Umetniki

Thanasis Kaproulias

MNK

AV performance

IIC (International Internal Catastrophes) is an audiovisual project by Novi_sad and Isaac Niemand. For this project, audio and film materials were gathered from expeditions in remote parts of Iceland and transformed into a visceral, elegant, and profound 30-minute audiovisual piece. In producing IIC, the collaborative duo sought to trigger a synaesthetic response in spectators by harnessing dissonant elements and bringing them to layered and gradual peaks. Carefully constructed mythical crescendos, slow motion deliriums, hyper-beauty, elegance, and tenderness come together in an immersive and resonant cinematic work. At the core of this generative project, built around a geometrical layering of sounds and panoramas, are the subtle manipulation of optical nuances and the sequential exploration of such terms as “collapse-rebuild-isolate-take off…”.

The piece unfolds in two parts: the first part is exclusively based on a wide range of sonic phenomena where what it captures is a direct response to the hostile Icelandic landscape; the second part is based on vibration recordings from the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges in New York and incorporates the voice of a woman mourning her children, who were murdered in the Bosnian war. A five-minute excerpt from the second part, entitled Riotous Viscera, was selected and featured in Lars von Trier’s Gesamt project.

Thanasis Kaproulias (1980), an artist based in the ancient Greek city of Olympia and working under the moniker Novi_sad, is as much engaged by nature and the rudimentary sounds that are borne of remote environments as he is by the act of representing them. With accomplished technical ability, as well as a sensitivity for the nuances of his considered locations, Novi_sad carefully recontextualises the scenery. The artist engages with the landscape by producing field recordings whose intensity is revived in spaces as sound pieces performed in situ. Novi_sad treats every sound with integrity, with a resulting resonance that invites and immerses the listener. Using an innovative approach inspired by the idea of ‘cinema pour l'oreille’ (cinema for the ear), Novi_sad aspires to ‘donner à voir’ (lead to seeing) by means of sound. Many of the artist’s projects are focused on architectural acoustics. His process brings unique field recordings into contact with various methods of audio analysis, and he as well utilises quantitative and numerical data from various sources, such as NASA.

Novi_sad’s projects have been presented internationally, including at the Venice Biennale Film Festival, Venice, and the MUTEK Festival, Montreal and Mexico City.

http://novi-sad.net/projects/iic-7/

Moritz Wehrmann

Alter Ego (Version 2)

Light installation

The flora of Europe as we know it today is composed of many and many species of plants of foreign origin that were once adapted and now grow freely on the continent. Nature is in constant movement due to climate change, human intervention and constant intercontinental exchange. The project Plantportation is about revising Europe's natural history, in particular plant migration. It question the concepts of local and foreign, adaptation, movement and migration. The project emphasizes the problem of perception of space by mixing the real and the virtual: it is easy for us to move, whereas for plants it is possible only in certain metamorphic states. The project also raises the question of the possibility of involving plants in our virtual lives, even if they are rooted in the ground, exploring the poorly researched possibility of telepresence of plants and looking after them at a distance. The concept of the project is to create an »inter-space« where people can temporarily assume a plant identity.

German artist Moritz Wehrmann (1980) studied media art and design at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, and at the College of Fine Arts, Sydney. His artistic focus is on the creation of visual and spatial access to forms of the un/known through experiments, installations, images, and apparatuses. He is currently a lecturer at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Beside his artistic practice, he has worked at the Internationalen Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie (IKKM), and at the Cluster of Excellence Image Knowledge Gestaltung at Humboldt University, Berlin. In 2022, he was a fellow at the ZiF Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Bielefeld.

STRAN 22

Soap Opera

Spatial installation

Co-produced by: Forum Ljubljana and PiNa

Soap Opera explores the boundary between an individual’s intimate experience of the world and the specific collective experience. Using a bubble solution, a mechanical device produces fragile membranes that create almost psychedelic colour and light textures. The installation allows one to experience the immediate formation of a unique spatial divide that reflects the uncertainty and fragility of how we perceive reality, and the instability of the relationship between the subject and the world. In doing so, it explores the space of intimacy and reflection, challenges the individual’s perception of the outside world, and provides a literal display of immersion into a given reality as it entices the spectator with the possibility of seemingly omnipresent structures suddenly vanishing. Soap Opera premiered in 2019 at the Lighting Guerrilla Festival in Ljubljana, before being featured at the Monfort in Portorož (the IZIS Festival) and the Evi Lichtungen Festival in Hildesheim, Germany, where it was seen by 11,000 people over three days. It was last on display at the collective’s exhibition at the Vžigalica Gallery.

STRAN 22 is an interdisciplinary collective that brings together creators from various fields – from visual and performative art to architecture, design, music, intermedia art, and poetry – under a common denominator. Aside from combining their different skills, the members are united in their desire to identify new artistic expressions beyond conventional approaches. STRAN 22 co-produces IZIS, a festival that has been held at various locations on the Slovenian coast since 2013, most recently in the Libertas Cultural Centre in Koper. In recent years, the collective has created the play Rats at the Glej Theatre (2019), the interactive lighting treasure hunt and radio play The Hedgehog and the Light Blue, which was adapted to the pandemic restrictions (Nova Gorica, 2020), the installation Da me stesso non vegno (2021), and the permanent display of the spatial installation Dante Copiosus at the Besenghi degli Ughi in Izola (2021). As part of the multi-year research project Soap Opera, STRAN 22 staged an eponymous exhibition at the Vžigalica Gallery (November 2021 – January 2022).

STRAN 22

Da me stesso non vegno*

Interactive lighting installation

Co-produced by: Forum Ljubljana and PiNa

It is difficult to imagine a more accurate representation of the Latin spectrum (image, picture) and its connection to the spirit (spectre). With recording and playback, all these mirrored and multiplied reflections are caught in a limbo where, according to Mark Fisher, “in some important sense, there is no present that can be captured and articulated.”

As Dante wandered the Beyond, a spirit foretold his expulsion from Florence, adding that: “We see /.../ like one whose sight is poor, / things that are far from us; to that extent / the Highest Leader shines upon us still. / When they approach, or are, our intellect / is wholly vain, and we, if others bring / no news, know nothing of your human state.” What is our current human state? We are firmly shackled by a chronic lack of time, trying in vain to see which apparitions haunt us and which invisible hands resist them so stubbornly. Perhaps that is why Da me stesso non vegno engulfs us in lower-frequency light (the infrared spectrum), so that we recognise ourselves for the ghosts that we are. For as Derrida says in Spectres de Marx: “[T]he spectre is the future.”

* “But I am not of myself” (Inferno, X, 61) is a title that includeboth “I come not of myself” (in the English translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) and “My own powers have not brought me” (in the English translation by Allen Mandelbaum).

STRAN 22 is an interdisciplinary collective that brings together creators from various fields – from visual and performative art to architecture, design, music, intermedia art, and poetry – under a common denominator. Aside from combining their different skills, the members are united in their desire to identify new artistic expressions beyond conventional approaches. STRAN 22 co-produces IZIS, a festival that has been held at various locations on the Slovenian coast since 2013, most recently in the Libertas Cultural Centre in Koper. In recent years, the collective has created the play Rats at the Glej Theatre (2019), the interactive lighting treasure hunt and radio play The Hedgehog and the Light Blue, which was adapted to the pandemic restrictions (Nova Gorica, 2020), the installation Da me stesso non vegno (2021), and the permanent display of the spatial installation Dante Copiosus at the Besenghi degli Ughi in Izola (2021). As part of the multi-year research project Soap Opera, STRAN 22 staged an eponymous exhibition at the Vžigalica Gallery (November 2021 – January 2022).

http://www.svetlobnagverila.net/team-members/4586/

Cirkulacija 2

World Improvement Machine; Common Wealth

Installation and performance

The World Improvement Machine dates to a time when the metaphorical meaning of this expression was still very young. This was a time of emergent European empires in the 16th and 17th centuries (the term comes from the German weltverbesserungsmaschine), later followed by the outlines of the modern state taking shape. It almost coincides with the Enlightenment, but that period is already a consequence of the operation of the Machine. The Machine as a metaphor for the modern state is a brainchild of enlightened absolutist rulers that facilitated the sustainable/systemic growth of the state and the reproduction of the entire “apparatus” of such a state – mostly via the system of taxation; this made it possible to have a standing army and to build public infrastructure, which in turn facilitated commerce, the educational system, etc. In the Anglo-Saxon world, this notion received the positivist designation of commonwealth.

This Machine/system kept changing over the following centuries, and yet the enlightened positivist role of the machine, which progressed from worse to better, despite the occasional delusions, remained standing until recently. Lately, there have been multiple harbingers of a possible collapse of the Machine: first the notion as to the end of history, then the rise of neoconservative and neoliberalist ideas that question the ‘commonwealth and the social aspects of democracies.

The World Improvement Machine is a modular situational manifestation that involves the participating artists creating a dynamic common space through the variety of their approaches. From the outside, it is a fairly abstract aesthetic form – a mosaic puzzle. But in its essence of a collective organism, its main role is that of an ethical position.

The members of the World Improvement Machine, called Cirkulacija 2, is changeable and its manifestations are very different. Thus far, Borut Savski (video, sound), Stefan Doepner (machines, sound), and Ryuzo Fukuhara (movement, voice) have always been involved. In the last two years, they have been joined by Iva Tratnik (movement, voice, sound, image), and for the latest iteration Tatiana Kocmur (movement, sound, image) also participated for the first time. Previous participants included Boštjan Leskovšek (sound), Freya Edmondes (movement, voice, sound), and Milan Kristl (sound). They nurture a collectivist approach that fully considers the individuality of all participants – that is their take on the Machine. The aesthetic result does not attempt to provide answers, rather it draws on the 400 years of history of the diverse ideas and practices of the Enlightenment and picks out images and suggests feelings, putting the symbolic components of the Machine into various juxtapositions, which end up being abstract patchworks of all these fragments – the reality of the present day. This always produces a very consistent and broad aesthetic form.

Cirkulacija 2 is an independent Ljubljana-based artistic initiative launched in 2007. The group’s principal motivating embodiment is their “house of artists” – an interdisciplinary, independent, artistic production and exhibition space that involves the diverse use of technologies and aesthetic expressions. They range from abstract sound, interactivity, and algorithms, to robotics, diverse media, and the internet – and the exploration of ever-changing performative approaches. And most importantly, a socially cohesive approach that combines the common with the individual. Over the last seven years – since the group started working in large exhibition spaces and have had more long-term public funding – they have been working as producers for different generations of artists. Every year, the group showcase over thirty individual events with more than sixty artists. In 2010, the group received the Golden Bird award for their programme of experimental, investigative, and collaborative approaches, a very important accolade nationally, whose previous recipients include NSK, Irwin, Laibach, and others. In 2020 the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia designated the group as an organisation operating in the public interest for their programme of experimental and investigative approaches.

http://www.cirkulacija2.org/?p=8090

Andrej Štular & Janez Grošelj

City – Sketch

Installation

This new installation by Andrej Štular, joined by Janez Grošelj with technical and software tools, explores the contemporary urban experience. The authors designed an integrated spatial ambient with numerous details, interspersing static minutia with a range of movable elements and diverse mechanical devices that provide the viewer with the experience of the cacophony of the modern city with light, shadows, and sound. The city as a space of endless possibilities is typically revealed to us as a conglomerate of diverse issues and perspectives, and this is reflected in the composition, which does not shy away from witty fragments and inspiring technological improvisation. And once again, the sundry ready-made elements and recycled objects so characteristic of Štular’s poetics spice up the visual narrative of the city – which never rests.

Andrej Štular (1967) often combines disparate art techniques with spheres of bucolic psychopathology, as well as universal subjects that reflect on the essence of humanity, and human identity and its position in the structure of the modern world. Štular’s work is characterised by a dextrous transitioning between different media and the blurring of the boundaries between them, resulting in a very idiosyncratic artistic language. The author’s creations are never completely straightforward and often challenge the spectator.

Janez Grošelj (1990), who holds a master’s degree in architecture, is rapidly moving away from designing buildings, having discovered his calling in the more intimate field of light and lighting art. Aside from doing creative work, he shares his technical knowledge and software experience as an adviser and mentor at workshops.

http://www.svetlobnagverila.net/team-members/andrej-stular-janez-groselj-mesto-skica/

Brina Ivanetič

Kaleidoscope

Installation

The work explores the human ability to adapt to the ever-changing reality via the issue of the irreparable pollution created by humans and everything that that entails, from climate change to the extinction of species, and beyond. Because we do not see airborne particles, because climate change is still subtle enough to be easily thought away, and because animals are dying far from sight, the work uses trash as visible and obvious proof of our unconscionable destruction. Trash is a quotidian part of our reality and when it is assembled it forms a new, independent image of the world that we cannot escape. Unlike what it really is, here trash is presented as light and aesthetic; a symbol of decay, decomposition, and unscrupulous human activity; trash morphs into a colourful symbol of hope. Not the kind of hope that does not require action, but hope that allows us to see beauty in even the most squalid bits of our reality, which gives us the power to move from apathy to action.

Brina Ivanetič (1987), a freelance artist, completed her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2016 and received a Prešeren Prize for students for her bachelor’s thesis Body and Nothing. She has collaborated in several group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad and in recent years has found her way to theatre, working as a set designer on the exhibition/play Rats, directed by Marko Čeh, at the Glej Theatre. Her creative process is characterised by a constant exploration of the human condition, especially its undesired aspects such as disease, fear, anxiety, alienation, and death, and by what our existence leaves behind: impressions, waste, feelings, and memories. In tackling these subjects, her focus tends to turn primarily to the question of absence and what takes the place thereof. By embodying this absence, her works end up in an ambivalent and inherently sculpture-based interplay of the material and the immaterial, whereby the void is manifested through its presence in order to build the sculpted object.

http://www.svetlobnagverila.net/en/team-members/brina-ivanetic-kaleidoscope/

Nika Oblak & Primož Novak

Infinity (digital)

Video installation

Co-produced by: Aksioma – Institute of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia; supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana

Infinity (digital) shows the motif of running, symbolised by an ordinary man involved in the multilayered mechanisms of today’s neoliberal reality. The image of the protagonist running in an infinite and senseless loop from screen to screen can thus be seen as a manifestation of the myth of Sisyphus, who, by means of divine punishment, was condemned to repeatedly roll a boulder up the same hillside. With this gesture, the artists point out people’s self-evident attitude to technological progress, show the imperative of adapting to all kinds of changes, and call attention to the loosening of basic humanistic values. (Colner, 2020)

Nika Oblak (1975) and Primož Novak (1973) have been working as a collective since 2003. They examine contemporary media and capital-driven society as they dissect its visual and linguistic structure. Their works have been exhibited worldwide at venues such as the Sharjah Biennial (UAE); the Japan Media Arts Festival, Tokyo (JAP); the Istanbul Biennial (TUR); the Biennale Cuvee in Linz (AUT); Transmediale Berlin (GER); and FILE Sao Paulo (BRA). Oblak and Novak have received numerous grants and awards, including the CYNETART Award (GER); the ACC_R Creators in Lab Grant, Asia Culture Center (KOR); an honorary mention at the WRO Biennale (POL); the White Aphroid Award from MMC KIBLA (SLO); and a Rihard Jakopič Honourable Mention Award, the highest national award for visual arts in Slovenia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lTKVqJOMr0

Nika Oblak & Primož Novak

Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

Kinetic video installation

Co-produced by: Aksioma – Institute of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia; supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana

Co-commissioned by: MMC Kibla, Maribor, Slovenia; the ACC_R Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, South Korea; Aksioma, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? shows a situation in which a performer is caught inside a screen, walking endlessly as if he is spinning a giant wheel, but awkwardly enough spinning a rectangular, 16:9 LCD monitor, a screen among the countless screens, information boards, and smart phones that flood our contemporary existence. This unconventional device appears to be like a perpetum mobile, but alludes to the contemporary definition of a rat race, endless, excessive, or competitive work, a pointless pursuit without a purpose. The title of the installation is taken from one of Gaugin’s final and iconic works, D'ou Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Ou Allons Nous, which was painted in Tahiti. Like Gaugin’s painting, the installation proposes the fundamental question of where the world is headed. It is an introspection into the human condition.

Nika Oblak (1975) and Primož Novak (1973) have been working as a collective since 2003. They examine contemporary media and capital-driven society as they dissect its visual and linguistic structure. Their works have been exhibited worldwide at venues such as the Sharjah Biennial (UAE); the Japan Media Arts Festival, Tokyo (JAP); the Istanbul Biennial (TUR); the Biennale Cuvee in Linz (AUT); Transmediale Berlin (GER); and FILE Sao Paulo (BRA). Oblak and Novak have received numerous grants and awards, including the CYNETART Award (GER); the ACC_R Creators in Lab Grant, Asia Culture Center (KOR); an honorary mention at the WRO Biennale (POL); the White Aphroid Award from MMC KIBLA (SLO); and a Rihard Jakopič Honourable Mention Award, the highest national award for visual arts in Slovenia.

http://www.oblak-novak.org/

Ladies of the Press*

Green Screen Photobooth

Live installation and participatory performance

The green screen, a cinematic technique dating all the way back to the 19th century, allows a person to be overlayed onto a different background. It can be a graphic or another bit of film footage, resulting in all kinds of real- and surreal-looking imagery. The Ladies of the Press* invite you to the Green Screen Photobooth. A decidedly performative take on green screen technology, the photobooth is staged and enacted by the artists, who busy themselves in creating surreal portraits of participants, which the participants take away as a memento of the performance. But because the photobooth is human, it’s constantly malfunctioning: instead of automatically reflecting what’s in front of its eyes, it arbitrarily changes settings, adds or subtracts characteristics to photographed people, and produces its own interpretations of what it sees. With plenty of humour, the Ladies of the Press* remix what meets the eye, throwing out questions as to the individual and social expectations around one’s own ‘image’. What do you want to be today? Where do you want to be today? But wait...why is everything, um, so green?

Ladies of the Press* is a multidisciplinary artist duo who stage publishing performances. They re-imagine the role of the publisher and publicist as a theatrical persona, mixing performance and print media. They are the publicist team that nobody asked for: immersed in their own installations, branding and seemingly conjuring their own world, they spin your conceptions of media and publishing into a surreal tableau that forces viewers to think about how content is presented to them. Using the concept of publishing as a medium, they make art through publishing: their work is participatory and interactive, with the end product in book form, printed ephemera, and performing before the camera for live broadcasts exploring various notions of ‘the press’. Comprising the performance art duo Ana Čavić (1979) and Renée O’Drobinak (1985), the Ladies of the Press* have been active in the live art and audience engagement sphere for nearly 15 years. They have performed live for prestigious organisations across Europe, including Tate Britain and Tate Modern, London, UK; the Wellcome Collection, London, UK; and the Kiblix Festival, Maribor, Slovenia.

Saša Bezjak, Jože Slaček, Jakob Vogrinec

Not Like Houdini

Video and VR installation

Houdini paved the way for what we call in situ performance. In front of the eyes of the public, he performed the most demanding illusions and escapes from dangerous situations: he escaped from a water cistern and a police car, unshackled his hands and legs, jumped into an icy river, opened a locked suitcase from the inside, and wrestled out of a straitjacket, to name just a few. As expected, all these performances ended fortuitously, to the amazement of the intently watching crowd. The illusionist, of course, depends on his or her team and the preparations for the performance. Houdini used a number of cunning tricks to successfully escape. And while he was generally popular and adored, there were naysayers who “doubted” his abilities; nowadays one might say that they were trying to think outside the box. One of the most famous doubters was Louis Vuitton. He challenged Houdini in a newspaper ad in which he wrote: “Dear Sir. I venture to think that the box you are using for your experiments is fitted for this purpose, therefore I take the liberty of challenging you to escape from the BOX I HAVE MADE MYSELF, and the RIVETING whereof shall be performed by MY STAFF. Should you be afraid to perform this experiment in public, I offer you an opportunity to perform it in private. IT IS UNDERSTOOD that in you doing so, the box may not be destroyed. I look forward to your answer, etc. L. VUITTON.”

The authors of this project take advantage of the opportunity offered by Vuitton: because Houdini did not take up his challenge, we have decided to attempt this performance in a modified form ourselves – in the modern era.

Why?

Faced with the torrent of fake news and conspiracy theories encountered daily on social networks, the authors wonder whether doubt, which Descartes set as the basic premise of human existence and basically the only proof that “ergo sum”, is still relevant as a rational means of understanding, or whether we have arrived at a point where “the truth” is being sold and gifted only by the media, political parties, activists, and others motivated to do so. Are the hands of “ordinary” people really tied? Are we but observers of the world that we are supposed to be a part of and which we are supposed to shape? Or are we but silent observers, confined in bubbles, institutionalised, and restrained in straightjackets that they refuse to take off?

Jože Slaček (1965) is a mentor, animator, and producer of video, animation, and intermedia art who lives and works in Maribor. He has been working with video regularly since 1989, when he completed his first video spot and organised a series of projections of Slovenian and foreign video artists at the Media Nox Gallery. In the early 1990s, he started focusing on computer art and became one of the initiators of the first international festival of computer art, MFRU, in Maribor in 1995. In the last ten years, he has been actively involved in the creation and production of computer-animated video works; in collaboration with Petra Kolmanič, he has contributed several computer animations for the MKČ Črka project Video Poetry.

Saša Bezjak (1971) is a visual artist and performer who was born in Maribor and grew up in Trate in eastern Slovenia. She graduated with a degree in fine arts education from the Faculty of Education in Maribor in 1999 under the mentorship of professor of sculpture Darko Golija, before earning a degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana under the mentorship of Prof. Metka Krašovec (practical work: Painting Sculpture) and professor of art history Dr Nadja Zgonik (theoretical work: Four Personal Views of Young Maribor Artists). In 2009 she completed her master’s degree in sculpture at the same academy under the mentorship of Prof. Luj Vodopivec; the title of her thesis was Different Dimensions of Reality. She has been a freelance artist since 2002. In 2013 she was awarded the title of specialised assistant for special didactics by the University of Maribor. Her areas of interest are drawing, painting, sculpture, embroidery, and art actions. She has been organising workshops for youths and adults, as well as exhibitions of works created at these workshops, for over a decade. She has lived and worked in Gornja Radgona since 2006.

Jakob Vogrinec (2003) finished media technician studies at the Secondary School of Design in Maribor and enrolled in the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television this year. He became involved in film early on in primary school and attended the Fotogroš photography workshop. He became more interested in photography and film as art forms in 2017, when he started attending Film Factory workshops. As a primary school student, he recorded videos of the exhibitions of major Slovenian visual artists at the MMC Kibla in Maribor, which is how he forged ties with important art figures and ended up recording the artist and performer Oleg Kulik. He has shot a number of short films and in 2020 his documentary short Grandpa Goes to the Seaside was screened at two major festivals, FEKK and Kino Otok, and received the first prize at Videomanija, a film festival for secondary schools.

www.artistsandpoors.com/not_like_houdini_VR

Intermedia projects by students of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana and the School of Arts, University of Nova Gorica

Mentored by: Prof Sašo Sedlaček, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana and Prof Rene Rusjan, School of Arts, University of Nova Gorica

Pixxelpoint also features students, future intermedia artists who will present their latest transdisciplinary works. Intermedia is still a »neglected« artistic field in Slovenia and it badly needs young creators whose contribution to the development of science, art and technology will have a decisive impact on the acutely needed technological and creative breakthrough, in Slovenia and in the broader environment.

Artists