[spectre] Visual Foreign Correspondents presents Issue 4: Igor Stromajer

[Marieke Istha]

Visual Foreign Correspondents presents
Issue 4
12 February – 10 March 2008
Artist: Igor Stromajer, Slovenia
Title: The Netherlands is respectful. Russia is corrupt.

In collaboration with The Globalised Crystal Ball this ist the fourth 
issue of Visual Foreign Correspondents. VFC is an independent platform 
in which 11 distinguished artists from around the world are invited each 
month to give their personal visual commentary on events and situations 
from their locally situated perspective. Their works especially created 
for urban screens and online platforms. This project will give people in 
the streets of Amsterdam a brief window into other regions, peoples and 
other kinds of imagination.

The Slovenian artist Igor Stromajer describes himself as an ‘intimate 
mobile communicator’. He started his career at the academy for theatre 
in Ljubljana. From 1989 he worked together with Bojana Kunst on his 
theatrical experiments, which they called ‘theatrical installations’. 
Together they studied relations between the body of the actor, dancer 
and spectator, physical energy, intimate plot, and the private 
examination of the actor in public (theatre) space. With the arrival of 
internet his interest in multimedia performance and especially net art 
grew. More than theatre the internet gave him the possibility to build 
on a more intimate relation with his audience. His performances on the 
web are working on themes like emotion and trauma, whereby he uses 
advanced but simple technologies that he develops in his own production 
house: Intima Virtual Base. His most well-known award winning works are 
amongst others Ballettikka Internettikka and Oppera Internettikka. His 
work is part of international renowned art collections and he travels 
across Europe and North America as artist in resident and guest lecturer 
in academies, universities and art organizations. At the moment Igor 
concentrates on political aspects of mobile, intimate, digital 
communication. In the form of intermediate guerrilla actions he is 
constantly searching for intimate communication.

In his work ‘The Netherlands is respectful. Russia is corrupt’ Stromajer 
is in search for current verdicts about the different countries from 
East and West Europe. Stereotypical sentences and surprising quotes are 
running across the screen in two hard lines, two subtitles in front of a 
black hole. The top one symbolises Western Europe, the bottom one 
Eastern Europe. This hierarchy in form seems harsh and inevitable, 
divided by the black background, without colour or light, but changes 
when reading the phrases. The speed of the sentences makes the words 
tumble, meanings are inter-changing and Europe becomes again one. 
According to Stromajer: “Politics is the poetry of today”.

Visual Foreign Correspondents is connected to The Globalised Crystal 
Ball, a series of monthly international seminars hosted by De Balie on 
globalisation and the future of the international community and spread 
over a full year. These monthly seminars feature internationally 
renowned speakers, examining the changing nature of globalisation. The 
screen-based artworks play an important role in contributing an 
alternative perspective to these meetings. Artist’s contribution to this 
event is not simple illustration but provides another kind of 
imaginative response to these subjects.

The work will be launched during the seminar event of the Globalised 
Crystal Ball in the conference space. An introduction to the work will 
be given, making a connection to the seminar and the ideas of the artist.
Independent from the seminar the work will then feature on the urban 
screen outside the ‘Balie’ every night for a month, on the The 
Contemporary Art Screen, at the Zuidas and in 11-Reatuarant Bar Club, 
part of Post-CS, museum of modern art, Amsterdam. These screens will be 
in relationship to a specially designed website and ‘Oog’. The VFC 
website will show the work and contextualize it with political, social 
and cultural background information. Furthermore it will give 
information about the project and a possibility for the audience to 
interact.
The work will also feature in ‘OOG’, a commentary and opinion platform 
that is part the online edition of De Volkskrant, a major Dutch daily 
national newspaper. Here the work will feature for a week as part of the 
continuing series of artist commentaries.

http://www.visualcorrespondents.com

Screen locations
De Balie: Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10, Amsterdam
http://www.debalie.nl
CASZ: Zuidplein, Amsterdam
http://www.caszuidas.nl
11/Restaurant bar club: Oosterdokskade 3-5, Amsterdam
http://www.ilove11.nl

http://www.volkskrant.nl/oog

Visual Foreign Correspondents
Artistic director: Nanette Hoogslag
Editors: David Garcia, Nat Muller, Petra Heck and Eric Kluitenberg

For more information please contact Nanette Hoogslag at 
info at visualcorrespondents.com

Visual Foreign Correspondents is made possible by Amsterdamse Fonds voor 
de Kunsten, VSB, De Balie and the NetherlandsMedia Art Institute

-- 

*Marieke Istha *
*Communication*
*istha at nimk.nl *

*Netherlands Media Art Institute*
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*Program*
Vertigo by Daan Brinkmann
Opening 8/2, 17:00
Presentation: 9/2- 15/2

Sonic Acts XII exhibition
Opening 21/2, 17:00
Exhibition: 22/2 - 22/3 2008
With works from: Boris Debackere, Kurt Hentschläger, Ulf Langheinrich, Julien Maire