The International Media Art Biennale WRO is the leading forum for new media art in Poland and Central Europe. Since its inception in December 1989, WRO has been devoted to art forms using contemporary means of creation and communication.
WRO started out as the Sound Basis Visual Art Festival, and was originally devoted mainly to audiovisual works in formats including video and computer art, installations, performances and multimedia presentations. Since 1993, the festival - now a biennial event - has also explored the new strategies and territories of digital artistic expression.
WRO is an enquiry into artist's relationship to existing technology and to the blurring of the boundaries between high and popular culture, between local and global awareness, between commercial and independent endeavours. WRO highlights individual approaches to artistic tools an the one hand; and on the other, the standarization of contemporary phenomena.
WRO 09 undertakes the theme of "Expanded City", referring to the avant-garde tradition and dwelling on issues of the city as a variable medium capable of coding and recoding, determining the observation point for contemporary mediality. The symposium as much as the competition and special presentations made by invited authors and curators attempt at determining the dynamismof this expanding space.
"Expanded Cinema" - Gene Youngblood's term from 1970 - was coined as a name for new forms of artistic experimentation with the language of film. But the term's underlying concept of synesthetic cinema combining esthetic sensitivity with technological innovation is also relevant to transformations in art arising from the infusion of new tools and the exploration of new views of perception. According to Youngblood, the new cinema medium - expanding beyond the limitations of the genre and foreshadowing the technological and esthetic diversification of contemporary art - became the most appropriate language for the post-industrial, post-literate, post-mass environmentwith its multi-dimensional simulsensory network of information sources.
"The Expanded City" extends the concept of expanded media: The city becomes a metaphor for shared space for exchange and communication, expanding and diversifying through new technologies. What does new media art contribute to this shared communication space? Is it mere commentary or does it offer new solutions? How does it define that space by exploring its dimensions? How is the city shaped by the appearance of new programmed and programmable agoras? How does contemporary art influence the concept, the substance and the image of a city?
Sites: WRO Art Center,
Wrocław National Museum, BWA Awangarda, Wrocławski Teatr Lalek (Wrocław Puppet Theatre), Entropia Gallery, Club XO.
Opening: May 5, 2009.
Exhibition schedule:
Ukryta Dekada. Polska sztuka wideo '85-'95 / The Hidden Decade. Polish video art '85-'95
Wrocław National Museum. Exhibition will be opened from May 5 until June 7, 2009.
Małe WRO. Wystawa Interaktywny Plac Zabaw / Little WRO. The Interactive Playground exhibition
Wrocławski Teatr Lalek (Wrocław Puppet Theatre). Exhibition will be opened from May 5 until June 7, 2009.
Wystawa konkursowa WRO 09 / WRO 09 competition exhibition, Budynków życie po życiu / The Afterlife of Buildings and Art-in-Residence
BWA Awangarda, Entropia Gallery. Exhibition will be opened from May 5 until May 10, 2009.
Wystawa konkursowa WRO 09 / WRO 09 competition exhibition and Wartopia
WRO Art Center. Exhibition will be opened from May 5 until June 7, 2009.
Scena audiowizualna XO/WRO / Audiovisual stage at XO/WRO festival club
Club XO. May 5 - May 10, 2009.
"Expanded City" Symposium
WRO Art Center. May 7 - May 8, 2009.
For more information see:
wro09.wrocenter.pl.
Press release