Jeanne van Heeswijk: You and the City. Diaries of a Future Avant-garde; workshop and performance

You and the City. Diaries of a Future Avant-garde, Novo mesto, 2008
Photo: Borut Peterlin

7 - 10 November 2008
Simulaker Gallery, Vrhovčeva 1a, Novo mesto
Atrium of the bookshop Goga, Glavni trg 6, Novo mesto

The event is part of the Hosting Moderna galerija! action.
Curator: Adela Železnik

You and the City. Diaries of a Future Avant-garde is part of a broader research project by the Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, focusing on how teenagers in different cities come to grips with the changing society. It chiefly focuses on young girls and their outlook on life and the future, but refers also to the specific local context in each edition.

Now the world is again undergoing substantial social and economical changes, and the question that poses itself is how secondary school students perceive them, living in a time of popular television series such as Sex and the City, or the Mexican soap opera especially popular among Slovenian teenagers, Rebelde. What would these young people's "revolution" be like, if there were one at all? Teenage girls still write down their realizations in diaries, and in the project You and the City they share their diaries with others.

Organized by the Simulaker Gallery, the project consists of a two-day workshop, where teenage participants will learn how to write blogs, which they will post on the website of the local magazine Park:
http://www.park.si/kategorija/ti-v-mestu/
The participants will publicly read their blogs on Monday, 10 November, at 5 p.m. in the atrium of the Goga bookshop. Hopefully they will continue writing their blogs and in this way contribute to the formation of a "virtual community of the future avant-garde".

Novo mesto has a special place in the history of Slovenian culture, more specifically, the early historical avant-garde. The years immediately after the First World War were strongly influenced by the so-called "Novo Mesto Spring." It was an era of radical changes, and in Novo mesto, their champions were the young artists who lived there. The torch-bearers were poets Anton Podbevšek and Miran Jarc, and working together with artists, political activists, and also a number of the Novo mesto gymnasium secondary school students they organized a series of public events which culminated in the "1st Regional Exhibition of Painting" on 26 September 1920 in Kandija near Novo mesto.

The exhibition itself was organized by painters Božidar Jakac and Rihard Jakopič and it met with a barrage of negative response and criticism. More important than the artworks shown, however, was the show's courageous disregard of the aesthetic canon of the time and the fact that also two sixteen-year old students of the Novo mesto gymnasium exhibited in it. The Novo mesto gymnasium secondary school had a strong tradition of literary societies and a school newspaper.

Marjan Mušič, a sophomore there at that time and one of the two exhibiting students, later wrote in his book Novomeška pomlad (The Novo Mesto Spring): "Today I know with certainty that the most precious thing for growing up into a mature and well-rounded person is unrelentingly broadening one's knowledge in all areas, and not just by leisurely reading, but by constantly recording one's profoundest realizations and far-reaching discoveries in a journal."

Participants:
Jeanne van Heeswijk lives in Rotterdam. Since 1993 van Heeswijk has been working on socially committed art projects that take place in public spaces. www.jeanneworks.net
Adela Železnik is a curator at the Moderna galerija, Ljubljana; Nina Berkopec, blog/diary writing mentor; Tina Cigler, coordinator, DRPD Novo mesto; Iztok Hotko, coordinator, Simulaker Gallery; Borut Peterlin, photographer and blogger; Damir Skenderović, editor of the magazine Park website.

The project has been realized with the kind support of:
The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands as part of the Bilateral Focus 2008; Društvo za razvijanje prostovoljnega dela - DRPD, Novo mesto; Simulaker Gallery; Multimedia Center of Dolenjska - MCD; Goga bookshop ; Park magazine; Youth Hostel Situla, Novo mesto.

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