Coded Utopia: from Makrolab to the Arctic Perspective Initiative

29 March - 19 June 2011
Moderna galerija, Ljubljana

Marko Peljhan, Matthew Biederman and collaborators

Video recording of the tour through the exhibition by Marko Peljhan and Matthew Biederman
Video in Slovenian and partly English (Slo/En)

The Makrolab project (1994-2007) is being presented in its entirety in a museum setting for the first time. The exhibition will include the structure of Makrolab, documentation of its genesis and ten years of operation from its origin through its first materialization at documenta X in Kassel to its transition into the projects Interpolar Transnational Art Science Constellation and the Arctic Perspectives Initiative (API).

The Makrolab project is one of the most significant projects to have originated in a Slovenian context in the last two decades. This exhibition will present it to the general public as well, since the project is much better known internationally than in Slovenia. The final phase of this process will be the construction of Makrolab?s working architecture in Slovenia, as a work of art and a laboratory instrument for the study of art, tactical media, ecology, radio communications and atmospheric physics.

The exhibition will also include a presentation of the artworks and archives of the Arctic Perspectives Initiative (API) project, which was premiered as part of the European Capital of Culture Ruhr 2010 in Dortmund. API is an international non-profit initiative made up of
individuals and organizations who are trying to raise public awareness about the cultural and ecological importance of the circumpolar regions and to establish open systems of creativity, communications and distribution infrastructures in these regions. One of the main objectives of the initiative is to create conditions through which the Arctic peoples, with the help of open-source technologies, systems of creativity, teaching and training, will be able to collaborate equally and sustainably in the acquisition and exchange of information about the environment and the changes to it that are the result of global climate change.

The exhibition was staged in association with Zavod Projekt Atol and C-TASC.

http://arcticperspective.org/

The project has been supported by The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the City of Ljubljana.