Utopia: (gk. Nowhere land); an imaginary island described in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) as a perfection in law, politics, etc, any ideal place or state; any visionary system of political or social perfection. The fall of Utopia, Communism, and the establishment of Capitalism as the only World Order, made Fukuyama proclaim the end of History. What has occurred recently has seriously questioned his thesis while the end of history is not yet in sight.
The fall of universal and monolithic ideologies has dematerialised the topos, making it an impossible topos (place), while claiming that the only true topos is U-Topos, it is YIU and yourself as THE TOPOS, it is your personal realm where your dreams and hopes come true.Is there a Utopia today, and if so, is it more a personal or a collective one? How does today’s artist deal with imagination and memory, how does he get access to both private and collective memory, in its static and dynamic forms? In these times of great structural changes of the collective mind and rapid globalization, the artist’s task is to be aware of these changes and create the new decors and sensory experiences connected to them and discover the suitable metaphorical artistic language. On the other hand, are we living in a world where laic or religious messianic message is outdated? Is the art of today able to convey such messages and is it really interested in them? Art today is not anymore a reflection of any utopian reality but the only topos where still exists a possibility of dreaming, the only possible topos which reflects the inner beliefs, truths and doubts; the land of impossible promises or the promise of the impossible, the unreachable realm of unrealistic social and political projects, together with its collective dreams and universal beliefs.
Artists:
Halil Altindere, Maja Bajevic, Matei Bejenaru, Sokol Beqiri, Otto Berchem, Tania Bruguera, Pierpaolo Campanini, Violeta Carku, Jota Castro, Jan De Cock, Alexia Dafni, Adam Dant, Olafur Eliasson, Charles Esche, Lara Favaretto, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Rainer Ganahl, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzales-Foerster, Sagi Groner, Igor Grubic, Pinny Grylls, Todd Haynes, Carsten Höller, Krunoslav Ivanisin, Jan Jeffrey, Lulzim Kabashi, Masato Kobayashi, Anders Krüger, Marta Kuzma, Yael Lepek, Frederik Levrat, Emanuel Licha, Milena Maksimovic, Miltos Manetas, Goranka Matic, Rudina Memaga, Ottonella Mocellin, Edi Muka, Tanja Ostojic, Serkan Ozkaya, Giorgios Papadatos, Gregor Passens, Nicola Pellegrini, Stephanie Pelz, Heldi Pema, Nicola Petrovitch, Pedro Reyes, Arian Risvani, Mario Rizzi, Michele Robecchi, Pietro Roccasalva, Anri Sala, Zolykha Sherzad, Shimabuku , Erzen Shkololli, Terry Smith, Bert Theis, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Piotr Uklanski, Enzo Umbaca, Gillian Wearing, Verdi Yahooda, Yi Zhou, Florian Zeyfang, Fani Zguro
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