Vesna Bukovec

Necessary discourse on hysteria

Exhibition: Necessary discourse on hysteria
Location: Koroška galerija likovnih umetnosti Slovenj Gradec /
The Gallery of Fine Arts Slovenj Gradec
Date: November 10 – December 10, 2008

Artists: Viktor Bernik (Slo), Vesna Bukovec (Slo), Mukul Deora (India), Jaša (Slo), Flatz (A/D), Pino Poggi (D/I), Timm Ulrichs & Ursula Neugebauer (D), Tanja Vujinović (Slo), Metka Zupanič (Slo), Julie Upmeyer (Turkey/USA)
Guest artists: Polona Tratnik (Slo), Tadej Pogačar (Slo)

Curators: Jernej Kožar/Radopoggi

About the exhibtion:
The starting point of the concept is the current degrading dialog between artists, theoreticians and the public, and the concept itself is focusing on re-establishing the credibility of contemporary art. Our concept must be seen as a part of a consequent development of the Koroška Gallery of Fine Arts Slovenj Gradec towards social aesthetics and as a start of a series of necessary discourses.

The four-weeks lasting “necessary discourse on hysteria” wants to revive museums and to face up to the responsibility of aesthetical education.
Artists of two generations will visualise, intervene and interact together with theoreticians on the issue of social hysteria. During the first week everyone will be able to experience the process of an exhibition-installation, and in the remaining weeks there will be room for performances, discussions, theatre, talks, speeches and video works.

Terror, Genetic Engineering, Consumer Society/Isolation, Mass-Information, Power of Media, Profiling, Supershows, Identity, Privacy, Noise Consumption, Sweet-life and Ideology are topics which will be treated and interpreted by FLATZ (A/D), Polona Tratnik (Slo), Mukul Deora (India), Viktor Bernik (Slo), Pinopoggi (I/D), Metka Zupanic (Slo), Vesna Bukovec (Slo), Tadej Pogacar (Slo), Tanja Vujinovic (Srb/Slo), Jasha (Slo), Joze Barsi (Slo), Timm Ulrichs & Ursula Neugebauer (D).

Essayists who will be participating are Simon Bryceson (GB), Caroline Kihato (RSA), Dr. Peter N. Kirstein (USA), Spela Spanzel (SLO), Ursula Sladek (D) and Marko Kosan (SLO).

A mainly artists-free space for creating on the concept of necessary discourse will take place in the interaction hall. There will also be worktables for visitors to leave their comments, thoughts and reactions on an individual topic, and so help create an additional public document.

The complete necessary discourse will be artistically documented by Julie Upmeyer (Turkey/USA).

The documentations through the essayists` texts, press-material, photos and videos of the artworks and discourse-events will be produced afterwards and only limited to the orders we collect during the exhibition in the gallery itself and on the internet.
This documentation DVD will also include a limited number of produced discourse-objects of all participating artists.

About my project for the exhibition:
Title: The Price of a Spectacle
Type: 2 channel video instalation
Duration: 35:45 / 22:13

One of the biggest spectacles of this year were the Olympic Games in Beijing. China invested 33 million Euros in the construction of new Olympic venues and the beautification of the city, thus making them most expensive games ever. But what was the real price paid by poor citizens? 1.5 milion residents of ancient Chinese residential districts called Hutongs were evicted from their homes and left homeless.

The video installation consists of 2 videos projected from each side to a non-transparent screen suspended from a ceiling. The form is a visualization of a well known saying “there are two sides to every coin”. The bright side or the spectacle is represented by parts of the opening ceremony and official promotional videos. The dark side or the cost is represented by a mix of documentary TV footage of Hutong’s residents and their stories and amateur footage from Youtube of brutal evictions.