MAX 500. Art in Public Space – 2018/19

Art is leaving the exhibition space and interacting with a wider audience. The State of Tyrol sees “Art in Public Space” as a modern form of debate on current social questions. It takes up relevant sociopolitical themes and plumbs the relationships between people inhabiting or passing through a region and their environment. Art in public space aims to trigger discussion and to set processes in motion. It should be an integrative component in the development of perspectives for the future, as well as playing a part in shaping the state's identity within the contemporary context.   

Action
In 2018/19 the State of Tyrol will be setting up the funding provision “Art in Public Space” for the eleventh time.

This action serves to fund both permanent art projects and temporary interventions into publicly accessible space. To mark the Maximilian Year 2019, this time around there will be a thematic accentuation, and the works and their realization will be incorporated into a time frame.

2019 marks the 500th anniversary of the death of Emperor Maximilian I. The Holy Roman Emperor known as the “Last Knight” was born in 1459; an ambivalent figure, he ruled in a Europe torn by epochal change between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. He was influenced by the code of chivalry as well as openness to modern methods in administration and technical innovations in the art of war. (Cf. www.habsburger.net/de/kapitel/maximilian-i-kunst-im-dienste-der-politik, 11.12.2017) New images of the world and schemes of order were emerging during this epoch. Maximilian I made use of an ingenious media policy, which made him popular even during his lifetime, and worked hard at historicizing his own person. Traditionally, he is known to have said, “He who does not provide for his memory while he lives, will not be remembered after his death, so that this person will be forgotten when the bell tolls.” He is regarded as a patron of the arts and sciences, and was a pioneer not only of political propaganda but also of self-staging. He contested military struggles as well as media battles with his counterpart, the French King Charles VIII. The many wars he waged were extremely costly, and so he had to take out loans from bourgeois bankers such as the Fugger family. In exchange, among other things, they received mining revenues from the Tyrol (silver mine Schwaz). Although he may have enlarged the Empire skillfully – also via marriage policy and diplomacy –, his heirs had to work hard for many years to pay off a mountain of debts. Emperor Maximilian enjoyed a politically and geographically extensive radius of movement, travelling a lot, but he chose Innsbruck as his residence and liked to stay in the Tyrol because it was ideal for the pursuit of his interests: climbing, hunting and fishing. He left his mark on the entire area of today's Austrian federal state from Anras to Pflach and from Nauders to Kufstein, but was pioneering in a new dimension of European politics and culture with a media presence unprecedented in his times. In retrospect, the past of 500 years ago reveals how themes like the relationship of power and media, migration, and the market economy emerged at that time, continuing to the present day.

A number of activities are planned in the fields of art and science in the anniversary year 2019. In contemporary art, work in public space is particularly suited to triggering widespread discusssion.

Curators
Maria Anwander, Walter Prenner and Franziska Weinberger will select projects submitted following the open call and incorporate them into a schedule of content together with additional works / interventions that they will invite directly.   

Formal Criteria
The action “Art in Public Space” promotes projects that take place in the Tyrol, and deal with themes clearly relating to and taking up the epoch and character of Emperor Maximilian.

Following an award by the jury, the prerequisite for state funding is the submission of every possible necessary permission for the project's realization, as well as agreement from the authorities responsible for the location(s) of the project submitted. Selected projects must take place in 2019, within a time frame agreed by the jury.

Excluded are: funding in retrospect or the acquisition of an already realized artwork, classical “Art in Architecture” projects, publications that do not form part of a project, and events in public space like concerts or theatre productions with no link of content to the funding action.    
Participation:
The funding provision is directed towards international artists, artist collectives, curators, art or artist societies working in the field of contemporary visual art, and municipalities insofar as they appear as the carriers of art projects.   

Endowment
The action MAX 500 “Art in Public Space of the State of Tyrol” is endowed with a sum of 188,000 Euros in the years 2018/19. According to the jury's recommendations, the level of state funding of projects recommended for realization by this action can amount to up to 100% of the overall fundable cost.  

Jury
The independent expert jurors, who will also be acting as curators for MAX 500, will choose from among the submitted projects and develop a proposition for funding. The final decision on funding is made by the member of the Tyrolean State Parliament responsible for cultural affairs.

Members of the jury are
Maria Anwander, artist
Walter Prenner, architect
Franziska Weinberger, art historian   

Documents/Procedure: The documents to be submitted comprise

3 copies each of

• Project description: text and visualization (sketches, montages, renderings,
• model photos; no models!) in A4 format as hard copy, max. 10 pages
• rough estimate of costs (incl. project-related communications)
• time plan

one copy each of

• documentation of previous activity as an artist (photos, catalogues etc.; no originals!) and current CV in short form
• completed MAX_500_data_sheet.pdf

The completed documentation must be sent, marked with the reference:
“Kunst im öffentlichen Raum 2018/19” to the
Amt der Tiroler Landesregierung – Abteilung Kultur
Leopoldstraße 3/4
6020 Innsbruck
by 29th June 2018 (date of postmark).

It is expected that the jury's decision will be announced at the end of August 2018.