A.C.T. Project

From 2012 to 2014, La Criée is involved in a European cooperation project entitled Art Cooperation Transmission Democ[k]racy with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union.

LAB & FAB seminaries – Research and critical space

The A.C.T. project encourages discussion and debate in order to analyze how European democracies have come to establish a social organization based on exclusion and control, instead of forms of organization that encourage diversity and singularity – including its relationship to art.

With the seminars, the goal is to test a research and criticism on art and democracy by bringing skills beyond the only artistic professionals. It consists of a multidisciplinary laboratory uniting, in addition to all project participants, about twenty multidisciplinary researchers concerned with issues related to democratic and artistic issues: anthropologists, architects, designers, teachers, philosophers, sociologists and urban planners.

This laboratory works on four issues that affect arts and cultural emancipation in democracy:
– Education, education and training in their contributions to democratic creativity;
– Freedom, limits and potential of creative freedom in Europe;
– Urbanism, daily practices of democracy in European cities;
– Poetics, the role of art and poetry in the reinvention of the imaginary of democracy.

Each issue is worked over the threeone-day seminars held in Rennes, Eindhoven, Cluj and the final symposium Art & Democracy in Belgrade. Amongst other researchers and critics the seminaries gather Paul de Bruyne, Joëlle Zask, Joop Hazenberg and Samuel Vriezen.

Exhibitions – Creation of democratic imaginary

The A.C.T. project intends to demonstrate that real and sustainable innovation of a culture in motion is the opposite of stun devices proposed to us today.

The exhibitions aim to experiment with a space to cultivate creativity, representations and democratic imaginary. They consist of a laboratory of creation about democratic imaginary which supports the production of works and exhibitions voluntarily offering diverse perspectives, even contradictory, on issues of democracy that occur in different European contexts. These works and exhibits cultivate otherness and solicit critical and crossed eyes on the political, aesthetic and societal issues.

Four exhibitions bring together more than forty European artists who circulate and disseminate their works in Rennes, Eindhoven, Cluj, and Belgrade.

Exhibitions are designed by curators asked to think European challenges as part of this issue Art and Democracy. Rather than offering replicas of the travelling exhibitions, the exhibitions will be crossed between the partner cities, one partner inviting a European curator from another partner city. These interchanged curatorships are vital in order to offer a sufficiently rich and diverse panorama of European creativity. They also offer an opportunity to establish long-term cooperation between different artistic scenes. The exhibitions will amongst others feature Uroš Đurić, Vladimir Nikolić, Raša Todosijevi and Nicoline van Harskamp.

Residencies – Creative and pedagogical projects

The A.C.T. project intends to promote higher arts education as a necessary condition to have a democratic practice. Residencies aim to invent and share new learning processes for art students and to establish creative partnerships between art schools and structures of production and distribution.

Four exchange residencies of students and teachers are organized between the cities of Rennes, Eindhoven, Cluj and Belgrade.

Publication

In order to build awareness and disseminate this dynamic of reflection and creation, the publication How to act? is a multi-focus work on art and democracy. It comprise: the proceedings of the seminars and symposium, visuals from the exhibitions accompanied by interviews with the curators and artists, documents relating to the students’ and teachers’ exchange residencies…