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performing arts, Film / Photography, Architecture / Fashion / Design | Slovenia | by Maja Vardjan | 2005-09
Shaken Gaze of Slovene CultureA Commend on the last exhibition "Territories, Identities, Nets" in Ljubljana of the Slowenian curator Igor Zabel (1958-2005).The exhibition "Territories, Identities, Nets" ends the trilogy that has been presenting the main streams in Slovene modern art and related fields since 1975. Unfortunately, the exhibition "Slovene Art 1995-2005" is also the last exhibition of curator Igor Zabel, the key figure in Slovene contemporary art who suddenly died at the age of 46. As many other exhibitions he curated also his last one proves his wide intellectual scope.Since it is almost impossible to create a historical synthesis of the present decade, Igor Zabel with curator Igor Španjol chose for a mosaic and collective concept. The different fields of art – from new forms of painting, new media art, political art, net.art to architecture, design, theatre, film – were discussed and assembled by different experts. This heterogeneous approach epitomizes the main transitions in Slovene art of the last decade. “If I would proceed from my own subjective experience, the moment when different art tendencies were connected and culminated in the idea of Slovene “contemporary art” as a collective phenomenon with its own specific dynamics, I would choose exactly the year 1995,” writes Igor Zabel in the introductionary text in the catalogue. The exhibitions "Zbirka P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E muzeja" (The collection of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum, Slovene art of the 90) and "Čas kot struktura, metoda kot pomen" (Time as Structure, Method as Meaning) in 1995 showed the vivid new art scene ready to risk and experiment. In Zabels words, the washing machine of Maja Licul washing paintings was a ritual act of cleaning away from traditional values and their limitations. Igor Zabel looks at the development of contemporary art, strictly separating it from modern art, through the prism of crucial contemporary exhibitions, in particular the polemic U3, The Second Triennial of Slovene Contemporary Art. This was the first exhibition curated by international curator Peter Weibel, who not only introduced Slovene contemporary on the world stage but also confirmed its local importance. Not only exhibitions transform the landscape of art, also the issues taken up by artists themselves play a decisive role. According to Zabel there are several basic characteristics of contemporary art. Just to name a few: One (1) the artwork expanded from object to spatial installation, a created situation or specific relation; secondly (2), art becomes a social sculpture, acting in social space; third (3) the development of new technologies and mass media brings a new art; fourth (4) the transformation of the image changed painting; fifth (5) interactivity, participation, collective creativity; sixth (6) critical and self-critical political strategies of resistance. The expansion of the artwork into space and further in the net of relations and situations gave the exhibition its title. Territories are borrowed from the artwork of Marjetica Potrč. Her deconstruction of sculptures into urban installations is symptomatic for contemporary art. The common denominator of most of the projects in the exhibition are small, individual stories. Igor Zabel was the first theoretician of Slovene contemporary art, the first Slovenian curatorial figure, and also a great ambassador for Slovene art. Besides many interdisciplinary intellectual skills he was of tremendous symbolic importance too. Slovenia as a small nation counts only a couple of experts in a specialized field. If one of these experts has to be missed, the balance is ruined. And the balance in Slovene culture is tragically shaken in 2005. After the sudden death of a great film theoretician, the director of Slovene Cinemateque Silvan Furlan, and after the sudden farewell of Igor Zabel a painful and fearful silence emerged in Slovene culture. The Museum of Modern Art and the Slovene Cinemateque were two rare state institutions which independently and sovereignly could design their cultural program. The shaken gaze of Slovenian culture is now focused on what the new right wing government will act out within the cultural field. The first – no matter how difficult – step that the new government should take is to find a proper replacement of these two exceptional personas. The second is to finally realise that a young European country should not just embrace populism and the market but should invest in contemporary art and culture instead. The increase of such investments would be the only proper farewell. Maja Vardjan, architect, works as an architecture editor for Slovenian magazine "Ambient" and writes for several other publications including "A10" (New European Architecture) and "Art.si". related articles» Back to report |
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