(Select
above for archive year).
History
of Eight Days A Week
Artists from Liverpool and Koln taking part in a unique cultural exchange
through an ongoing programme of exhibitions, residencies, films, performances,
discussions and publications.
It is important to stress that Eight Days a Week developed and has
continued to be a grass roots and artist led project. Its beginnings
were in artists meeting in response to exhibitions in Liverpool of
Cologne Artists. After a public forum and artists' meeting at the
Bluecoat Arts Centre', plans were developed to make the first `Eight
days a week' artists' festival and reciprocal exchange project in
1998". The project has sustained momentum ever since by piecing
together artists' goodwill and energies with in kind and financial
support from a variety of public and private sources. Eight days are
confident that this process will continue with recent funding from
the Arts Council of England and the Liverpool Culture Company.
Eight Days a Week is an initiative that facilitates artists from Liverpool
and Koln taking part in unique cultural exchanges through an ongoing
programme of exhibitions, residencies, films, performances, discussions
and publications. Eight days a week projects in both Liverpool and
Koln are the result of collaborations between artists in a broad sense
working with a number of venues and sites, including galleries, colleges,
artists' spaces, civic buildings, alternative exhibition venues, the
cathedrals and churches, and the Internet. Since its beginnings in
1998 Eight days has organised over 90 projects in Liverpool and Koln
and seeks to open up artists' practices to new audiences and new communities,
to generate informed, critical and public debate around contemporary
art and culture.
Eight Days are developing expansive links with initiatives in Liverpool,
with the Biennial, the Universities, the Art School, Colleges and
Schools, studios and with similar projects in Koln. Recent Eight Days
projects were the exhibitions `Crash 1 & 2'"', with also
invitations to work in Hageniv, Wiesbaden, Simonskall V and Gummersbach,
Germany. Projects in Liverpool, Southport, Preston and Cologne are
planned for 2006 leading up to more ambitious projects for 2007 and
2008.
Eight Days a Week and Liverpool European Capital City of Culture 2008,
Liverpool City Council highlighted Eight Days a Week as an inclusive
collaborative project as a major featured event for March 2008 in
the initial Capital of Culture submission to celebrate artists' run
projects and initiatives. This significant `grass roots' organisation
brings together the different artists, educational and cultural organisations
in the city for a common creative purpose to celebrate the energy
and artistic quality in Liverpool and Cologne.
The
following are the critical objectives for Eight Days a Week and its
contribution to the Capital of Culture:
Artists
and Artistic Practice
• Maintain creative dialogue, collaboration and exchange.
• Facilitate the exchange of artists, their work and their ideas.
• Broaden the experiences and professional development of artists
in Liverpool and Koln.
• Facilitate opportunities for new partners to contribute to
Eight days a week.
• Develop networks of creativity within and between the two
cities.
• Embrace a wide range of artistic practice.
• Developing and Promoting the Links.
• Sustain and build upon existing cultural links between Liverpool
and Koln .
• Raise the profile of Eight days a week and the two cities,
highlighting their contribution to the local cultural economy and
to Liverpool's international status.
• Increase recognition locally, nationally and internationally.
• Attract media interest and publicity for the project and the
city of Liverpool.
• Make 2008 a focal point of activity, developing a strategy
for the period.
leading up to European Capital of Culture.
Eight Days represents and signifies a creative agenda where artists,
musicians, writers etc develop projects, facilitating initiatives,
creating new circumstances for production and communication. These
creative networks, strategies and projects in alternative places and
contexts are part of a new attitude to making and exhibiting. Artists
particularly in the North West of England have the confidence to know
that things are changing, the world is getting smaller and nearer,
art and culture can be more available and accessible in a more decentred
and devolving culture.
• Local Exchange, International Change, an Artists' Forum',
Bluecoat Arts Centre 1995.
• Eight Days a Week, Liverpool in Koln 1998, curated and organised
by Jurgen Kisters, writer and Journalist, Kolner Stadt Enzeiger and
Georg Gartz, Koln Artist.
• Crash 1, Collaboration, `Crash 2, New Painting from Liverpool',
VHS Koln 2004
• Interface, artists working in collaboration, Kooperative K,
Hagen and Liverpool Art School 2003/4.
• Internationale Kunstausstellung- Natur und Kunst', Hurtgenwald-
Simonskall, 2003.
Eight Days a Week is a project co-curated by Pete
Clarke from Liverpool and Bryan Biggs, Director Bluecoat Arts Centre
with Jürgen Kisters, Journalist and Art Critic Kölner Stadt
Enzeiger and artist Georg Gartz from Köln. This Project facilitates
artists from Liverpool and Cologne taking part in a unique cultural
exchange through an ongoing programme of exhibitions, residencies,
films, performances, discussions and publications.
The Idea (Statement - 1998)
We
are a group of committed artists from Cologne/Köln. We work with
different materials: clay, cloth, metal, glass, wood and paper. We
came together as a group joined by the contrasting and stimulating
experience of developing our ideas not only by phantasy and intuition
but also by the characteristics of the material we work with. It is
this element of tension which connects us.
We
want to build bridges...
Through
our work we seek artistic exchange in Liverpool, the first and oldest
sister-city of Cologne. In the year 2002 we will celebrate the 50th
anniversary of this partnership. It is our aim to present our group
of artists and their work in the year 2000 in order to establish contacts
in Liverpool for the year 2002. Personal interactions will show parallels
and contrasts in traditions and techniques. We wish for a joint and
artistically fascinating cooperation.
The stimuli from the one region promote the ideas of the other region.
We would like to contribute and be part of the growing European cultural
exchange by developing a long-term concept of working and exhibiting
together.
