Art reflection »On«: On art of artefact and event

Wednesday 17th December 2008 at 7 pm, Kibla - the final event this year in Petra Kapš curator project Art reflection »On«. This time On art of artefact and event.

Guests: Andreja Kopač, Marko Košnik, Jernej Dejan Kožar

A view through the rear-view mirror if focusing on past actions and achievements in arts indicates key mutual influences between a work of art and an event, which defines several possibilities of mutual relationship. One example is a cause and a consequence, i.e. an event transforming into an artefact based on the wish to possess or to testify the reality of the event, or the artefact causes and stimulates various effects and events, or, more rarely, they exist as individual entities. The discussion shed light on the edges of one and the other naming, on the articulation of anchorages to discuss one or the other, and open up an insight into the history and presen and into experience of merging – transferring and co-influencing. An event requires "liveliness", the"now and here"in time and location. Nowadays the term is used in a wide range of meanings to designate live performed manifestations. Visual arts intensively assume techniques of animating the public as well as exhibited forms. For a long time now, simply exhibiting the works of art has not sufficed; live action is required as well. Is this only related to making it more popular and acquiring visitors, and to making the art create a contact with life, or is this an example of meeting the expectations and requirements of prevailing trends for participation in culture, or maybe performing arts have been taking up and acquiring the space that was once only intended for visual (perception) arts? Or is it vice versa? Which are the crucial correlations between the public, artefact and event?
The consideration focused on defining the forms in art with regard to the work of art – artefact and event and their manifestations in artistic practice and media. If a work of art can still be referred to with regard to its movemen through space, an artistic event certainly cannot. Yet a work of art is still designated a completeness that has the possibility to appear and repeat in time, while the space is what defines it in a crucial way. As for the artistic event, it is designated as something realized in time and space, thus unique.

Andreja Kopač, journalist, MA in Linguistics of Speech and Theory of Social Communication. She contributes to magazines Maska and Dialogi. She was granted scholarships for 2008 international critic programmes Mobile Lab and Gulliver Connect. She has been active in various fields: coordinator of Seminar of Contemporary Performing Arts, public relations manager (Pristop, Maska) as well as performer (Betontanc: Wrestling Dostoevsky, Martin Krpan). She is a free-lance art critic, participating in numerous domestic and international projects.

Marko Košnik has been polymedia artist since the early 1980's. He composes electro-acoustic music, develops synaesthetic instruments to process live digital video, directs and produces solo and group performances, builds poetic platforms and installations expanding them with social and technological coatings all the way to interactive environment that he prefers to programme by himself. Apart from art concepts for his own and group needs, he is the author of numerous essays and lectures that were published and presented at home and worldwide. Between 1992 and 1997 he moderated a regular radio show “Egon March Institute presents”, within which he established an independent MUU media university with many domestic and international guests lecturing on the air. Likewise he established the Ministry of Experiment, so far the only open access production unit among Slovenian broadcasting media, which existed between 1997 and 2000. He presented his practical and theoretical work as guest lecturer at prominent institutions worldwide. Within his self-moving research and production Egon March Institute, which has been supported b the EU since 2008 (within X-op project managed by Kibla, Maribor), he has managed to join and combine the work and creations of over thirty international artists, researchers and thinkers. Since 1997, Egon March Institute has been digitalizing its archives and transferring them online, which is currently being done at: web.mac.com/marchegon

Jernej Dejan Kožar was born in Slovenj Gradec in 1970. He completed his art history studies at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana in 1994. He continued his master studies at the same faculty, mentored by dr. Jože Vogrinc, which he completed in 2001. He has been a curator at Koroška Gallery of Fine Arts since 1997, preparing more than 30 exhibitions featuring works by Slovenian and foreign artists in various galleries. His latest project: Necessary discourse: hysteria / http://www.necessarydiscourse.org/

The Art reflection »On« curator project focuses on the reflectionand researc of topical issues and themes, contained and addresses by contemporary art. Promoting and keeping track of artisticproduction, establishing meaningful, systemic and sociopoliticalcontexts, verifying possible interpretation models, seeking andcreating new media and environments for distribution, transfer andcirculation of information, opening up spaces in which art ishappening, as well as analysis of individual artistic terms andconcepts are issues to be included in the Art reflection »On«. Bye stablishing the conditions and options for each event to be open (experimental), the way for an interdisciplinary approach of discussionand realization is being paved; individual situations as well as theintegral project will be made up of artistic and discursive presence.
Key terms: art / artist / curator / critic / reflection / interpretation / discussion / context / on

The Art reflection »On« project included a series of ten events in 2008.