The art space positioned in the context of an art school brings with it a specific set of networks and interrelationships. The active and vibrant art community of students and experienced art practitioners creates unique opportunities for art and discourse production as a space for experimentation and undefined formats of practice.
The gallery’s mission is to engage artists and scholars in public dialogue on issues of mutual concern through exhibitions as a form of advanced research. Located downtown at the intersection of academia, contemporary art, and the city, the gallery creates and presents artworks to the public in a variety of formats. While some exhibitions remain on view for extended contemplation, other activities such as performances, workshops, readings, roundtables, salons, and screenings have shorter durations.
The gallery collaborates with scholars, students, artists, communities, and the public to explore ways of working that may lie outside the usual disciplinary boundaries. Understanding the location of the gallery in a broader context, as a border city in Central-Eastern Europe, allows for conceptualizing the main motive of content production to focus on borders in a full range of semantics of this concept.
Understanding the location of the gallery in a broader context, as a border city in Central-Eastern Europe, allows for conceptualizing the main motive of content production to focus on borders in a full range of semantics of this concept.
Questions about borders have recently emerged in many areas of social and political life, as well as in visual and artistic practices.
The experiences of the First and Second World Wars, and even more so of decolonization and the emergence of new nation-states, not only led to a re-evaluation of how borders are studied, but also had an impact on the emergence of border issues in anthropology and sociology. The wave of political and social change that followed the fall of communism and the fall of the Iron Curtain led to a new permeability of borders, which for a time seemed to diminish their role, only to be revived by the re-establishment of nation-states.
This was followed by the uneven reconfiguration of borders through the integration of some states into the EU while others remained outside, as well as 9 / 11 and the new appeal for the securitization of borders.
Indeed, the post-Cold War era has become an important context for rethinking border issues. Instead of borders disappearing from the social realities of the world, it became clear that borders were proliferating. In the form of police checks and administrative barriers, they could be found within the territory of states, while in the form of cooperation with neighboring states and their institutions, borders could be found outside the territory of states.
With the increasing use of digital technology as a form of securitization and control, borders even seem to have lost their spatial component, or at least they are certainly not limited to the borderlands, the spaces attached to the spatial edge of states.
We must not forget that the borderlands remain an important site of connection and disconnection in relations with neighbors, where the permeability of the border is questioned. It is in this liminal space that new dynamics can unfold, which can also be important for Europe. It is therefore valuable to take a closer look at these
borderlands and to analyze their dynamics in a more systematic way in the context of contemporary art and theory practices.
Art is a self-educating and flexible tool that adapts opportunistically to the rapid changes of today’s world. As an experimental form of knowledge and an intense way of life, art appears as an offer where other branches of knowledge are afraid to take the risk of experimentation or where they are limited by the rationality directly conditioned by economic neoliberalism.
ZONA is conceived as a contemporary art institution working at the intersection of contemporary art, new music, performative projects, research and interdisciplinary education. It is conceived as a space produced for artists and other socio-political workers committed to reflecting on and responding to relevant challenges in contemporary society. Our collective approach is active, critical and emancipatory.
ZONA acts as a social platform: fostering dialogue with diverse, intersecting publics; working with clear social and political intentions; encouraging an engaged and grounded approach to artistic practice and research; promoting interdisciplinary education; fostering intellectual independence; and working to create conditions in which contemporary thought and practice can flourish.
ZONA aims to build a discursive platform, a place for good conversations - a space for conviviality and cultural pluralism. It is animated by a network of collaborators, co-creating community and communities with which it breathes. The gallery’s program includes exhibition-making, research, sonic and visual cultures, embodied pieces of knowledge, and other heritages of creativity.
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