EU-ART-NETWORK – SYMPOSIUM 2025




25 Years of Symposia in the Field of Contemporary “ART! ……. WHAT FOR?”

After 25 years, eu-art-network is looking back on a multitude of contributions of high-quality contemporary art in the fields of visual arts, music and literature.

More than 300 international artists, numerous exhibitions in Austria and abroad as well as extensive documentation bear witness to our art project’s focus on socio-political commitment.

“… and for what …?” you might ask! After such a long span of time, it is certainly justified to take stock and to pursue this question during this year’s symposium, as well ask further questions: “What is art?” “What can art do?” “What is art for?” – in order to get closer to a more definitive answer.

There have already been countless attempts at answering this question. In his book “Was ist Kunst…?” (Or: “What Is Art…?”), Andreas Mäckler has collected 1080 quotes, from Aristotle to Joseph Beuys, organised thematically into different chapters and sections: Art as nature, art as science, art as beauty, art as a political issue, art as communication, and art as art, to name just a few.

First and foremost, the wealth of these quotes illustrates how complex the term is and how it clearly defies definition. It is evident that art plays a central role in our society by serving as a mirror for social debates and offering creative opportunities for escape, or by being an important means of communication that builds bridges between cultures, as well as serving innumerable other functions. Ultimately, creative work, and thus art, has existed since time immemorial. In its essence, art is a mystery and borders on the unknowable. In its significance for society, it is primarily dialectical. At times a revolutionary act, at others an unfathomable allowance.

One might also ask what definition would be favourable for art at today. What role does it currently play in our society? To what extent is art free and autonomous? Or is it just part of a vast, tangled web of power structures, relationships, sponsors and patronage – in other words, dependent?

A succinct quote by Joseph Beuys, “art = capital”, could be considered accurate in this capitalist society, when one takes into account an over-extended art market. However, if one interprets the term “capital” in this quote as “precious asset”, one might well doubt the veracity of another quote by Beuys at this point, when he says, “art = humanity = creativity = freedom.”

How accurate is this conclusion when art and human beings are potentially in danger of losing their creative impulse due to artificial intelligence, of slipping more and more into a state of “creative impotence”? So that artists as users are truly reproducing “canned” art – generated en masse, quickly and cheaply?

These are the kinds of questions we want to tackle in this symposium. We will focus primarily on the art form of drawing as it is the most direct and spontaneous form of expression available to the artist, a form of writing, as Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres called it, or as German art historian Uwe M. Schneede described:

“In the realm of art, drawing, without fail, is entirely itself at the beginning, furthest removed from the danger of being exploited by commercialism, the flood of images, the illusions and deceptions – light and fleeting, hesitant and unscrupulous, open and fragmentary ….”

With this in mind, we want to take a look back and raise critical questions in this anniversary year, while at the same time recognising and honouring the power of art. Because as Renato Guttuso said:

“Art is also an act of revolution.”

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