INEMEA is an Association for promoting culture, art and education, founded in Jerusalem by cultural figures from the Commonwealth of Nations.
The main project of the association is the international Art Platform On — a space for dialogue between the different cultures of Europe, Asia, America and the Middle East. The platform aims to place Israel as an integral part of the global cultural space, to build horizontal ties between members of different nationalities and to expand the boundaries of mutual understanding. Today, artists and creators from six countries — Israel, Korea, Belgium, France, USA and Mongolia — work on the platform.
The events of the Art Platform On — Jerusalem 2023 as part of VI Biennale of Jerusalem program:
— the exhibition "Nomada Digital Art: Flying over Borders" (Jerusalem City Hall "Harmony", 28-30, November 2023);
— the Metaverse Multimedia Exhibition and the Metaverse Art Exhibition (December 2023);
— the International online conference "Art and Nomads: The Other Nature";
— the catalogue "Art and Nomads: The Other Nature" publishing (including all events listed above).
The overarching theme of the events, in which guests from all countries active on the platform participate, is be "Art and Nomads: The Other Nature". This topic, which is linked to the nomadic lifestyle, also reflects the current migration processes and presents questions regarding the technological migration to the digital world.
ART AND NOMADS: THE OTHER NATURE IS THE NEW MEDIA ART PROJECT, A PART OF VI BIENNALE OF JERUSALEM.
NOMADISM IS A CONCEPT THAT REFLECTS NOMAD'S LIFESTYLE OF CHOOSING TO MOVE TO SURVIVE OR ENJOY A BETTER LIFE. WHILE EMERGING AS A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYZING MODERN SOCIETY THAT HAS ACHIEVED DIGITALIZATION, IT HAS A PROFOUND INFLUENCE ON THE EXPRESSION AND FORM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, AND ARTISTS' WORK ACTIVITIES.
PROGRAM
— International Art Exhibition (Jerusalem)
— Metaverse Multimedia Exhibition
— Metaverse Art Exhibition
— International Online Conference
CO-ORGANIZERS
— IVCAA, Republic of Korea
http://www.artplatformon.com
— INEMEA group, Israel
http://inemea.org
— ADEM, Belgium
http://ademlabo.eu
— CYLAND, USA
http://cyland.org/lab
CURATORS
Jungsuk Noh —
(Republic of Korea)
http://artplatform.width1024.co.kr
CO-CURATORS
Nataliya Kamenetskaya (Israel) — http://www.artplatformon.com
Galina Bleikh (Israel) —
https://bleikh.art
Alexandra Dementieva (Belgium) —https://alexdementieva.org
Solongo Tseekhuu (Mongolia) —
http://www.landartmongolia.com
PARTICIPATING COUNTRIES:
PREHISTORY
The Art Platform On was initiated by IVCAA, Gwangju, Republic of Korea. The previous events has taken place in 2021 and 2022 in Gwangju.
The Art Platform On project unites countries of the Asian, European and Middle Eastern regions. Each art curator represents the artists of his/her country in relation to a theme of an exhibition, and also talks about main problems and general trends in the art of their countries at a conference.
In 2021, due to lockdown restricts the first Art Platform ON was held online: it was NATIONAL IDENTITY AND CONTEMPORARY ART event.
In November 2022 the exhibition of 47 artists from five countries was held in Gwangju under the theme ART & ENVIRONMENT = CROSSING as the international cooperative that seeks the value of art, social role, and direction of practice and explores common issues together.
Thanks to the combined efforts of curators from South Korea, Israel, Mongolia, France and Belgium, approximately 100 domestic and international contemporary artists already took part in this project.
THE CONCEPT
Since the 80s philosophers describe the modern world as a multitude which cannot be integrated, the multitude, which evades any attempt to impose any unified principle of life and language of description. Global theories are failing. Today everyone is looking
for their place in the world and the explanation of it for themselves. In the world lacking the point of assemblage a movement is not a tool, but an aim in itself. Deleuze and Guatarri use the notion of nomadism to describe these transformations. For the world turns into a place for nomadic, and its inhabitants turn into nomads. Modern media turn this explanatory metaphor into a mundane fact. A human being armed with mobile internet is no more tied to a concrete place and is able to go above and beyond all geographical and juridical borders.Their belongings are narrowed down to a backpack, laptop and bank card.
In such a world an artist is bestowed with incredible abilities: everything he needs is in a reach of his hand, including audience, which has an access to his digitized creative work.
The digital art takes many forms – from the creation of new worlds with VR-technologies to science-art, web-art, software art, NFT-art, etc. The art institutions undergo changes too, as well as the traditional roles of curator and creator. The new combinatorial models of making and presenting art as well as collecting art appear. The possibilities of art communities, free of geographical borders and linguistic barriers, are in a process of expansion.
However, the recent events revealed the other side of this utopia. The very instruments which make people mobile and free, presume total control. This is a vulnerable spot of a modern human, who has nowhere to hide – they don't have a home as a safe space, which guarantees stability from the switching leverages of total control. Can art find a balance between mobility and stability, between freedom and control? Can the artist find a place for a human in the space of alienation, which the modern world turned out to be?
The Project “Art and Nomads: The Other Nature” creates a center of gravity, a location, in which interaction with contemporary art would make a viewer to include themselves in the experience of this gap and enables them to acquire a new experience of interaction with the uncertainty.
JERUSALEM DIGITAL PLEIN-AIR WORKSHOP
Once upon a time, a kind of revolution took place in art – artists left the closed premises of their workshops and began to paint in the open air. A new genre of painting was born – plein-air. The theory of plein-air painting is attributed to Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750–1819), first expounded in a treatise entitled Reflections and Advice to a Student on Painting, Particularly on Landscape (1800), where he developed the concept of landscape painting, where the artist paints directly on canvas while inside the landscape. The impetus for artists to paint outside the walls of their studio was the invention of oil paint tubes, which allowed artists to become more mobile.
Today we can talk about a qualitatively new stage in the development of this genre. An artist working with new media feels even more mobile. Instead of a bulky easels with tubes of paint, he has a small tablet in his hands with all the necessary tools and a palette, and instead of a limited exhibition hall, he has the Internet with its endless possibilities for the number of views. All this turns a digital artist into a kind of nomad, who has the whole world as a workshop and an exhibition hall at the same time, which are always with him.
The immersion into the physical space of Jerusalem, the eternal city with its dramatic landscapes and antiquities emerging from the thin layer of the “modern” life, adds to this nomadism another dimension – that of time. Artists seem to be equipped for that kind of travel better than anyone else. Throughout ages, Jerusalem has been focus of artistic attention. David Roberts, W. H. Bartlett, Carl Werner, Gustav Bauernfeind, Jean-Léon Gérôme, to name a few, traveled to, observed, walked through, studied, and depicted its landmarks from different angles and in a varying degree of resolution. The Jerusalem Digital Plein-air Workshop is expected to be held as part of the Israeli program “Art Platform On – 5 countries” in November 2023. Artists from different countries will enjoy a guided tour of Jerusalem, during which they will have an opportunity to observe the city from some of those angles and to draw on tablets those very landmarks as they manifest themselves today.
The resulting art works are supposed to be shown on street screens (as part of the Jerusalem Biennale), as well as on the INEMEA website. The same works can be a collection of the NFT Art charity event.