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.

Artists: Jasna Hribernik and Zmago Lenardič, KOLEKTIVA (Vesna Bukovec, Lada Cerar, Metka Zupanič), Polonca Lovšin, Tanja Lažetić and Dejan Habicht

Curators: Vesna Bukovec and Metka Zupanič

Video section from the exhibition PHOTONIC, LUMINATIC: New Slovenian Photography and Video will be preseted in Ljubljana based gallery Photon.

About the exhibition:
This selection presents four video works, which were created by eight Slovenian authors of the younger and middle generation. All artists take part in the representative and testimonial exhibitions of contemporary Slovenian art and they are also active in the international sphere. The joint characteristic of the selected video works is a conceptual research of contemporary society’s peculiarities and of individual comprehension of the urban city reality. All works are based on personal narratives and intimate experience. In three of the videos this is expressed by a form of individual memory of the past, which is continually intertwined with excerpts from the present. The fourth video deals with the future or the ideal image of home. Similar starting points are explored differently by each of the four authors with the use of different formal approaches. The results are four formally and conceptually completely different videos of four different cities, each of them opening new aspects of experiencing a contemporary city.

Exhibition: PHOTONIC, LUMINATIC: New Slovenian Photography and Video
Location: K2 Contemporary Art Center in Izmir, Turkey.
Date: September 19 - October 25, 2008

Curator for photography: Dejan Sluga
Curators for video: Vesna Bukovec and Metka Zupanič

Participating artists:
Photography: Uroš Acman, Tomo Brejc, Vanja Bučan, Dejan Habicht, Jernej Humar, Nataša Košmerl, Peter Koštrun, Andrej Osterman, Borut Peterlin, Boštjan Pucelj, Bojan Salaj, Damjan Švarc, Bojana Tomše, Špela Volčič
Video: Jasna Hribernik and Zmago Lenardič, KOLEKTIVA (Vesna Bukovec, Lada Cerar, Metka Zupanič), Polonca Lovšin, Tanja Lažetić and Dejan Habicht

About the exhibition:
This overview exhibition introduces but a small selection of Slovenian artists who use medium of photography and video for research and creative endeavour in the broader context of the visual arts. Rather than providing a uniform aesthetic and semantic key, the selection draws attention to the particular artistic positions developed by the fourteen young and middle-aged photographers, who have been nominated by Dejan Sluga.

Video selection presents four video works, which were created by eight Slovenian authors of the younger and middle generation. All artists take part in the representative and testimonial exhibitions of contemporary Slovenian art and they are also active in the international sphere. The joint characteristic of the selected video works is a conceptual research of contemporary society’s peculiarities and of individual comprehension of the urban city reality.

Exhibition: ZAPPING UNIT - Les Petites Formes (The Short Forms)
Location: Centre d’art contemporain de la Ferme du Buisson
Date: September 13 - October 19, 2008

About the project:
Zapping Unit considers the status and use of images. It is an ambitious content within a simple form: a sculpture of honeycombed cardboard with a video display for four spectators devised by Marie Auvity. This hybrid and deliberately fragile construction establishes a common space for the broadcasting and reception of video works. Provided with a remote control, the spectator can zap among 80 short films each less than 2 minutes. These “Short Forms” are brought together by the curator, Keren Detton. They consist in more or less completed films mixed with experimental try-outs or video documentation, and rarely find a suitable context in which to be presented. To each video correspond the artist’s statement. The spectators thus discover a hidden side of the artists’ practices and can zap at will to put together their own editing. Truly a moving exhibition, Zapping Unit moves from one place to another towards different spectators and will also travel to Seine-et-Marne this year.

Exhibiton: KOLEKTIVA, Special Place in the City
Location: Umetnostna galerija Maribor, Razstavni salon Rotovž
Date: August 7 - October 4, 2008