Art Line - a Baltic collaboration 2011-2014

Art Line was an cooperation between Sweden, Poland, Germany, Russia and Lithuania
Initiator and project leader Torun Ekstrand

Art Line was an international art project investigating and challenging the concept of public space – the digital and physical domains. 14 partners from 5 countries around the Baltic Sea joined to create a co-operative platform for art and academia in Poland, Sweden, Germany, Russia and Lithuania. The platform strengthened the institutions, created opportunities for artists, and interacted with at least 400 000 people in public space, in exhibitions, online, in storytelling-projects, on conferences, in laboratories and on the Stena Line ferries between Gdynia and Karlskrona.

On the website www.artline-southbaltic.eu
you can watch a 3 minutes film about 3 ½ years of transdisciplinary art collaboration in the Baltic Sea region; scroll an artistic rendition of digital material in the project; watch a documentary about one of the projects, Telling the Baltic, and take part of photos and texts about events, lectures - and Art Online.

Read, watch and listen to talks, workshops, public space projects, art and technology-experiments, art and digital media conferences, exhibitions, programs on the ferries going in traffic between Sweden and Poland, tailormade art tours to Poland and much more. Step into the network and collaboration of Art Line.

The project was co-financed by the EU Program South Baltic Cross-Border Co-operation Programme.

A catalogue with two lives – printed and Online
www.artlinecatalogue.eu

The essays in the catalogue reflect upon the wide range of art projects executed within the multi-year project Art Line (2010-2014) where fourteen Baltic institutions worked collaboratively to investigate and challenge the concepts of public space, particularly the relationship between the digital and the physical realms.

The catalogue responds to the mixed media content of the project and hence exists in two formats, in print and in an extended digital version with more essays and artworks included. In the online catalogue the visitor has access to Art Online, videos, sound works, lectures, documentaries and to an online gallery exhibition about the storytelling project Telling the Baltic. An artistic rendering of all projects, A Message From Another Shore by Nicola Bergstrőm Hansen concludes the project in the form of a playful examination of the visual traces of creativity and collaboration.

Art in our public spaces, both in the digital and within the ‘real’ physical venues, has been one of the overarching topics as well as experiments in art and digital technologies within the international collaboration Art Line. The project itself derived from the need for a stronger cultural infrastructure in the Baltic region. Art Line was a long-term interdisciplinary cooperation anchored in 14 art institutions and academies and as a result had created a collaborative platform between Poland, Sweden, Germany, Lithuania and Russia.

Art Line worked on different arenas and locations to meet new audiences through workshops, exhibitions, public space projects, interactive art works, online projects, contests, storytelling activities, conferences and workshops about art and science, art and technology, art and digital media and about art in public space. Artists showed works in gallery/museum settings & in re-located settings at other types of museums and in technology parks. Works were presented outside of the gallery and museum context in the public spaces of our cities: in housing areas; in parks, outside shopping centers and in more unconventional settings: on the sea; by the seafront, as art works on our website and on smart phones or tablets; Art Online and the Mobile Art Applications and in crossmedia-projects combining digital and real space: as artists’ experiments in technology laboratories on the ferries moving between Sweden and Poland, and in arenas beyond How often does a ferry turn into an art gallery, and how often does an art gallery cast off and leave its’ comfort zones to travel beyond its walls?

The European Commission appointed Art Line a Flagship project, and it is now part of the Action Plan for the Baltic Sea Strategy. Art Line is seen as a high quality project with a focus on contemporary art and digital media technologies. The initial project period was 2011-2014, but the network will be developed geographically and conceptually during this year.

The catalogue contains texts by art critics, curators, artists and researchers: Michaela Crimmin, Julia Draganovic, Michał Bieniek, Kuba Szreder, Julita Wójcik, Jacob Lillemose, Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, Agnieszka Wołodźko, Bettina Pelz, Torun Ekstrand, Catharina Gabrielsson, Oscar Guermouche, Agnieszka Kulazinska, Gernot Wolfram, Martin Schibli, Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, Victoria Vesna and James Gimzewski, Nina Czegledy and Rona Kopeczky, Monika Fleishmann and Wolfgang Strauss, Luca Farulli, Jakob Ingemansson, Izabela Zolcinska, Jarek Denisiuk, Krzysztof Topolski, Joanna Warsza, Lissa Holloway-Attaway, Nicola Bergstrőm Hansen, Pau Waelder, Iwona Bigos, Jay Bolter, Maria Engberg, Joasia Krysa & Geoff Cox, Rebecca Rouse, Dan Jőnsson, Elena Tsvetaeva, Luca Farulli, Rasa Antanaviciute, Lisbeth Lindeborg, Ola Carlsson, Frank Schloesser, Karin Nilsson, Erika Deal and Maria Bjőrkman and Larry Okey Ugwu.

Editors: Magdalena Mroz-Grygierowska and Torun Ekstrand
Editors group: Magdalena Mroz-Grygierowska, Torun Ekstrand, Agnieszka Wołodźko, Ingemar Lönnbom

Design and graphic layout: Mateusz Pek
Online design: Klaudia Wrzask

ISBN: 978-91979807-4-6
Pages: 236

The online catalogue will be maintained until 2020: www.artlinecatalogue.eu

The catalogue was made possible through the South Baltic Cross-Border Co-Operation Programme.Part financed by the European Union (ERDF). Additional financial support: Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Poland; European Cultural Foundation, the Netherlands; Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation; NGO ArtMission, Kaliningrad, Russia.

Partner institutions: Blekinge museum (lead partner and publisher); Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art, Laznia CCA, Gdansk; Gdansk City Gallery; Galeria EL, Elblag; Blekinge Institute of Technology; Kalmar konstmuseum; Karlskrona konsthall; Baltic Sea Cultural Centre; Kulturcentrum Ronneby; Kunsthalle Rostock; Baltic Branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Kaliningrad; Nida Art Colony of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania; Stena Line Scandinavia and Region Blekinge.

Art Line - a Baltic collaboration 2011-2014

The Art Line Catalogue