Preparing to the ARTsobes festival, October 10-20 in St-Petersburg.
To support heroic efforts of our friends from russian-german exchange to organise the event where art and social problems can meet.
THE SOCIAL ART FESTIVAL
“ASSEMBLY STATION” (“MESTO SBORKI”)
October 2009, St. Petersburg
In October 2009 the German-Russian Exchange together with other public organizations directs the festival of Social Art dedicated to the promotion of the ideas of gender equality in the sense of equal possibilities for deferent but not as the equality of the same.
This festival intends to organize the set of events in October 2009 in St. Petersburg (Russia). The festival is designed to refer to the non-standard or oversized images and unusual decisions taken by men and women in different social spheres and positions. This could be a possibility to broaden old-fashioned ideas on the abilities as well as on the borders between people and on what they can do despite strict regulations and stereotypes. For these purposes the participants of the festival are invited to develop the topic of outgoing from the frames of the standard ideas on “feminity” and “masculinity” in the modern Russian society with the help of artistic creativity. In this context the social art is called up to mark the problem of difference, to uncover especially serious problems of every day life that are connected with the various types of inequality and exclusion and to mark as well spheres and positions in which the double standards of what is to be done and could be done by men and women today are expressed in the brightest manner.
The festival aims to present successful social projects made with the help of art, projects which have successfully helped to different socially excluded groups and which have shown the new meaning of “diversity” and “equality”. Here “diversity” is a mark of the special situation in which everybody can occur to be and “equality” is possibility of empathy, compassion and inter-subjectivity. The providers of the festival set a mission to strengthen the cooperation between organizations, initiatives and institutions on the issue of equal rights and tolerance. The artistic form of expression is based on the desire to present this social issue in the most vivid and bright manner to the wide public. Therefore it can evoke reaction from mass media and affect public opinion.
The project is meant to realize a number of exhibitions, performances, artistic actions dedicated to the issue of “feminity” and “masculinity”; to organize a set of round tables, public lectures and master- classes with the representatives of specialists from different branches of activities. It is also planned to work out the concept and model of social (gender) brand which purpose is to form the positive image that will be useful in order to revise the stereotypical understanding of “masculinity” and “feminity” and open the horizons for the future self realization of men and women in different spheres of activities. During the festival the information about already existing but unknown social projects and forms of social art on the gender topic will be spread. One of the results of the festival should be the promotion of cooperation between existing organizations and initiatives that deal with the issues of gender equality and the promotion of solidarity on the different levels of public work.
Reference:
Public noncommercial organization “German Russian Exchange” (GRE) during a number of years has been navigating the set of events dedicated to the attraction of the public attention to the burning social problems of modern reality with the help of art and culture. This way during the festival “Art -Sobes” in 2006 several artistic projects that were aimed on the promotion of the new ideas and ways of actualization, on the gaining of experience and the development of cooperation between civil initiatives, noncommercial organizations, socially accountable business and state sector were realized.