TRACES
IN SPACES

The Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw, member of the Association of Independent Schools of Art and Design organizes a series of artistic and theoretical events under the collective theme “Traces in Spaces”. This year’s AIAS event will be held from Nov 6th to Nov 10th in Wroclaw, Poland, and the leading theme of the meetings of representatives of students and staff members will be drawing in the contemporary world in diverse interpretations and experiments.

Drawing is the basic instrument of a non-verbal recording of thoughts, and thus – a universal carrier of ideas, the idea of development, idea of creativity, idea of freedom, idea of accomplishing the impossible, both in art and design. The drawing lies at the basis of all fields of visual activities and is an ideal medium for constructing the relations between many parts of one whole. It is a way to mark, name, delineate, thus it is a method to recognize a place – it is linked to a vital necessity to explore outskirts and peripheries.

While drawing up the programme of the lectures and workshops within “Traces in Spaces” we wished to emphasize a non-orthodox understanding of the notion ‘drawing’. However, while discovering the vanishing traces of the city’s contours and placing our own marks intended to aid social communication, we do not forget that drawing still remains a magical activity which unifies the body and the mind, a theatre of gesture, a space permeated by the unrecognized.

The project ‘Traces in Spaces’ will take place on the streets of Wroclaw. The city’s inhabitants, architecture, complex history, difficult presence will be the arena of our studies and activities. Wroclaw is the place where many cultures merge, it is a place of meeting and accepting each others’ diversity. Through the cooperation of various groups of inhabitants we want to contribute to the Beuys’s concept of social sculpture and work according to the idea of understanding and communication. This concept concerns shaping, altering and creating the world in which we live.

The Polish artistic traditions, which we want to refer to, are mostly the conceptual art of the 1970s, the phenomenon of concrete poetry, as well as the Orange Alternative movement, the activities of the Luxus group and the rich tradition of the contemporary drawing competitions in Wroclaw.

The AIAS event will comprise:

  • workshops for students from around the world entitled “Traces in Spaces”, culminating in an exhibition;

  • two-day symposium, during which the participants of the AIAS eventwill be provided with eight lectures connected with the theme of the event and take part in discussions;

  • drawing exhibition organized by the Department of Drawing at the E.Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw;

  • presentation of schools – members of AIAS;

  • guided tour of the city and the Academy in Wrocław;

  • dialogue with the city, its inhabitants, people from all over the world!