Last week, Tranzit Slovakia said its farewell to the location it has been occupying for more than 10 years on Studena 12, at the outskirts of Bratislava. The event was marked by a panel discussion in the frames of the current (and last) exhibition in the space: The Need for Practice (still running till the 22nd of the month) and was debating: What Practices do we need?
Both the exhibition as well as the discussion focused on the necessity of re-thinking the relation between theory and practice, symbolic resistance and direct action, art and activism[1]…What practices do we need started with the recurrent question “do we need artistic practice at all today?”, to which the answer was positive, emphasizing however, that in the artistic world “we like each other’s company and art, but there is a rupture between this community and the people that are not into it” (Raluca Voinea). This gap is the sensitive point art still has to work on. The discussion touched other points as well, such as self-organizations as an alternative to existing models, viewed as a meaningful practice, that allows for linking individual initiative to common interest, while maintaining diversity and difference[2]–a sensitive topic, as the dangers of solely reproducing what you are trying to replace in the first place are very high.
Details on the participants and exhibition can be found on transit.sk website. Impressions from the event and exhibition, in the photo-album bellow:
[1] From the website: http://sk.tranzit.org/en/calendar/
[2] From the website: http://sk.tranzit.org/en/calendar/
