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Text/Interviews |
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Text
for the catalogue of the Piemonte
Share Festival
for
the program curated by Aksioma
- Institute for Contemporary Arts and Intima
Turin, Italy, March 8-12th 2006
Collaborate, participate, perform!: On some artistic examples
from Slovenia or how to sharpen one's critical sense
Nataša Petrešin |
1. The premises
The last decade of Slovenian contemporary art may
be perceived as a period of its increasing visibility and
presence in the international art sphere and context. Its
complex, experimental and political field has enabled artists
and their various collaborators to become actively involved.
The contemporary political situation - several years of the
independence, the end of the war in ex-Yugoslavia and Slovenia's
entrance into the EU in 2004 - combined with expansion into
a broader international context denotes an increased international
interest in recent and emerging production in the post-communist
country; it also means addressing problems posed by hegemonic
institutions on a local level. Criticism of the local artistic
production and reflection on own position in the globalised
world was triggered by a dispositive of West European and
American modernist history and conceptual art, the perception
of a developing geopolitical situation, the discussion of
contemporary art institutions and the role of contemporary
artists.
The changes, which originate from the early performative and
experimental art practices from the 70s and which are, furthermore,
amplified by new technologies, are taking place in all the
elements and relations within the creative production in the
field of contemporary art and new media practice. The freedom
of exchange of the ideas and the author as the institution
are the two main issues that are being thoroughly interrogated.
Individual artist/author is more the basic link in the chain
of the creative production. Collaboration between the artists
is something we know about from the earliest stages of human
tackling with art. Specially when entering into the digital
era, collaboration evolves into an interdisciplinary and complex
process where various contents and bodies of knowledge intervene
and loosen the borders between art, technology, design and
science. Taking the form of the online open collaboration,
the model of a teamwork developed with loosely connected members
within a non-hierarchical structure that each contribute to
the shaping of the reality.
The connections between art, technology and science merge
different knowledge models and cause interferences between
them; they create various appropriation artistic and activist
strategies and new reference points regarding artistic, social
and political issues. During the last decade of Slovenian
contemporary and media art, we have been observing the rise
of many art initiatives and collaborative platforms. These
shape the current artistic map and its relationship to the
socio-political climate that has since the 80ies been largely
under impact of subversive and political artistic practices
(Neue Slowenische Kunst, Marina Gržinic and Aina Šmid, Zemira
Alajbegovic and Neven Korda - to mention just a few).
Generally speaking, in the post-structuralist theory the text
is an open organic format that the readers perform and, through
their own associations and identifications, contribute to
the text's interpretations and meanings. Similarly, the ontology
of the work of art in the last few decades has changed its
itinerary away from its end-product goal, imposed on the art
world by the laws of the capital and the art market. Instead,
the work of art is inviting its viewers to be an engaged participant
and a performer while in the reception process. Interactivity
as the term, which has been a necessary companion from the
beginnings of the digital media art, is today more and more
omitted in favour of describing the dynamic communication
and exchange between the work of art and its recipient as
participation from the side of the public. Participation by
the audience originates from the performance art and defines
the direct intervention of the content by its various users.
Parametres and protocols are set either by the artists or
by the audience itself, and most often it occurs that the
work of art appears to be content-less if the collaboration
by the audience remains at the zero point. Thus, the participatory
strategies were much favoured by Nicolas Bourriaud and his
notorious relational aesthetics of the contemporary art of
the 90s as being analogue to the neo-liberal production of
the exchanges and relationships in the consumer society. Contrary
to the seeming freedom, the critical artists are using the
participatory strategies to enhance the criticality and the
open contribution to the content.
Performativity, which is in close relation to the participatory
strategies, originates from the theatre studies, philosophy
and linguistics. In visual art, performativity denotes the
single actions or interventions, development or process of
a particular event. As maintained by theorists, performativity
establishes social action where the relationship between the
subject and the object transforms into an intersubjective
one. However, critics of performativity and participation
strategies point out that due to inherent moment of pleasure,
they are often connected without much reflection upon the
spectacle culture, consumption and entertainment industry.
Emancipatory function of both performative and participatory
formats can be achieved thus through the continuity of the
changing meanings of the art works.
2. Self-Institutionalised Artistic Initiatives
Parallely to the self-proclaimed "NSK State-In-Time" (1992)
by the artistic collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (1984-1992),
without doubt the most powerful artistic movement that happened
in the history of contemporary art in Slovenia, the self-institutionalisation
of certain artistic initiatives started to emerge as an emblematic
characteristic in the Slovenian visual scene. The other characteristics
of these non-profit cultural nucleuses are the flexibility
and much collaboration between the respective actors.
Marko Peljhan formed in 1992 his collaborative and interdisciplinary
art platform Projekt Atol. The subject matter of Marko Peljhan's
and Projekt Atol's projects are the source of technology originating
in the military-industrial field and closed scientific research
centres. One of most complex, developing projects is the laboratory
and information base "Makrolab", conceived in 1994 and presented
for the first time at one of the most important manifestations
of contemporary art - the 1997 exhibition Documenta X in Kassel.
The self-sustainable nature of the unit enables artists and
scientists to collaborate at a specific time in locations
that are usually outside urban areas (until now Lutterberg
near Kassel, Rottnest Island in Australia, Blair Atholl in
Scotland and the Campalto Island outside Venice).
Peljhan, via Projekt Atol, is also the co-producer of one
of the most exciting international network projects, MIR (Microgravity
Interdisciplinary Research). MIR encourages the exchange of
different types of skills, experiences, and expert knowledge,
to accelerate the dialogue on the international space programme
and on access to space as a potential place of experimental
creative practices. In Star City, Russia, two projects were
created in the condition of weightlessness inside an aircraft
used for parabolic flights: "Biomehanika Noordnung" presented
by the Cosmokinetic Cabinet Noordnung and directed by Dragan
Živadinov; and Vadim Fiškin's "Kaplegraf".
Igor Štromajer founded the artistic platform Intima Virtual
Base (www.intima.org) in 1996, through which he has been developing
his net art projects and collaborations with other artists
and theoreticians. He describes his projects as "low-tech
net.WAP.GSM.GPS.org.wLAN tactical emotional art". The key
issue that he has been focused on from the early net projects
on ("0.HTML", 1996, or "b.ALT.ica", 1997) is the possibility
and advocating of intimacy within the ubiquity of the online
communication.
Janez Janša works and collaborates with other artists
within the platform of Aksioma - Institute for Contemporary
Arts, a non-profit cultural institution which is interested
in take advantage of the new technologies in order to investigate
and discuss the structures of modern society. It concentrates
on artistic production that explores social, political, aesthetic
and ethical concerns.
A year before Štromajer launched his artistic platform, Vuk
Cosic appeared as one of the members of the small group of
net.art pioneers. The term net.art was used to denote a variety
of practices and activities by groups of leftist intellectuals,
subversive and conceptual artists to which belonged. Exchanging
ideas and distributing information through the Internet via
Bulletin Board Systems, forming mailing lists and discussion
forums like Nettime.org, Thing.net and Rhizome.org, the activities
and domains encouraged and more or less united the net.art
community from 1995-96.
3. Participatory and performative projects
Participatory strategies encourage the exchange of skills,
ideas, information and open public co-authorship of various
works; they also place art in the sphere of everyday life.
Since the mid-nineties, Darij Kreuh has employed technology,
remote control and viewer interaction in his installations.
In 2000, Marko Peljhan and the German conceptual artist and
electronic musician, Carsten Nicolai, collaborated with the
Canon Artlab, a Japanese new media lab, to create the complex
project "Polar". Participatory installations of the Russian
artist, Vadim Fiškin, who has lived and worked in Ljubljana
since 1992, deal with - much like his other artwork - the
ephemeral, spiritual and metaphysical.
Janez Janša's virtual parliament "DemoKino" brings the
participation in the form of an anti-entertainment event that
includes TV-voting, SMS-voting or streaming live over the
Internet. Based on eight short interactive films in which
the protagonist reflects upon bio-political questions (abortion,
cloning, GMO food etc), viewers, as potential voters, are
invited to react according to their own opinion with a "yes"
or a "no" to the issues presented. Bojana Kunst wrote: "The
project questions not only the utopia of contemporary virtual
forum that is supposed to open ways for a more direct and
influential participation but also points out a much deeper
problem of modern democracy (virtual as well). With its reduced
narrativeness - the story is built on the "pro and contra"
inner dialogues of the protagonist who is led around his home
in a parliamentary kind of way by the "voters", based on their
decisions - Demokino shows how these ethical dilemmas of modern
life suddenly become the core of our political participation."
("Virtual Biopolitical Parliament, Janez Janša's DemoKino",
by Bojana Kunst, 2003) As an artistic tandem to "Problemarket",
Igor Štromajer and Janez Janša created the participatory
project "The Problem Stock Exchange" (2001 -2006) and presented
it as the first stock exchange where only problems are being
traded. Those companies that deal with problems (buy, sell,
borrow or deposit), were thus offered a special stock exchange
situation. Janša, as the president of the stock exchange,
and Štromajer, as its executive director, launched the Problemarket's
website and the news programme "ProNews". For example, art
problems and problems of dealing with the ecological issues
in Italy have been taken into account. Very often Problemarket
collaborates with invited guests who are asked to provide
the audience with a special problem that they might have,
and thus launch it into the sphere of market dynamics.
The topic of performativity in the physical and virtual spheres
was considered in several projects by Marko Košnik. For example,
Paparapapa (1998) was a continuous one-week performance by
actors located in Frankfurt, Paris and Ljubljana, synchronized
via real time video/audio transmissions over the Internet.
Performativity on the Internet is also the focus of the multi-phase
project "Ballettikka Internettikka" by Igor Štromajer and
Brane Zorman, in cooperation with Janez Janša (on the
phase of "Ballettikka RealVideo Internettikka"). This series
of projects (2001-2006) is an ongoing research of the internet
guerrilla performance. After internet ballet performance (2001)
and invasion to Bolshoi Theater (2002), the series culminated
in wireless illegal remote-controlled net-ballet invasion
to the microlocation of the Milan Scala (2004) and in entering
the office of the director of the Belgrade Ballet. The act
of appropriating public territory is a tactical method for
claiming visibility in today's disappearing public space,
which is subjected to increasing surveillance and hyper-regulative
legislation. At the same time, the series of internet guerrilla
performances questions the constructed hyper-mediatized reality
in which still a large amount of the world's population believes
ultimately.
SilentCell Network challenges the role of artists as reality-checkers
who transgress certain models or boundaries in social relationships
and offer an altered view of everyday life. This is achieved
through creativity and the potential that lies in small or
larger scale interventions in it. As Jaques Rancičre says,
"the real must be fictionalized in order to be thought".
SilentCell Network is an international open research platform
for interventions in public spaces initially established by
Mare Bulc, Janez Janša, Bojana Kunst, Igor Štromajer.
The project is described as "a capital-free zone laboratory
maintained by a group of multimedia artists and theoreticians.
It is programmed to mine a corpus of cells for associated
strategies or connections (linking between concepts as a tactic)
-- like connections between two unrelated concepts". The group's
actions, interventions and performances operate in various
physical and geographical locations (Ljubljana, Graz, Venice,
Bordeaux), as well as in most existing media and distributive
contexts (Internet, magazines, national and commercial TV
channels). The accidentally present audience, unaware of the
actual artistic codification and context of these events,
as well as the audience later on directed to the documentation
of the events, is confronted with the group's tactical manipulations
of the thin line between real-time inserted fictions and constructed
realities (in Graz, for example, the visitors and guards in
the Kunsthaus encountered two men, one of whom claimed to
suffer from electrical hypersensitivity - a certified medical
disease that causes symptoms of weakness, headache, and chest
pain or heart problems when exposed to electromagnetic fields.
The man attended the museum in a special protective suit that
shielded him from the electromagnetism generated by the artworks
in the exhibition. The two men navigated with care through
the exhibition, explaining and bantering with guards about
the technical aspects of each work in the exhibition). The
documentation of the events furthermore questions the basic
dilemma surrounding the truth and lies spread through various
media networks and PR politics.
The 90s were marked by a conscious acceptance of sound as
an artistic practice existing between contemporary art and
new media. The concept of sound comprises the collaboration
between a musician and a visual artist (multimedia operas,
dance spectacles), sound events stressing the perception of
the audible (sound installations), audio projects in public
spaces, intermedia and multimedia high-technology projects.
It also comprises interactive and participatory projects where
the viewer's movement and participation affect the artwork
itself, and sound poetry on the border between literature
and music.
Brane Zorman has established himself as one of the first electronic
musicians who has been active also in the field of visual
and media art, besides as the composer of soundtracks of many
important theatre productions. Quite a few other Slovenian
new media productions utilising sound define the medium as
a tactical tool. In 1996, Borut Savski, Marko Košnik, Luka
Frelih and Chiron Morpheus established the "Ministry of Experiment"
that operated in the framework of Radio Student, but also
organised occasional live events in the Kapelica Gallery,
at Metelkova and Ljudmila. Since 2000 there has been a flourishing
of series of sound events (such as "Bitshift" at the Kapelica
Gallery, "FooBar" in the Museum of Modern Art, RE-LAX at the
Minimal Salon and Metelkova, and "Zarobotko" at Metelkova).
Presented in galleries and other non-club spaces, these series
involved computer-generated music or laptop electronica, the
experience of listening to microsounds, electric acoustic
music and the interactive audio landscape.
"Signal Sever!" ("Signal North!") organized by the Projekt
Atol is an audio-visual performance lasting several hours
where the participating authors follow changes in the electromagnetic
spectrum within a specific time period (from dusk till dawn).
Another audio-visual project is BAST, initiated in 1998 by
Aldo Ivancic, former member of the band Borghesia, Vuk Krakovic,
former violinist of 2227 and the artist Janez Janša.
Projects focusing on political implications of (un)democratic
cooperation examine methods that may empower an individual
to participate in the decision-making process and in the mutual
creation of various themes. Thus, in recent years, multimedia
centres in Ljubljana, i.e., Ljudmila (the Ljubljana digital
media lab, established in 1995) and Kiberpipa, and in Maribor
(Kibla) have made a decisive contribution to the flourishing
of the open source movement and free software.
Nataša
Petrešin is a freelance curator and contemporary
and new media art critic.
Problemarket.com
- the Problem Stock Exchange
performance
Accademia
Albertina, Turin, Italy, March 8-12th, 2006
Photo: Pablo
Balbontin Arenas
SilentCell
Network
installation
Accademia
Albertina, Turin, Italy, March 8-12th, 2006
Photo: Pablo
Balbontin Arenas
DemoKino
- Virtual Biopolitical Agora
anti-entertaining interactive screening
Accademia Albertina, Turin, Italy, March
10th, 2006
Photo: Aksioma
Antonio
Caronia, Paradoxes of Democracy
and presentation of the book DemoKino
- Virtual Biopolitical Agora
Accademia Albertina, Turin, Italy, March 10th, 2006
Photo: Aksioma
 
SilentCell
Network
installation
Accademia
Albertina, Turin, Italy, March 8-12th, 2006
Photo: Aksioma
Ballettikka
Internettikka
installation
Accademia Albertina, Turin, Italy, March 8-12th, 2006
Photo: Aksioma
 
Problemarket.com
- the Problem Stock Exchange
Antonio Caronia, Director of PROmediaSet,
Turin, Italy, March 2006
Photo: Aksioma |
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