[spectre] Open call for collaboration: exhibiting the Untitled (Praxis) by Igor Grubić

[Darko Fritz]

Open call for collaboration: exhibiting the Untitled (Praxis) by Igor Grubić

https://who-cares.eu/activities/open-call-praxis-grubic



Open call for the collaboration to share and distribute the art poster Untitled (Praxis)by Igor Grubić. The idea is that you display this art poster any time during 2022 at your gallery/office/street. Exhibiting the work is free of charge, lasting at least ten days, and after that, you can freely keep the work. We expect a photo of the setup.

Artwork is a typographic image that reads the text: "The criticism of all that exists starts with self-criticism". The artwork corresponds with rather general and global subjects trigged by Praxis philosophy. Praxis's slogan was "ruthless critique of all that exists" where the phrase is related to Marx directly.

The size of the posters is variable and the edition is unlimited. The minimum size is 70 x 50 cm, going up to the size of the big-size advertising billboard (both horizontal and vertical orientation). Grey Area will sent you a print (EU countries) or redesign the artwork up to the preferred size and sent you a digital file that you may print yourself. Please inform us about your venue and dates of the display / exhibition, and sent us the photo.

Igor Grubić, Untitled (Praxis), 2020 - 2022, links for download:
50 x 70 cm: http://sivazona.hr/images/WhoCares/GRUBIC_50x70cm.pdf
70 x 50 cm: http://sivazona.hr/images/WhoCares/GRUBIC_70x50cm.pdf

This artwork corresponding with the workshop Caring for 20th-century heritage Grey Area will host in Croatia in 2022 as part of the Who Cares? project. The idea is to include the "best practices" of the 20th Century within a particular idea of care. It also speaks of the notion of local (Korčula island,  where both Korčula Summer Schooland International Artists Meetings took place at the 1960s and 1970s) and the global/international movement and circulations of ideas. The artwork will be displayed on a big-size billboard in Croatia and distributed globally in different sizes.

Grubić reflected on his work in general: "I realized that if I wanted to criticize others I should start from myself; it is exactly here that personal demons and self-deception lurk and there is a need for continuous work on one's vigilance and self-questioning."

About the Praxis / the Korčula Summer School

In the 1964 introductory text Why Praxis? editors stated how they want a journal: "that would not be philosophical in the sense according to which philosophy is just one of the special areas, one scientific discipline, strictly separated by the rest of them and from the problems of everyday human life. We want a philosophical journal in the sense that philosophy is the thought of the revolution, ruthless criticism of all that exists, a humanist vision of the human world and as an inspirational force for revolutionary activity."

The Praxis was a Marxist humanist philosophical movement, that originated in Zagreb and
Belgrade in the SFR Yugoslavia. From 1963 to 1974 they published the journal Praxis and organised the Korčula Summer School in the town of Korčula. The collective of critical thinkers around the journal developed a singular trajectory of humanist Marxist and socialist analysis in the context of non-aligned Yugoslavia, and they functioned as a hub for the exchange of critical perspectives between the East and the West. In the proceedings of the summer school and the journal, many prominent figures of the period participated, among others Ernst Bloch, Eugen Fink, Erich Fromm, Lucien Goldmann, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, Henri Lefebvre, Karel Kosík, Richard J. Bernstein and Shlomo Avineri.

Each summer, the gathering focused on a particular topic: Progress and Culture; Meaning and Perspectives of Socialism; What is History?; Creativity and Creation; Marx and Revolution; Power and Humanity; Hegel and Our Time; Utopia and Reality; Freedom and Equality; The Essence and Limits of Civil Society and Art in a Technologized World.

About grey) (area . space for contemporary and media art, Korčula

grey) (area program is being developed across four program lines which relate to the aspects of human activities observed through the prism of contemporary art and culture: sustainability, economy and context. These program lines are Politics of Green Spaces, New Materialisms, Critical Tourism and History of Contemporaneity. We conduct interdisciplinary research of our own and present national, regional and international programs anchored in visual and media arts. Activities include support and promotion of contemporary audio and visual languages of urban culture as well those from peripheral cultural positions, especially in the Mediterranean region, supporting and assisting the art that confirms the forms of expressions that use the languages of contemporary art, media culture and new technologies.

The book grey) (area … Discourses from the Periphery, 2021. Artwork Untitled (Praxis) by Igor Grubić is on page 211.
Free book downloads (8 Mb each):
English edition: http://sivazona.hr/images/novi-dokumenti/greyarea_discourses.pdf
Croatian edition: http://sivazona.hr/images/novi-dokumenti/sivazona_diskursi.pdf

The project Untitled (Praxis) curated by Darko Fritz is part of the workshop/symposium Caring for 20th-century heritage which will be held in 2022 as part of the European project Who Cares? and the exhibition International Meetings of Artists in Vela Luka 1968-1972, which is performed in collaboration with the MUO - Museum of Arts and Crafts, Zageb.

Artwork Untitled (Praxis) by Igor Grubić is under licence Creative Commons: Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0), Approved for Free Cultural Works
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Igor Grubić (b. 1969, Zagreb) is one of Croatia's most accomplished and internationally acclaimed artists. His work includes site-specific interventions in public spaces, photography, and film. Since 2000 he is also working as a producer and author of documentaries, TV reportages and socially committed commercials. Grubić's project sits firmly in the humanist dimension, bridging together poetics, politics and social reality. He presented Croatia at the 58th Venice Biennial (2019). Exhibitions include, among others: Tirana Biennial 2 (2003); Manifesta 4 (Frankfurt, 2002); Manifesta 9 (Genk, 2012); 50.October Salon (Belgrade, 2009); Gender Check, MuMOK (Vienna, 2009); 11.Istanbul Biennial (2009); 4.Fotofestival Mannheim Ludwigshafen, Heidelberg (2011); East Side Stories, Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2012); Gwangju Biennale (2014); Zero Tolerance, MOMA PS1 (New York 2014); Degrees of Freedom, MAMbo (Bologna, 2015); 5th Thessaloniki Biennial (2015); Cut / Rez, MSU (Zagreb, 2018); Heavenly creatures, MG+MSUM (Ljubljana, 2018); The Value of Freedom, Belvedere 21 (Vienna, 2018). Miško Šuvaković reflected on his work: "Grubić, by generation, belongs to those artistic tendencies, which, close to political theory (...), make a turn from the neutral aestheticism of postmodernism to political activism. (...) The critical potential of artistic presentations becomes important ranging from the treatment of the recent past (decline of self-governing socialism, emergence of transitional practices of capitalism, formation of nation-states) through problematization of gender and racial violence, intolerance and ideological blindness in contemporary times."

Who Cares? project
Who Cares? is a cooperation project focusing on care practices. It is made up of 5 organisations dedicated to artistic production from different latitudes in Europe: Idensitat (Barcelona, Spain), SPACE (London, United Kingdom), Rupert (Vilnius, Lithuania), Grey Area (Korčula, Croatia) and Centro Huarte (Navarra, Spain). They working on a common project to explore new ways in which to engage audiences, incorporating care practices in the infrastructure and programs of their respective organisations. Care is a major thread in the project that runs through the concerns and challenges that each of the entities currently faces. Who Cares? understands care as a joint responsibility towards the communities, both local and global, to which the activity is addressed as artistic production organisations.
Who Cares? is led by Centro Huarte as one of the selected projects within the European Cooperation Projects 2020 call of the Creative Europe program.