The Art+Science Meeting Project is being realized since 2011 by the LAZNIA Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdansk.
The Art+Science Meeting project presents art and science through an expanded exhibition, workshop, publication, meeting and debate program as two different perspectives of the same reality. The interdisciplinary open to discussion character of the project gives a possibility to present the achievements of world’s most outstanding artists who create in the area of science and technology. It also allows a wider look on the contemporary civilization for which science and technology are progress conditions but still remain opaque to most people.
The Outdoor Gallery of the City of Gdansk is an art project for the Lower Town – the district of Gdansk where Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art is situated. This culture institution through the cooperation in the framework of a long-term revitalization plan supports the process of social and architectonic transformation of the neglected district. The project consists of two important elements: international competition aiming to create a permanent collection of works of art in urban space and a wide range of educational activities.
Art and the City Non - Festival is the first, pilot edition of a non-festival organized by the ŁAŹNIA Centre for Contemporary Art. The event takes place in Gdańsk over the summer and focuses on the broadly understood public art.
Art and the City is an opportunity to look at the latest developments in contemporary art exhibited outside gallery walls, spend some time outdoors, take part in creative activities and meet new people. Through these actions we want to refer to pressing social problems, think about the role of art in the urban space, look for different forms of communicating with viewers and new contexts for art.
We’re doing art in the city. Not another public art festival!
The Festival In Out, ongoing since 2005, is a competition for works of video, animated, experimental, documentary, and feature film etudes. The competition is open to young artists under 35 years of age. Each edition focuses on different artistic and social problems. The event aims to create a platform for discussion between artists, and to examine the current state of the art of cinema, as well as to encourage reflection on the world and its problems.
Intertextuality… a notion introduced by Julia Kristeva who, when writing about the works of Mikhail Bakhtin, notices that the discovery made by this researcher was of the fact that “any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another. The notion of intertextuality replaces that of intersubjectivity, and poetic language is read as at least double”. As Kristeva writes, Bakhtin notices that three elements have been drawn into the dialogue: the subject of the writing, the addressee and external texts. The word’s status is thus defined horizontally (the word in the text belongs to both writing subject and the addressee) as well as vertically (the word in the text is oriented towards an anterior or synchronic literary corpus). (...)
And it is precisely on this that I would like to concentrate. Intertekst will, therefore, be a space where particular texts will enter into an intimate dialogue with each other and with other – past and future – texts about culture. They will arrange themselves into different kinds of mosaics, absorb and transform each other.
from the introduction of Kamila Wielebska
Heroes We Love is a collaborative, multidisciplinary project on the (still controversial) topic of socialist heritage of the 20th century European art. It brings together partners from institutional and non-institutional sectors from Central and South-Eastern Europe. The project is aimed at connecting contemporary art practices with research works and involvement with the audiences on the phenomenon of socialist art in its cultural, social-ideological and political context, spanning the period from the inception of the communist/socialist states of Eastern Europe until today. It boldly exposes the geo-political term ‘New Europe’ and encompasses the region from Poland to Albania in a joint transnational project.
The aim of the project is to outline development of socialist art, its various (art) forms and visual manifestations, its relevant art works and artists by presenting different case studies and to connect the heritage with contemporary art trends and visions as well as communicating and connecting the topic with the audiences. We will be asking questions about the background of socialist art in Eastern Europe, its different applications and diversions regarding the geo-political frameworks, we will search for its artistic excellence and controversies, we will try to understand its lure (even fetishisation), we will be asking about its role during the transition period and we will look to identify potentials and a legacy of socialist art for the contemporary condition and its future. While largely unexplored and lacking appropriate interpretation, many of the socialist art works are highly original and finally ready to undergo new interpretations. The project seeks to detect (often forgotten, hated or ridiculed) works of socialist art that with their formal, narrative and aesthetic power reach beyond political justification, seeks for their art history status and hold potential added value for future developments. The project seeks to reconstruct an important segment of the shared history of ‘New Europe’ and to strengthen cross-cultural respect and understanding through trans-national collaboration and mobility.
The title of the project Heroes We Love is deliberately ambiguous, trying to question our prejudices and reflections when talking about socialist art. Heroic and monumental art and its protagonist long lost their relevance for contemporary societies; nevertheless being part of our cultural heritage they deserve a second look, our attention and our involvement.
Close Stranger: promoting mutual understanding between population of Gdansk, Kaliningrad and Klaipeda through facilitation of exchange in the field of contemporary arts and culture (2013-2014)
Art Line is an international art project investigating and challenging the concept of public space. 14 partners from 5 countries around the Baltic Sea join to create a co-operative platform for art and academia in Poland, Sweden, Germany, Russia and Lithuania. The platform will strengthen the institutions, create opportunities for artists, and interact with people in public space, on the internet, in exhibitions, and on the Stena Line ferries between Gdynia and Karlskrona. The project period is 2011-2014.