Cumulus participants who arrive earlier than Friday 12, are cordially invited to join the opening of the exhibition Copy / Paste which is an AFAD event accompanying the conference.

Venue: Medium Gallery, Hviezdoslavovo nam. 18, Bratislava

Istroart is an international meeting of art academies, organized periodically by the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava since 1993. This year, already the seventh with the topic “Copy – Paste” is organized by the Department of Paining and Other Media. It is a reaction to the current interest in various forms of quotations (intentional or not) such as plagiarism, copying, fragmentarisation, recontextualisation, appropriation of visual motives and remix. This project intents to look at different pedagogic and ideological approaches around these issues from an international perspective. While we approached mostly painting departments that are professionally closest to us, all media options were available for utilizing by students in the Istroart 2007.

The “Copy – Paste” topic tries to create space for thinking about the meaning and forms of interpretation for visually perceived “reality” in the era of electronic images that often challenge the power of the “naked eye”.

Once individually perceived reality expressed by the fine arts is today mediated to the public from outside – by the seemingly objective view of mass media. The eye is replaced by the “object-lens”, and a subjective search for meaning is replaced by pseudo-objective “directions”. The intention of our meeting is to call attention to the fact, that the loss of originality leads to a possible final loss of independent thinking and, to the shift of responsibility from oneself to schemes coming from outside.

The presence of the mass media in the role of mediator between the author and viewer produces simplistic reading of art and takes responsibility for “meaning making” away from the viewer.

This year we are hosting in Gallery Medium the following partners:
Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts Budapest, Hungary, Academy of Art, Novi Sad, Serbia, Koszalin University of Technology, Poland, Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design Prague, Czech Republic,Academy of Fine Arts and Design Bratislava, Slovakia