C.O.A.L. - from Carboniferous to Open-eyed Artists on Landscapes

C.O.A.L. wants to take part in the revival regional identity of four adjacent coal mining basins: in France (Nord-Pas de Calais), in Belgium, in Germany (Ruhr), and in Poland (Upper Silesia). These areas are linked by a common geological story, a heavy industrial development, a same coal mining culture, and a same industrial heritage. All of them are faced with economical, social, and environmental reconversion. In these old european industrial regions, transformation and revitalization process is a challenging issue, and protection of the industrial heritage is an important factor of regional identity.

All these features can be summarized and read into the landscape. At the same time "landscape" is a remarkable genre with sustained tradition in the history of art. So the partners of C.O.A.L. have chose to federate on coal mining landscape topic. We want to analyse, explain, interpret landscape with different ways of cultural expression, and to give rise to an intercultural dialogue between art and science.

Partners will bring different technical and scientific approach, and different experiences in positioning the aestetic strategies of art work for a creative transformation to postindustrial society. In our project, contemporaneous art is a medium of reinterpreting industrial-landscapes as cultural heritage. Cooperation between scientists and artists from these three regions should also serve as tools to support sustainable development of each region and their inhabitants.

C.O.A.L. comprises 1): an exchange of 18 artists. For a week they will live in the partner-countries, appropriating specifications of each country as a source of their artistic preoccupation. This cross-border mobility of artists forms the basis of our multilateral cooperation. It will continue 2) as an exhibition, which will circulate in each partner country and which will communicate the art works in an European context. This exhibition shall 3) accompanied by an intenational conference in Katowice, to establish dialogue between scientists and artists coming from the three partner countries. Our multilateral cooperation will 4) culminate in a simultaneous sound/picture bridge by internet-life-stream/ video-conference, which will transform the local publics to a simultaneous European one.

Europe brings an ideal space for the communication between citizens living in areas which have been degraded by the industry. Today, we are four european partners engaged to connect by an intercultural dialogue our coal basins and their inhabitants.  When Essen will be an European Capital of Culture, in 2010, we will enlarge our network to Belgium and England.