The idea is to go off into the outskirts of the city, explore its hidden nooks, and find places given a wide birth by tourists.
July 3–31, 2011
The open culture resort is a concept that ties in with the artistic and cultural traditions of Sopot. This was the birthplace of Polish jazz. Sopot’s famous Opera Leśna was the venue for the Wagner festival in the inter-war period, and now hosts the International Song Festival. This was also the headquarters of the famous SPATiF (Association of Polish Artists of Theater & Film) and the National Art Gallery, both gathering places for Poland’s bohemian artists.
In July 2011, the Sopot resort will open its doors to young and ambitious artists, to non-trivial ideas, and to projects that engage their audiences. The event will draw fans of unconventional artistic solutions, those interested in alternative leisure activities, and people curious about the world around them. Basked in the rays of the July sun, the Open Culture Resort will uncover a new side of Sopot.
The OCR is more than just the downtown area and the seaside strip that attract most of Sopot’s tourists. The OCR is a city inhabited by people — people who step out of the picture in the summer months. They are the main audience of the project’s numerous workshops and the planned artistic route, which will run through the so-called “bedroom districts.” We also hope that our program will attract the interest of tourists who wish to discover a previously-unknown side of Sopot.
The project will involve changing the route of bus 187, which runs through the entire city, into an artistic route. All of the artistic events of the OCR will be held along this route, and it will also host an open-air gallery.
Around ten bus stops will be converted into exhibition points. Each will be entrusted to a different artist or artistic group that will use the bus stop as the basis for an art project. Invited artists include PGR ART (Sylwester Gałuszko, Mikołaj Jurkowski), the “Swelina” Association, A Kuku Sztuka, Emilia Bartkowska, Aleksandra Chomicz, Konrad Zientara, Piotr Andruszkiewicz, and Gosia Golińska.
The project will also feature several additional artists: Iwona Zając, Mariusz Waras, Grupa Krecha, and Kamila Chomicz,who will prepare site-specific projects along the planned route.
The common element of the ART Bus project will be the decoration of buses on the 187 line with reproductions of work by Tri-City painters and graphic artists: Ania Wypych, Magdalena Mellin, Piotr Makowski, Marcin Zawicki, and Agata Wojcieszkiewicz.
