DIVA Station
DIVA Station Celebrates
1.000 entries
108 artists and art collectives
100 hours of AV material for on-line view

DIVA Station is a phyisical and web archive of video art, developed at SCCA since 2005 with the intent to research, document, present and archive video/media art.

By now, it contains more then 1.000 items of different materials. The notable 1.000 entry in the archive was a video performance Wear VIII produced in 2010 by Tomaž Furlan. The artist has been working on his sculptural and video project in progress Wear, since 2006. He says that Wear is "some sort of a critical reflection on the use of interactive works or, as it were, sculpture, which have emerged as extended body applications in a constrained process". We are also glad to note that in 2012 Tomaž Furlan was awarded OHO 2012 Award for young artist and is participating at the Manifesta 9 Biennial in Belgium.

Tomaž Furlan: Wear VIII, 2010 (stills)

THOUSAND VIDEO WORKS OF VARIOUS GENRES

Apart from artistic works DIVA Station also contains documentations, television shows about video and new media art, and documentations of events. Various sources and genres are of utter importance for research and understanding of video and media art. It contributes greatly to the possibility of interpretation of art works as well as the context in which they were produced. DIVA Station constantly adds newly acquired works to the archive and promotes an overall understanding of artistic oeuvres by organising discussions and presentations.

Materials from physical archive are available for public viewing at Project Room SCCA at Metelkova 6, Ljubljana, where we also organise discussions with artists that are directly involved with archiving contemporary video art.

From the first input into the DIVA Station video archive interface on February 27th 2007 we digitised numerous video works. The first one was video performance Nails by Damijan Kracina, video film Menhir by Ema Kugler was the 50th, the ID number 100 was occupied by dance video Vertigo Bird by Sašo Podgoršek, and the ID number 500 was taken by artistic video Forth Into the Past by Marko Kovačič.

The web interface enabled us with up to date input of data about the artistic video works and other materials that are otherwise subdued to constant changes of video formats and unstable carriers. DIVA Station is primarily concerned with understanding, accessibility, promotion and dissemination of video and media art contents from Slovenian cultural milieu, however it is not restricted to this locality; we also present audiovisual artistic materials from our international collaborators. A special emphasises is given to monitoring and researching interdisciplinary works and collaborations between different artistic types and interpretative practices.

The range of material in DIVA Station archive is a diverse and very specific view into the development of video and media art. In the forty years long history of video art in Slovenia we have encountered various types of video production like artistic video, video installation, video performance, dance video, experimental video and many others. We gather the material according to the criterions of artistic quality and creative usage of technology, closely following the presence of video artists in the exhibition spaces.

Due to the vulnerability of the unstable carriers of media art, our archive is compelled to follow the current artistic production, consequently leading to the never ending endeavours. We continue with new acquisitions – amongst the latest was video animation by Polonca Lovšin – and in this way broadening the spectre of video types and keywords that follow.
In the desire that DIVA Station would become even richer, more complex and useful, we actively gather documentation of artistic events and other sources that are ephemeral and unrepeatable, such as art history lectures, interviews, texts on video art etc.

MAJOR SUCCESSES AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF DIVA STATION

• 108 artists and art collectives.
• 6.000 minutes or 100 hours of AV material for on-line viewing, and 15.000 minutes or 250 hours in the material archive.
• The most represented genre is artistic video.
• The most used keyword is body, followed by music and women.
• The most productive decade is from 2000 till 2009.
• 28 curated video programs Videospotting are based on DIVA Station archive.
• Since 2005 we have prepared 31 presentations and screenings (5 per year) in Slovenia and internationally, amongst them at the numerous international festivals of new media art such as Ars Electronica Festival, Linz; Transmediale, Berlin; MediaScape Festival, Novigrad; Film Festival Sofia; LUX Centre, London; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art MMSU, Rijeka; VideoSpritz Festival, Trieste; Blickmaschinen Exhibition, Kunsthalle (Műcsarnok), Budapest; Townhouse Gallery, Cairo; Arsenal City Gallery, AiR and Production Center of Contemporary Art K2, Izmir; City Galery, Nova Gorica; Cultural Incubator, Maribor; Vžigalica Gallery, Ljubljana; Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana; and elsewhere.
• We organised 4 international seminars and 2 study exhibition projects focused on the issues of AV archiving in Ljubljana alone.
• At the seminars we hosted 35 experts, lecturers and artists from Slovenia and from international art milieu, amongst them Stephen Kovats (Transmediale, Berlin), Dalibor Martinis (Zagreb), Dan Oki (Split, Amsterdam), Gerard Couty and Christian Vanderborght (Paris, Berlin).
• DIVA station is a partner archive of GAMA (Gateway to Archives of Media Art) international platform that connects similar European media art archives and enables them better visibility and wider accessibility (C³ Center for Culture & Communication Foundation, Hungary; Filmform, Sweden; Netherlands Media Art Institute / Montevideo, The Netherlands; Ars Electronica, Austria; ARGOS centre for art & media, Belgium ...)

LINKS :

• DIVA Station on-line
• 1.000 entry: Tomaž Furlan: Wear VIII

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

SCCA-Ljubljana, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana
Contact: Dušan Dovč, tel.: 01 431 83 85, 051 361 681, e-mail: info@scca-ljubljana.si

[Published July 6, 2012]