CONTACT announces 2006 theme Globalization has stimulated an increasing cycle of interconnections through economic, environmental, political, technological and cultural exchange on a world-wide scale. A dialogue between people globally is dramatically on the rise as cultures continually interact while goods, services, money, and ideas flow rapidly across national borders. As we move beyond traditional territories and national states, the combined forces of globalization stimulate both positive and negative circumstances of world-wide human interaction from the increase in artistic exchange made possible by the internet to the degradation of the environment caused by multinational corporations. Photographys ability to document and articulate issues that transcend boundaries is central to an understanding of the forces that shape globalization and define our place within a worldwide culture.
For the tenth anniversary of the CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival, Imaging a Global Culture will focus on photo-based works that reflect the interconnections between people of this planet that have increased dramatically over the past decade. Although not strictly limited to this particular time period, the thematic focus of the festival will include the following issues:
1. Environmental Change
- degradation of the environment and ecological transformation
- stimulating a global response to the need for ecological conservation
- cultural immigration and social/political conflicts
2. Urbanization
- industrialization and forces of urban expansion; the interconnectivity of localities
- conditions of diversity and/or contradiction as defining characteristics of contemporary experience; loss of cultural identity
- ruptures in the social fabric; the transition from past to present with implications into the future
3. Social and Cultural Communications
- impact of global forces; worldwide integration of social and cultural exchange
- global flow of products, values and ideas across national borders; global politics
- expressions of a borderless nation or one world culture
4. Technology and Economic Exchange
- global space or geography - a domain of connectivity spanning distances and linking localities to one another (e.g. a map or the internet)
- depiction of time, movement, migration, translation and communication
- effects of free trade, commerce and cultural exchange managed on a world wide basis
Imaging a Global Culture will explore these issues through exhibitions, public installations, lectures, films and events in CONTACT from May 1 31, 2006.