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 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.
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.
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.
During the exhibition in Vžigalica Gallery the interviews with artists on the topic of the presented video works have been made by curator Nika Grabar. Two of them have been published on DIVA so far: Neven Korda on video Discipline and Marko Peljhan on video The Parc of Culture. A very informative reading on the conceptual and contextual background of video production.
You can find them on SOURCES >INTERVIEWS.
When we type various keywords relating to a book in DIVA archive, the poetry is by far the most successful in number of hits/video works. We have chosen a few of them and the decision was not an easy one. On occasion of the World Book Day (April 22 and 23), we kindly invite you to take a stroll through this on-line archive that is going to be presented soon also at the symposium in Paris Bibliotheque Nacionale. You may well discover what relations between fine arts and literature exist and how they can meet and co-exist.
How can we present video works in a physical space of a gallery in order to follow a curatorial concept researching the relationship between space and video and simultaneously provide the chosen videos with an adequate setting that would efficiently address their contents? The exhibition Proximity Effect offers a well elaborated proposal that follows the narrative conceived along the concept 'the image of transition displayed in video works or how the space has been disintegrating'. As a result, the exhibition takes the visitor on a tour of six different spatial installations beginning with spatial screenings (Discipline, Vertigo Bird), to be followed by installations placing the video in a relationship with the spatial object, and thereby with the human body (Path of Crazy Wisdom, The Park of Culture, Construct, Quick/Slow).
The image of transition displayed in video works or how the space has been disintegrating.
DIVA Station is continuously preparing exhibitions with specific themes involving in-depth research. In the exhibition Proximity Effect (15 March–8 May 2016), our collaborator and curator Nika Grabar questions the meaning of space in chosen video works by artists Zemira Alajbegović, Neven Korda/Borghesia, Marko Peljhan, Sašo Podgoršek & Iztok Kovač, Nataša Prosenc Stearns, Miha Vipotnik.