Video installations and video screenings opening

Opening: Tuesday, March 6th at 21.30, Infoshop above Menza

PAULA MUHR: INVENTING SOLITUDE (2005, Germany, audio-visual projection, played in an endless loop)

This series of self-portraits represents a visual diary of the photographer's more disquieting moods and feelings. The photographs were taken in the state of emotional upheaval, at the moments when the self was at the extreme point of definition. All the images are deeply subjective, yet they also include references to models of representation – how one perceives oneself is always in collision with the roles one takes up in the eyes of others. The pervasive sense of loss and displacement is mingled with self-enclosed fantasies, challenging the distinction between document and fiction, intimacy and exhibitionism, attractiveness and abjection. The music which accompanies the succession of still images, together with the title, emphasizes the (de)constructed nature of the montaged diptychs, stating that our identity is always already shaped by given cultural models. Website: http://photo.sittcomm.sk/muhr_solitude.htm

On the photography: Paula Muhr - Inventing solitude

HELENA SCHULTHEIS: BORDERS AND SHADING (Croatia, 2006, 03'42'', colour, video)

Attempts to “capture” individuals into photographic medium (prints, numbers, lines) change them into objects. They keep their shapes but change their substance: they become plastic or paper. Even colours fade... Information has emancipated itself from reality, thus creating an almost autonomous system. An experimental art video.

ZEMIRA ALAJBEGOVIĆ: QUICK SLOW (2004, Slovenia, 10', colour, video)

A short art video about “modalities of time”: circularity, repetition, speed, stillness, time vs space. It focuses on specific places, like a yard, a kitchen, a bedroom and researches the emotional states you can find there (loneliness, hysteria, melancholy).

JUAN delGADO: DON'T LOOK UNDER THE BED (2001, Great Britain, 10', black/white, two-screen video), WHO ARE YOU ENTERTAINING TO? (2002, Great Britain, colour, video performance, played in an endless loop)

Juan delGado's two-screen video Don’t look under the bed explores the issue of how bullying and how school still does not secure a safe environment in which young people may develop self-esteem and self-respect. Produced in response to the suicide of a teenager who was taunted for three years apparently for being gay, this project examines issues of power and social alienation within the educational context whereas rising the key question that lack of educational support allows bullying and queer bashing in wider society, and leaves young men vulnerable and exposed in the school environment.

In the video performance Who are you entertaining to? a man hits another man over and over again. With his back to the camera the abuser towers over seated victim who faces us, his eyes averted. In its implacable repetitions, the video produces a complex and ultimately terrifying representation of the experience of violent abuse as duration. It has neither a past or a future, just the continuous present of the performance. It is interminable. Narrative pleasure is interrupted by the refusal to act, react, or retaliate, arousing the desire of spectator for what is missing in the scene, namely, a reaction from the artist-author-object of the violence which might thereby satisfy our anguished desire for him to leave, for it to stop, for the perpetrator to be punished.

TANYA BEZREH: UNTITLED (2005, USA., 30'', colour, video), AIR PARADISE (2004, USA, 5', colour, video) and MORNING ADDITION (2005, USA, 5', colour, video)

Untitled was inspired by a thirty second film festival that actually never happened. Air Paradise speaks about the liberating effect of taking an Air France flight. Morning Addition follow the story of author’s friends who wanted to make a dirty movie.

ANTONELLA BUKOVAZ: SCRIVIMI (2006, Italy, )

Scrivimi is an Italian expression for “write to me” or, figuratively speaking, “write on my body”. The video understands writing as the language of the body. Bodies are spaces which host memories and tiny intimate scriptures. The video includes Antonella’s unpublished poetry from her Esercizi per l’ingenuitŕ (Exercises in naiveté) poetry series. Her words derive out of her body in search of otherness.

BIOGRAPHIES

Paula Muhr was born in Subotica, Serbia. She lives and works in Leipzig and Lübeck, Germany as a curator, writer and photographer. Her recent solo exhibitions include Absence (MXEspai, Barcelona, Spain), Tata (Rectorate of the University of Arts, Belgrade, Serbia) and Fetish (Gallery of Icons, City Museum, Prilep, Macedonia). In 2006, she hosted in Ljubljana's Atelier 2050 in a group exhibition entitled Attitudes (with Katarina Radović and Aleksandrija Ajduković).
Website: http://www.paula-miklosevic.net/

Helena Schultheis (1972) lives in Zagreb where she has studied sculpture, painting and history of arts. She continued her studies in Amsterdam at the Rietveldacademie and Amsterdams Institut Voor Schilderkunst. She has been working as a lecturer at the faculty of textile design in Zagreb. In 2005, she and co-author Azra Svedružić have contributed their art video You Can Call Me Anything You Want to 6th Rdeče zore festival.

Zemira Alajbegović (1958) is a director, scriptwriter and journalist. She is the author of short films, art videos, documentaries and television programs in the field of art and culture. In collaboration with Neven Korda, she was leading member of the FV 112/15 Theatre and FV Disco Club from 1982 to 1988, and this was where and when they also started to work in video. She lives and works in Ljubljana.

Juan delGado’s work in photography and video installations refers to social and cultural representations of sexuality, gender, and disability in the Western society. Being profoundly deaf, delGado has developed a strikingly strong visual work exploring notions of displacement, cruelty and trauma. He developed a photographic series examining representations of gender, Transformers (1989 – 1995) and L’Androgyne Sexuel (1994 – 1996) where the dynamic interplay between gender roles and the economies of power are addressed. Drawing upon personal experiences, the photographic series The Wounded Image (1997-2002) stand as a visual discourse on violence and the emotional response that this subject provokes. The subject of exclusion was also explored in Don’t look under the bed (2001) and in Who are you entertaining to ? (2002). In 2003, delGado developed a project in collaboration with the London Metropolitan University and a group of international artists. The piece, entitled flęches sans corps (2003) looks at the tragic reality of the ‘so-called’ illegal immigrants and the traumatic experience that most of them go through after being forced to leave their land.
Born in Spain, delGado studied art in Valencia (Spain) and an MA in Media Arts at the University of Westminster. He lives and works in London since 1994.
See http://www.cremerprojects.net/ for details.

Tanya Bezreh likes to inspire intimate conversations. Keeping a video diary allows her to practice being more and more vulnerable and honest, in hopes of creating permission for other to share their vulnerabilities. Tanya also works as a life coach, focussing on issues of sexuality and shame. She wishes for everyone total permission to articulate their truths. There is a whole lot more at www.tanyabezreh.com

Antonella Bukovaz was born in the village Topolovo. She is a video artist and a poet. Her poetry collection Tatuaggi was released in 2006. The collection consists of diary notes focusing on seemingly insignificant events which can change the world from inside-out, whether drastically or just temporarily, like light that can never be captured. She has also co-organised the Topolovo village based festival Stazione Topolovo. The festival presented artistic works from both sides of the Italian-Slovenian border.