Under the patronage and with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the City of Prague

The third edition of TINA B. - The Prague Contemporary Art Festival, organised by Prague's Galerie Vernon, aims yet again to combine the creative energy of the cultural scene in Central and Eastern Europe with emerging talents and trends from around the world in the Czech Republic's vibrant capital. Adopting the leitmotif FORMS OF ENGAGEMENT, TINA B. 2008 will focus on the relationships between art and society, exploring the role of contemporary art, artists and artistic practice as socio-cultural agents that not only provide a critique of social order, but also serve a direct, positive and symbiotic social function on both a local and global level.

Curators: Micaela Giovannotti, Rosanna Musumeci, Yukiko Ito, Blanca de la Torre García, Viktor Misiano, Marek Tomin, the Greyzone Collective.

The third edition's focus on the ways in which art engages with individuals and society is all the more pertinent in the year of the 40th anniversary of the momentous events of 1968, which had a major impact on society and politics throughout the globe, as well as on Czechoslovakia in particular. TINA B. 2008 feels honoured to be able to make at least a small contribution to the commemoration of an anniversary that is a strong symbol of liberty and free thinking (as well, unfortunately, of the ill-fated imposition of political and military might).

 

The Main Event of TINA B. 2008 will take place from September 25 until October 15, 2008, at various venues and locations in Prague, including the Italian Cultural Institute, the Laterna Magika Theatre, the Gallery of Art Critics and TINA B.'s ALTERNATIVE SPACE, a dilapidated building opposite the Czech National Gallery (Dukelských hrdinù 28, Prague 7), as well as in public space.

The festival is focusing on video, light and sound installations and the new media generated by mobile technologies, which are so profoundly influencing the course of our lives, as well as visual art performances. Another approach highlighted at TINA B. 2008 is open collaboration, engendered by two exceptional projects - RE-BRANDING PRAGUE by Wooloo Productions which is part of Micaela Giovannotti's VIDEOCRACY section, and the groundbreaking multifaceted research and performance project VYSOCANY CONGRESS curated by renowned Russian critic and curator Viktor Misiano

Special Events Week will run from October 9 until 13 and will include a number of public events and visual art performances, for example by extravagant Italian contemporary art duo ConiglioViola and Czech multimedia artist Darina Alster. The TINA B. STREET PARTY will explore the interface between contemporary art and popular culture in general, featuring various visual art activities, outdoor video screening and performances by several experimental music groups with strong contemporary art connections. Special Events Week will also see the culmination of Viktor Misiano's VYSOCANY CONGRESS project. The Russian artists Yevgeniy Fiks, Ilya Budratskis and Nikolai Oleynikov will involve local artists, intellectuals and the general public in a staged performance or reconstruction of events linked to the free Extraordinary Congress of the Communist Party held in Prague's CKD factory one day after the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies on August 21, 1968, which was the party's last attempt to maintain the course of the Prague Spring reforms and hold on to "socialism with a human face". The performance will include audio and video archives and interviews filmed by the artists during the research phase of the project.


VIDEOCRACY
Curator Micaela Giovannotti will transform the architecturally rich space of the Italian Cultural Institute located in Prague's Malá Strana into a vibrant contemporary art location with her section entitled VIDEOCRACY, exploring and questioning the democratic nature of video art in the broader context of entertainment and video output and examining the fine line between viewer democracy and video dictatorship, as well as revitalizing tangible architectural elements of the institute with several site-specific installations employing the ephemeral elements of light, sound and motion.

Danish art project Wooloo Productions (Sixten Kai Nielsen & Martin Rosengaard) will present video documentation of their previous actions carried out for the Defending Denmark project, as well as an exploration of the artist as political agent though their tactical media performance RE-BRANDING PRAGUE. In this performance, taking place at the Italian Cultural Institute during the Special Events Week, the artists will present critical strategies of real and utopian means of re-thinking national identity.

The section includes work by Tamy Ben-Tor (Israel), Regina Jose Galindo (Guatemala), Ragnar Kjartansson (Island), Sigalit Landau (Israel), Domenico Mangano (Italy), Alex McQuilkin (US), Adrian Paci (Albania), Amparo Sard (Spain), Wooloo.org (Denmark) and Hank Willis Thomas and Kambui Olujimi (US).


DARKNESS IS NOON
This section curated by Rosanna Musumeci brings together artists mostly from Italy whose works are concerned with one of the essential elements of both art and life - light. "Light is the medium to see - to conceive - the form of any object. Objects, however, are perceived by subjects and that makes the whole difference," writes the curator. The section includes sound and video projections, as well as digital, video and mixed media installations exploring artistic and scientific, objective and subjective, methods, approaches and strategies tackling the ways in which light enables us to see and alters our perceptions.

 

The section includes Italian artists Carlo Bernardini, Flavia Bigi, Fiodor Bonaviri, Carmen Cardillo, Tiziana Contino, Emanuele Costanzo, Giuliana Cuneaz, Alberto Finocchiaro, Semira Forte, Claudia Gambadoro, Loredana Longo, Valentina Medda, Flaviano Poggi, Gianfranco Pulitano, Paola Ricci, Martina della Valle, as well as Saverio Todaro (Switzerland), Zevs (France), Florian Grond (Austria) and Teun Hocks (Netherlands).

 

SPECIAL FOCUS - JAPAN
Curated by Yukiko Ito of Hiroshima Art Document, a special section of Japanese Art entitled WE DESTROY WE REGENERATE; A THING OF BEAUTY explores cultural contrasts and synergies, employing video artworks and site-specific installations to engender a stimulating discourse on cross-cultural aspects of the social and political role of art and artistic practice. Participating artists will include Buiper Ware, Koso Haranaka, Jitsuro Mase, Koji Matsumoto, Kiyohito Mikami, Toshihiro Nakanosai, Nobuka Otsuka, Tamaki Ono, Mali Suzuki, Teruhisa Suzuki and Tomohiro Uesugi.

 

ALTERNATIVE REVOLUTIONS
With her section Alternative Revolutions focusing on video art, curator Blanca de la Torre encompasses a series of works that could be seen as a subversion of the classical concept or behaviour of Revolution.

Taking Marshall Berman's ideas about understanding modern society in an open way (All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, 1982), de la Torre applies its core ideas to the concept of revolution, understanding it in a more expansive way. Therefore, we can see all sorts of political, intellectual, social and quotidian revolutions as part of one dialectical process, and to develop creative interplay among them, enlarging our vision of our own experience and giving our daily lives a new resonance and depth.

Participating artists include Katarina Zdjelar (Serbia/Netherlands), Eugenio Ampudia (Spain), Montse Arbelo and Joseba Franco (Spain), Avelino Sala (Spain), Cristina Lucas (Spain), PSJM (Spain), Brody Condon (US), Ana Prvacki (Serbia/Singapore), Jenny Marketou (Greece) and Johanna Billing (Sweden).
 

Avelino Sala (Spain 1972)
culture
2008 | one channel video installation, 2 min 5 sec
courtesy of the artist and Espacio Líquido Gallery, Gijón, Spain

VYSOCANY CONGRESS
A special project curated by Viktor Misiano involving New York-based artist Yevgeniy Fiks and Moscow based political activist and artist Ilya Budraitskis will consist of a staged performance or "re-enactment" of events related to the socialist reforms in Czechoslovakia in 1968, as well as the subsequent invasion of the country by Warsaw Pact armies, as experienced by workers in one of Prague's CKD factory, which was the site of the free Extraordinary Congress of the Communist Party held just one day after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact armies. Focusing on the social and micro-political dimension of the idea of "socialism with a human face" and on workers' capacity of self-organisation, this visual art performance will consist of the reading of a script based on authentic historical materials and extensive on-site research including interviews with intellectually and workers conducted by the artists and curator in Prague. Audio-visual material gathered and recorded in Prague will also be used during the performance and another Russian artist, Nikolai Oleynikov, will endow it with key visual elements.

Importantly, the project is open to the participation of local artists and intellectuals, as well as the general public. The re-enactment itself, taking place on the premises of the CKD Eletrotechnika factory, will also be documented on video and later broadcast in one of the festival locations, as well as being available on the festival website. A film will subsequently be made combining footage of the re-enactment with audiovisual archives and various artistic interventions.

 

TRANSIENT BOUNDARIES
Transient Boundaries, curated by Marek Tomin, will create a temporary art centre in a dilapidated building in Prague 7. The building has a unique location - directly opposite Veletrzní Palace, which houses the Czech National Gallery's Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art. The art centre will include the ground floor of the building, which in times past held an apothecary, as well as twelve broken-down garages located in its extensive courtyard. The building's facade will also be utilised as a space for art, creating a direct communicative interface not only with public space on one of the main transport arteries in Prague 7, but also with the art institution opposite.

On the boundary between private and public space, this temporary art centre will provide a unique setting for the exploration of the different ways in which artists engage with their work, its setting and context, the public domain and society at large, as well as giving new life to an urban structure before it returns to its original functionality - the building is soon to be reconstructed. The section combines video, digital and sound installations with site-specific wall paintings, street art, sculptures and spatial interventions by both domestic and international artists. Artists presenting video and digital installations include Erik Olofsen, Jakub Nepras, Lukás Machalický, Jakub Roztocil, Richard Wiesner and Linda Ciharová. Site-specific interventions and wall paintings will be produced by, among others, Guma Guar, Vladimír Skrepl, Mario Chromý and Jan Kaláb, as well as Pasta, Masker and Dize.

A graduate of the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, Jan Kaláb is also closely involved with the Czech street art scene. The third edition of TINA B. views street art, whose authors mostly shun financial gain, as a form of engaged art in public space. Over the last few years there has been an unprecedented proliferation of street art in Prague, including stencil graffiti, sticker art, street poster art, mosaic tiling, installations and sculptures, as well as the more traditional forms of free-hand aerosol sprayed graffiti artwork.
 
 
TINA B. ON THE ROAD
This section curated by TINA B. brings together a host of artists from various parts of the world. During her travels around the world, attending various exhibitions and art fairs, TINA B. has come across many interesting artists and their artworks. She has selected some of them and invited them to take part in her very own section. Not being partial to any particular medium, TINA B. has assembled a thought-provoking ensemble of artists whose works broadly correspond with this year's leitmotif - FORMS OF ENGAGEMENT.

The section will include artworks by William T. Hillman (US), Ulu Braun (Germany), Christoph Runne (Canada), Giovani Agosta (IT), Kensuke Koike (JPN), Donna Conlon (US), Cannon Hersey (US), Samson Mnisi (LSO), Alexandros Yiorkadjis (CYP) and many others.

 

TINA B. MEETS DESIGN
In a new departure in 2008, TINA B. presents the TINA B. MEETS DESIGN section which endeavours to explore the interface between contemporary art and design. The section is launched with the exhibition ALESSANDRO MENDINI for CLETO MUNARI, which marries the artistic activities of two of the most important figures of world design. This section also presents the video Invidia - Envy by Italian artist Marco Chiurato, a playful interaction with Alessandro's design objects from the Ricetta - Recipe series.

 

 

SPECIAL PROJECTS
As in previous years, TINA B. 2008 will present a number of Special Projects at various exterior and interior locations in Prague. One such project, curated by Micaela Giovannotti, will be a site-specific installation employing light and sound by Stefano Cagol (IT) that promises to transform one of Prague's landmarks into a beacon of contemporary art. Other special projects will include an installation by Daniel Gonzalez, a public space site-specific video installation by Giuliana Cuneaz (from the Darkness Is Noon section) and two public space projects by CONIGLIOVIOLA. Curated by Blanca de la Torre, David Maroto will organise a three-stage strategic board game tournament during Special Events Week. Entitled DISILLUSION, the project employs the board game as a platform to explore wider issues of coexistence and the generation of meaning through experience.

 

Billboard Text Art: EMERGING WOR(L)DS, curated by the collective Grey Zone, is a unique one-year site-specific project featuring textual and word-based artworks on large billboards throughout Prague, creating a platform for diverse art interventions, messages and statements tackling a broad range of issues and subjects concerned with the complex social, political, corporate and cultural structures currently emerging within the context of the post-Cold War - and post 9/11 - world.

EMERGING WOR(L)DS will culminate during the Main Event of TINA B. 2008 with an exhibition of the graphic artworks exhibited on billboards during the project with accompanying photographic documentation in the GALLERY OF ART CRITICS in Prague's Adria Palace. A comprehensive publication featuring all the billboard artworks exhibited in Prague will be available to accompany the project.