Screening of film/video oeuvre ’80-’10
Screening and talk
Wednesday, 24 April 2024, 8pm
Slovenian Cinematheque, Miklošičeva cesta 28, Ljubljana
The new millennium marks a break with professional production, and Neven Korda moves to independent work on his computer. Until the 2000s, all his video productions were made in TV production environments, while the switch to the PC allowed him to observe the medium even more closely. With the New New Film (NNF) series, Korda returns to the conceptualism of the 1970s, when repetitive manifestational statements are an essential mode of expression, and to the structuralist film of the 1960s, when the celluloid tape becomes a message.
The films are highly experimental, focusing on feedback loops, which had already served him in Triumph of Desire to create the texture of the video image. In doing so, he returns to the idea of the multi-channel video projections he performed live in the 1980s: a pure video representation of the concept of the video signal.
With NNF, Korda ventures into an environment of low resolutions, small formats and simple sound. He uses petite frames in a mosaic way to create larger wholes, and he also works with live video manipulation, using keyboards and potentiometers to adjust the set parameters.
In the NNF, technology reaches the highest degree of independence in Korda’s oeuvre and becomes a critical condition for thinking about content: the films are based on the disruption of the medium, while the social constantly emerges from them (manipulation of political speeches, use of slogans, etc.). The ideological message and the formalism are in a dynamic relationship, and the films create a densely intertwined web where the same motifs keep returning in different audiovisual variations.
Robert Kuret will talk with Neven Korda.
Author: Neven Korda, Slovenia, 2001, digital format, colour, 2′
A report from a real day-to-day life. Inspired by and a tribute to Derek Jarman’s Blue.
Author: Neven Korda, Slovenia, 2001, digital format, colour, 1′
The constant fragmentation and multiplication of squares, 4:3 planes, and the embedded words. These are taken from a never-finished project (Heaven and Earth, Alajbegović, Korda), which was to collect and analyse public figures’ short thoughts on cyberspace and virtual reality.
Avtor: Neven Korda, Slovenia, 2001, digital format, colour, 1′
Rhythmic repetition of graphic passwords on a substrate that vibrates just before it breaks up—a revival of the original phrases from the ’60s.
Author: Neven Korda, Slovenia, 2001, digital format, bw, 1′
An anti-globalist, anti-religious and progressive mantra.
Author: Neven Korda, Slovenia, 2002, digital format, colour, 4′
The autumn still life is dedicated to the artist’s electronic archive, feedback loop and remnants from the early 1980s.
Author: Neven Korda, Slovenia, 2003, digital format, colour, 2′
A narrative of expectations and realities.
Author: Neven Korda, Slovenia, 2003, digital format, bw, 4′
Two nobelmen, an abbot, a soldier, a hungry dog and a prisoner. A husband and wife. Young and loving. A terrible deception has brought them here and the husband knows everything. Unfortunately he is stupefied and unable to speak. His thoughts. His thoughts shoot back and forth…
Author: Neven Korda, Slovenia, 2005, digital format, colour, 16′
The video object of the same name consisted of a monitor that said it was called the Taxidermist Monitor, a computer that processed the sound and image production and played back the result, and facsimiles of the original records or sources of the passwords used in Reincarnation.
Author: Neven Korda, Slovenia, 2006, digital format, colour, 5′
Automatically jump between the five NNFs of the Angelic Wreath, in the manner of the endless overflows of club visualisations.
Author: Neven Korda, Slovenia, 2007, digital format, colour, 7′
All 5 New New Films, all the words of Reincarnation and Nomad, quotes from Jean Genet’s A Song of Love, Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, and snapshots of everyday life.
Autor: Neven Korda, Slovenia, 2007, digital format, colour, 8′
A visualised and voiced biography of Neven Korda.
Author: Neven Korda, Slovenia, 2016, digital format, colour, 8′
Declaring war on the world.
Unknown Land IV: ’80–’00
24 April – 1 May
» View at Slovenian Film Database (BSF)
The last programme of Neven Korda‘s films at Baza slovenskega filma (BSF) will present some of the author’s short experimental films from the time of Disco FV, some of which are already included in the documentary The Old and the New, shown in the first section; the films Socialism and Yu sen. The Excerpts are a compilation of various projects by the author. The series concludes with a lecture by Miško Šuvaković, focusing mainly on the Borghesia collective.
Neven Korda, Slovenia (Yugoslavia), 1983, 2’
Video dissects a sentence taken from a propaganda statement by a party politician. With gradual deconstruction author leaves only traces of a word socialism.
Neven Korda, Slovenia (Yugoslavia), 1983, 3’
The story of a dedicated, hard-working Tito youth.
Neven Korda, Slovenia, 2020, 25’
Excerpts from various film and performance works by the artist.
Serbia, 2024, 22’ (in Serbian)
The video lecture discusses the status of an alternative concerning contemporary art, culture and society. The example of the Borghesia group and the experimental work of Neven Korda indicate the destabilization of the dominant culture and the role and functions of the drudge scene. While alternative video films were erased traces of the unconscious, recent narrative works unconsciously place as a fictional class of the possibility of disruption of inner experience because just as the body is always a social body, so is the world of memories, dreams, phantasms, but a social body within the public codes of (mis)representation.Dr. Miško Šuvaković is a professor of applied aesthetics, art theory and media. He taught at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. He teaches at the Faculty of Media and Communications in Belgrade. He publishes in Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, and English. He published books in the Slovenian language, Anatomy of Angels: Discussions on Art and Theory in Slovenia after the summer of 1960 (ZPS, Ljubljana, 2001); Figura, asceticism and Perversion (Gabriel Stupica) (Hyperion, Koper, 2001); Surplus LIFE: The Philosophy of Contemporary Transitional Art and Form of Life (Polona Tratnik) (Transars / Horizonti, Ljubljana, 2011) etc.
Neven Korda: Unknown Land
Programme (January-April 2024)
31 January / 28 February / 12 March / 24 April
Production: SCCA-Ljubljana and Slovenian Cinematheque
Curator: Robert Kuret
Neven Korda is an artist who has contributed significantly to developing video as a new medium. He creatively expressed himself through various periods, experimenting with the expressive possibilities of media that produced video.
A survey of Korda’s works will be organized into four programmatic strands, which follow the development of his creativity, each linked to a specific historical, production, genre, and collaborative context. Except for his last period of filmmaking, Neven Korda has been a part of various collectives where authorship has been declared joint.
Co-production: SCCA-Ljubljana/DIVA Station and Slovenian Cinematheque
Partner: Slovenian Film Database (BSF)
Supported by: City of Ljubljana – Department of Culture
Thanks: Barbara Borčić, Miha Colner, Petja Grafenauer, Nikolai Jeffs, Nerina Kocjančič, Bogdan Lešnik, Majda Širca, Melita Zajc
