Zapotek Quinquennial 2011- Call for Entries
The Quinquennial will be held on the 5th anniversary of the founding of Idiosynchronism.
We hope that similar events will be scheduled to take place simultaneously in other locations around the world. The main event is scheduled to take place as far from any leading art centres as possible. It will take place in the remote village of Lemona in Cyprus on the old threshing floor overlooking the valley so that the blaze will be seen for miles across an empty landscape.
At this stage we are looking for organizers. If you would like to take part or to organize such an event in your location then please contact us at: zapotek@niccosta.com
Artists of courage and integrity are invited to submit one piece of their work to the Quinquennial for destruction on Wednesday April 6th 2011.If you are a practising artist we invite you to submit 1 piece of your work for destruction. The proceedings will be recorded and publicized, and participants will be invited to attend.
We base our appeal upon the following 5 premises:
1. That the perception of the quality of the artwork is never determined by the artist but ultimately by the buyer, who is often looking only for a "good investment" or social kudos in order to fit in with the prevailing fashion. In other words, the following falsehood prevails: if there is no buyer there is no art.
2. That the artist like everyone else is fallible. Not everything produced by an artist is worthy of the label "art". Other labels are readily available and perhaps more honest. By the same token, the artist does not have to produce "art" every time they work- they are also permitted to fail.
3. That artwork is constantly judged by the settings and environment it is in rather than by what it actually is.
4. That art for all its social kudos and hyperbole has increasingly made itself less, rather than more relevant to the world at large.
5. That art's intrinsic power has been usurped by other media and its precepts are used successfully on a daily basis as a tool for manipulating our perception of the world merely in order to line the pockets of the callous few.
By destroying our work, we willingly place it beyond the reach of the systems that we ourselves have blindly worked so hard to sustain!
From the ashes a new future will arise!
Long live the future!
"Our society is regressing and repeating the same mistakes of the past but in glitzy new disguises seductively packaged as fighting for freedom, democracy and truth.
Our rush to embrace new technologies and wasteful showy lifestyles is little more than a yet another happy headlong rush into yet another, but perhaps far more lethal, form of totalitarianism." E. Zapotek 2009