30.11.2008 AKADEMIE DER KÜNSTE, HANSEATENWEG 10, D-10557 BERLIN-TIERGARTEN

The first Migrating Art Academies conference focuses on three topics – migration, art, and education. Theoreticians, artists, and professors overview migration concepts within art and sciences.

11:00 – 12:00 Socializing

12:00 – 15:00 Presentations

Migrating Art. Hubertus von Amelunxen

Does Art touch the ground? And how persistent is it to participate in the formation of identities today? With regard to the writings of Vilém Flusser the talk questions the possibility of the project “Migrating Art Academies” to formulate art education today in relation to cultural and political territories.

Migrating Reality. Book Presentation. Mindaugas Gapševičius, Vytautas Michelkevičius

Electronic and digital systems generate completely new forms of migration. In the creative arts, new phenomena related to migration and the synergies of disparate systems are emerging. Artistic products evolve from traditional forms into hybrid digital forms. Analog products are being digitized; data spaces are trans-located from one data storage system to another; existing sounds, images, and texts are remixed and fused into new datasets.

Art-O-Thlon. Žilvinas Lilas

Being a junior brother of Régime, Art-O-Thlon is one of the projects of Vilnius European Capital of Culture 2009, also a partner project for Migrating Art Academies Laboratory III in Vilnius. Art-o-thlon is a first-ever international championship of arts and, as such, it is a unique attempt of presenting a broad range of art practices ranging from painting to performance and conceptual art to the widest audience possible through the channels of mass media as well as Internet. Following in a tradition of Fluxus, the only prominent art trend of the 2nd half of 20th century Lithuania has an intimate connection with; Art-o-thlon carries on a tradition of innovation, interdisciplinarity and an active engagement with non-artistic context.

AmeXica sKin. Sylvie Marchand

Through experimental and multimedia writings, Sylvie Marchand, a new media artist with an anthropological point of view, tackles a transversal topic : the cultures of mobility in our contemporary world. Today, Sylvie is questioning the worldwide migratory flux in collaboration with international artists who join the dialogue through on line web events and off line performances set into her “AmeXica sKin” installation.

15:00 – 16:00 Coffee break

16:00 – 19:00 Presentations

Second Life. Nicolas Rivet

Has art school as an institution become a hazy notion? As changing and temporary as a hotel, mobile like camper or immaterial as virtual platform? Via several medias, tools and particular space-times, art school explores new forms of learning and communicational processes. Second life for instance, provides a computer generated place where educational institution and architecture is stretchable, foldable, temporary or omnipresent at will. Though we have to know how to get lost in its coils…

Collaboration Practices. Alvydas Lukys

Someone could call as standard the exhibitions of contemporary art, which are displayed at Vilnius art scenes for the ten recent years. Is it because of the institutions supporting nowadays art? The circle of a themes sometimes appears very close to actual problems of European Commission. What is individual observation and where is a reason for artists collaboration practices?

The Return of the Gastarbajters. Noa Treister

The return of the gastarbajters is an interdisciplinary project dealing with the reciprocal effects, which the relation immigrants – home community, immigrants – host community have on each other. In the last two years, the seminars and artists’ workshops were held in Eastern Serbia where more than 50% of the population is on “temporary work abroad”. The project has a pronounced activist side. During the workshops, it means that artists work and exhibit in public places and engage as much as possible with the local population – both that of the immigrants and the community that stayed in the home country.

19:00 Inaugural Migrating Art Academies Reception