Interrupted Histories

14.03.2006

Moderna galerija / Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
14 March - 28 May 2006

Artists: Huseyin Alptekin, Artpool, Chto delat, Amit Goren, Ivan Grubanov,
Dmitry Gutov, Dejan Habicht & Tanja Lažetić, Edi Hila, IRWIN, Komar & Melamid, Žiga Kariž, Zofia Kulik, David Maljković, Anja Medved & Nadja Velušček, Pages, Lia Perjovschi & CAA, Borut Peterlin, Alenka Pirman, Tadej Pogačar & P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art, Marjetica Potrč, Luka Prinčič, Marija Mojca Pungerčar, Khalil Rabah, Erzen Shkololli /Alban Hajdinaj, Anri Sala, Gentian Shkurti/, Mladen Stilinović, Sašo Vrabič, Vadim Zakharov

Curator: Zdenka Badovinac

Press conference: Tuesday, 14 March 2006, 11 a.m.
Opening of the exhibition: Tuesday, 14 March 2006, 8 p.m.

The exhibition Interrupted Histories does more than simply present as separate entities the art projects of the twenty-seven artists and groups invited to participate; it also offers these works as instruments for new processes in historicizing art. It is this newly acquired function, demonstrated by the works on view, that allows us to speak of a new relationship between art and its history. We see this new function of art in the deliberate and systematic way it involves itself in searching for answers to the urgent questions that face spaces outside the canonized history, spaces we could call spaces of interrupted histories. And while the present exhibition focuses primarily on the eastern half of Europe and, to some degree, on the Middle East, one might easily extend its concerns to the whole of the non-Western world - a world that, for political and economic reasons, has not been able to integrate fully the processes of modernity, among which processes we can certainly include the modern system of creating histories - historicization.

Artists today find themselves in a situation where, on the one hand, they are still to a large degree left to do their own historicizing while, on the other hand, the newly interested West has already started to include them in its museum collections - where they find themselves estranged from their own original context.

The exhibition Interrupted Histories asks, on the one hand, what are the implications of the absence of systematized historicization in spaces outside the Western world or on its margins, and, on the other hand, what sort of methods are needed to accelerate the processes of such historicization.

The exhibition Interrupted Histories presents itself as a kind of tool for creating history.

The participating artists act in their works as archivists of their own and other artists' projects or of various phenomena in the national history, as curators who research their own historical context and establish a comparable framework for various big and little histories, as historians, anthropologists, ethnologists, who record current and pertinent phenomena in the interaction between tradition and modernity as well as rapid change in the local landscape.

The exhibition displays the works of art in the physical space of the museum, but at the same time it also goes beyond the limitations of space and time. Both the individual works and the exhibition as a whole are characterized by an open structure, which will allow also for the addition of new elements after the exhibition is dismantled and over.

Elements can be added from 15 March on to the exhibition on-line (www.mg-lj.si) and to the catalogue, which has the form of an archival file into which new material can be inserted. Interrupted Histories is both the end product and an open process in progress.

The exhibition will also include archives of samizdat publications, which address current issues in the society and express tendencies toward societal changes. These reflections are in many ways very specific; generally, they oppose the established social patterns and avoid any form of censorship and control.

Among those who have kindly loaned their samizdat archives or participated in the project in some other way are: Petra Kolmančič, Dušan Hedl, Marko Brecelj, Alina Serban, Suzana Milevska, Aleksandra Mirčić, Branka Stipančić, Vit Havranek, Edi Muka, Vasif Kortun, Viktor Misiano, Artpool Art Research Centre, Peter Szabo, Božidar Zrinski.
Editor of the archives: Bojana Piškur.

Also forming part of the exhibition are:
Nika Špan, A project for the Interrupted Histories and the Domestic Research Society installation & projections of Alternations and Shut Your Eyes and Watch at the Cabinet (the yard of the Galerija Škuc) (14 - 21 March 2006, 4 - 7 p.m.).

The exhibition has been supported by:
The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Municipality of Ljubljana, Mobitel, Pristop, Mediapool, Renderspace, Embassy of the Republic of Turkey