V4

www.visegradfund.org

OFF Bratislava is an international festival of contemporary photography. The festival OFF Bratislava acquires its uniqueness by being a platform for fresh talents from the photography scene. Since its inception, the aim of the event has been to create optimum conditions for the promotion and support of emerging artists working in the field of photography and new media. The festival started in 2010 and during its 13-year history it has been dealing with various social subjects. It has thus stimulated contemplation, for example, on the ideology of dogma, the mystery of birth, the revolutionary manifesto, the archive of the future, the generation Y, the force of migration, or the human impact on the ecosystem of our planet.

The fourteenth year, under the title “The House of Plausible, Probable, Possible and Preferable Futures”, will be about a vision of the third millennium. Art always had the power to foretell the future. Through creative and artistic thinking visionaries always contributed to scientific predictions. Thanks to technological developments art has the possibility to progress, advance, and evolve within new mediums and platforms. New formats of expression are allowing humans to manifest themselves in a way that reflects the technological advancements of the era. The vision of the future world is open, multifaceted, and contradictory and brings countless possibilities for interpretation in your storytelling.

With its initiative, OFF Bratislava supports communication and relations between countries in an artistic context. One of the main efforts is to promote healthy competition and eliminate qualitative declines by democratically offering each country equal presentation conditions. At the request of artists, the festival offers the possibility of festival production (printing and installation) of exhibited projects. The festival allows artists to gain rare professional relationships and thus an opportunity for future cooperation between the V4 countries. The artists arrive at the festival before its official beginning and participate in the preparation of the festival. During the installation week, students create proposals for the installation of their projects, which they afterwards implement in the space with the help of the festival team and curators. Artists from these countries have the opportunity to win the prestigious LEE AWARD, intended for individual exhibitions and ON AWARD for an individual from exhibited schools and therefore there is an opportunity to gain prestige at the international level.

By focusing on artists from the V4 countries, the festival would like to facilitate the connections between the artists from these countries. Currently, there is an absence of organized events to meet and share ideas despite being neighbouring countries. This is a unique opportunity for cooperation and knowledge sharing. The festival aims to equally help up-and-coming artists to find peers and space to express their opinions regardless of their financial situation.

The 14th OFF Bratislava will take place in November 2023. It will once again present the work of hundreds of young talented authors to the general public and professionals. The exhibits will be centralized in one exhibition space in Kunsthalle, Bratislava. This centralization will allow exhibitors and visitors to see the complete program of the festival in one place and gives more space to the creativity of artists and their unique installations. Art projects from V4 countries (in the OFF ACADEMY section - school projects, OFF LIBRIS and at individual exhibitions) will be presented by the festival with a visible label, thus offering a space for thinking about V4 projects as a whole, which works in relation to other international projects. Discussions and international cultural exchanges will be encouraged by individual lectures, workshops and roundtables focused on V4 topics. In addition to fixed awards (ON AWARD, LEE AWARD), the festival will also create a separate V4 award for the most original project.

V4 Award:

The V4 Award for 2022 and 1000 Euro prize went to Kristína Baloghová from The Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. The jury members were: Walter Bergmoser, Gábor Arion Kudász, Michaela Obermair and Zuzana Lapitková.

List of participating schools, in alphabetical order:

ACADEMY OF ARTS ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN IN PRAGUE AND UNIVERSITY OF OSTRAVA (CZ)

ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS AND DESIGN IN BRATISLAVA (SK)

FILM AND TV SCHOOL OF THE ACADEMY OF PERFORMING ARTS IN PRAGUE (CZ)

MOHOLY-NAGY UNIVERSITY OF ARTS AND DESIGN BUDAPEST (HU)

SILESIAN UNIVERSITY IN OPAVA, INSTITUTE OF CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY (CZ)

THE TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF KOŠICE, FACULTY OF ARTS (SK)

UNIVERSITY OF ARTS IN POZNAŃ (PL)

UNIVERSITY OF WEST BOHEMIA, LADISLAV SUTNAR FACULTY OF DESIGN AND ART (CZ)