Vžigalica Gallery, Ljubljana, 28 November, 2012

The discussion at the end of the Video Turn exhibition project attracted a great number of people. Besides the numerous participants, the curiosity brought in also some representatives of the so-called interested public – as mentioned by one of them. The collaborators on this project varied in background and occupation. This was after all a very important part of the experimental practice, which we tried to explore and materialise in the course of a bit more than two weeks at the Vžigalica Gallery. The process of developing the installations was accompanied with quite a few obstacles and traps, dilemmas and presupposed expectations, and also some disappointments and small incidents.

Neven Korda spoke about his experience with the series of five events-performances in the framework of the workshop situation and about his changing installation entitled Dominant Black. In this repeated and evolving performative atmosphere that has built a tight relationship with the audience we were able to recognise and understand Korda’s experimental video practice – as it was also elaborated by one of the participants of the workshop on writing about this exhibition. These live events were also valuable opportunities for questions, discussions, and opinion making.

Sergej Kapus made an important contribution to the project by Miha Vipotnik, as an expert and author of several research books on the oeuvre of Jožef Petkovšek, and fervent interpreter of his painting entitled Home, which served as the base or a starting point for this project. Kapus greatly contributed also as an important communicator as a professor at the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts whose students played the key role in building the setting for this installation. He actually opened the gateway for his students to step into an unknown situation of an open and creative workshop. Kapus stressed the importance of such experience for everyone involved, while students themselves commented how important they found the slowly building relationship and understanding with Vipotnik, and upgrading their understanding and engagement with the process that also brought them joy and pleasure.

During the discussion we made a short break in order to open the curtains and invite the public to step into the Home installation to view the final outcome of the recorded sequence. A number of participants and actors who contributed to the making of this artwork were present at the gallery. Amongst them the most busy with the final touches were the cameraman Daniel Alberto Rodrigues Correia and assistant director Lucia Smodiš. Vipotnik was absent – just as at the beginning of the workshop. At that very moment he was somewhere on the plane between Istanbul and Beirut. Conceptually his absence had some relation to the reasons behind the topic of the installation “home” which is sometimes a very unstable and uncanny place. We sent him photos and videos that were constantly being documented by photographer Jasna Jernejšek and video editor Toni Poljanec – also published on these blog.

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