About Magic Carpets

“MagiC Carpets” is a “Creative Europe” platform uniting 15 European cultural organisations that create opportunities for emerging artists to embark on international journeys to and to create, together with local artists and local communities, new works that highlight local specificities and compensate for the shortage of story-telling existing in modern society by enhancing cultural accessibility, cultural activism and participation.

The name is a reference to the well-known tale of One Thousand and One Nights and to the idea of the magic or flying carpet, a “fantastic device” to travel the world in the blink of an eye – a convincing metaphor of the power of culture, to turn mistrust and confrontation into intercultural dialogue, mutual understanding, respect and even love.

One of the goal of the project is to broaden worldviews of young emerging talents by sharing different local identities throughout residency projects. Every year during the entire project the artists involved will be selected by an open call and each partner will pick two emerging artists per year. The selected artists will be asked to carry out an inquiry which may involve local communities; at the end of each residency they will be invited to realize a site-specific project.

Magic Carpets strives for:

• work in socially engaged and responsible art field (visual art, public art, community art, exhibitions, performances, documentary theatre, online art, etc.) to research and to implement new productions together with local artists and local communities with aims to:
• enlarge a mutual understanding between local population and ‘strangers’ (‘others’) through innovative
  ways of story-telling and co-creation;
• boost the skills of emerging artists to work ‘outside the institution’ and research deeper into the
  sociocultural context of the host city or ‘unknown land’;
• increase the visibility of emerging talents through transnational mobility of artists and artworks and
  through the broad visibility of partners’ international profile;
• trigger intercultural and interfaith dialogue, and facilitate the integration of displaced people and
  refugees;
• develop new and deepen existing contacts with various audiences and target groups in many European
  cities and countries through inclusive cultural programme and extensive use of information,
  communication, digital technologies, and innovative approaches.

OPENSPACE.INNSBRUCK is a private association that runs approximately 60 m2 of polyvalent indoor and 60 m2 art venue and co-workings space. It has been conducting its activities in Innsbruck (Austria) since 2012 with the Aim of giving organizational and professional support for local, national and international artists and creative.

Using its experience gained working in the fields of arts, architecture, sound and design, the openspace.innsbruck team is constantly organizing a wide variety of indoor and outdoor cultural projects, often in collaboration with the local communities.

Team

EXTERN >>

Text
Johannes Reisigl, Marco Russo, Lona Gaikis

Design:
Stefan Rasberger, Armin List, Johannes Reisigl, Julian Berger

Photo and Video:
Günter Kresser, Natalia Zajacikova
Nanook Multimedia

Partners

“Magic Carpets” Platform is co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union, and financially supported by the City of Innsbruck, Land Tirol as well as Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport

Our venue

We strive to maintain healthy communication both with our community, and the professional environment as well. Working on diverse projects, art directions and locations, we are able to reach a wider audience. Deep in the heart of neighborhood and working for community, we also intend to bring the arts and education to the audience, which frequently remains left out of the scope of contemporary cultural activities

openspace.innsbruck, based in the Wilten district, was nominated as Austrian representative for MAGIC CARPETS in 2018 and since then has been working together with another 14 partner organizations to help selected artists gain new experiences and network with local artists and communities through practice oriented artist in residency program.

http://openspace-innsbruck.com

Contact

Openspace innsbruck
info@magiccarpets.at

+436769418881
Mentlgasse 12b
6020 Innsbruck
Austria