Call for projects – COAL Prize 2013

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The Coal Art and Environment Prize is awarded each year to a contemporary artist’s project on environmental issues. Its objective is to encourage artists to take up major contemporary societal and environmental issues and to participate in the emergence of a new culture of nature and ecology.

The 2013 Coal Prize is dedicated to the theme of Adaptation. It will be awarded in spring 2013 at Le Laboratoire, a private art center dedicated to research in art and science, in the presence of the artists and personalities from the fields of art and sustainable development. The winner will be chosen from among ten artists nominated in an international call for projects.

Created in 2010 by the Coal association, the Coal Art and Environment Prize, worth 10,000 euros, is placed under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture and Communication, the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy and the National Center for Plastic Arts. It is also supported by the Yves Rocher Foundation and the Egis group.

>> Download the call for projects in pdf

Calendar

The closing date for the call for projects is
February 28, 2013 00:00
.
The Coal Award will be presented on April 02, 2013 at the Laboratory.

Adaptation

Adaptation, a term used in biology as well as in art, consists in adjusting an entity, a representation, an individual, a system, an organization to the variables of its natural and cultural environment. On a global scale, and according to the theory of evolution by natural selection defined by Charles Darwin, the adaptive capacities of species explain the conditions of their survival or their disappearance. Climate change has affected the living conditions of many of them and led to five major mass extinctions in the past. Today, the transformation of the climate and the depletion of ecosystems are accelerating with innumerable consequences that once again pose a threat of extinction to the diversity of living beings with which our species has co-evolved for several million years.

Do we have the tools and means in our society to adapt to these profound changes? International summits result in disagreements or minimal commitments within timeframes that are incompatible with the urgency of the issues at stake, and citizens are suffering from the economic crisis, with employment and the short term as their priority. How to reconcile adaptation, anticipation, change and resilience? How can we reverse the principle that structures the relationship between Western man and his environment? By adapting it to the scale of its needs and no longer to its capacities. What are the values that will govern our energy, food, social, political and economic choices? Who has the keys to this adaptation? Ecologists, urban planners, farmers, industrialists, lawyers, artists? What role can social networks, collaborative innovation, creativity, biomimicry play in fostering adaptation? Will the exploding social inequalities create the great casting of those who will or will not be able to adapt? Will refuge areas, sanctuaries of abundance and preserved nature be the new ghettos of tomorrow’s privileged? Will they leave out the most affected countries or will they stand in solidarity, nationally and internationally, with the advancement of climate justice, global governance and social ecology?

Adaptation: this word is at the heart of contemporary thinking and of the strategies deployed by nations, cities, companies and communities to deal with global warming. It is the object of a displacement, of an appropriation, of an adaptation by the artistic creation. It is the term chosen for the COAL Art and Environment Award 2013.

Selection Committee

– Nathalie Blanc, Director of Research at the CNRS (LADYSS) in urban geography
– Anne-Marie Charbonneaux, President of the art center Le Magasin in Grenoble
– Claudio Cravero, Director of the Parco d’Arte Vivente in Turin
– Olivier Darné, Artist, winner of the COAL Art and Environment Prize 2012
– Eva Hober, Director of the Eva Hober Gallery
– Theresa von Wuthenau, Coordinator and spokesperson for Imagine 2020
Lauranne Germond, Alice Audouin, Loic Fel, Guillaume Robic and Clément Willemin founders of Coal.

The selection committee is chaired by Anne-Marie Charbonneaux.

Jury

– Claude d’Anthenaise, Chief Curator of the Museum of Hunting and Nature
– Judith Benhamou-Huet, Art critic and curator
– Patrick Degeorges, Philosopher, emerging and strategic ideas at the Ministry of Ecology
– David Edwards, Founder of the Laboratory
– Jennifer Flay, Artistic Director of the FIAC
– Thomas Grenon, Director General of the National Museum of Natural History
– Raphaël Ménard, Director of Foresight, Egis Group
– Chiara Parisi, Director of Cultural Programs at La Monnaie de Paris
– Gaëlle Rocher, Yves Rocher Foundation
– Gilles Tiberghien, Philosopher

Project selection

The selection criteria of the projects take into account the artistic value, the relevance (understanding of the stakes), the originality (capacity to propose new approaches, themes or angles of view), the pedagogy (capacity to pass on a message, to raise awareness), the social and participative approach (commitment, testimony, efficiency, societal dynamics), the eco-design and the feasibility

The Coal Prize supports artistic projects in progress or to come. Its 10,000 euro endowment does not necessarily cover the totality of the project’s production costs and must be considered as an aid to its development.

Beyond the awarding of the Coal Prize, the call for projects is also an opportunity to promote artists involved and to demonstrate the creative potential of the visual arts on the theme of the environment.

Coal wants to foster the networking of these artists with scientists and stakeholders, produces, enhances and promotes projects identified by the call for projects through exhibitions, events and commissions. The projects may be disseminated on Ressource, a national platform for arts and ecologies, with the agreement of the artists.

Application Form

The application must be made up of the following documents in a single pdf file (20MB maximum):
-A synthetic and illustrated description of the proposed project presenting its artistic dimension and its perspective with the environmental subject and the annual theme;
-A note on the technical characteristics of the project, particularly in terms of infrastructure and means of production;
-Budget estimate;
-A Curriculum Vitae and an artistic file.

Submission of files

All proposals must be submitted on the Coal server by February 28, 2013.
>>> Put your file online on the Coal server

Special conditions

By participating in this call, the authors of the projects expressly authorize the Coal Association to publish, reproduce and publicly distribute all or part of the elements of their project, for all purposes related to the promotion and communication of the Coal project, in all media, in all countries and for THE LEGAL DURATION OF COPYRIGHT. Projects submitted and not selected will remain in the archives of the Coal Association. They remain nevertheless the property of their authors.
Participation in this call for projects implies full acceptance of the above conditions.

Contact

For any additional request please write to: contact@projetcoal.fr

Coal Prize partners

Image credit

Antti Laitinen, Self-portrait in the swamp, 2002