Improvisational performance and talk
Wednesday, 29 January 2025, 7 pm
Photon Gallery, Trg Prekomorskih brigad 1, Ljubljana
In a slightly different format of the Video Evening, the intermedia artist Neža Knez will present the materials for her emerging experimental film, which is currently in the process of editing. In a live improvisational performance, she will manipulate raw and partially edited visual, audio and written material. She will test different combinations, observe and follow them, allowing them to intertwine, transform and create new relationships and spaces. Together with the audience, she will reflect on the nature of documentary language, the boundaries between reality and fiction, and the difference in materiality between the digital and analogue processes of creating the moving image.
The artist in her own words thinks of images and sounds, which intertwine and amplify their original potential through their uniqueness, as emotional transitions before they are reinterpreted. Through constant repetition, multiplication, copying and presenting the same thing in a different way, the original and the copy gradually lose their identity. They become a stream of textured light and sound, cinematographic perforations, sounds and images of time. Through performative projection, the properties of the original and the copy are redefined. The presentation will constantly oscillate between the ‘voices’ of the actors – what is recorded, with what it’s recorded, who records it and what marks it.
Neža Knez (1990) is an intermedia artist based between Ljubljana and Zagreb. Her work explores hybrid formats that integrate discursive and poetic principles of artistic practice, viewing them as inseparable from daily life. She focuses on minor, invisible, fragile, and delicate processes within and through media and material. She is interested in the relationships and diffractions that occur in the structuring of forms, whether they be moving images, sound, language, or mixed media installations.
She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana, where she received the Prešeren Award (2015) and graduated with the highest distinction, Summa Cum Laude, for her master’s degree (2017). In 2018, she was awarded the OHO Group Award for young artists in Slovenia. That same year, she undertook a two-year residency at the Creative Centre Švicarija (International Centre of Graphic Arts MGLC) in Ljubljana. Along with three other artists, she received the European Mobile Award I-Portunus (2019). In 2020, she partially relocated to Zagreb. She completed informal education at Restart Documentary Film School (2021) and at Baltic Analog Film School (BAL, 2024).
Knez actively collaborates with artists from Slovenia and abroad in artistic research, exhibitions, and film productions. She conducts workshops and regularly works with the collective Studio Pangolin and Klub Vizija. Currently, she is assisting on the film Vremenoplovke by Nicole Hewitt and is one of the mentors for the GRRRL Power film workshops led by artist and director Vida Guzmić. She also leads analog film workshops as part of the International Festival of Experimental Audiovisual Practices V-F-X Ljubljana, and New media department (Academy in Zagreb). Currently she collaborates and works on her own projects with artists Jasen Mullhausen, Vida Guzmić, Tin Dožić, Tatiana Kocmur, and others. She is currently finalizing her experimental film The Same Sweat Still Flows through the Same Pores, produced by Studio Pangolin and supported by Croatian Audiovisual Centre HAVC.
Her work has been presented locally and internationally, including at galleries such as Tobačna 001, Škuc Gallery and P74 Gallery in Ljubljana, Museum of Contemporary Art Ljubljana, City Gallery Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Arts Celje, International Centre of Graphic Art Ljubljana, Kibla Maribor, Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art Rijeka, Art Quarter Budapest, Gallery Mohsen Tehran, Gallery Nova Zagreb, Gallery GMK Zagreb, MLZ Art Dep Trieste, and Gallery Kunsthalle Graz. Her video works are also included in the DIVA Station archive (SCCA-Ljubljana). (Photo: Aleš Rosa)
https://knezneza.website
Neža Knez at DIVA Station
At Video Evenings with DIVA Station, we host authors who are included in the archive and invite them to talk about their work and the background behind creating individual video projects. The presentation in the gallery (artist talk) is accompanied by projections with comments, followed by a conversation with the audience. The Video Evenings are prepared by Vesna Bukovec, a professional associate of the DIVA Station archive of video, film, and new-media art.
Production: SCCA-Ljubljana/DIVA Station, Photon Gallery
Supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and City of Ljubljana – Department for Culture
