From first festivals to institution. WRO Sound Basis Visual Art Festival and the polish digital turn

Sylwia Szykowna

From first festivals to institution. WRO Sound Basis Visual Art Festival and the polish digital turn

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, 2025 (First View), Issue 1 (63),

Authors

Titles

From first festivals to institution. WRO Sound Basis Visual Art Festival and the polish digital turn

Abstract

This article deals with the institutional aspect of new media art, which is inextricably linked to the socio-cultural and political context of its development. In the article, the author focuses on the history of the WRO Art and Media Centre, the most important and only independent institution in Poland, which has been co-creating an alternative system of festivals and new media art centres since 1989. By analyzing the early period of WRO's activity, one can see the process of gradual institutionalization of the independent initiative initiated at a critical moment, i.e. during Poland's systemic transformation, by a group of young people from Wroclaw's punk counterculture community, who saw the new media as a tool of resistance and struggle against the repressive system of communist rule.

Keywords

new media art, institutional definition of art, art world, institutional criticism, cultural policy, WRO Sound Basis Visual Art, media art festivals, video art festivals

Information

Information: Arts & Cultural Studies Review, 2025 (First View), Issue 1 (63),

Article type: Original article

Authors

Sylwia Szykowna

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4943-2539

Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu

Article status: Open

Licence: CC BY

Percentage share of authors:

Sylwia Szykowna (Author) - 100%

Article corrections:

Publication languages:

English

View count: 24

Number of downloads: 0

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