À la Cart Performance Webshop is an offbeat proposal. Two Slovenian artists, Nina Jan and Urša Sekirnik, set off to build a real performance webshop. Sounds controversial? Perhaps! It is for sure a little bit revolutionary.

In September 2014 Jan and Sekirnik opened a fully functional performance webshop (from September 5th 2014 accessible on www.a-la-cart.com) through which you can adapt their work to your personal taste and demands and thus order a live customized performance.

With a perfectionistic care for details, Jan and Sekirnik are using and abusing the principles of web shopping, aggressive marketing and customization procedures. So much so that at first glance they manage to convince us that they are aiming for total commercialization of their artistic work. However, as they state in one of their performance chapters: "In general, the system of customization is always done in a way that the buyer is convinced to have a certain power, freedom of decisions, ability to take part. This sells better because it gives people a feeling that what they feel, need or care about matters. And it does, but only to a point. All the really important decisions stay in the hands of the corporations which produce the products. But now, what if it is the artist who is offering customized products? Does this endanger his creative autonomy or does it mean that it is the him now who is in charge of the important decisions? That in this way he can always stay in charge of his work which is customizable and in accordance with the contemporary marketing, but only to the point determined by the artist ." (Jan and Sekirnik, A Chapter That Answers Questions)

In the À la Cart Performance Webshop, Jan and Sekirnik are not only always in charge, they are also all the time consciously referring to the real unseen work hidden behind their artistic process. They warn us against seeing art purely from the position of artistic romantic euphoria, a view which is in their opinion so often an excuse for constant self-exploitation and minimal or no financial compensation for artistic work. Rather, they invite us to look to the other side, into the circumstances of a creative process, to understand the invested labour, dedication and time as well as to comprehend the traps and benefits of precarious lifestyles.

Although in their work Jan and Sekirnik are using concrete examples taken from their own experience of artistic precariat, it is however clear that their examples can easily be projected on a much broader scale - that of a widespread contemporary precariat.

Conception and realization: Nina Jan and Urša Sekirnik
Web design: Maarten Janssen and Fabian Valkenberg (Janssen & Valkenberg)
Online shop programming: Quentin Drouet
Camera and editing: Momchil Alexiev

Production: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2014
Artistic director: Janez Janša
Producer: Marcela Okretič

Coproduction: KUD NUM and Center For Urban Culture Kino Šiška

Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Municipality of Škofja Loka, Muelle3, Centre Cultural Albareda, NFTA, Turist Farm Žgajnar

Sponsor: Datacenter d.o.o.

Special thanks to: Toni Mlakar, Momchil Alexiev, Bram Loogman, Maarten Janssen, Sergio González Cuervo, Polona Reya, Etienne Van Hezewijk, Ida Jan, Žan Kalan, Jana and Matej Demšar, Marjan Sekirnik, Fabian Valkenberg, Kaja Teržan, Nina Djekić, Matevž Ftičar, Boštjan Jakopec, Kobe Geboers, Tomaž Furlan, Dragan Kalinović