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The Atlantic Project
Roland Levinsky Building, Drake Circus
Plymouth
Devon
PL4 8AA
About us
The Atlantic Project is a pilot for a new international festival of contemporary art in the South West of England, opening on 28 September 2018.
Taking place in public and outdoor locations across the city, the Atlantic Project has commissioned site-specific works by artists of international renown, with a strong emphasis upon audience development and community engagement.
Visit the disused Millennium building on Union Street for a large scale video artwork from Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda, or enter the Civic Centre for three pieces of work from artists Hito Steyerl, Vermeir & Heiremans and Kiluanji Kia Henda.
There will also be, for an exclusive three days only, a large balloon suspended above Drakes Island, as part of an installation from artist duo Postcommodity.
Plymouth is a city built upon visions of the future. As a deep-water port, facing the Atlantic Ocean, its history is bound up with maritime exploration, in pursuit of the unknown worlds that lie over the horizon. From Francis Drake to Charles Darwin, James Cook to the Pilgrims, the legacies of such utopian imaginaries have come to define our contemporary world. Just as the barbaric inhumanity of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the inequities of British colonialism have shaped the precarious conditions that characterise globalisation today.
As the largest naval base in Western Europe, Plymouth was bombed extensively in WWII and the subsequent city architecture could be said to reflect a succession of post-war visions of the future, from Soviet-style social housing to European 'Brutalism' to American-style free enterprise. With the acceleration of globalisation and the prolonged impact of austerity, however, the century-long obsession with the concept of progress has ground to a halt. Without a clear vision of the future or a shared belief in the continual transformation of society for the better, the question arises, how will the singularity of the artist function and change, drifting in the wake of utopian imaginaries - after the future?
The Atlantic Project is curated by Tom Trevor (Artistic Director) and has been developed as a partnership between The Box (the £37m redevelopment of Plymouth City Museum) and University of Plymouth, hosted by The Arts Institute. The Atlantic Project in 2018 is part of Horizon, a two-year programme of visual arts development across the city, led by Plymouth Culture, with funding from ACE Ambition for Excellence and Plymouth City Council.
For more information, visit www.theatlantic.org
