Floating Artistic Interdisciplinary Research (FAIR) is an innovative project whose conceptual framework revolves around the idea of ​​a quest that in one way or another defines art as its object, a kind of research that is most often recognized as “artistic research”. FAIR is a platform – a medium, aimed at the development and promotion of artistic and theoretical work that has the characteristics of, or refers to “artistic research”. Through its activities, the platform’s intent is to establish and/or strengthen the interaction between institutions, research groups and individual artists in an international context. FAIR shares the principles and theoretical outlines set out in the “Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research”.
The main activities of the platform are accomplished in the form of several-day seminars in various disciplines of art practice – film, photography, fine arts, media and digital arts, music and performing arts – and achieve its results both within these disciplines and often in a transdisciplinary environment. The activities are executed by the FAIR platform independently, by a partner organization or in cooperation with other organizations and individual artists or theorists. The sustainability, vitality and expediency of the project imply the establishment of long-term partnerships, which through periodic interactions with the platform will enable the settling and upgrading of an artistic product of high value. The conceptual framework of the project also includes forms of interaction such as exhibitions, performances, screenings, concerts, readings and more.
The specific structural framework of the project, outlined as environment – vessel – participants – individual is a precondition itself for intensive and unpredictable interaction within the platform scope. FAIR’s multilayered, dynamic and generative setting, is a source for an experience that is catalytic to engage in a creative research process, either shared or individual. The uniqueness of FAIR as an artistic research platform is determined by the vast extent of possible interactions induced through the facility it operates, a sailing vessel – the yacht Soma. The destined specifics of a sailing vessel to induce creativity, both as a subject itself as well as means, has been inspiring for the French philosopher Michel Foucault too, whose thoughts on the topic are exceptionally relevant:”…the boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea… but has been simultaneously the greatest reserve of the imagination.”