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The exhibition concept

In September 2005, Slovenj Gradec served as the venue for the international conference of Peace Messenger Cities (1-5 September).

At this occasion we organised an international fine art exhibition, entitled simply 2 LIVE . It was our aim to encompass the widest possible meanings and existential dilemmas of our existence and being. The title enabled us to invite artists working in various creative practices and poetics. However, primary focus was put on the medium that so decisively marked the 20th century and has become the leading art genre in the current century: PHOTOGRAPHY .

The year 2005 sees a number of important thresholds and anniversaries: among others, sixty years since the end of World War II and the founding of the United Nations. At the time, both events announced significant changes in the world: the end of World War II brought the hope that conflicts of such dimensions would never happen again; and the founding of the UN was meant to assure (with the Declaration on Human Rights) that human rights would become important and would see a real chance of being realised. However, never before has the world been so torn with conflicts and clashes, intolerance has become omnipresent, ecological problems appear unsolvable. Therefore we face the basic existential dilemma of whether we will be able to survive for long in such a world. What is it that preserves life and humanity, so that we might live our lives, our little daily stories?

The exhibition theme is meant to be as wide as possible. We would like the artists of different generations to point to the social, ecological, economic and humanitarian dilemmas of man, to picture man as an individual and a social being, whose basic right is to live. The insights of artists into the problems of war and human aggression, as well as the human impulse to work in extreme situations, will give a special weight to the exhibition and open the questions of the ethical role of artist and art. It is our wish that the invited artists and the curatorial team of the exhibition would uncover – in the complex interaction of the strongest creations of individual artistic poetics – the positive thought and ethics that would take account of the topical existential problems and point to an optimistic view of the world and a fundamental belief in man.