Art against tortures and execution

CONCEPT

The project "ART OF TORTURES AND EXECUTIONS - ART AGAINST TORTURES AND EXECUTIONS" is an open social network artistic communication within the given issue that can be expressed and realised in different forms of human activity.

Open There is an open access to the project for all participants, along with active invitation of individual persons. Besides, the openness of the project is presupposed by its network nature, and by the large-scale and media character of the subject.

Social The social nature of the project is determined by the urgent issues of the real life in determining the phenomenon of tortures and executions. The intensification of contrasts in the world between the polar anthropogenous structures is getting ever faster, making wider the gap between them. On the one pole there is a functionally-machinized technogenic type of human being, on the other - primitive societies that have hardly changed for the past millenniums. The space between them is filled with a great number of ethno-confessional groups, among the number of aspects common for them being significant and expressive are attributive and ritualised tortures and executions. Among the social aspects there could be distinguished the verification result, that is attained at the final stage of the project as statistical and representative information about the socio-cultural human activity within the event. Besides, the project is based on the conflicting dual position of a human as a Homo Sapience. On the one hand, it is the focus of cruelty, it is the most sophisticated "machine" of violence and destruction; on the other hand - it is the institution of law and protection dealing with environmental and preservation issues.

Network Network is the most convenient inter-media communicative form of relationships and links. Access to the information (knowledge) for the mass audience is increasing on the geo-global scale thanks to the new means of information delivery, mobility of news receiving, and total spread of networks all over the civilised world. At the same time, the privilege of the State for reservation, receiving, transmission and broadcasting of information is levelling.

Artistic By its definition, the institutionalised Center for Contemporary Art, initiating and canalising this project into the society, deals with art. Constituting this project as artistic, but not as multi-cultural, and inviting to participate in it all creative and intellectual-creative individuals and groups who are capable of initiating art-reflection on the given issue in different social spheres, the project participant acts as a field receptor, and as a result the environment is resounded and artistic events take place. Individual artistic implementation of the subject within relative borders can vary, clone, mutate, dissolve and concretise in the local discourse environment.

"Tortures and executions" It is senseless to philosophise at the category of violence, the presence of which is total in the material life due to the natural and seemingly divine and devilish origin of the phenomenon. What is important for the society is the phenomenon of truly exclusively human invention of context-applied violence. The practicing, most advanced professional executioners follow the technical progress, introducing innovative means and methods, achieving perfection and efficiency of tortures, and sometimes highest humanity killing without torment and pain. Such is the dialectics of the penetration of technical progress into the deepest and most intimate spheres of human or anti-human activities.

"Art of tortures and execution" The subject of aggression and violence in the art can be called the common place, the mainstream of the contemporary artistic situation. Cutting own artist's or his colleague's veins in public has become somewhat fashionable recently. And the traditional and trite question "Where is the border line between art and life?" is today answered, even by a "non-advanced" person and not even an intellectual, "Everywhere and nowhere" or "It is where we mark it".

"Art against tortures and execution" Trying to promote the subject in the public artistic consciousness, the curators of the project again and again make the participants of the event comprehend the idea of the project, and through their creative activities initiate public resonance in the society against the violence of the anthropogenous character.

Pressetext

Art of tortures and execution - Art against tortures and execution
Organisation: Kaliningrad Branch of the National Center for Contemporary Art, Russia
Idee: Evgeny Umansky
Kuratoren: Irina Tchesnokova, Elena Tsvetaeva

Period of implementation 2000 - 2001

mit Agricola de Cologne, Bruno Pollacci, Miklos Legrady, Daniel Daligand, Anton Litvin, Franc Purg, Konstantine Gayday, Dmitry Gutov, Vadim Koshkin, Alexandra Mitlyanskaya, Oleg Kireev, Nina Kotel, Vladimir Salnikov, Joseph Nechvatal, Barbara Caveng, Vanessa Beecroft, Alexander Shaburov, Alexander Serov, Temur Javakhishvili, Katy Deepwell, Lena Lapschina, Jiri Cernicki, Lena Kovylina, Richard Kostelanetz, Raivo Kelomees,Khatuna Khabuliani, Oleg Lystsov, THE NEW STUPID, u.a.