Full name of the program

Ars.Polis – Virtual City-State of Art, Artists and Art-Lovers

Duration of the program

Long-term

Program description

What Ars.Polis, a virtual city-state of art, artists and art-lovers, mainly relies upon is the new information technology.

The possibilities made available to us (and not given to us as a present) through the development of the “electronic age” or, to be more precise, through the development of the very emblem of the electronic age i.e. the Internet, will be used to network and, in the long run, create an Internet (yet not limited to the web), trans-local and possibly trans-national COMMUNITY of individuals, a creative SPACE where different art DISCIPLINES meet and intertwine, and all MEDIA, all LANGUAGES blend into one i.e. the DIGITAL.

By encouraging education, cooperation and volunteer work we aim at avantgard forms of activity in the field of cultural and artistic practice or, in our own words, at creating a “solidarity network”.

WHETHER OR NOT the technical innovations will bring about a “digital revolution” in the real (positive?) sense of the word will depend exclusively on the awareness that particular social communities, interest groups and individuals have regarding the new technologies, the knowledge that they systematically develop, and in the end “revolutionarily” apply…

The basic idea

The word “city”, polis, had already in Homer’s period three different meanings. It sometimes describes an urban settlement, sometimes a political unit that represents a single state, sometimes only a group of citizens regarded as one body: the three meanings that can literally be translated using Latin words such as urbs, civitas and cives.

All three meanings reflect how the Ars.Polis, the city-state of art, was envisaged:

…a city-state of art as a “museum of today”, a museum of artists and their creative work hic et nunc, therefore online,

…a city-state of art as a virtual, Internet community which, we hope, will encourage, both in the short and in the long run, creative cooperation, mutual bonding of artists, and bonding of artists with the wider public,

…a city-state of art as an organization that connects artists and sponsors, artists and theorists, artists and cultural institutions, unique in the Croatian web space.

Through a symbolic union of the Latin word ars with the Greek word polis we wish to pay tribute to the vein and the artery of our civilization – the Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.

Program objectives

To create a city-state of artists and art-lovers (“museum of today”, Internet commune, “sponsorship fair”…),

To make possible an online access to thousands of presentation folders that include texts, images, audio and video recordings stored in our database,

To include as many young and non-established artists into the circulation of the Croatian cultural life: encourage their fresh and precious creative potential to be materialized in the form of concrete projects; present them to sponsors and cultural institutions…

To offer technical and field support to all artists who lack the knowledge and/or equipment needed to digitalize and publicize their own creative energy on the Internet…

To contribute (at least partly) to making artists independent of the State and the Ministry of Culture.

Expected results

The most comprehensive online database intended to present Croatian artists and their projects,

A unique web space intended to provide a place where artists and art-lovers meet and socialize, exchange ideas, and find associates and sponsors…

In the scope of the program we plan to release a multimedia DVD under the title of “Museum of Today” on a yearly basis.

Potential users

A) The established and the non-established artists, those who have acquired a status and those who have not, the young and the young-in-spirit, the professionals and the amateurs… ALL who call themselves “artists”

B) The art-lovers and the wider public