LAND ART FESTIVAL
Land Art Festival is an event which for seven years now has been travelling around locations on the Lublin region’s map which are particularly valuable but are not economical or cultural centres.
Since 2015 the location of carrying out new artistic spaces is the Podlasie Bug Gorge. It is a region of unique environmental, natural, and cultural values of the Eastern Poland.
The motto of this year’s edition of the festival is a Road. During a 10-days residency each of the invited artists will refer to this motto in a formal and artistic way. Installations, films, photography projects and documentaries will be created.
Some of the invited artists are, i.a.: Robert Kuśmirowski (PL), Donald Buglas (NZ), Sergy Radkewicz (UA), Takashi Ikezawa (J), Artur Trojanowski, Vlodko Kaufman (UA), Grzegorz Borkowski, Lorenzo Palmeri (I), Ralf Withaus (DE), Janusz Bałdyga, Vladimir Topij (UA), Mariusz Tarkawian, Tomasz Sikora.
The projects will be carried out between July 6th and 15th 2017 along a county road in the neighbourhood of Bubel Łukowiska village. The road is also a section of the Eastern Cycle Trail. Some of the works will be created on the grounds of the Bishop’s Castle in Janów Podlaski. The Festival will be concluded on July 15th with an opening walk with the artists and invited guests.
The opening will be closed with a concert by Early Music Choir from Lviv and an outdoor concert by a band Drewutnia.
The completed projects – works of art – will remain in the area after the closing of the festival, making up another part of the “outdoor gallery” which has been created in the region since 2015.
About the idea
The theme of this edition of the festival is not restricted to this picturesque and distant perspective. It is man we look for among these paths and roads as it is difficult to find another form which is so close to humanity. A road does not exist without people and people do not exist without a road. In order to bring it to life man cuts down the trees, levels the ground and brings destruction. Sometimes in the course of it what was hidden in the ground gets revealed. It also happens the other way – for years men have trodden it gently with their own feet, leaving its right to nature to rule over it. Roads determine the character of a map-picutre, mark tensions that emerge there.
The road is a great metaphor of the human condition.
If talking about a road we always mean a journey, it would be hard not to ask about its aim, meaning and destination. You can go away, but also come back – go to the roots. On the road we acquire experience and try to find ourselves. In the labirynth of the roads we can get lost, fall by the wayside…
Suggesting meditations on the road theme, we hope to continue the reflections of previous years, being convinced that the depth resides in simplicity. We encourage the artists to get immersed in the wilderness of the Bug river area, make active comments on the local map-picture, enter the paths marked by the lives of other people (of the once multi-cutural territory) and also follow their own paths, regardless of epochs, continents and artistic strategies.