new media center_kuda.org

AIR project Opening Our Closed Shops

Since 2008, the artist exchange program has been expanded with a two-year Opening Our Closed Shops project, supported by the Allianz Cultural Foundation. The main goal of this project is to respond to the imbalance of artistic exchange between Eastern and Western European countries, through intensive interdisciplinary cooperation between Akademie Schloss Solitude with its five partner institutions in Warsaw, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, and Novi Sad.

During this period, New Media Center_kuda.org created a council that included several external collaborators of experts who worked on the selection of artists for the Opening Our Closed Shops program. During this period, Center_kuda.org developed more intensive cooperation with the Institute for Culture of Vojvodina, http://www.kultura-vojvodina.org.rs/ with the aim of creating better conditions for sustainable cooperation in the future.

Associates-organizations within the program Opening Our Closed Shops:
Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, www.akademie-solitude.de
a-and-r laboratory, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, www.csw.art.pl
József Attila Circle, Budapest, www.jozsefattilakor.hu
Agency for Contemporary Art Exchange, Budapest, www.acax.hu
Inter Space Media Art Center, Sofia, www.i-space.org
Center for New Media_kuda.org, Novi Sad, www.kuda.org

Artists from Serbia who participated in the program Opening Our Closed Shops:

> Goran Radovanović, artist, Novi Sad / Belgrade visited Budapest in 2008. Goran Radovanović was born in 1985, he graduated from the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad in 2004, at the Department of New Media. He has participated in several group exhibitions and workshops dealing with video and illustration. He is particularly interested in comics, experimental electronic music including video and the relationship between sound and image. He is committed to recycling and raising environmental awareness (which is at a very low level in his environment), and he is also interested in the concept of environmental cities. He is interested in experimenting with graphics in open space.

> Darinka Pop-Mitić, an artist from Belgrade, visited Warsaw in 2009.
http://www.kuda.org/darinka-pop-miti

> Natasa Vujkov, a video artist from Novi Sad, visited Sofia in 2010.
She was born in 1983 in Novi Sad. Natasa graduated from the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, Department of New Media. He works in various artistic fields, mainly using video, photography, and other multimedia tools to express himself. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions and international workshops, the most important of which are: Alternative Film and Video Festival, SKC, Belgrade, 2005 - video selected for the list of special achievements at the festival; History of video game development - research project for the exhibition "Play Cultures", Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, 2007; Videoskop, Illectricity festival, Zagreb, Croatia, 2009; Solo exhibition - documentary video project and video installation, Artist in Residency program, Fridge, Sofia, Bulgaria, 2010.

Artists who have resided in Serbia (Novi Sad, Center kuda_org):

> Karol Radziszewski, an artist from Warsaw, visited Novi Sad in 2008.
He was born in 1980 in Bialystok (Poland). He lives and works in Warsaw. He studied painting at the Academy of Arts in Warsaw (1999–2004). Author of paintings, murals, drawings, installations, action, photography, and videos. Conceptual creator and one of the founders of Szu szu fl ying gallery (www.szuszu.art.pl). Author of the exhibition Pedaly - exposing gays unprecedented in Polish art (2005). Founder, publisher, and editor-in-chief of DIK Fagazine - the first and only periodical magazine in Central and Eastern Europe that deals with art with a special focus on homosexuality and masculinity (www.dikfagazine.com). Fellow of the Ministry of Culture (2002, 2006). Main Award Winner: III Samsung Art Master (2006). Nominated for the Deutsche Bank Foundation Views 2007 award. Www.karolradziszewski.com

> György Vári, a writer from Budapest, visited Novi Sad in 2009.
He was born in Budapest in 1978. He is a journalist and literary historian. He received his bachelor's and doctoral degrees from the University of Pecs. He spent a year as part of the academic program of the Paideia Institute for Jewish Studies in Stockholm 2004-2005. As a journalist, he deals with Hungarian politics. As a literary historian, his main fields of interest are the history of the 20th century, Hungarian poetry, prose, and the history of criticism. He works as a lecturer at the University of Budapest (Faculty of Media Studies), and also at the University of Veszprém (Faculty of Anthropology and Ethics). Since 2008, he has been teaching the history of literature and philosophy of art at the Academy of Arts in Budapest. He is employed part-time at the Holocaust Memorial and Educational Center.