A conversation between Zemira Alajbegović and Jake Yuzna about the club scenes in Ljubljana and New York in the 80s and 90s, about self-organization and collective action.
Friday, 23 October 2020, 6 pm
SCCA-Ljubljana
The conversation will take place live online in English language. The link to the video stream will be published on this page and on the FB page of SCCA-Ljubljana.
The conversation will contrast two aspects, personal (Zemira Alajbegović) and research (Jake Yuzna), each in its own way representing the club scene, in which video played an essential role as part of the club program, a documentation tool and an artistic means of expression.
Through personal experience and involvement – as protagonist, author and organizer – Zemira Alajbegović will talk about club events in Disco FV and video related to youth subculture, rock and punk music and club events and multimedia practice, and about ŠKUC-Forum video production in in the early 1980s. The subcultural and alternative scene in Ljubljana was characterized by self-organization, collective action, which also led to the establishment of its own production and event spaces, “its own institution, own means of communication, own language”: Disco FV with club events, multimedia and video production and publishing – FV Video, FV publishing house. At the same time, it was necessary to reflect on the events later on, which was most comprehensively manifested in the author’s documentary Old and New, made by Zemira Alajbegović together with Neven Korda in 1997. During the conversation, we will also watch some excerpts from of this very informative video.
Another view, a researcher’s view, will be presented by Jake Yuzna, film author, and curator of exhibitions and video programs at international festivals. He made a research of the club scene in New York and published the book THE FUN: The Social Practice of Nightlife in NYC (2012). During last winter in Ljubljana, as a Fulbright Scholar, he researched the multimedia club scene and art, as well as video and film in Slovenia, in cooperation with SCCA-Ljubljana and also with the help of the DIVA Station video archive. Jake Yuzna will lead the conversation and show some material from club life in New York.
In the 1980s, Zemira Alajbegović was a leading member of the multimedia and theater group FV 112/15 and Disco FV, and co-founder of the video production FV Video and FV Label. Between 1983 and 1989, she was a member of the multimedia group Borghesia. In collaboration with Neven Korda, she is the author of numerous videos, music videos and dance videos. In recent years, he has directed documentaries and television shows about art and culture. She is one of the three artists selected by SCCA-Ljubljana to be part of the international project Not Yet Written Stories.
Jake Yuzna completed his master’s degree in directing at the American Film Institute and film production at the Minneapolis College of Art And Design. He works as a director, screenwriter, and producer. Selected filmography: Young Adult (2017), Open (2010), Sunshine (2007), Better Left Alone (2005), Between the Boys (2005). He also prepares curatorial projects at the Museum of Art and Design in New York (2013, 2014). In 2020, he was a Fullbright Scholar at a research residency in the archives of the DIVA Station at SCCA-Ljubljana.
Project Not Yet Written Stories is managed by the Arton Foundation in Warsaw, and in addition to the SCCA-Ljubljana, the Zagreb Office for Photography and the Riga Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art are involved. Each partner organization will focus the research on female artists who have often been overlooked in the history of contemporary art.
DIVA Station is a physical and web archive of video art which is being developed since 2005 at SCCA-Ljubljana with the intent to research, document, present and archive video/media art and experimental film.
Organization: SCCA-Ljubljana / DIVA Station
Supported by: EU program Creative Europe, City of Ljubljana – Department for Culture
