© Agnieszka Sejud | HOAX
Topic: To the Streets!
On this edition, GETXOPHOTO will approach the exploration of public space (both physical and digital) as an updated setting for conversation, protest, as a space for meeting and mutual recognition and as a eld of experimentation, play and celebration.
New artistic direction
Jon Uriarte, digital curator at The Photographers’ Gallery (London), is the new
head of the artistic direction at the 14th edition of the Festival.
Open-air and digital edition
Most of the exhibitions are designed as open-air installations, highlighting the dialogue between image and environment and, at the same time, the festival dives into the digital space with a speci c program for the Internet: Instagram lters, podcasts, playlists or performances.
Hybrid Festival
GETXOPHOTO selects visual representations in different media such as photo- graphy, video, archive, installation, VR and digital art, showing the work of ar- tists from different backgrounds who have created multidisciplinary narratives.
A festival that continues expanding
With the direct involvement of local population (shop owners, bars and cafés, amateur photographers) and at the same time with international submissions from artists from more than 40 countries, GETXOPHOTO is expanding more and more every year.
Large activity program
The program includes activities designed for different audiences: conferences, speeches, screenings, laboratories, night walks and different tours both throu- gh the city center and the beach.
GETXOPHOTO is an International Image Festival that takes place in Getxo (Basque Country) during September since 13 years. These editions have been increasing the repercussion of the Festival, participation and acceptance by critics and the public. Its main objectives remain the same since its inception: propose a dialogue on issues of general interest that affect us as citizens, recover urban spaces for cultural uses, or deepen the exploration of unconventional formats, supports and exhibition spaces with rigorous international programming. Over the past 13 years, more than 200 renowned artists have participated such as Martin Kollar, Martin Parr, Nadav Kander, Naomi Harris, Phil Toledano, Marcos López, Ricardo Cases, Wang Qinsong, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Roger Ballen, Cristina de Middel, Vincent Fournier, Boushra Almutawakei, Pieter Hugo, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Paul Fusco, Zanele Muholi, Yann Gross, Simon Norfolk, Erik Kessels, Juno Calypso orMatthieu Gafsou, among others.The 13th edition of GETXOPHOTO will be held from September 3 to 29.It will be a different edition for obvious reasons. The impact of Covid-19 has been enormous and we still cannot see the looming recession. In this sense,the Festival tries to respond to this “new” situation by presenting its mostparticipative, street-based and, at the same time, most digital edition.
As usual, the program is structured in two main areas: exhibitions and activities, to which this year, as a novelty, an online program is added. Regarding the exhibitions, GETXOPHOTO focuses more than ever on the use of public space and has programmed almost all of them on the street, outdoors, on the axis that runs from Ereaga beach to Puerto Viejo as well as in the center of Algorta. In this edition, new spaces are added to be used as the facade of the Post Office or that of a municipal headquarters on Calle Urgull. There will be around twenty exhibitions that will revolve around the topic of this edition: A la calle!
The Festival is configured as a platform that houses exhibitions, an international open call that opens the doors to artists from all over the world, the laboratories that are part of the education program, the digital program, collaborations with cultural agents and institutions that allow strengthen the cultural ecosystem, meetings as a shared space for reflection on images and the profession or various activities as part of the participatory program.
GETXOPHOTO also aspires to be a more hybrid festival, in which in addition to hosting photography, video, installation, cinema, virtual reality or digital art also have a place. And it also wants to be a more sustainable festival. An internal reflection has led us to develop a sustainability plan that will guide us to reduce the environmental impact that may be generated. In this sense, the Basque Government has awarded GETXOPHOTO the Erronka Garbia seal, recognizing it as a sustainable festival.
Artistic program and exhibitions
Jon Uriarte, current digital curator in The Photographers’ Gallery in London, starts as Getxophoto’s curator on this edition. Around twenty projects will articulate the artistic program he has defined, whose theme is To the Streets! The works will address various aspects related to public space in contemporary global society; a physical and digital place to meet, play, propose, protest and debate ideas that respond to the multiple challenges and concerns we face today. The street is claimed as a primary setting to generate new relationships, situations, cultural possibilities and social interaction. The issues raised include the climate emergency, as well as racism and patriarchy, probably the oldest and most worrying struggles for human inequality, among others.
The German artist Charlotte Schmitz took pictures at La Puente, the biggest brothel in southern Ecuador. It is a collaborative project in which the women chose their own poses. A series of documentary portraits in which nail polish is used as a creation tool. Felipe Romero Beltrán focuses on the fight against racism. His series Reducción focuses on police violence against immigrants in Spain. The work includes staged photos of arrests and appropriate images from police files that make us aware that racism not only takes place in the United States but is very much present among us.
Thaddé Comar will participate with How was your dream?, a documentary photographic project carried out during the Hong Kong protests between June and October 2019. The author deals with new forms of demonstration and insurrection in our post-contemporary era dominated by seamless control societies.
The renowned Japanese artist Sohei Nishino will participate with Diorama Maps, a series of collages in which he offers wide panoramic views over large cities from the union of small photographic fragments. In this way, the author tries to express how a city looks like inspired by his own experiences and memories, integrated with the landscape.
In a more digital aspect, the Swiss collective Fragmentin will bring their Virtual Reality (VR) project 2199. Through a synchronized choreography, they generate a space for questioning and criticizing the vulnerability of human beings towards technological advances.
Due to the impact of coronavirus, the use of public space and public transport has changed. Michael Wolf’s Tokyo Compression can be considered a great example of that as it depicts subway scenes before the pandemic that can seem dangerous and terrifying from today’s point of view.
On a performative level, the Mentalgassi collective will visit us again to present their latest project. A work made by, for and from the public space, where to confront and question the amount of waste that a person is capable of generating in a short period of time.
Online Program
GETXOPHOTO expands to the Internet with the aim of using the online space not only for communication or promotion objectives, but as a space to deploy the Festival’s artistic program. In this sense, specific contents have been developed. For example, Aran Calleja and Borja Crespo sign a changing playlist inspired by the theme of this edition, creating the Festival’s soundtrack. Podcasts also sneak into the program. The Festival has started a collaboration with Radio Ambulante, an initiative that creates unique and high-quality podcasts that have been recorded for several years on NPR (National Public Radio) in New York and tell exciting stories about Latin America, in spanish. The online section will also host the phenomenon of Instagram filters that sweeps social media. GETXOPHOTO has launched the First Instagram Facial Filters Contest, a contest unique in its category. Public Protest Poster is an online design tool created by Navarrese Raúl Goñi that allows anyone to quickly design their own poster, share it on social networks or print it. The artist Victoria Ascaso has created T4BU (Thanks for being you), an app that relays everything that happens on the user’s screen to all those who connect and want to see it. These are some of the proposals that will be available on the Festival website.
The most participative edition
We live in a time when we all take, share and look at photographs and we want to celebrate and promote the possibilities that this medium offers. In this sense, GETXOPHOTO has always sought a close and horizontal relationship with its public, which is why it has tried to maintain and promote open windows for participation. A visible example during this edition is the Shared Screen initiative. The local population has been invited to send screenshots of the video calls they did during the confinement. Thirty of them will occupy the windows of the facade of the Communication Department’s building of the Getxo City Council (Urgull 4, Algorta). The Festival has also launched its International Open Call, adressed to artists from all over the world that would like to exhibit at the festival.
This third call has received more proposals than ever: a total of 329 projects from 43 countries. The prestigious international jury has been composed by personalities from important photography institutions: Emma Lewis (TATE Modern), Sarah Leen (The National Geographic Magazine), Mirjam Kooiman (FOAM) and Jon Uriarte (The Photographers’ Gallery and GETXOPHOTO. The winners of this last edition are Felipe Romero Beltrán with Reducción, Thaddé Comar with How was your dream?, Georges Georgiou with Americans Parade and Agnieszka Sejud with HOAX.
Popular participation is another of the proposed initiatives. Organized in collaboration with the local association Algortako Dendak (Shops from Algorta), it is an open format for all those who want to participate in the Festival by sending a single photo according to the theme proposed in this edition. Around 35 of them will be exhibited in the windows of local businesses.
Finally, Internet Tour by Mario Santamaría is one of the program’s highlights. A guided visit by the artist to see nearby places where the circulation of our e-mails, messages, likes or photos occurs. Places like the Zamudio Technology Park or the Sopelana beach. An experience halfway between the tourist route and the non-tourist.
Further activities, guided tours and conversations
The program is completed by the extensive program of guided visits in Euskara and Spanish that includes day tours during all weekends, offered by a mediator who presents and contextualizes the key themes of each exhibition. Accompanied by the light of lanterns and strolling through places that are normally not accessible at night, the cycle of night tours has also been organized: a different way of approaching the work of the artists, in privacy, allowing readings from other points of view.
GETXOPHOTO por is another format for visiting the Festival. Four guests will contribute their personal point of view on their favorite exhibitions. For three consecutive saturdays, Borja Crespo, Yogurinha Borova and bertsolaris Miren Amuriza and Jone Uria will offer unique and unrepeatable tours.
Hamaiketako (lunch in euskara) stands out in the conversation program, a space where participants can share an aperitif around a table with local creatives Helena Goñi (Britney Spears, Marilyn Manson and other references in my photography) and Javier Mendizabal (La Kantera, history of a skatepark), delving into their stories and trajectory, and enjoying quality time.
Collaborations
The Festival establishes a closer and collaborative relationship with cultural agents and local, national and international institutions, in order to strengthen the cultural ecosystem. This year, we are working with the Kutxa Kultur Foundation in San Sebastián, the italian research platform PHROOM, the contemporary photography website PHMuseum, or the creators of Picter, german tool for advanced image processing, among others.
Curator Jon Uriarte
Born in Hondarribia in 1979, he studied photography at the Institut d’Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya and the International Center of Photography of New York, he also holds a master in Projects and Artistic Theories by PhotoEspaña and the European University of Madrid. His work has been exhibited in collective and individual exhibitions at different galleries and centers such as La Casa Encendida in Madrid, Koldo Mitxelena in Donostia, Studio 304 of New York, HBC center in Berlin and Sala d’Art Jove in Barcelona. Founder of Widephoto, independent platform dedicated to curating activities about contemporary photography. He also conceptualized and coordinated DONE for three years, a project about reflection and visual creation promoted by Foto Colectania. He is currently living in London, where he has recently joined The Photographers’ Gallery as digital curator.
Artists Preview
Michael Wolf (United Kingdom) Tokyo Compression Ilyes Griyeb (Morocco) Aït Ouallal Sohei Nishino (Japan) Diorama Maps Raisa Galofre (Colombia) Stay at home & Eva Gjaltema (Netherlands) Thaddé Comar (France) How was your Dream? Julieta Gil (Mexico) Nuestra Victoria Randa Maroufi (Morocco) Les Intruses Silvia Rosi (Italy) Encounter Charlotte Schmitz (Germany) La Puente Agnieszka Sejud (Poland) HOAX George Georgiou (United Kingdom) Americans Parade Felipe Romero Beltrán (Colombia) Reducción Mentalgassi (Germany) Waste Wastes Estampa (Spain) 3409 Worker Esther Hovers (Holland) False Positives Fragmentin (Switzerland) 2199 Victoria Ascaso (Spain) T4BU (Thanks for being you) Hiru Kolektiboa (Euskadi) Radio Farm Mario Santamaría (Spain) Internet Tour
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