Essl Art Award Bratislava
Established by the Austrian art collectors Agnes and Karlheinz Essl and conferred in close co-operation with experts, museums and art academies, this award is dedicated to the discovery and support of talented art students in Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia and also for the first time in Turkey. The award reflects the commitment of the Essl family to the support of young art and provides a significant stimulus to the European cultural sphere. Thus one main goal of the ESSL ART AWARD is to offer a broad and multi-layered insight into the young art scene of Central and South-Eastern Europe. Initiated in 2005, the award is conferred every two years and bestowed for the fifth time in 2013.
- This year's Essl Art Award was no different from previous years.00:00:10.388
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- The award has a strict selection process.00:00:19.495
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- First, there is the on-line component.00:00:25.733
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- Artists from various countries submit their work.00:00:31.119
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- This includes annotations of works submitted.00:00:40.213
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- They send them to the Essl Museum.00:00:45.185
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- The international jury, made of eleven curators, gathers the works.00:00:47.960
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- We then have a look and each of us chooses ten works per country.00:00:54.972
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- These are then generally evaluated.00:01:05.353
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- The jurors' votes are compiled and ten works per country are selected.00:01:11.748
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- These ten artists then hold an exhibition in their respective countries.00:01:22.441
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- Curators travel from country to country00:01:28.180
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- to see all ten exhibitions.00:01:33.692
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- Next, we vote on two winners per country.00:01:37.730
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- The two winners have equal importance.00:01:43.282
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- The winning positions are of equal importance.00:01:47.111
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- To explain why Zuzana Žabková and Marcel Mališ won,00:01:51.951
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- we could say the following:00:02:00.155
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- Zuzana Žabková presented a very sensitive video,00:02:06.132
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- connecting plastic arts with music, choreography, and dance,00:02:12.770
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- while also including intertextual references to the past,00:02:22.669
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- and the Old Testament. The message had multiple layers00:02:28.954
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- and represented, very adequately, the medium used.00:02:33.815
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- Marcel Mališ dealt mainly with collective memory.00:02:38.775
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- His portfolio played a major role. His previous projects.00:02:46.090
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- Jurors appreciated Mališ's sophisticated expression00:02:52.327
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- and subversive rendering of ideas.00:03:00.103
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- The way he confronts our collective memory of the recent past,00:03:03.165
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- with a personal attitude.00:03:08.822
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- It's as if he sought to undermine the general opinion of 198900:03:14.830
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- as being the first step toward a better future.00:03:24.780
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- The confrontational, generational attitude is quite strong.00:03:29.563
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- It's about how this generation views post-1989 changes.00:03:34.546
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- Jurors thought that our development was very dynamic.00:03:40.358
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- As if this school set the standard higher.00:03:48.282
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- I don't want to speak too much for fear of lowering the standard.00:03:53.996
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- However, this is the current view.00:04:00.446
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- They also pointed out the balance between various media represented.00:04:03.716
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- The photography is excellent, as is painting and video.00:04:10.433
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- This also includes objects and sculptures.00:04:15.486
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- The positions are well balanced.00:04:21.204
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- In other countries one medium dominates,00:04:23.662
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- be it painting or photography. Here it is more balanced.00:04:27.745
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- I was surprised by the final selection of artists.00:04:31.863
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- I guessed only three of the Slovak artists,00:04:37.838
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- while I guessed seven Czechs.00:04:40.435
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- So sometimes, I am also very surprised by who's selected.00:04:45.451
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- But one must say that many of those who applied were very good, too.00:04:54.592