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Date: 03-June-2006 (Saturday); 6.00 to 9.00 PM
Location: Basekamp space
Description: Presentation of East Art Map, by Miran Mohar of IRWIN - a group of five artists who make up the visual-arts component of the art collective NSK, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
EAST ART MAP - (RE) CONSTRUCTION OF THE HISTORY OF ART IN EASTERN EUROPE
Every single move of the artist in Western civilization is documented.
But, did you know there is no similar thing in Eastern Europe?!
In Eastern Europe (former communist countries, East & Central Europe or New Europe) there is, as a rule, no transparent structures of events, artifacts and artists significant for the history of art that would be organized into a referential system and accepted and respected outside the borders of a particular country. Instead of them we encounter systems that are closed within national borders, most often based on argumentation adapted to local needs, and sometimes even doubled so that besides official art histories there are a whole series of stories and legends about art and artists who opposed the former. But written records about these latter are few and fragmented. Comparisons with contemporary Western art and artists are extremely rare.
A system that is fragmented to such an extent, first of all, prevents any serious possibility to comprehend the art created during the times of socialism as a whole.
Secondly, it represents a huge problem of orientation for artists, who, apart from lacking any solid support in their activity, are compelled, for the same reason, to steer between the local and international systems of art.
And thirdly, this blocks communication among artists, critics and theoreticians from these countries.
History is not given.
It has to be constructed.
East Art Map Online is a tool that will lead you through the last 50 years of the history of visual arts in Eastern Europe.
You will get to know 250 artists/events/projects that are considered of major importance by the 24 invited art critics, curators and artists from the different ex-socialist Central, Eastern and South-Eastern countries invited to make an initial selection for the EAM.
East Art Map Online is now open for contributions by its users.
You are invited to participate in the selection of the ten most important artworks or crucial art projects from every country of Eastern Europe since 1945.
How to participate?
We invite anyone who wishes to, and who thinks s/he has a better idea than the initial selectors, to propose a replacement for any project or artwork included in the EAM.
Send your proposal - complete with a) a written page of text presenting your suggested replacement and the reasons why it should be included, and b) written references confirming the reliability of the date of the work you are proposing for inclusion - to editor@eastartmap.org or submit it directly at this website on the information page of the artist you wish to replace.
All the proposals - provided they contain the requested materials - will be displayed on the website and kept for public discussion until the final decision of the international committee. A feedback area will be installed.
Every two to three months an international committee of six experts will decide whether or not to include any of the proposals submitted.
Any questions should be directed to the editor Inke Arns at editor@eastartmap.org
East Art Map: Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe
edited by IRWIN
Reconstructing the missing history of contemporary art, art networks, and art conditions in Eastern Europe from the East European perspective.
The artistic map of Europe contains different degrees of detail and resolution. Italy, France, and Spain are presented in fine grain, but the Balkan peninsula is little more than a vague outline. England, Germany, and Scandinavia have many features filled in, but to the east of Germany things are blurred. Until recently, cities like Sofia, Odessa, Skopje, and Belgrade had next to no definition. Further to the East, Moscow comes into focus, but this is no compensation for the Baltics, sentenced for the last halfcentury to blank space.
In the West, virtually every move of the artist, the art market, and the art public is documented. But in Eastern Europe, no such system of documentation or communication exists. Instead, we encounter systems that are not only inaccessible to the West, but incongruous from one country to the next. Beside the official art histories there is often a whole series of stories and legends about “unofficial,” unapproved art and artists. East Art Map: Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe is an ambitious attempt to reconstruct the missing histories of contemporary art in Eastern Europe from an East European and artistic perspective. It is perhaps the widest ranging art documentation project ever undertaken by the East on the East, involving a large network of artists, scholars, curators and critics coordinated by the IRWIN group over several years.
The editors invited eminent art critics, curators, and artists to present up to ten crucial art projects produced in their respective countries over the past 50 years.The choice of the particular artworks (many of them reproduced in colour), artists, and events, as well as their presentation, was left exclusively to the individual selectors. In addition, the editors asked experts from both East and West to provide longer texts offering cross-cultural perspectives on the art of both regions.
An Afterall book /distribution MIT Press
536 pages
more than 250 color and b&w reproductions
24 selectors
17 essays
selectors and writers:
Inke Arns, Vladimir Beskid, Iara Bubnova, Calin Dan, Ekaterina Degot, Branko Dimitrijevic, Lilia Dragneva, Marina Gržinic, Sirje Helme, Marina
Koldobskaya, Suzana Milevska, Viktor Misiano, Edi Muka, Ana Peraica,
Piotr Piotrowski, Branka Stipancic, János Sugár, Jiri Ševcik, Miško
Šuvakovic, Igor Zabel, Nermina Zildžo
Lutz Becker, Susan Buck-Mors, Roger Conover, Eda Cufer, Michael Fehr, Boris Groys, Jürgen Harten, Sergej Kapus, Erden Kosova, Rastko Mocnik, Andreas Spiegl, Slavoj Žižek
Since 1983, the IRWIN artist group has been working with various media, from painting to public art, from sculptural works and installations to publishing. Following their “retro principle”, the five-member-group utilizes and combines different motifs, symbols and signs from the fields of politics and art, which results in the transformation of their historical meaning and content, and in the re-contextualisation and deconstruction of their related ideologies.
Very often, basic information on what NSK is, when it was founded, what the NSK and Laibach philosophies are, and the like are required. To put it in a nutshell, NSK is in its structure a simple and yet complex mechanism which makes any precise explanation in a few words practically impossible. NSK began operating in 1984 as a large collective, a union of various groups brought together by their shared way of thinking and a similar way of expression through different media. The main NSK groups are: Laibach, Irwin, Noordung, New Collectivism Studio and the Department of Pure and Applied Philosophy, while there is a number of flexible subdivisions which emerge as the need arises and disolve under their own inertia. Each of the groups primarily works within its medium, nevertheless their bonds are firm and fruitful. Members of the groups meet on a regular basis, they talk, discuss and plan major common campaigns, test aesthetic and other preferences, exchange ideas and contexts, travel together, etc.
Weekly video compilation
Dates: 03-June-2006 through 31-July-2006; Open during summer hours
(Tuesdays, Thursdays, & Saturdays; 12.00 - 4.00 PM)
Location: Basekamp space
Description: Video compilation of selected artworks included in the “East Art Map” project, by IRWIN (a group of five artists who make up the visual-arts component of the Slovenian art collective NSK).
Weekly video screening list:
ANRI SALA
INTERVISTA – FINDING THE WORDS, 1997
Sala belongs to a generation of young artists whose education took place after the political changes in Albania. From this ideological schizophrenia he has learned to push the language of documentary to its radical conclusions, working on the borders between reality and absurdity. Intervista - Finding the Words (1997), his first film, marked one of the most important moments for Albanian contemporary art. The work makes a new approach to short film, an exercise in interpretation and an effort to bridge the distance between the past and present, neutralizing the sense of objectivity traditionally associated with documentaries.
THE LJUBLJANA LACAN SCHOOL -
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
INTERVIEW WITH SLAVOJ ZIZEK, 1997
from film Retroavantgarde by M. Gr?inic & A. Šmid, (excerpt 2’41”)
The subcultural movement that arose in Ljubljana within the Student Cultural Center (known as ≈†KUC). in the 1980’s was a manifestation of an exceptional underground collision of art, culture and politics. The most significant strategy of the movement was not to find alternatives to the Communist system, but within it. In this way, the Ljubljana alternative movement clearly shows a deeper change in the actions of the underground movements of Europe, and more specifically, in Eastern Europe. Its theoretical framework was re-articulated by the Lacanian psychoanalytical discourse, most notably through the work of theoretician Slavoj Zizek
RASSIM
JAAN TOOMIK
FATHER AND SON, 1998
Toomik developed his own, post-minimalist artistic code in the 1990’s and since 1994 has mostly been using video as his main medium. Although not tied to any specific mythological or religious dogma, his work carries a strong mystical element. His video installations Way To Sao Paulo (1994), Dancing Home (1995), and Father And Son (1998) are driven by Toomik’s despairing desire to give expression, through his bodily activities, to primeval conditions by repetitively using timeless symbols like water, fire, mirrors, and the sun.
COSMOCINETIK CABINET NOORDUNG
/ DRAGAN ZIVADINOV
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One-night screening: “Predictions of Fire”
Date: 08-July-2006 (This Saturday); 6.00 to 9.00 PM
Location: Basekamp space
Description: Special screening of “Predictions of Fire” (1996 documentary about the Slovenian art collective NSK). This screening accompanies the “East Art Map” project (see below) also at Basekamp throughout June and July 2006.