The Very Tangible, October 2009, London
Prague, September and October 2009
The Jatka project is going to be at and part of the
5TH INTERNATIONAL BIENNIAL VESTIGES OF
INDUSTRY 2009 in Prague later this Summer
Curatorial Residency
Jatkaproject offers a curatorial residency that includes six weeks of working time at the Jatkaproject site in Czech Republic.
The time frame is to include a finalised exhibition that is open to the public for a minimum of one week. the Curatorial
Resident will assist the Directors in the selection of works for a follow-up exhibition in London.
The Curatorial programme includes:
• 9 large spaces for studios and exhibitions on the Jatka site
• accomodation for up to 8 people
• Support from the Directors that includes advice about funding and marketing in the Czech Republic
• the possiblity of a built-in exchange programme at the Meet Factory in Prague for selected artists for up to 2 weeks
• Input into the annual Jatkaproject publication
• An individual section within the Jatkaproject Archive
Application Guidelines
Applicants should send
• a curatorial proposal that includes:
• A clear definition of the theme/concept of the proposal
• Details of participants CV’s and press including images
• Outline of a publicity and audience development plan
• Time line of project production
• Budget
• Funding and resources
• Monitoring and evaluation strategy
• a CV
• a PDF formatted file of previous projects.
Send to: info@jatkaproject.com
For further enquiries please contact
Sarah Purchase: sarah@jatkaproject.com
Deadline for application 5th June 2009
previous:
session 1 + 2 + 3
13.09.08\ 6-10PM
WORKS BY:
Session Three
Sebastian Acker | Gaby Bila-Günther | Eugenia Ivanissevich | Mark Ther | Lucia Udvardyova
Session Two
Marco Chiandetti | Nathan Edmunds
Session One
Studiofourarchitects:
Benjamin Farnsworth | Martin Johnson | Dean Myers | Sinan Pirie | Dominic Rago-Verdi | Viktor Westerdahl | Natalie Wills | Jonathan Wilson
session 1 + 2 + 3_____13.09.08
Sebastian Acker | Gaby Bila-Günther | Marco Chiandetti | Nathan Edmunds | Benjamin Farnsworth | Eugenia Ivanissevich | Martin Johnson | Dean Meyers | Sinan Pirie | Dominic Rago-Verdi | Mark Ther | Lucia Udvardyova | Natalie Wills | Johnny Wilson | Viktor Westerdahl
Recent Articles
ArtArtArt Issue 2
www.artartartgallery.com/abattoir.html
cult.code
http://www.cultcode.net/node/42
Notes From an Abattoir
01 introduction; Doro Globus in conversation with Sarah asking ten quick questions to give an overview of the project
Doro Globus: Sarah, I would like to get started with the nuts and bolts of the project if you will… the basics. So tell me, where is the project?
Sarah Purchase: Césky Krumlov, a town in southern Bohemia in the Czech Republic. It is called Jatkaproject. Jatka being the Czech word for abattoir and the site itself being an abandoned abattoir.
DG: Most people assume its in Prague when you start talking about it, could you tell us a bit more about what the town is like?
SP: Its a medieval town based around a large castle and intersected by the Moldau River. Its a UNESCO World Heritage Site so has very picturesque centre. Surrounding this is a large suburban area comprised of many purpose-built housing blocks from the communist era. There is this mixture of the romantic, medieval image of Czech culture with the reality of its thrust into modernisation, there is a large Tesco hypermarket on the outskirts.
DG: Interesting, so it must have been a real contrast to try and bring contemporary art into a UNESCO site. What has been your approach to the site and the town? What has been your unifying principle?
SP: The context of the project has been really important in terms of what we have been trying to do this year. The setting is a destination for two million tourists per year, Egon Schiele lived and worked there having great influence on the art of the area, and so we have been attempting to re-think what contemporary art can be in this context. This is not a unifying principle as such, but a starting point for each of the artists who are participating, as they develop their work over the months.
DG: Keeping in mind, we will expand upon all this in entries to come, I’m going to move forward and ask, how did you select the artists?
SP: Really simply I approached artists whose work and methodology I thought would suit the Jatka site and its context, that would be interested by both the physical buildings and history of the abattoir as well as the rapidly changing environment of the Czech Republic.
DG: What has been the most difficult element thus far?
SP: Not speaking Czech has made the process certainly more difficult and is something that I am working on, so far there have been a lot of hand gestures and sketches.
DG: Ha, perhaps we can publish some of the sketches on the blog! How long is this project?
SP: The project on the site is ongoing, this will be the third year. My residency is one calendar year. The period of studio time for the artists will range from three weeks to two months spread over a total of three months in the summer. Throughout this time there will be a series of exhibitions and events that are open for the public. An important part of the project is the web-based archive that is built up of past projects and will act as an on-line portfolio for everyone that has been involved.
DG: Fantastic, I think we should wrap it up now, just quickly if our readers would like to go and see your show how would they get there?
SP: Well, they can contact me for further details but basically, you can fly to Prague or Linz in Austria and then take a train to Césky Krumlov.
02 Site; A visual walk through of the Jatka site at Cesky Krumlov in the Czech republic
03 History & Future; Larissa Hadjio, Director of Jatkaproject, interviewed by Sarah Purchase
Sarah Purchase: How and why did the Jatkaproject begin?
Larissa Hadjio: It began through such a natural process, of that when you produce work, and your process and understanding of making artwork as a student, when you have no more than a few years of academic life and you are very much in academia, your mind set is very influenced through that, and you start to constantly think about putting your work elsewhere than the designated areas you are given. So we were looking for spaces to exhibit and to work and we always found the same restrictions. We found problems of lack of space and with money, and there being guidelines to everything. So I thought well in Eastern Europe, and actually there are plenty of spaces, and that is how, well from hanging out in some spaces there, we decided to set up a gallery in somewhere that was empty. It developed from there and I brought artists out every year. The first year started off being as ambitious as it is now, but because we were all very naive and not used to the complex structure of an art project like this, it remained very simple. There were also restrictions, because the only way that we could get the site was because it was so run down. So obviously we came to a complete wreck, without roofs and so on.
SP: I’m not sure that its clear why the Czech Republic became an alternative place to search for exhibition spaceLH: First of all I’m half Czech, which makes it an immediate connection for me. Secondly, I had begun looking around me in the Czech Republic and asking for empty spaces. It was something that was quite unheard of there at that time, at least in that area of the country. Luckily it happened that I could use the abattoir site as the owner did not have enough money to renovate it at that time, but was happy for it to be inhabited and in constant use. Over the time our understanding and appreciation for the project grew and now even as it is getting partly renovated we can still continue working there as the owner has become a supporter of our ideas and what we’re doing.
SP: Originally when you took people over there, were they making work at and for the site?
LH: Yes, it has never been meant as a site for work produced elsewhere. One artist did actually show there once without working there as he could never make it. So we took a piece over and exhibited the work, which was difficult to install entirely without him.
SP: How was the first residency?
LH: The very first time I ever took anyone, let me retrace how that was, I went out there with a girl I had worked with at another art organisation. Neither of us wanted to curate a show but bring friends to work for a summer on the site. At that moment the Jatkaproject, which means slaughterhouse in Czech, was still a completely abandoned factory site, with bare remains of what it used to be, with really powerful architecture, it is also a listed site. From then on it was really clear that this overpowering factor of the site is one of the things that works for and against using it as a studio space. So what happened next is we came back to London and literally invited everyone that we liked to be involved in the Jatkaproject. With this everything grew, as we hadn’t put an structure down, through the dialogue of what it could be and what is involved in being there was fluid, so where we are now is pretty much the result of conversations between most of the people who have been working on the site and within the project.
SP: Given that way working things out, what to you is the difference between having a group of artists with an open studio, and a residency programme?
LH: Maybe I’ll define it by saying what each is first. A group of artists with an open studio work independently from each other and often are more isolated. As a residency, it is also that the artists are chosen by whoever runs it. The dogma of their programmes stands in the foreground initially. So for the Jatka it became clear that it needed to define itself conceptually as it was so many things for different artists, and had so many aspects to itself. For that it needed to be unified. That unification started with having architects over who were supposed to solve the issue of making the Jatka habitable, which was a project in itself. That was at the end of the summer 2006 and I was more the mediator between the architects and their involvement with the site. So that is basically what happened and it turned out to be a very interesting project, never to be realised as we didn’t have the funding. But it was important for the Jatka principle because I realised that I was interested in providing opportunities, and in order for that to happen that was a lot of organisation.
SP: So did you change it to a curatorial residency in order to share the organisational load!
LH: A curator does not only organise. Before, I was the only person involving people and thinking about the idea of the Jatka. At this stage I was effectively doing a curatorial role as well as making work, and because I was doing all of it I began thinking what the roles was that I was playing, and whether it would be interesting to understand this in the context of the project. I wanted to push it and think about the Jatka, to see it through the eyes of another curator.
SP: Is this then a joint curatorial project?
LH: At this point I think not. Maybe in the future if I feel the need to be engaged with it in another way. Right now, I have a directorial role in that I have an insight into every aspect of the machinery, but you as the curator make the decisions of what is artistically happening there. But our relationship is based very much around dialogue. Now my choice is to work with a curator rather than the artists directly, and that is where the collaboration is, and of course that relationship will change every year with each curatorial resident.
SP: So what are you asking for from your curators exactly?
LH: First of all to think about the Jatka within its context but also what that context is because to date the artists and now the curator that I have brought there are not locally based and are used to thinking about a very large global context. Secondly to really expand the Jatka - in terms of audience development, bring money in and structuring the funding so that we can develop the archive and I wanted to strengthen the relationship with the local town and art scene. Understanding what the Jatka needs in order to function well, thus to provide a good platform, as I guess I have a very subjective take on it.
Basically I’m asking the curator to produce critical exhibitions and/or events that are both coherent and layered so that the Jatka can grow and is not stagnant.
Next Article to be entered - 10/06/08
A series of articles by curator Sarah Purchase
Notes from an Abattoir follows Sarah Purchase’s curatorial residency in the Czech Republic as she builds a pavilion, questions residencies, and lives in an abattoir. Initially we are publishing the first three extracts from a series of articles, exploring a variety of methods documenting a residency. Over the coming weeks further articles will be added below as the project gets underway. for more information visit; www.jatkaproject.com/index.html