ATLANTIS

The opening of the exhibition “ATLANTIS, Hidden Histories – New Identities. Europe 2009 – 20 Years after 1989. Traces, histories and new identities on  the borderlines after 20 years.” The international project ATLANTIS thematizes an issue of transformation of the European countries after the year 1989 and via artistic outputs reflects political as well as social changes occuring after this year. Confronting the opinions of artists and professionals coming from former Eastern and Western Europe ATLANTIS enables to perceive this period from various perspectives and provides diverse ways of percieving and understanding this transitional period. The main idea of the project uniting the partners from Germany, Greece, Bulgaria and Slovakia is a mythical country sunken in the ocean that stood as a model for an allegorical example of the ideal state in the discourse about egalitarian or elitist ideas of society between the philosophers Plato, Sokrates and Aristotle. 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain the mythical Atlantis gains a new meaning. The Fall of the Curtain is the fall of one of the political systems – socialism and right now in the time of celebration of this event, during the financial crisis also the other political system – democracy is being examined. The Atlantis project should be a symbol for all utopias about the ideal state. Therefore we have chosen it as a title of the project which by means of artistic approaches and research wants to broaden our knowledge about last 20 years in the development of the Central European region. The methods of artistic approach and exploration, adaptation and development will deepen the view of the past history in the way politics can never name. The project will be a dialogue between artists coming from the former authoritarian Eastern Europe /participants from Slovakia, Bulgaria/ and the former democratically constituated Western Europe /participants from Germany, Greece, Austria/. This dialogue will promote the European identity formation and support the European Constitution process. The core of the project create site specific works based and realised in the borderline areas with a very peculiar atmosphere, in so called no man`s land as well as works commited directly for the gallery space reflecting an issue of political, social transformation and socialism itself.