Spring 2015 exhibitions
Nika Autor: The News Is Ours!
Loredana Bianconi: Do You Remember Revolution?
The New World Summit: Art of the Stateless State
27 January–26 April 2015
Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova
Maistrova 3
Ljubljana
Slovenia
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10am–6pm
Curated by: Bojana Piškur
Nika Autor: The News Is Ours!
The title of the exhibition is a paraphrase of the titles of two notable films—the 1971 American newsreel Finally Got the News and the 1936 French newsreel La vie est a nous. The guiding principles of both works are the exploration of the intertwinement of images and the political and social situation at the time, and the dialectics of montage, thought and social engagement. A similar principle guides the artworks presented by The News Is Ours!, that is, the exploration of the intertwinement of images and an attempt at social engagement. The News Is Ours! is a continuation of the artistic research work and the eponymous exhibition presented at the Jeu de Paume in Paris between February and May 2014 at the invitation of curator Nataša Petrešin–Bachelez in the framework of her one-year curatorial project titled Histoires d’empathie. In addition to the films, the exhibition in Ljubljana also presents documentary material based on the visual research material gathered in cooperation with the Newsreel Front. At the invitation of the curator of the exhibition Bojana Piškur, two new works, For Slava (2014) and Falsches Bild (2014), and other documentary material is shown in addition to Newsreel 55 (2013), Solidarity (2011) and In the Land of Bears (2012), plus Jurij Meden’s Karl Marx Among Us (2013) from the collection of the Newsreel Front.
Loredana Bianconi: Do You Remember Revolution
In her documentary Do You Remember Revolution, the Italian director Loredana Bianconi interviewed at length four women who actively participated in the leftist armed struggle in the Italy of the 1970s. All of them were leading figures in the Red Brigades. Bianconi has no intention to judge their actions, nor their lives. Instead she has decided to listen. We hear no sensational—and very few anecdotal—aspects of these women’s revolutionary lives. Instead, we listen to answers to questions no judge ever asked them…Then she cuts to archival images shot by Italian state TV. We see the four protagonists at their trial. The film shows us how four exceptional women look back at their common cause.
The exhibition presents various archival materials on the events related to the Red Brigades and photographs by Italian photographer Tano D’Amico.
The New World Summit: Art of the Stateless State
The New World Summit is an artistic and political organization founded by artist Jonas Staal that develops “parliaments” for unacknowledged states, stateless and blacklisted political groups. The members from the New World Summit collaborate in creating temporary platforms all around the world in art institutions, theaters and public spaces to facilitate the representation of the histories of stateless political struggle banned from the existing political order.
The New World Summit claims to redefine the project of democracy—the unrestricted representation of all voices—through the space of art. Developed in the age of the War on Terror, the summits that took place so far in Berlin (Germany), Leiden (the Netherlands), Kochi (India) and Brussels (Belgium) focused largely on organizations confronted with modern day politics of blacklisting, such as the Basque Independence Movement, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, the Kurdish Women’s Movement, the National Liberation Movement of Azawad and the Oromo Liberation Front.
The title of this first overview of the work of the New World Summit refers to two fundamental aspects of the organization. On one hand, it refers to the role of art in creating alternative political platforms through new visual, architectural and choreographical models in the form of parliaments in which stateless political groups can speak publicly. On the other hand, it also refers to the role of art within stateless political groups.
With contributions by Lisa Ito (theorist, Concerned Artists of the Philippines), Moussa Ag Assarid (writer, National Liberation Movement of Azawad) and Mazou Ibrahim Touré (artist, Artist Association of Azawad).
