Good practice:

Short Circuit

The project offers students a practical experience in curatorial work and art production with an emphasis on contemporary developments in artistic practices that can be found at the intersection with science and technology. Also, along with trying to offer practical experience that is missing in higher education in Croatia, the project also focuses on interdisciplinary collaboration offering an alternative, collaborative model of studying art (history) and working in art production.
The interdisciplinary project Short Circuit has been built upon the idea of introducing students into practical multi-disciplinary work through an intensive workshop where students of different professional and scientific backgrounds design and perform one or more group projects developed from a topic that is complementary to the current exhibition of one of the KONTEJNER’s triennial festivals.The work process is mentored by professionals from selected areas to direct students and give them the structure within which to develop their own ideas. The mentors are there every step of the way, letting students come up with ideas and brainstorm while leading them towards a well thought out concept based on their group work and providing a reference to what can be done in a certain amount of time and what should be done as an extension of the work.
Main stakeholders and beneficiaries of the practice are students, mentors, visitors of KONTEJNER’s festivals, faculty staff, public.

Croatian Ministry for Demography, Family, Youth and Social Policy- 70 000 KN (cca 10 000 EUR)
Croatian Ministry of Culture 20 000 KN (cca 2,5 000 EUR)

Ensured future collaborations between artists, scientists, and curators, printed publication, defined unique methodology for interdisciplinary work with a group of students from different backgrounds, produced, exhibited artwork.10 out of 15 participants had worked on collaborations in the field of art and science, 3 of the students participating in the project have come aboard the 2020 cycle, 2 of them had worked on KONTEJNER’s festivals ,1 student had become an integral part of KONTEJNER.

The most prominent challenge was learning how to communicate ideas between the arts and science sector. This was successfully done by implementing the mentorship aspect. Another challenge was dividing the roles between the students without leaving someone out.

The main objective of the project is to develop a new audience of independent cultural events and programs by bringing contemporary interdisciplinary artistic tendencies to people with different scientific backgrounds. Throughout the project, the participants were able to engage in critical discussions, develop a concept of an artwork, write and edit a publication, realize and produce an exhibition, present the project to new audiences. The project offers an alternative model based on collaborative work rather than individual efforts. It can be interesting to different regions and organizations which can adapt the content according to their needs. So, the initiative started from art and attract other (ICT, science…), hopefully in the future it will be the other way around. This is good example for SMEs who are thinking about different approaches to solving their problems as well as for policy makers which are creating programs to fund these types of collaboration.