Open call artworks
This year, Copernicus Science Centre and the Austrian Cultural Forum have invited Polish and Austrian artists to take part in an open contest for an artistic project. The winning entries from Austria an Poland will be presented at the XI Przemiany Festival, and on 7 October, at Austrian Cultural Forum, a meeting will be held with the artists behind those pieces. All entries which met the criteria of our contest are presented on a separate subpage at Przemiany Festival.
In a debate, instead of assuming the crisis perspective, we want to focus on actual solutions. The time has come, within social debate, to analyse which solutions are the most realistic and the most desirable. And also – how to introduce them efficiently. On every scale: from little changes in our everyday lives, to urban and local community centered designs, and economic or political decisions on highest levels, regarding whole industries, especially in relation to the energy transition policies, and the need to shift away from fossil fuels as soon as possible.
The artists who answered our Open Call were offered two, very different approaches to the subject. Within the frames of one of the two perspectives, they were asked to create artworks which connect the topics of science and engineering with those of sociology and culture.
In the Open Call, we were mostly curious to see projects exploring the frontiers between art, design, science, and engineering, within the frames of broadly understood current of art and science, or the new media art. So those that were implementing bio art, data art, speculative design, robotic art, or responsive environments. We were looking for projects that would fit into those objectives, that would carry ideas, and become pretexts for a deepened debate and workshopping during the XI Przemiany Festival.
We wanted to see entries that:
- question the feeling of powerlessness, dominating within the collective imagination regarding the struggle against climate crisis, which births dystopian narratives, full of catastrophical prognoses;
- add a humanistic and social context to the analytical and strategic optic of the climate crisis solutions;
- build an artistic bridge between scientific and engineering facts, and emotions – connected information with inspiration, an environmental perspective with the social one;
- refer to the co-dependency between efficiency, aesthetics, and the easiness of introducing new technologies (in the context of an aesthetic aspect of the energy transition);
- promote long-term thinking, and do the groundwork of positive thinking about the future;
- present solutions, which could be used against the climate crisis, as well as ideas related to those solutions, in easy to understand, digestible ways.
Tablets section
Good news is: there is a lot to learn about the climate change and solutions to the climate crisis. Bad news is: due to the aforementioned fact, we are unable to present everything we would have loved to share with you at Przemiany. Which is why we recommend other sources which will be helpful in contributing to your knowledge about the climate change, its consequences, and the most interesting examples of pro-climate actions.
On the tablets, available at the exhibitions area you will find:
- an experiment on how a heightened CO2 level in the air can influence human well-being (a CO2 sensor will be available at the exhibition);
- a teaser of the course towards solving the climate crisis;
- nuclear power related materials;
- geo-engineering projects;
- presentation of the so-called Dyson's Sphere, and the process of nuclear fusion;
- a report on the attitude towards climate change among Poles.
