The DIVA News page refers to public presentations, exhibitions, screenings, publications in Slovenia and on the international scene, connected to participations of DIVA Station Video Archive and the video artists who had contributed their video artworks to the archive. We also introduce events organised by DIVA Station (SCCA-Ljubljana) in order to promote its content and usage.
DIVA Station was hosted by UnionDocs (UnDo) Center for Documentary Art based in Brooklyn (Dec 4, 2016). We are happy that the organisers made a nice poster and the short trailer of the video program. The event was successful, a lot of people joinded and were interested and they were very active in reactions to the video works. The event included the presentation of DIVA Station and a screening of curated program DIVA Station Presents No 3. The discussion between Barbara Borčič, curator of the program, Emil Memon, New York based artist, and Pawel Wojtasik, video artist and film maker, was fundamental and it trigerred a lot of questions and comments. more
DIVA Station archive was on tour in November and December 2016. First in USA, at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) and UnionDocs (UnDo) Center for Documentary Art based in Brooklyn. Beside USA tour we visited also countries in the Region, Croatia and Serbia. DIVA Station was a partner at the project Archive as Practice, which gathered archiving organisations at the discussions in Belgrade (30 Nov) and Zagreb (2 Dec).
We are happy to state that Diva Station, hosted by Lace - Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions next week (November 16, 2016) was successful. It consisted of the presentation of DIVA, screening of DIVA Station Presents 3 (program of Slovenian video works) and discussion with Nancy Buchanan, Kathy Rae Huffman, Nataša Prosenc Stearns an Barbara Borčič. more
This year SCCA-Ljubljana marked the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage (27th of October) with a joint venture of DIVA Station and Argos, Centre for art and media from Brussels at the Slovenian Cinematheque. Presentations and screenings of video programs Fresh Perspective (Vesna Bukovec/DIVA Station) and Belgian video art (Sofie Ruysseveldt & Andrea Cinel/Argos) were the opportunity to get to know more about video art history and contemporary trends as well as to broaden a dialogue and future collaborations. more
DIVA Station is present at the Guerilla Girls exhibition in the Whitechapel Gallery (1 October 2016 – 5 March 2017). Namely, SCCA-Ljubljana has participated at the research by this group of anonymous, feminist activists that explored diversity in European art organisations. The exhibition Is it even worse in Europe? presents responses to questionnaires sent to 383 European museums and galleries. In their respond to our reply »We don’t have a collection, but we have a video archive DIVA Station that includes 54% of women artists«, Guerilla Girls comment: Always room for DIVAS! more
During summer months we were occupied mainly with upgrading and updating the oeuvre of artists actively present on international arena for more decades. Apart from video works by Neven Korda and his series New New Films, we devoted our attention to Nataša Prosenc Stearns to complete the selection of her video works on DIVA. We are also glad to be able to publish an excellent document that Ana Čigon made based on her performance Ana at the Station staged at Project Room SCCA last autumn.
During summer the work at DIVA Station has been quite intesive. Now, we can proudly express our content on sucessfully upgrading and updating the NNF series by Neven Korda. New New Films were made between 2001 and 2007 and consist of twelve videos. They are in-between reports by Neven Korda from his renewed reading of the 1960s. They were presented at the Škratov Garden, The Autonomous Cultural Centre Metelkova mesto, Ljubljana. Neven Korda explains: I believe, Reincarnation, Nomad, An Autumnal Still Life, 1 Sec of My Life were made during 2000 and 2001. The image of An Autumnal Still Life compounds of found footage as for the others the image was generated especially for this purpose. They were developed and finished during monthly happenings Zbogom video (Goodbye Video) in Gromka Club in Ljubljana in 2001/2002 (http://www.korda-art.si/korda/zbogom/index.html). In the same stroke, a conceptual documentary Poletje (Summer) was being made. They were all edited digitally on timeline, in a low-resolution size 320 X 240 in formats JPG, MJPG, Cinepak and alike and were not a production standard. The videos were enlarged and copied to VHS in order to fit the conditions of projection of that time. Since the autumn 2002, they are played at film projections live from computer with a programme Isadora. Later, in 2004, they were all, except Poletje (Summer), rounded up into a whole called Angelski venček (Angelic Wreath). Gagarin and Blind Faith were made in 2003 out of a material of a play and performance Beri me za naprej (Read Me Forward). These films were reused in different forms in editing from 2005-07. Reinkarnacija na Prepariranem monitorju (Reincarnation On Taxidermist Monitor), Angelski venček na speedu (Angelic Wreath On Speed) and Angelski venček na oceanu (Angelic Wreath On Ocean) are the results of flowing editing done in a single piece of time - either in a studio or in front of an audience. In Tukaj in zdaj (Here and Now) the re-editing is done on timeline.
In frame of our program Archiving Practices we have organised a panel discussing the meaning of contemporary archives and usage of audio-visual material (Project Room SCCA, (22. 6. 2016). We were also interested in the feedback by artist especially concerning their attitude towards the selected and structured archive, such as DIVA Station, in relation to a mass of unselective portals focused on presentation and exchange of videos.
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We have joined the traditional Museum Summer Night (18 June 2016) with a two-hour screening program entitled Feedback Loop 2 at Ljubljana Museum Square (Facade +MSUM) in Ljubljana. The video program Feedback Loop 2 curated by Ida Hiršenfelder presents the part of video archive which is extremely important for understanding video art and its social impact, but remains almost entirely unnoticed and non-representational.
Barbara Borčić participated at international symposium in Paris: The Emergence of Video Art in Europe: history, theory, sources and archives in Bibliothèque nationale de France and INHA – Institut national d’histoire de l’art , 25 & 26 May 2016. The goal of the symposium with speakers from different European countries was to present an alternative to the dominant narrative of video art history in which American art is given the most attention.
