Vesna Bukovec

19. dokumentART, European Film Festival for Documentaries

Exhibition: 19. dokumentART, European Film Festival for Documentaries
Locations: Neubrandenburg (DE) / Szczecin (PL)
Date: October 8-13, 2010

videoART
October 9-13, 2010, Kino Obserwatorium, al. Wojska Polskiego 90, Szczecin
Curator: Antoni Karwowski

Artists: Paulo Abreu (PT), Michał Brzeziński (PL), Vesna Bukovec (SI), Zlatko Cosic (BA/US), Alec Crichton (UK), Rainer Gamsjäger (AT), Pieter Geenen (BE), Takahiro Hirata (JP), Joanna Polak (AT), Noah Klersfeld (US), Lenka Klimešová (CZ), Ulf Kristiansen (NO), Wai Kit Lam (HK), Rudolfas Levulis (LT), Kai Lossgott (ZA), Johann Lurf (AT), Gillian McIver (UK/CA), Charlotte Merino (FR), Matias Montarce (ES), Stina Pehrsdotter (SE), Mikey Peterson (US), Janna Riabowa (DE), Avi Rosen (IL), Peter Rosvik (FI), Sam Smith (AT), Simone Stoll (DE), Arthur Tuoto (BR), Robbert Weide (NL)

About the screening:
Experimental videos of 29 artists from all around the world will be screened as part of 19th European Film Festival for Documentaries dokumentART.
www.dokumentart.org/en/event/397
www.officyna.art.pl

I am participating with with 3 videos: Endless Game, Consumer Culture and I can create positive change.

SIMULTAN FESTIVAL #6

Exhibition: Past Continuous. Future perfect. SIMULTAN FESTIVAL #6, Timisoara
Locations: Teatrul Maghiar (str. Alba Iulia nr. 4), Sinagoga din Cetate (str. Marasesti nr. 6), Daos Club (Splaiul Titulescu nr. 5, intrare de pe str. Jiul)
Date: September 30 – October 2, 2010

About the festival:
The Simultan Festival is an annual festival for video, media art, experimental music and a/v projects.
The festival wishes to sustain and to stimulate the creative ways of the most modern visions of perceiving and recording the cultural realities in contemporary art. It presents the current processes and the way in which technology and society give rise to new forms of artistic expression by using the new media.
Based on a different theme every year, the festival presents video art projections, live performances, installations, lectures.
www.simultan.org

I am participating with videos It Will Be OK and Personal Advice.

Minimal Differences

Exhibition: Minimal Differences
Location: White Box, 329 Broome Street, New York, NY 10012
Date: September 15 – October 23, 2010
Opening Reception: September 15, 2010, 6 – 9 pm
Panel Discussion: September 16, 2010, 6 – 8 pm

Curators: Denise Carvalho, Monika Szewczyk

Artists: Paweł Althamer, Azorro, Vesna Bukovec, Jiři Černický, Oskar Dawicki, Katarzyna Kozyra, Zbigniew Libera, Joanna Malinowska & Christian Tomaszewski, Anna Molska, R.E.P., Slaven Tolj, Marek Wasilewski, Julita Wójcik, Martin Zet

Panelists: Michal Koleček, Izabela Kopania, Jerzy Onuch, Jarosław Suchan, Marek Bartelik
Moderator: Denise Carvalho

About the exhibition:
“Central Europe,” the umbrella term favored among formerly “Eastern” European countries, is defined by membership, not geographical position. Although called ‘central’, Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovenia, Slovakia, et al, remain in the periphery of continental Europe, having within their borders great differences in regard to language, religion, ethnicity, economics, and politics. These differences become ironically ‘minimal’ in light of the new economic demands that enable their survival in the global economy. This catch-22 leaves Central Europeans with little choice but to reflect themselves as stereotypes of ‘otherness’, as virtual realities, an otherness within, like two parallel worlds living together, even though only one is real. Postcolonial societies over the centuries have chosen to inhabit the very stereotypes they hoped to overturn; only by “being” could they eventually subvert their own half-identities, somewhere between the colonizer and the colonized. “Minimal Differences” explores the two sides of this ironic self-definition: one, which has become ‘central’, therefore losing all the privileges of subversion, resistance and rebellion of its previous state of difference and otherness; and the other, still a memory of itself, a self-stereotype humoring itself as a parallel reality, a phantom-limb, itching and hurting, but no longer real.

More:
galeria-arsenal.pl
www.whiteboxny.org

I am participating with the project Contemporary Art for Parents

With Vesna Bukovec’s video and interactive piece, Contemporary Art for Parents (2002), this idea of meaningful meaningless is turned on its feet, as art becomes as meaningful as a new ideology that needs to be learned by parents and people of earlier generations. In Bukovec’s work, she is the narrator, the interrogator, and the ruler. She creates the laws of either understanding or misunderstanding art. Bukovec applies a didactic method in which misunderstanding art is the most effective way to actually understand it. It is also interesting to consider how the communication of contemporary art is its most valuable tool to sustain language autonomy from an art market that reduces ideas into desirable objects or marketing strategies. The historical trajectory of Art has gone from being an object of mediation between beauty and function to an object of language, from object to subject matter; it has become an advocate for the dying dialect of the intellect of an elite-turned-margin of the global world. In today’s world of consumerist functionality, the subject matter of contemporary art is a dead language, but its object is mostly alive. How to explain to parents and the mainstream lay person that the art object’s concept is still what drives it into the economic circuit? This is an ongoing task. Vesna Bukovec’s work is also about the difficulties in sustaining communication on the most basic levels, here paralleled to the level of the stereotypes in central Europe. The artist tries giving a hands-on explanation to her parents about the most important issues in contemporary art, looking at market, history, institutions, browsing through texts, tasks that prove to be quite difficult. The issue of being didactic, which contemporary art avoids, ironically becomes the main tool for achieving a common ground.

From the text Minimal Differences by Denise Carvalho

—

Photos from the opening

Word for Word, without Words

Exhibition: Word for Word, without Words / Dobesedno brez besed
Location: City Art Museum (MGML), Mestni trg 5, Ljubljana
Date: September 15 – October 30, 2010

Artists: Marina Abramović in Ulay, Maria Ångerman, Vesna Bukovec, Attila Csörgő, Zvonko Čoh, Edvin Dobrilovič, Domestic Research Society, Igor Eškinja, Tomaž Furlan, Kostja Gatnik, Albert Heta, Damijan Kracina, Siniša Labrović, Giovanni Morbin, Ivan Moudov, Alban Muja, Miki Muster, Arjan Pregl, Provokart, Marija Mojca Pungerčar, RIGUSRS (The Researcs Institute for Geo-Art Statistics of the Republic of Slovenia), Hinko Smrekar, Ive Tabar, Slaven Tolj, UNIKUM (University of Klagenfurt, Cultural Center)

Artifacts and documents from collections: Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana, National Museum of Slovenia, Celje regional Museum, Slovene Ethnographic Museum

Exhibition concept and selection of works: Alenka Gregorič and Domestic Research Society (Damijan Kracina, Alenka Pirman, Jani Pirnat)

Curator: Alenka Gregorič

Expert associates: Erika Kržišnik, Mateja Podlesnik, Janez Polajnar, Petra Zaranšek, Bernarda Županek

About the exhibition:
What happens if we divest language of figurativeness and start taking it literally, word for word? With a number of selected idioms from the Slovenian language as our points of departure we have explored linguistic directness and presented it in an interdisciplinary show. Underpinning the project is our everyday experience of using idiomatic expressions in written and spoken language.

More… / Več…

I am participating with a video Important News, 2003

—

Art in a Suitcase

Exhibition: Art in a Suitcase (Curator’s intervention)
Location: Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Dresden, Berlin, Ravenna, Mola di Bari, Istanbul
Date: September 1 – October 3, 2010

Curator: Vasja Nagy

Participating artists (at departure): Uršula Berlot, Marko Brecelj, Vesna Bukovec, Gani Llalloshi, Žiga Okorn, Bojan Radovič, Tilen Žbona

About the project:
Art in a Suitcase starts as a curatorial project depending on the initial communication between the curator and artists involved. Based on the idea of a travelling exhibition that can fit into one traveller’s suitcase and be presented or exposed virtually in any place. Once the initial selection is done and packed, the curator starts the travel by most convenient means. Destinations are in fact places where the curator has been invited to carry out an event.

More:
www.vasjanagy.org
www.artinasuitcase.net
Curator in a suitcase, interview with Vasja Nagy by Ana Peraica, FlashArtonline.com, July 2011

I am participating with the video It Will Be OK

U3 – 6th Triennial of Contemporary Art in Slovenia: An Idea for Living. Realism and Reality in Contemporary Art in Slovenia

Exhibition: U3 – 6th Triennial of Contemporary Art in Slovenia: An Idea for Living. Realism and Reality in Contemporary Art in Slovenia
Location: Museum of Modern Art (Moderna galerija), Ljubljana
Date: June 15 – September 19, 2010

Curator: Charles Esche

Artists: Nika Autor, Jože Barši, Berko, BridA (Tom Kerševan, Sendi Mango, Jurij Pavlica), Matija Brumen, Vesna Bukovec, Jasmina Cibic, Vuk Ćosić, Delavsko-punkerska univerza, Lojze Dolinar, Leon Dolinšek, Društvo za domače raziskave, Vadim Fiškin, Samo Gosarič, Tomislav Gotovac, Dejan Habicht, Irwin, Ištvan Išt Huzjan, Marco Juratovec, Jaša, Bogoslav Kalaš, Tine Kos, Vladimir Kuprijanov, Tanja Lažetić, Vladimir Leben, Polonca Lovšin, Anja Medved, Borut Peterlin, Nikolaj Pirnat, Tadej Pogačar in P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Muzej sodobne umetnosti, Marko Pogačnik, Uroš Potočnik, Marjetica Potrč, radioCona (Irena Pivka, Brane Zorman), Sašo Sedlaček, SMALL BUT DANGERS (Mateja Rojc, Simon Hudolin-Salči), Slavko Smolej, Bálint Szombathy, Nika Špan, Miha Štrukelj, Matjaž Wenzel, Dunja Zupančič::Miha Turšič::Dragan Živadinov, Želimir Žilnik.

About the exhibition:
This 6th U3 Slovenian art triennial focuses on how artists from across the generations reflect on realism and reality today. The works both depict (as in realism) and take a direct part in (as in reality) activities and relationships in the world. The exhibition foregrounds artistic proposals that suggest ways to read history anew, focus on the environment and the social and reflect intimate relations among communities, families and friends. In general, the works are not centred on the inner life of the artist but on his/her relationship to external conditions. This choice for reality was made because it reflects the current strengths of the Slovenian art scene. In addition it emphasises a continuity with Slovene artistic practices in which realism and, later, a readiness to include techniques and subjects outside of the traditions of l?art pour l?art are very present. For this reason works from the collection of Moderna Galerija going back to the 1940s have also been included in U3.

More… / Več…

I am participating with a series of drawings Positive Illussion.

—

—

Moderna galerija has published a Virtual guided tour of the U3 on the exhibition’s blog.

Below is the presentation of my work.