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sustainable visions * a translocal screening and discussion event * glor * ennis * co. clare * october 19th 2006

still from Beata Veszely’s On the Way to Heaven (2006)

This screening will feature artists films that engage with issues of sustainability in a rural context from a Central European perspective. Responding to the broad dilemma of ‘how to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ has implications for artistic practice both in terms of formal approach and subject matter. The transformation of society into a more sustainable one entails putting into practice the principles of ecology, grassroots democracy, social justice and non-violence.

Sustainable Visions presents films that deal with changes in rural economies, the position of the other in closed communities, the contemporary desire to reconnect with old knowledge, and the possibilities of non-violent artistic intervention in the rural environment.  The programme will include Goran Devic’s Imported Crows (2004), Csaba Nemes’s Africa Day (2006), Beata Veszely’s On the Way to Heaven (2006), Ivan Ladislav Galeta’s Fire (2006)  and Denis Kraškovic’s Strabat Mater (2006).

Sustainable Visions is devised and introduced by art historians and curators Maja and Reuben Fowkes. They have dealt with issues of art and sustainability through exhibitions, such as ‘Human/Nature’ in 2002 and ‘Unframed Landscapes’ in 2004, in their collaborative writings, including ‘The Art of Making Do with Enough’ in The New Art (Rachmaninoff’s London, 2006) and ‘The Principles of Sustainability in Contemporary Art’ (Praesens / www.greenmuseum.org ), and as organisers of the ‘International Symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art’ at Central European University Budapest in March 2006. Many of their projects involve translocal exchange between Hungary, Croatia and UK. They are currently working on the exhibition ‘Revolution is not a Garden Party’, which deals with the contemporary resonances of revolution and opens in Trafo Gallery Budapest in October 2006. Their collaborative practice in the fields of curating, research and writing aims to create translocal knowledge and experience. www.translocal.org