State of the ART(ist), a collaborative project between the Austrian Federal Ministry of European and International Affairs and Ars Electronica, was established in 2022. In 2023, the initiative significantly expanded its focus. Initially driven by Russia’s war on Ukraine and its complex global impacts, the project now addresses broader risks and existential insecurities faced by artists worldwide.
The 2024 State of the ART(ist) Initiative concentrates on global issues that create precarious conditions for artists, including:
- Conflict zones, political interference and warlike aggression.
- Lack of freedom of expression or social repression.
- Natural disasters or the climate crisis, leading to drastically altered living conditions.
The award targets artists directly affected by these threats, whose lives are marked by “uncertainty” and “risk.” While exploring “What is Risk?” is a submission requirement, the jury evaluates entries based solely on their artistic quality.
POSTCITY
WED Sept. 4 – SUN Sept. 8, 2024
Access to this exhibition on the 1st floor of POSTCITY is free of charge.
-
A Woman’s Odyssey
A Woman’s Odyssey is an inner journey, one that confronts the outside world and finds a way out of suffering. Perhaps these sufferings and paradoxes, like death and life, darkness and light, bad and good things, comprise the process that make you who you are. This project is a combination of poetry and visual and…
-
Design to Live
This project demonstrates how Syrian refugees at the Azraq Camp in Jordan use art and design to transform their environment, restoring humanity amid deprived circumstances. Featuring more than 20 innovative projects, it showcases design as a world-making practice and as a tool for reclaiming agency and hope. From vertical gardens to privacy-enhancing structures, these creations…
-
Fertility Performance
Who are they? Where and why do they drag their stones? What must a woman go through to give birth? What tests does the goddess face on the path to creating something? The way turns into girlish passion and obsession. A tender sisterhood turns into a bitter struggle. Humility and disobedience. The old must die,…
-
Heating Season
Heating Season originated as research of a particular creative community at a shipyard in Odesa, where organic and mechanical solidarities intersect and new semantic connections between industrial systems and the natural environment are formed.
-
Immersive Sky Experience
Immersive Sky Experience is an AI/ML moderated interactive public platform that forecasts on a minute-to-minute basis weather changes in specific micro-geographical areas. It is designed to facilitate climate-vulnerable marginal communities from the Indian coastal state of Odisha to share their environmental stories and experiences. The project collects and analyses data — particularly environmental disaster photographs…
-
Nanna Langa
Nanna Langa (translated from Kannada as “my skirt”) is a transformative art installation comprising a monumental 23-feet-long skirt, intricately woven with the intimate stories of women from Namma Katte, an inclusive leisure center in Bengaluru, India.
-
Poisonous Meadow
In those poisoned fields where the flowers of deceptive values flourish, people’s dreams rot and die smothered by the roots of political authority that wears the sacred crown of religion in order to enslave people. What happens in the shadows remains unseen. Truth dies to enable poisonous flowers to flourish.
-
Swimming Lesson
A swimming lesson for Bedouin girls in a waterless “pool” owing to the lack of swimming pools accessible to Bedouins in Israel.
-
The Queer Muslim Project
The Queer Muslim Project is Asia’s leading digital and cultural platform for queer, Muslim, and diverse voices, with a growing global community of over 70,000 people. Nurturing underrepresented LGBTQIA+ talent, it provides them with the tools, resources and networks to tell stories that can generate sustainable change. The project’s programs include Language is a Queer…
-
The Red Macadam
Every day feels like a walk with this weight pressing down. It is a new beginning in a strange land, a culture unfamiliar yet somehow comforting. Despite the distance, I hold on to the threads that connect me to my loved ones back home. They are a lifeline, a constant reminder of the fight that…
-
حاورية) حاوية+ حرية)
Haawriya is an artistic reproduction reflecting a form of cultural resistance and the Sudanese people’s right of expression. Using visual and audio tools of expression, it explores the phenomenon of blocking bridges with metal shipping containers, revealing the tension between hope and disappointment felt by protesters.
-
寂靜春天來臨前
The Days Before The Silent Spring is a multi-channel video installation in which the artist weaves together a spectrum of footage shot from different points of view. An homage to the decade-long journey of the farming collective Sangwoodgoon to which she belongs, it reflects on the multitude of connected worlds and many life-forms germinated by…
Jury Statement
Kamya Ramachandran (IN), Oyindamola (Fakeye) Faithful (UK), Marita Muukkonen (FI) and Ivor Stodolsky (DE/FI), Simon Mraz (AT), Christl Baur (DE)
Autocratic leaders are increasingly gaining power—and weakening human rights—around the globe. Humanity is losing its way. Conflicts are raging, civic space is shrinking and the media is under attack from all sides. The climate crisis is a human rights crisis that is hitting the most vulnerable and frontline ecological defenders the hardest.
While authoritarian governments and many world leaders are backtracking on human rights obligations, we feel art, its actors and its institutions can actively engage in countering inegalitarian, anti-democratic and eco-destructive forces. Art can stand for resistance and change.
The State of the ART(ist) initiative promotes and highlights this artistic agency. This year, it garnered a remarkable number of 311 submissions across 46 countries. The candidates are both diverse artistically and thematically: from collective action software applications, through grassroots movements, to more traditional visual arts and contemporary dance. They carry messages addressing topics ranging from the violence of terrorism and war to structural violence in domestic and everyday practices of alternatives.
The jury conducted a rigorous evaluation process, in which the question of risk constituted a fundamental aspect of reflections on each submission. Political and social contexts provided a critical backdrop to the work. Nevertheless, while addressing this question was a prerequisite for valid submissions, the jury’s selection criteria were based on artistic quality.
We should emphasize that in its work, the prize adheres to international human rights conventions, affirming that discrimination on grounds of origin, ethnicity, race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or any other identity category is unacceptable. Regardless of any government or leadership’s violations of basic freedoms and human rights, collective discrimination against individuals based on the actions of their country or its leaders is not legitimate. Individuals stand for their own thoughts and actions.
We extend our sincere appreciation to all participating artists for their courage and creativity in sharing their vision, stories and perspectives. While provoking meaningful discourse on human rights, societal challenges and the enduring power of artistic expression, we wish to emphasize that we evaluate artists for their art and the selected works are examples of this combination of engaged artistic excellence.
