SURVIVAL 10 - call for projecs

With the motto ‘Up To You’, we are beginning the tenth anniversary edition of the SURVIVAL Art Review. Between 23 January and 31 March 2012, we would like to invite artists to send in their projects of artworks!

The tenth edition of the SURVIVAL Art Review will take place at the ‘Oławka’ stadium at ul. Na Niskich Łąkach 8 in Wrocław, and in its nearest proximity (the area of the so-called Bermuda Triangle). This area, despite being located near the centre, lie out of the main traffic routes. The ‘Oławka’ stadium itself is a picturesque training centre with well-kept sports facilities.


In consequence of choosing a venue of this kind, the content of the jubilee edition of the SURVIVAL Art Review will be determined by key words and phrases such as: competition, struggling for perfection, spectacle, games, collective experience etc. Sport and physical culture are connected with a wide array of notions and human desires: with perfecting the body and the spirit, fair play, the need for competition. Sport rivalry is primarily an opportunity to test and prove one’s skills as well as a chance to overcome weaknesses and inhibitions. Sport is also a collective experience and peculiar rituals – a spectacle, an enactment of a game. Therefore, the motto of the tenth edition of SURVIVAL – ‘Up To You’ – refers to broadly defined activity and the need for putting one’s abilities to the test.

Situating the tenth edition of the Review on the premises of a functioning sports centre will also take on significance in the context of the approaching EURO 2012 Football Championship. Contemporary sport is just one of many commodities on the global market, and the element of rivalry connected with it becomes visible as soon as countries and cities begin the competition for being the host of the most important sports events. The world of art is also being increasingly dominated by market rules. Some of the rules governing the world of contemporary art may resemble those functioning in the world of sport. Just like in sports games, in the world of visual arts there is competition and only few of the ‘players’ (artists) succeed in ‘coming top of the league’ and later defending their position. The complex system of numerous competitions, often prestigious ones, fuels  these ‘artistic Olympics’. The artists who take part in them become the ‘representatives’ of their countries, galleries, institutions, circles. The long-standing tradition of SURVIVAL, based on selecting some of the art projects entered in the competition, also operates in terms of rivalry, choosing ‘winners’, i.e. authors of most interesting conceptions. The deciding game, however, always happens when the artistic idea is carried out in live public space.

The SURVIVAL Art Review has taken place in Wrocław for ten years, each year exploring a new venue and a new set of notions connected with it. The artists of SURVIVAL have worked at the Central Railway Station in Wrocław, in an air-raid shelter, in a park and in former Soviet barracks, to name but a few. During the Review, works of both beginning artists and acclaimed representatives of Polish contemporary art were shown, including the realizations of Dorota Nieznalska, Jerzy Kosałka, Rafał Jakubowicz or Stanisław Dróżdż.

Deadline for sending entries to the competitions: 31 March 2012
More information about the competition and the previous editions of the Review available at www.survival.art.pl
Rules / regulations and entry form available [HERE].

10th SURVIVAL Art Review / ‘Oławka’ stadium, ul. Na Niskich Łąkach 8, Wrocław / 22 June – 1 July 2012

Organiser: ART TRANSPARENT Foundation