UNIVERSITY OF                                                               MUNICIPALITY

WESTERN MACEDONIA                                                    OF PRESPES

DEPARTMENT OF VISUAL

& APPLIED ARTS

(1^st Painting Workshop)

VISUAL MARCH TO PRESPES 2010

Extended / Absolute Fields

Last year (2009) the process Visual March in Prespes dealt with the idea of Global Landscape. The title established a framework that allowed the participants to explore the relation of the local to the global. It also created a concept that gave the opportunity to explore the relation of those who participated in the project to the environment of Prespes. The thematic allowed the participants to move away from mere descriptive comments and develop works and texts related to the idea of landscape in a contemporary approach.

For this year we move in a more abstract thematic Extended / Absolute Fields that will allow us to elaborate on issues that will enrich last year's effort. This year's   thematic will relate Visual March to Prespes and has philosophical or even poetic connotations and links the process to broader concepts that will not be directly related to a literal image or term.

The idea of 2010 is the idea of Field as an extended concept that goes beyond the spatial definition of the term. The term in its contemporary use is often conceived more as a formalistic term and is related almost entirely to painting. In this year's effort we introduce the concept in a way that will allow us to face art in a broader concept and to "extend" it beyond the limits of geometric format of the artwork.

Considering that, the term Field could also gain a contemporary interpretation and define a situation or a condition (not only related to space) where ideas, gestures, images, situations are projected. Field could be an entity that is on the one hand a spatial term and also a conceptual one. Field is the area, the volume, the time frame where it is required to develop an idea. In that way Field is the screen where the   projections of what we are trying to create is been developed. The area of Prespes is by itself a Field.

At the same time Field has a conceptual interpretation and refers to the entities that surround us: nature, culture, "reality", all these that many need to be defined. Even the initial meaning of the word has that interpretation: we are walking in a field, maybe the fields of Prespes. Field is at the same time an actual screen where we project images and an virtual environment of  ideas where we walk.

Last year we developed the idea of Global Landscape. The idea of Field comes as a second more conceptual framework. The title of 2010 process is Extended Fields or Stretched Fields or Anxious Fields or Absolute Fields. In that way we distance ourselves from the formalistic past and we create a broad frame where we can work.  The final title Extended / Absolute Fields is better representing the ideas that we develop because Extended / Absolute becomes the primary part of the title. Field becomes  the explanation of  Extended / Absolute. Extended /Absolute describes the idea, Field describes the milieu. The idea of extending/stretching a given notion (such as Field) can become the main topic of our workshop.

This year's title comes as a continuum of last year's title Global Landscape. Field is related to Landscape and Extended to Global. Somehow we are abstracting last year's title. The idea of transforming a title that is more literal (Global Landscape) into a title that is more abstracted (Extended Fields) is a process that could also be one of our topics.

In order to approach the idea of Extended / Absolute with a broader spectrum of ideas we are introducing three sub-thematics :

-Extending...the margins

-Extending ...the myths

-Extending...the images