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On Tour: Southeastern Europe Travelogue, Part 3

Brian Droitcour — 2009-07-03T15:00:00+01:00

Image: Kosmoplovci, P3225504-procesor, from the series “Fragments”

In June I traveled through southeastern Europe from Venice to Athens, where I’m looking at art and blogging. Part three of the travelogue is about Belgrade, Serbia.

With a population of two million, Belgrade is twice as big as Zagreb, which is thrice as big as Ljubljana, but the sizes of these three cities have a paradoxically inverse relationship to their cultural infrastructure, particularly at the intersection of art and technology. While little Ljubljana had enough events to fill my schedule for four days, Zagreb’s handful of galleries were in a summer slumber. But organizations were actually there, even if hibernating, while Belgrade had nothing. Many attributed that to the smaller country’s attempt to find a niche or a brand for itself in Europe’s crowded contemporary art world. “Artists in Ljubljana were trying to position themselves away from the context of ex- Yugoslavia,” said Maja Ciric, a Serbian curator. “I think it happened as an act of security. Institutional plans to normalize new media as a discipline were carried out to valorize the positive force of power, to show that the productivity of power is realized through policies that allow for the formation of the individual.”

Image: Kosmoplovci, stills from Satelitska Stanica

Belgrade had a small but active demoscene in the 1990s, which gave rise to one of the most interesting art collectives in the former Yugoslavia, Kosmoplovci (pronounced “kos-mo-PLOV-tsee”). The name means something like astronauts or space sailors, and comes from a 1970s do-it-yourself science and technology magazine that some demoscene friends found at a flea market in the early ‘90s. The members of Kosmoplovci are fond of rummaging through the past, and their varied output—which includes internet works, videos, music, comics, and books—usually involves allusion and found media. Satelitska Stanica is based on an old 8mm film extolling a joint project with Japan to build a satellite station in a remote Yugoslavian province; the reel was salvaged at a flea market and transferred to digital devices with minimal interference. Marko Kraljevic, the Turk-fighting hero of Serbian epics, appears in previews of 2D and 3D video games that Kosmoplovci will probably never make. Self-aware makes public footage from a broken webcam, primarily the bewildered faces of the camera’s owner and repairman in the shop.

Recycling material follows from Kosmoplovci’s structure, where the four or five core members regularly bring in a dozen or more “temporary” Kosmoplovci, who specialize in specific media or channels of distribution (Aleksandar Opacic, for example, has a ragged, layered style of drawing that defines Kosmoplovci’s comics). All their videos can be freely downloaded, or have distinct online versions, while paper publications often get passed around to friends. Their distribution systems put them outside markets and conservative institutional systems; and while Igor, the collective’s de facto leader, said he does tech support for cultural institutions in Serbia, which helps the group maintain a link to the establishment, he spends just as much time on web sites for his drum-and-bass DJ friends.

Image: Nikola Tosic, Under Super Stupid Land

A couple of weeks before going to Belgrade I wrote to Nikola Tosic—who specializes in posters and spare prose pieces—with a request to meet and chat, and in a gesture of Balkan hospitality he replied with an invitation to stay at his place for the duration of my visit. Tosic lives on the outskirts of Belgrade, fitting for an artist who was active with Neen but keeps his distance from the local scene. His artworks, which he tosses off when he’s not working as a designer or training for triathlons, are deliberately marginal. A thank-you note to the internet’s creator and a description of the human species intended for aliens have clumsy graphics and a plain but quirky usage of English, which gives them the poignancy of stories by a precocious child. Tosic also organizes ephemeral events, like Let’s Meet in a Nice Restaurant, a networking-as-art gathering that has happened in Milan, Istanbul, and Transylvania. His current pet project is Triathlon Team, which involves hosting and designing blogs for his favorite triathletes. The idea of designating a team for a purely solitary sport, and trying to make humble triathletes the subject of media attention, has the same dry, barely-there humor as his cartoonish pieces.

Image: Nikola Tosic, sticker for Internet Pavilion

Carving art up by nations is always fraught with missteps. Geographic proximity makes it tempting to draw similarities between Kosmoplovci and Tosic, though their paths haven’t crossed in years and they have never collaborated. They have stronger analogues with DIY scenes and Neen, respectively, than anything in their neighborhood. Still, local conditions—namely, the absence of an institutional peer network—has an affect on their choices; no one is telling them they shouldn’t make art about triathlons or drum-and-bass. “Belgrade’s lack of a real new media lab or institute makes it more free,” said Ciric, the curator. “Because when new media works are produced they are a result of the pure individual creativity.”

F'Book: What my Friends are doing on facebook (2009) - Lee Walton

Ceci Moss — 2009-07-02T17:45:00+01:00

Katie Minton is monochromatic. from lee Walton on Vimeo.

Rick Silva is self-editing. from lee Walton on Vimeo.

In Lee Walton's most recent project, he will perform what his Friends on Facebook are doing.

-- FROM THE ARTIST'S WEBSITE

I'll Replace You (2008) - Jennifer and Kevin McCoy

Ceci Moss — 2009-07-02T16:30:00+01:00

I'll Replace You from Jennifer & Kevin McCoy on Vimeo.

This film is an experiment in outsourcing everyday life. In it we hired 50 actors to take over all aspects of our daily routines and roles as parents, spouses, professors, artists and friends. The actors play opposite their real counterparts - our kids, our students, our friends, in our studio, presenting our work.

Take Care of Yourself (2007) - Sophie Calle

Ceci Moss — 2009-07-02T15:00:00+01:00

In this “tour de force of feminine responses…executed in a wild range of media,” Sophie Calle orchestrates a virtual chorus of women’s interpretations and assessments of a breakup letter she received in an email. In photographic portraits, textual analysis, and filmed performances, the show presents a seemingly exhaustive compendium with contributions ranging from a clairvoyant’s response to a scientific study, a children’s fairytale to a Talmudic exegesis, among many others. Examining the conditions and possibilities of human emotions, Take Care of Yourself opens up ideas about love and heartache, gender and intimacy, labor and identity. 107 women (including a parrot) from the realms of anthropology, criminology, philosophy, psychiatry, theater, opera, soap opera and beyond each take on this letter, reading and re-reading it, performing it, transforming it, and pursuing the emotions it contains and elicits.

-- FROM THE PRESS RELEASE FOR THE EXHIBITION OF "TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF" AT PAULA COOPER GALLERY

For an interview with Sophie Calle, where she discusses the exhibition of Take Care of Yourself at the French Pavilion in the 2007 Venice Biennale, go here.

The Question of Freedom at the Open Video Conference

Carolyn Kane — 2009-07-01T18:00:00+01:00

Does free video uploading and downloading equal democracy? I asked myself this question during the recent Open Video Conference, organized by the Information Society Project at the Yale Law School and the Open Video Alliance, an umbrella coalition for the development of an “open video ecosystem”: a “movement to promote free expression and innovation in online video.” Conference sponsors include Mozilla, Redhat, Intelligent Television, and Livestream. The conference was held at New York University’s Vanderbilt Hall, home of the NYU Law School from June 19-21, 2009. I attended several of the panels at the conference, although it was primarily Yochai Benkler’s opening keynote that was of concern.

The mission statement for the conference reads, “Open Video is a movement to promote free expression and innovation in online video." The conference and its affiliates aimed to respond to outdated copyright law in an attempt to open the limits on the circulation and distribution of copyrighted material. Gabriella Coleman of New York University in her talk, “The Politics and Poetics of DeCSS,” demonstrated the historical connection between code and free speech. Coleman traced the relationship back to John Stuart Mill, who first equated Romantic notions with utilitarian ones in order to justify free speech. In the 20th century, figures such as Richard Stallman, Peter Salins, and Daniel Bernstein, all further solidified the connection between legal rights and code. This history, Coleman points out, thus explains the popularity of today’s research into the triumvirate of copyright, law, and culture. Ideally, the open video culture sought after would be one that would allow for the distribution and use of copyrighted video content without the fear of lawsuits or legal action.

Yochai Benkler, author of the celebrated book, The Wealth of Networks (2006) took the stage in the morning on Friday June 19. His conflation of the freedom to access content, as noted above, with freedom in general, was suspect. Benkler argued that Open Video was indicative of an “open democracy for everyone, everywhere, all the time.” Open Video Culture, he said, would usher in the possibility for “anyone to express oneself, be creative and innovative.” Benkler also claimed that because “millions of people are now looking at [social and political] problems” we will thus find millions of, “distributed solutions.” In this “free” culture, he continued, “human creativity would move to the core.” Aside from the seemingly naïve conflation of terms, exactly which society, which “everyone,” and which economic system did Benkler have in mind?

Rhizome’s founder, Mark Tribe, also presented at the conference with Rhizome’s Executive Director, Lauren Cornell. After the talk, Tribe shed some light on the significance of Benkler’s broad statements. He said that Benkler is partially correct, social media has granted more freedom. For instance, look at what the Yes Men can do. But at the same time, he added, this freedom has no effect on social relations, economic inequity and will not necessarily increase freedoms for those whom it is denied. Lastly, it does not automatically equal audiences.

It is true. When Benkler states that in “Transparent culture, anyone can innovate” and thus become “better readers,” this is correct, in theory. For instance, random users may upload a video of a protest or demonstration to YouTube, or a mashup video of something they found online---they may make critical commentaries, subvert normative journalistic channels, and gain more insight into how television and mass media products are produced and assembled. But again, this does not guarantee more perceptive readers, critical content, or an audience for that material. As László Barabási points out, the majority of internet traffic still flows through major hubs—hubs like Amazon and Yahoo, which means that online content generally continues to rely on traditional media channels for distribution. Even if an independent new media organization may gain an audience, such as Boing Boing, or Rhizome, they may not be guaranteed the financial support needed to sustain on a long-term basis (this was the focus of Xeni Jardin’s talk at the conference, a reporter from Boing Boing).

The situation is nicely summed up by media scholar Geert Lovink, in his recent manifesto written with Ned Rossiter. “Web 2.0” they explain, “is not for free. ‘Free as in free beer’ is not like ‘free as in freedom’. Open does not equal free. These days ‘free’ is just another word for service economies…. Where is the enemy? Not on Facebook, where you can only have ‘friends’. What Web 2.0 lacks is the technique of antagonistic linkage. Instead, we are confronted with the Tyranny of Positive Energy...” The utopianism of “open and free” video culture, it seems, is correct in that it allows people to do things they could not do before. But this does not automatically equal change or democracy in itself. Any proclamation of social utopia deserves a second look, yet we also need to understand why Benkler framed his arguments in the way he did that morning––speaking to an audience of lawyers, corporate investors, sponsors, and public relations representatives.

= (2009) - Elna Frederick

Ceci Moss — 2009-07-01T17:41:00+01:00

the peace tape (2009) - Jacob Ciocci

Brian Droitcour — 2009-07-01T15:34:00+01:00

Music by Extreme Animals.

Beginning this week, Jacob Ciocci will be touring the west and east coast with his videos and a new performance, tour dates here.

Zebra Standards 29 - R. Stevie Moore (1978/2006)

John Michael Boling — 2009-06-30T21:00:00+01:00

Video assembled in 2006 by Nuno Monteiro using footage from George Romero's "There's Always Vanilla"

Mea Culpa (1981) - Brian Eno and David Byrne

John Michael Boling — 2009-06-30T19:19:00+01:00

Video assembled by Bruce Conner

No Static - Bottin (2009)

Ceci Moss — 2009-06-30T18:20:00+01:00

Music video, edited by Iris Lateral, using all appropriated footage from Lucio Fulci's Warriors of the Year 2072.

The Museum's Profile

Ally Paz — 2009-06-30T16:30:00+01:00

Image: The Brooklyn Museum's iPhone Application

As another major American art museum joins the Twitter-verse this past month (@Guggenheim), it begs the question: how can institutions and the public they serve better benefit from participation in Web2.0? Currently, many museums utilize the major social networking sites in the same manner they use their websites—to promote current and upcoming exhibits, special events, display works, and post the rare job opportunity. And while we can all benefit from multiple reminders, it's beginning to feel as if these institutions are not truly adapting to the opportunities opened up by social networking. The goal is to use these sites as they were intended, as a tool for conversation and relationship building between individuals, and not as an avenue for a one-way transmission of information.

The fear, of course, is that once museums begin actively participating in Web2.0 environments, they will have to give up some control over both content and message. As museum professionals Nina Simon and Gail Durbin both point out, in a world where all knowledge is at one's fingertips, visitors expect to be able to respond to their experience, therefore museums should develop platforms that allow for a diversity of voices. One New York institution in particular, The Brooklyn Museum, has successfully adopted Web2.0 endeavors, with two blogs on the website documenting installation and artist processes, an iPhone application to view and search the museum's collection, and 1stfans, a $20 museum membership with exclusively social network-based content and features, such as the Twitter Art Feed (@1stfans), which allows followers to pick a different artist to create work for the feed each month. Another example of an organization which has expanded its 2.0 reach is the Victoria and Albert Museum, which uses its Flickr stream to display user-generated exhibits, such as artistic photography of tattoo and body art, and documentary materials of period weddings, which are currently being studied by the museum's genealogical research team. By creating platforms that allow for a constant feedback and participation between the institution and visitors, these museums have been better able to expose their content to an audience outside of the traditional brick and mortar model.

Sixteen Candles (2007) - Aaron Miller and Nick Bruscia

John Michael Boling — 2009-06-30T15:00:00+01:00

Sixteen Candles is an experiment in physical computing. As a candle is burning, it is being captured and processed live by a computer. The computer copies the live image onto a 4x4 grid and projects it onto 16 mirrors. The mirrors, rapidly tilted up and down by custom solenoid apparatuses, throw the images of the candle across the room.

-- FROM THE ARTIST DESCRIPTION

Dispatches from No Soul For Sale: More Highlights!

Ceci Moss — 2009-06-29T19:18:00+01:00

No Soul For Sale closed yesterday, ending a mad week of performances, exhibitions, lectures, and more. See below for the last of our mini-reports from the festival.

Light Industry
Light Industry put together a packed program this past week, and I would expect no less from this smart and savvy Brooklyn-based cinematheque.

Image: Daily program listing in the Light Industry space
Image: "A Combination of Works" by Oliver Laric and Wojciech Kosma

Images: People playing Mark Essen's new game "The Thrill of Combat" during opening night and a screenshot of "The Thrill of Combat"

Latitudes
Latitudes, a curatorial office in Barcelona run by Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa, reconstructed the interior of a Burger King restaurant in their space. The plastic booths ended up as an impromptu rest area for visitors, who could sit and chat or read through the publications and posters documenting Latitudes previous projects.

Images: Shots of the faux Burger King built by Latitudes

K48
K48 is a fun and chaotic local fanzine that has showcased many emerging artists and musicians over the past few years. For their project, they built the below inflatable room out of stitched together trash bags. Once inside, there was a sound installation and strobe light.

Images: Outside and Inside shot of K48's inflatable room

Participant, Inc.
Lower East Side non-profit arts space Participant, Inc. showed two films by Luther Price on television monitors in their space.

Image: Film by Luther Price

Filipa Oliveira + Miguel Amado
This Lisbon-based curatorial team put together the group exhibition, "If you don't know what the South is it's simply because you are from the North", named after the piece below by Runo Lagomarsino. The show proposed to "respond, comment, and speculate on globalization, displacement and identity on the current international art scene."

Image: Runo Lagomarsino, If you don't know what the South is it's simply because you are from the North, 2009

Dispatch
The New York-based curatorial office run by Howie Chen and Gabrielle Giattino, Dispatch, advertised their presence at NSFS with the following, "Secondary Market + Artistic Coffee Mugs + Dispatch Portfolio Projects = Dispatch Corp. at No Soul For Sale." Their booth hosted the debut of Hanne Mugaas's Secondary Market in New York, a collection of art ephemera found on eBay.

Images: Secondary Market at the Dispatch booth

White Glove Tracking (2007) - Evan Roth and Ben Engebreth

John Michael Boling — 2009-06-29T16:00:00+01:00

On May 4th, 2007, we asked internet users to help isolate Michael Jackson's white glove in all 10,060 frames of his nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean. 72 hours later 125,000 gloves had been located. wgt_data_v1.txt is the culmination of data collected. It is released here for all to download and use as an input into any digital system.

-- FROM THE ARTIST DESCRIPTION

A 2007 Rhizome Commission

Rhizome Commissions Announced!

Rhizome — 2009-06-26T23:32:00+01:00

Rhizome is pleased to announce the ten emerging artists and collectives that have been awarded grants through the Rhizome Commissions Program. All emblematic of new directions in the field of new media art, the works manifest in a variety of forms from performance, sound to web-based works and touch upon themes from cultural and historic memory, to reality TV, to the possibilities for humanizing participants in mass social networking systems.

Two of the commissions were determined by Rhizome’s membership through an open vote; eight were determined by a jury including Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Design at the Museum of Modern Art; Jason Kottke, blogger, Kottke.org; Henriette Huldisch Independent Curator and co-curator of the 2008 Whitney Biennial; Monica Narula, artist, Raqs Media Collective; and Paul Pieroni, freelance curator, critic and Associate Director of SEVENTEEN.

The Rhizome Commissions Program is supported by the Jerome Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, the Rockefeller NYC Cultural Innovation Fund, and Rhizome members.

2010 Rhizome Commissions

Jury Awards:

Toby Heys of Battery Operated and Steve Goodman aka Kode9, Unsound Systems
Unsound Systems will be an hour-long sonic documentary that explores the ways in which sound, infrasound, and ultrasound have been utilized as weapons, as apparatus for psychological manipulation, and as instruments of physiological influence by industrial businesses, civilian police forces, and military organizations around the world.

Heba Amin, Fragmented City
Amin writes “Cairo exudes the clichés of a romanticized Ancient Egypt and, through its tourism industry, is banking on fantasy.” In this multi-faceted project, Amin will research and locate abandoned buildings in Cairo and then populate Google Earth with sketch-up models of these structures to “counteract the skewed understanding of the city’s experience online where only models of historic monuments exist.” She will then set-up a tourism bureau in Cairo in order to give tours of these forgotten areas to provide a new view of the city.

Jeffrey Crouse, Crowded
Crowded is an montage audio program similar to radio shows like This American Life, The Moth, or the productions of Joe Frank. What makes it unique is that all of the material is is made up of segments of audio requested from and submitted by workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk site in return for payment. Crouse will produce a series of shows, comprised of recordings by Mechanical Turk workers, that will culminate in a CD and accompanying book.

Aleksandra Domanovic, 19:30
19:30 is an anthology of television news music from the geographic region of ex-Yugoslavia, starting with the first televised news broadcast in 1958 to the present. Musical news themes are collected with the aim to modify and redistribute them as DJ-friendly tracks. The carrier for this project is a website archiving all the collected music as well as the remixes based on it. All of the material is stored in mp3 format and available for free download.

Chris Moukarbel, Cast
Cast is a long-form video that seamlessly weaves together footage from Reality TV auditions with narrative and scripted scenes. The video will develop the idea of how the decentralization of media and entertainment industries mirror new technology. It will explore how popular notions of performance have shifted away from traditional character and now emphasize the creation of a distilled self. Everyone involved with the project will have access to repurpose any footage shot.

Michael Kontopoulos, Measure of Discontent
Inspired by certain countries' efforts to impose a quantifiable value to the “happiness” of its people (notably, the tradition of Gross National Happiness in Bhutan), and the idea that if you can measure happiness, you can also measure unhappiness, Measure of Discontent aims to quantify and represent anxiety. By quantifying the subjective, in this case, anxiety or unhappiness, the artist aims to render poetic the contemporary American problem: a nation in crisis, and a state of palpable, national anxiety.

Tristan Perich, Microtonal Wall
1,536 small speakers blanket a wall (8 ft. by 12 ft), each emitting tones tuned microtonally to span eight octaves (dividing each half-step into 16 pitches). This dense cluster of sound sources is the subject of a series of musical compositions, continuing the artist’s investigations into the foundations of electronic sound. Each speaker, emitting a single, primitive 1-bit tone, becomes a microscopic voice in the total composition, substituting individual pitch for larger sonic masses.

Red76, YouTube School For Social Politics
The YouTube School for Social Politics utilizes surplus knowledge as its driving force. Scattered throughout YouTube lie countless points of view, scattered moments of histories, both personal and collective. By arranging these video segments - documentaries, personal missives and old family films, newsreels, music videos - new light can be shed on the sociopolitical landscape of history past, and history present. The YouTube School for Social Politics (YTSSP) invites guest historians, artists, and theorists to construct passages of historical inquiry through the assemblage of clips found on YouTube.

Member Awards:

Diana Eng, Fictional Jewelry and Other Wistful Adornments
This project takes the idea of jewelry that blooms, breathes, and moves, and makes it a living reality through the use of interactive electronics. The project will manifest as a collection of jewelry pieces each with a personality fit for fiction and characterized by it’s movements and design.

Tiff Holmes, Solar Circus
The Solar Circus project is a collection of related creative activities: hands-on workshops, nomadic solar-powered installations, and online performances that explore solar-powered art.

Dispatches from No Soul For Sale: Migrating Forms

Ceci Moss — 2009-06-26T22:41:00+01:00

Local experimental film and video festival Migrating Forms are screening "Half-inch Half-life" in their booth during No Soul For Sale this week. For this film program, the organizers asked their network of friends to submit tapes from their personal VHS collections, which are available for viewing on a television set in the space at specific times.

Dispatches from No Soul For Sale: Kling & Bang

Ceci Moss — 2009-06-26T18:33:00+01:00

Image: Videos in Kling & Bang's space at No Soul For Sale

I talked to Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir of Kling & Bang, an artist-run gallery based in Reykjavik, Iceland, yesterday about their organization and their set up during No Soul For Sale. With three projectors, 5 or so small DVD players, and two flat screens, Kling & Bang packed the audio/visual material into their space. I asked Hekla about this, and she said that they brought 44 DVDs by artists who show and collaborate with Kling & Bang to the festival, and switched them out throughout the day. The problem, of course, is that it was difficult to tell what was what, but with two representatives from Kling & Bang right there, I was able to talk to them about the works. When I was in the booth, they were screening a video by John Bock, titled Skipholt, that he had produced in collaboration with Kling & Bang. There were also a handful of flatworks and sculptures on view. The one pictured below, by Egill Kalevi Karlsson, is constructed entirely of wet clay, and as the water circulates, the fountain slowly falls apart. It also resembles excrement in a playground kind of way, and with a gaudy rotating glass ball as its centerpiece, I couldn't help but chuckle.

Image: Egill Kalevi Karlsson, Fountain, 2009

Reminder: HEXA_FLEXAGON_F_EVER workshop/performance by Anna Lundh Sat. June 27th from 2-3pm

Rhizome — 2009-06-26T18:00:00+01:00

As part of Rhizome's participation in No Soul For Sale, Anna Lundh will stage a workshop/performance on Saturday June 27th from 2-3pm on the first floor of the 548 West 22nd Street space in Chelsea. Based around her work HEXA_FLEXAGON_F_EVER (2008), the event will walk participants through the process of hexaflexagon construction and present a short history of the hexaﬂexagons in the form of a corporate seminar. The event is free and open to the public.

On Tour: Southeastern Europe Travelogue, Part 2

Brian Droitcour — 2009-06-26T15:04:00+01:00

Image: Sign for Mama internet center

This month I’m traveling through southeastern Europe from Venice to Athens, where I’m looking at art and blogging. Part two of the travelogue is about Zagreb, Croatia. Part one is here.

Zagreb’s center has more street names than streets; the names change every few blocks so meters can be allotted to every worthy Croatian hero. And many names differ from the ones streets bore twenty years ago, since a different history needed to be inscribed in Zagreb’s map after Yugoslavia dissolved and Croatia became independent. “The Renaming Machine,” an exhibition currently on view at Zagreb’s Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic, addresses the obsession with names. Sanja Ivekovic’s contribution is inspired by Zagreb’s Street of the Unknown Heroine—a name that is both unsettling and appropriate when virtually all other streets are named for men—which takes the form of a poster with maps, e-mails, and other supporting documents describing the artist’s attempt to give the same name to a street in Utrecht during her retrospective at Van Abbemuseum.

Image: Installation at Touch Me festival in Zagreb, December 2008

Just as street names reflect political values, so do the uses of buildings on them. After arriving in Zagreb and settling in the Angelina Jolie room at The Movie Hotel, I met with Tomislav Medak, director of Mama, an organization that was founded in 1999 as a center for internet activists and artists, but in recent years has shifted its attention to urban development, specifically the use of former industrial sites that abound in Zagreb (as they do in many other large, formerly socialist cities). Mama lobbies the municipal government to reserve abandoned factories for public use—whether cultural activities or low-cost housing—rather than handing them to private investors. But it also keeps up its media-art legacy through collaboration with Kontejner, a curatorial collective with annual exhibitions that alternate thematic focus on machines and bodies.

Mama was founded in 1999, and Kontejner made its first exhibition in 2001; the turn of the millennium was also a turning point in Croatia’s cultural scene. “Up until 2000 Croatia was asleep,” said Klaudio Stefancic, director of Galerija Galzenica. In the 1990s, the country’s cultural life was hindered by war and a nationalist regime. As a result, Stefancic said, only recently have the conceptual and post-conceptual practices of artists like the aforementioned Ivekovic, Mladen Stilinovic, and David Maljkovic formed the artistic mainstream in Croatia. But now that they have, Stefancic feels a need to showcase work outside that mainstream, whether it is painting or media art. Galzenica is in Velika Gorica, which was part of the outskirts of Zagreb until it got so big it balkanized into its own city. The “House of Culture” where Galzenica is located shares a public square with residential buildings, and the rehearsal rooms and library that coexist with the gallery were intended for the intellectual enrichment of the neighbors. The Sunday before last, when I visited, this artifact of 1980s utopian urban planning bustled with the activity of a cheerleading competition, as adolescent girls in sequined uniforms danced in the square and crowded the House of Culture’s stairwell.

Image: Goran Skofic, stills from Corpus

Galzenica was exhibiting the four nominees of the Radoslav Putar prize, which is awarded annually to a Croatian artist under thirty-five. (Galzenica provides exhibition space but does not organize the award or participate in the selection process.) The winning work was Corpus by Goran Skofic, an installation of six looping videos in which multiple images of the artist perform repetitive leisure activities: rows of Gorans in tuxedoes applaud at the theater, a team of Gorans lifts weights at the gym, and so on. Play figures in the work of another of the four exhibited artists, who showed a hopscotch game made of engraved tombstones and a unicycle capped with a deadly spike. Fun is a distraction from life’s inexorable passage toward death, the artist seems to say, in a tone as scolding as a surgeon general’s warning. Skofic, on the other hand, approaches the topic with humor, letting play overcome time with the artifice of the loop, and exaggerates it with the absurd simultaneity of his body repeated within the frame of each video and across the six monitors. In Zagreb, where the abundant plaques and statues in the streets represent an official attempt to seize time with static monumentality, Skofic's fluid, funny installation really is more worthy of prizes.

Dispatches from No Soul For Sale: "Sonic Bed_Marfa" (2008) by Kaffe Matthews at Ballroom Marfa

Ceci Moss — 2009-06-25T20:00:00+01:00

Image: Kaffe Matthews, Sonic Bed_Marfa, 2008 (In the Ballroom Marfa space at No Soul For Sale)
Image: Kaffe Matthews, Sonic Bed_Marfa, 2008 (In the Ballroom Marfa space at No Soul For Sale)

I asked a stranger lying in Sonic Bed_Marfa, a sculpture by artist Kaffe Matthews, to describe the sensation in two words. He said simply, "Sonic Massage." Non-profit arts space Ballroom Marfa is currently showing Sonic Bed_Marfa in their section on the third floor of No Soul For Sale. The piece was originally commissioned for their 2008 exhibition on sound art and public space, "The Marfa Sessions" curated by Regine Basha, Rebecca Gates and Lucy Raven. The work is one in a series of Sound Beds that take their materials and bedding design from their local surroundings. Sound Bed_Marfa is constructed out of wood gathered from around the Marfa area and its bright yellow bedding is inspired by the color used to paint houses in neighboring Ojinaga. The color yellow also figures into the title of the composition "Yellow" by Matthews which effectively encircles the visitor and vibrates the bed through a 12 channel sound system hidden underneath the mattress and in the side panels.