From the Archives of the DIVA Station: Digital Surfaces

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Kiblix 2020-2021
Thursday, 1 April 2021, 7pm
Online screening and talk (in Slovene language)
Guests: Marko Peljhan and Alenka Pirman
Link: https://kiblix.org/streaming

DIVA Station at Kiblix 2020-2021 Festival

The International Festival of Arts, Technology and Science Kiblix 2020-2021 hosts the DIVA Station archive with a series of events in April and May. The theme of the festival Virtual Worlds Now is focused on the critical evaluation of the intersections and disconnections between the virtual and the physical, and the research and critique of modern technological media and their use in contemporary art, culture and education, which is especially interesting at a time of epidemic constraints, when for many people digital and virtual have become the dominant environment for work, communication, education and entertainment.

In a series of four events under the common title From the Archives of the DIVA Station, we are preparing a series of online video projections on the computer and online art, perception of physicality in a virtual environment, and transmitted feelings. The purpose of online projections is to get acquainted with works from the digital archive, get to know individual authors, and create a space for joint reflection, discussion, and knowledge exchange. Each event will be based on a selection of (including older) works from the archives of the DIVA Station and a conversation with the authors. Deriving from the events’ online context, the focus will be on works that can start a discussion on the new reality of art perception through the digital experience. The conversations will be moderated by Irena Borić and Vesna Bukovec.

PROGRAMME

From the Archives of the DIVA Station: Digital Surfaces

Curator: Irena Borić

We will be presented with a computer video animation by Marko Peljhan, conceived as a theatrical play without actors in cyberspace. The video animation was prepared, modeled and rendered using a program written explicitly with the real-time SGI Crimson animation tool. We will also see several short works by Alenka Pirman, which are not videos, but the endless repetition of the PowerPoint presentation, which has been established in the academic and commercial world to present knowledge. The projection will be followed by a conversation between the selector Irena Borić, the artists, and DIVA Station associate Vesna Bukovec.

Marko Peljhan, LADOMIR-ФАКТУРА: FIRST SURFACE–MICROLAB V1.0
Projekt Atol, A Team of Three Production, Aster, 1994, 23′ 10”
» video
Alenka Pirman, Aleš Kermavner: KAJ JE (V-SEBI-NA = V), ok. 1966–2006
Društvo za domače raziskave & SCCA-Ljubljana, 2006, 2′ 22”
» video
Alenka Pirman, Ivan Volarič-Feo: Peščena ura, 1969–2006
Društvo za domače raziskave & SCCA-Ljubljana, 2006, 2′ 2”
» video
Alenka Pirman, Matjaž Hanžek: Nebotičnik, 1967–2006
Društvo za domače raziskave & SCCA-Ljubljana, 2006, 2′ 46”
» video

 

Marko Peljhan (1969) founded the art organization Projekt Atol in 1994 and was one of the co-founders of the Ljubljana New Media Laboratory Ljudmila a year later. He presented one of his most famous projects, Makrolab, for the first time at the Documents in 1997 and 2003 at the 50th Venice Biennale. In the last 25 years, Peljhan’s work has been presented and awarded at numerous biennials and festivals, at ISEA and Ars Electronica exhibitions, and in museums such as PS1 MoMA, New Museum of Contemporary Art, ICC NTT Tokyo, YCAM Yamaguchi, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, Asia Culture Center Gwangju and Garage in Moscow. In 2001, he received the Prix Ars Electronica award zlata nika for his polar project, co-created with German artist Carsten Nicolai. Together with the American-Canadian artist Matthew Biederman, they have been leading the Arctic Perspective Initiative since 2008. It focuses on the global significance of the Arctic geopolitical, natural, and cultural spheres and was presented at the Coded Utopia exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana in 2011. Peljhan’s work is also dedicated to research and pedagogy in the crossroads of art, technology, and the media at the University of California, UC Santa Barbara, where he holds the full professor’s title. In Slovenia, he was one of the initiators for establishing the Slovenian Centre of Excellence for Space Sciences and Technologies, and in 1998 he began to work actively in space and aeronautical research and culturalization. In the radio spectrum, he is known as the S54MX.
Marko Peljhan na Postaji DIVA

Alenka Pirman is a freelance artist, writer, and Ph.D. student of heritology at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. She is a founding member of the Domestic Research Society (2004), where she develops collaborative research on the cross-section of contemporary art and cultural heritage. In the 1990s, her work was predominantly related to the three fictitious institutions: the SK8 Museum (1991–93), the RIGUSRS – Research Institute for Geo Art Statistics of the Republic of Slovenia (1997; with Ćosić and Wölle), and the Domestic Research Institute (1994–98). She then collaborated with the artistic collectives/platforms like Luther Blissett/01.org (1998) and London-based Bughouse (2002–03). She has carried out several methodological exhibition projects, e.g., with a collection of the German loanwords used in the Slovene language (Arcticae horulae, 1991–98) and a deposited collection of the Police Museum (The Case. Art and Criminality, 2005). In 2014 the International Centre of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana prepared the Collected Works survey exhibition of her oeuvre.
Alenka Pirman at DIVA Station

Irena Borić is freelance editor, curator and critic. She graduated in Art History and History at the Faculty of Arts, University of Zagreb and Arts And Heritage: Policy, Management and Education at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. She has participated in the projects Economics of Love / Politics of Feelings (2012–), Shame on You! (2013) and net.cube (2015–). She has curated numerous exhibitions, including Truth that Lies (2019) and Low Tones of Earth Song (2019). She has prepared numerous discursive events, co-designed and organized the symposium Irrationality of the Biennial (2018) at MGLC, Ljubljana and the seminar Sketches for the Curriculum: Forms and Challenges of Art Education (2017) at the Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb. She is one of the editors of the independent publishing platform INCA press and a member of the Croatian section of AICA. She curates and organizes the educational program at KIBLA.

Vesna Bukovec (1977) graduated and obtained her master’s degree in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. She is a socially critical author who expresses herself in various media, putting drawing in the foreground in addition to video. She has presented herself at several solo and group exhibitions in the domestic and international space. She also works in the field of graphic design and video art curation. Since 2015 she has been an expert associate of the DIVA Station at SCCA-Ljubljana.

The International Festival of Arts, Technology and Science Kiblix has been organized by KIBLA from Maribor since 2002. It is an open source festival that connects art, technology and science. It problematizes two different aspects: the impact of science and technology on the social life of the individual, and research into the mystery of science that dictates the future. Both, however, try to offer solutions to bridge the powerlessness of the individual in modern society.
It is part of the RUK project (2019-2022). RUK is a network of art and culture research centers on the crossroads of art, science, and technology. In this interdisciplinary triangle, the partners Delavski dom Trbovlje, PiNA and KIBLA on the Trbovlje-Koper-Maribor axis are developing innovative products and services for a humane technology of the future. More about the Kiblix 2020-2021.

The DIVA Station is an online and physical archive that SCCA-Ljubljana has been developing since 2005 to research, document, archive, and present art film, video, and new media art. It is based on the collection of video materials within the extended concept of the national context and includes artists working in Slovenia and/or internationally.

Production: ACE KIBLA and SCCA-Ljubljana/DIVA Station