http://www.siol.net/kultura/dogodki/2013/03/delo_vpeto_v_globalni_svet.aspx

In her projects, the intermedia artist Metka Zupanič deals with the relation between the individual and the technological Other. In the new project “Anti – Global?”, she focuses on the way the body reacts to stimuli generated by the human subconscious.
Already in her previous works she has addressed the theme of contemporary technology which is in the service of control and supervision. The project “How to Kill Something in Me” (2010, 2011) thematised the use of technologies for control and identification which are available today on the open market. She connected them to the real threat of arms interventions, especially the image of “special units” which are becoming a part of the professionalization of civil service with a “licence to kill”. The project was based on the question of how to manage personal information in the present and future society, especially in the context of the society of fear.

In the current project “Anti – Global?” the author now deals with the feelings of fear which are born in the individual in the extraordinary and hopeless societal, social and economic conditions in the time of late-capitalism – the time of apparent freedom and the “spectacle of major corporations”. The project is manifest in two independent parts. The sculpture in the first space is a combination of two basic geometric bodies, signified as a metaphor of the system founded on work and striving for the top, where it perpetuates “added-value”. Fear is the central response to the physical and emotional danger of the object. The rotating balls in the object go faster and faster and represent the acceleration of the system, while at the same time the author focuses on the body’s response – its surface – to stimuli which is generated by the human subconscious.
The video installation in the other space is a clean, concrete presence, without metaphorical dimensions. It represents the stories of three individuals, who in the globalised world have found work and personal satisfaction in Slovenia. Using the dynamic path of global mobility, their potentials are realised here. Where, then, do we live? In the worst or the best of all worlds? Do the dynamics of the fast times in which we live demand that we create for ourselves and our close ones the best that we are able?

Metka Zupanič is an internationally recognised intermedia artist. After her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (ALUO) in Ljubljana, she continued her studies at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. In 2005 she completed her MFA at ALUO. She has participated in numerous international exhibitions of contemporary arts, among others, in Graz, Venice, Łódź, Gdansk, Skopje, Berlin, Vienna, Bratislava, Novi Sad and in Slovenia in Museum of Modern Art (U3), Kapelica Gallery, P74 Gallery, and Celje Gallery of Contemporary Arts, etc. Since 2002 she is a member of art group KOLEKTIVA (with Vesna Bukovec and Lada Cerar).

The programme of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute is supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of the Republic of Slovenia and by the Municipality of Ljubljana, Department for Culture.

Exhibition: (Ne)vidne sledi II / (In)Visible Traces II, solo exhibition by KOLEKTIVA
Location: Alkatraz Gallery, Ljubljana, SI
Date: October 10–November 2, 2012
Opening: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 at 8 p.m.

Curators: Jadranka Plut, Sebastian Krawczyk

And what kind of object would you preserve?
Send to KOLEKTIVA your suggestions and photos. E-mail kolektiva@gmail.com.

About the exhibition

The art group KOLEKTIVA, consisting of Vesna Bukovec, Lada Cerar and Metka Zupanič, touches the engaged social topics with its artistic creation. These are the works eluding the world of art, slipping into the world of life, opening a possibility of a relation of the subject (the observer) to the matter (the object). The object is based on the building of human relations and their social context. As Nicolas Bourriaud has described it, it is about the emphasis of communication/correlation between the subject and the object.
The KOLEKTIVA group does not produce an artwork for the sake of its aesthetic value, instead it is trying – with its help – to form inter-human experiences or participate in them and establish a social interface. Marx’s term that Nicolas Bourriaud has incorporated into the field of contemporary art, is the space of human relations, offering different possibilities of exchange from those, valid, operating in the system. The KOLEKTIVA should encourage free sociability outside the routine communication channels. With their artistic creativity the female artists are trying to create an environment within which redefined communication can take place – an environment outside old frames, not solely intended for sociability. The KOLEKTIVA are inviting the visitor to become an equal subject of art that is being created, and not being merely a witness to the projection of the artist’s personality. His or her participation is the key part of the artwork.
The authors of the KOLEKTIVA group continue with site-specific practice of the inclusion of the local space and people within the frame of the exhibition project. They continue with the exploration of the extended idea of archaeology they started with in their project (In)Visible Traces from 2009 in Ptuj, however, at the same time picking up the topic of a city, its inhabitants, and the alternative mapping of cities (e.g. the projects Special Place in the City, Secret Heart, Talk to the Other Side, Hiteti ali biti temeljit? (Hurry or be Thorough?), Visions). The exhibition at the Alkatraz Gallery will be composed of black and white boards, on which the visitors will be answering the question, which object they would like to leave to the future generations. Placed in the middle of the gallery space there will be an object, by its shape resembling a geological well. The concrete sculpture consists of several smallish elements – profiles, concealing in them various objects from everyday life. The symbolic geological well represents a non-coincidental fossilization of the objects from our era, waiting to be discovered by the archaeologists from the distant future.

Excerpt from the text by Sebastian Krawczyk and Jadranka Plut;

www.kolektiva.org

—

Photo: Vesna Bukovec, Sunčan Stone (Alkatraz gallery archive)

Exhibition of KOLEKTIVA (Vesna Bukovec, Lada Cerar, Metka Zupanič)

May 10 – June 17, 2012
Gallery Mihelič, Ptuj, Slovenia
Opening view: Thursday, May 10, 2012 at 7 pm

Curators: Stanka Gačnik (Mihelič gallery) and Petja Grafenauer (independent curator)

—

After ten years of working together in an art group KOLEKTIVA, artists Vesna Bukovec, Metka Zupanič and Lada Cerar present their first mid-career retrospective.

In their collective work they research various aspects of communication, inter-personal relationships, and everyday life. In their projects they search for all kinds of personal stories and are interested in both storytelling and voyeurism at the same time. As a group they create projects in response to given situations.

They frequently collaborate with the public. They invite different individuals, passersby or specially targeted groups to collaborate and they include them in their projects as a source or co-authors of the work. The artists understand the process of art making as a mixture of imagination, negotiation, exchange and cooperation.

In ten years of collaboration KOLEKTIVA have presented their works in several solo exhibitions and participated in significant international group shows in Slovenia and Europe. KOLEKTIVA is mostly known for different projects within their platform Special Place in the City for which they gain international recognition.
Besides working in KOLEKTIVA all three authors work as successful solo artists. Metka Zupanič and Vesna Bukovec also curate video screenings and exhibitions of international contemporary video art in collaboration with the Photon Gallery.

—

Exhibition catalogue (pdf)

curated by Elisabeth Arlt (AT)

steirischer herbst & Pavelhaus

Metka Zupanič

Looking for a better world

Looped Videos, 4″40, 2011

Never before have questions of work, workers and migrants been so pertinent as they are today. Immigrants who flee in hopes of a better life are faced with growing hostility among their new neighbours, who fear increased competition for jobs and deterioration in their country's standard of living. The media is flooded with tragic tales of unfortunate people; immigrants and migrant workers, intellectuals, and our society fears such situations and represses any discomfort or negativity.

Slovenia is one of the few countries that have a relatively small number of immigrants and migrant workers from other countries. In some ways, it is an isolated island, and its perspective on immigrants also differs from the norm – it is less hostile than in other European countries. The project "Looking For Better World" portrays the private lives of people who have found a positive and optimistic approach to the challenge of job hunting. The three films included in the exhibition depict portraits of people who could be described as "heroes" of the current unjust and exploitative labour system, with which we all have to contend. The films tell the life stories of people from three different corners of the world, who all happened to come to the same small Slovenian town of Ptuj. Each one of them had the courage to tackle the problems they encountered in their new country. These are people who managed very quickly and successfully to integrate themselves into the local community. They found jobs, opened their own businesses and launched careers in their own professional fields. The films are psychological portraits in which the protagonists describe their memories of the past, their longing to return home to the countries from which they were forced to flee, while also discussing their reasons for the decisions that they made. In this project, I aim to highlight aspects of their life stories that are often overlooked and to illustrate certain prejudices, which even now are so firmly instilled in our thinking.

In my recent work, I’m dealing with the art system as something opposed to an artist. Artist is struggling in an environment, which is constantly puzzling him, where the paths could lead to many dead-ends but sometimes also to the “highest throne”, which are in this case the most famous art institutions. In the art world, an artist is constantly walking through the labyrinth, not knowing, whether he will meet a Minotaur or God on the next corner…

The first known labyrinth was built by Daedalus, Greek artists, to keep the monster, Minotaur, away of people, of civilization. Later, labyrinths were used to symbolize a hard path to God, as symbolic forms of pilgrimage. This double meaning conveyed in the image of labyrinth, has stayed within cultural and visual history of mankind throughout the modern times.