Artcolony 2020

The ArtColony has been held every year since 1996. We want to keep this process – despite this year’s physical realization – which is why we are now announcing a special art event to which we respectfully invite participants. Of course, this virtual program cannot replace the on-site symposium, but it can achieve valuable answers and creations within its own genre.

• The Occasional Oratorio is number 18, written quickly in early 1745 when Handel, about to turning 60, was experiencing severe financial difficulties. In the absence of King George II, who was in Hanover, Jacobite leader Prince Charles Edward Stuart, a.k.a.
• An Occasional Oratorio (HWV 62) is an oratorio by George Frideric Handel, based upon a libretto by Newburgh Hamilton after the poetry of John Milton and Edmund Spenser.Handel composed the Occasional Oratorio hastily in January and February of 1746 and premiered it immediately on 14 February 1746.

For his 'Occasional Oratorio', composed in 1746 in an age of personal and political upheaval, Handel made generous use of much of his own earlier material, and this resulted in something quite close to an anthology: a choice collection of his most beautiful and most famous pieces - as it were, a 'Best Of'. The 2018 London Handel Festival closed with a performance of the composer’s Occasional Oratorio HWV 62, so called because it was written in response to a specific occasion. This was the Jacobite rebellion, which by December 1745 had seen the Duke of Cumberland drive the Stuart armies back into Scotland.

Although the title of the project is the same as Händel’s work, we are now thinking of another meaning of the oratorio: “the place suitable for retreat, thinking, praying.”

The photos placed below can be used freely. Based on any of them – you can create your own, free association response, creative reaction, either from one or all of them. The photos containing independent details of events and motifs were also intentionally manipulated in order to be processed separately or together. (The photos uploaded on the website are small in size, if you need a good quality – high resolution – version for your work, we can of course send them.)

In addition to the artists originally invited to the 25th symposium, we also invited other international artists to participate in this project.

There are no content, technical, size or genre restrictions on the individual work. We ask for high-quality photos or documentation of the completed works – if necessary, additional textual additions and descriptions of the works – which we use in our upcoming artbook about the ArtColony to present this project.

March From The Occasional Oratorio

It has been advantageous so far, but the situation in the world now justifies the presentation of contemporary artists in electronic communication, social media and professional portals. For this reason, the completed works will be promoted in these plattforms. If we also receive a photo or video documentation of the creation of the works (work in process), we will include them in the campaign and share them through the contacts of the ArtColony.

Occasional Oratorio Pdf

We would appreciate it if you could send these to artcolonycered@gmail.com during the creation process.

As a result of the e-mail art project, the organizers are hoping for answers to the following questions:

What content and direction are the creative answers based on the given “raw material”? In what other context can the artworks be interpreted in a traditional or experimental approach? How spectacular will there be a difference between the works of artists with local knowledge in Cered and those of artists without any local knowledge?

A further aim of the project may be to provide an answer to the hypothesis: what kind of creative quality or creative activity does a virtual project produce in a world situation limited by physical and personal activity caused by the pandemic?

Occasional Oratorio Handel

What other community processes, additional events – or even new artistic innovations for the future – will this project generate in the life of an international artcolony? How can this become transparent to locals and wider communities? Are there – and if so, which – mechanisms and forms for this?

Occasional Oratorio Libretto

This post is also available in: Hungarian