PERFORMANCE AND MULTIMEDIA FESTIVAL / 29. 5. — 15. 6. 2024 / PIAZZETTA A NÁRODNÍ DIVADLO, PRAHA
PHOTO CREDIT: SOUMYA SANKAR BOSE
RE-CONNECT ART 2024
The 4th edition of the international performance and multimedia festival Re-connect Art will this year bring art to the public space on the piazzetta of the National Theatre in Prague. The theme of this year's edition is Revealing, in which the festival will focus on making hidden social issues visible and will bring to the fore Czech and international artists who deserve more attention from the public and the art world. The festival will run from 29 May to 15 June 2024 and will feature interventions in public space, screenings, video-art, workshops, discussions, artist talks and more.
CREDIT: ARTBIOM
REVEALING
This year's edition of the festival will focus on revealing the hidden, unspoken or unconscious. Through a variety of artistic interventions, discursive and educational programmes in a series of pop-up events, it aims to make visible topics that are uncomfortable and problematic or compromising for many, and therefore often deliberately suppressed or even tabooed. The curatorial concept aims to provide points of reference to navigate the overwhelming flow of information and impulses with which humans are surrounded in the digital era, making visible processes and mechanisms that often run in the background without our noticing. At the same time, the festival will actively use digital technologies to promote live art, society-wide discourse and the development of interactive and participatory artistic practices.
ABOUT PRAGUE BIENNALE
A globally acclaimed contemporary art event, the Prague Biennale was founded in 2003 by Helena Kontova and Giancarlo Politi and is organised by the Nadace Prague Biennale Foundation (established in 2004).
After the pioneering first edition, organised along with the National Gallery in 2003, three successful editions followed in the grandiose industrial space of Karlin Hall, in the futuristic Microna skyscraper and at the Žižkov Freight Station, finally revitalising the vibrant district of Žižkov. The principal goal of the event in all its previous editions was to explore and capture the current trends on the contemporary art scene in the Central and Eastern European Region and present the best artists and curators to experts as well as to the general public.
The objective of the Prague Biennale Foundation is to support artistic and authorial creation that contributes towards the enhancement and development of the cultural heritage in society, fosters the principles of democracy, humanism, ethics, and freedom of artistic expression, and contributes towards the shaping of awareness of democratic values. Such values include the freedom of speech, equality, diversity, tolerance to differences, mutual inter-gender and inter-species respect, and support for inclusion.
Unfortunately, the current economic crisis, political shocks and the long-lasting processes of cultural globalization have also resulted in the aggressive polarization of society. In times of cultural boycotts and a plethora of hate speech, we must pay maximum attention to correctness and mutual respect between everybody involved and safeguard an inclusive and safe environment during our program.
This is why we have decided to invite two external ‘confidants’ to take part in Re-connect Art and guarantee the transparency and coherence of our inclusive strategy and oversee the observance of ethics principles during festival activities.
Participants in the programs will have the option to approach Barbora Trnková and Michal Kučerák with their issues related to inclusion, discrimination or misuse of the position of power in cultural institutions either via telephone or e-mail, should they prefer written communication.
We believe that this option will contribute towards fostering the rise of diverse communities of artists, researchers and viewers willing co-create an atmosphere of safety and acceptance that will enhance mutual enrichment through an exchange of knowledge and experience.