Vesna Bukovec

Value Point – Siemens_artLab hosted by Hilger Contemporary

Exhibition: Value Point – Siemens_artLab hosted by Hilger Contemporary
Location: Hilger Contemporary, Dorotheergasse 5, Vienna
Date: August 25 – September 24, 2009

Artists: Ana Adamovic, Ervin Babić, Vesna Bukovec, Lies Maculan, Michail Michailov, Sašo Sedlaček, Kosta Tonev, Mathias Winkler, Simon Veres

Curators: Alenka Gregorič, Maria Vassileva

About the exhibtion:
During the hot summer of 2009, in the middle of Europe and the “eye of the storm” of the financial crisis, nine artists from Austria, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia are gathering under the patronage of Siemens_artLab. The perfect time and place to reconsider one’s position in the small Central-Eastern European Community, to check the level of crises in human relationships and to discover each others values.

OHO Award Finalists 2009

Vesna Bukovec, Ana Čigon, Sašo Vrabič, Tanja Vujasinović

May 29 – June 12, 2009
Center and Gallery P74, Prušnikova 74, Ljubljana

Opening and winner announcement on Friday, May 29, 2009 at 7 pm.

http://www.zavod-parasite.si
http://www.yvaa.net

PHOTONIC, LUMINATIC: New Slovenian Photography and Video

Kultur Zentrum Korotan, Vienna May 7 – 12, 2009 | Opening on Thursday, May 7 at 7 pm
Photoport Gallery, Bratislava, May 15 – June 6, 2009

The exhibition was produced by Photon Gallery, Ljubljana in 2008/2009.

Curator of photography: Dejan Sluga
Curators of 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, Anja Medved, Tanja Lažetić and Dejan Habicht

The exhibition was first presented in K2 Contemporary Art Center in Izmir, Turkey in 2008. The video section Video in Progress 2: City Perspetives was also presented in Photon Gallery in Ljubljana in 2008. In 2009 the video section expanded with additional video of Anja Medved.

Updated press release of Video in Progress 2: City Perspetives (pdf)

Anja Medved: EU-foria, video still

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.

Video in Progress 2: City Perspectives

Exhibition: Video in Progress 2: City Perspectives
Location: Photon Gallery, Ljubljana
Date: September 26 – October 6, 2008

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.

Tanja Lažetić and Dejan Habicht: Ideal Home, video still