ARTISTS AS AGENTS OF INSTITUTIONAL EXCHANGE is a 2015 joint initiative of tranzit.ro/ Iasi and Skaftfell, Seydisfjordur, Iceland, that is materialised into a unique live streaming platform dedicated to the use of its artists in residence: Cristina DAVID and Ásdís Sif GUNNARSDÓTTIR. As practitioners, we often witness or create a result of artistic research that is mostly based on past, hidden, personal processes, on archaeological praxis, but we never allow ourselves the freedom to go live into the void of online audience and perform a video or carry out research together with our audience. Through this project, a term deemed to live forever in the past, the footage (a film that has been shot) will thus be experienced live, instantly, by the contemporary artist and the contemporary online witness. Platforms for live streaming are already the new institutional media in various instances, but this project is doing more than transmitting the result. Its function is to offer to our two artists in residence a new tool for live footage. It is about transforming this communication medium into a medium of artistic production, where the artist will have full control and responsibility for engaging a larger audience into a personal research process. With this we hope to further expand the notion of what an artist residency can be, by closely examining two institutional experiences from both the artists’ and the producers’ perspective. The new method for embarking on such a process is to empower the artist as an internal agent.
tranzit.ro was founded in 2012 at the initiative of ERSTE Foundation, becoming thus the fifth member of tranzit.org, a network of independent, non-profit organisations in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and the Slovak Republic. tranzit.ro has the particularity of being itself a network, activating in three permanent spaces in the cities of Iasi, Cluj and Bucharest. Rather than illustrating curatorial concepts, tranzit.ro/ Iași searches long term involvement with art projects or artists that may initiate public interventions and influence the mental or social constructions that surround us. tranzit.ro/ Iași is a curated institution whose mechanics is softly determined by a local context within an international conversation.
tranzit.ro/ Iași
Al. Lăpușneanu street, No. 7-9, 700057
Iași, Romania
Skaftfell Center for Visual Art, est. 1998 is located in Seyðisfjörður, East Iceland. The center plays the essential role of presenting, discoursing and encouraging the development of contemporary art in eastern Iceland. It is a meeting point for artists and locals, and its activities are based on exhibitions and events, alongside an international residency program and outreach program. Skaftfell is also the guardian of a minuscule house previously owned by the local naïve artist Ásgeir Emilsson. In March 2013 Skaftfell received an Icelandic award, Eyrarrósin, for outstanding cultural leadership in a rural area.
Skaftfell – Center for Visual Art, East Iceland
Austurvegur 42
710 Seyðisfjörður, Iceland
(+354) 472 1632
skaftfell@skaftfell.is