[spectre] Helium n#4, Trondheim

[Tanja Vujinovic]

[via xchange]


NIFCA (Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art) and BallongMagasinet
Present
H E L I U M #4
http://www.ballongmagasinet.com/helium

New Release presenting Slovenian artists working with sound: Joze Barsi &
Bojana Piskur, Tanja Vujinovic Kusej, Breda Kralj, Katarina Pejovic and Tao
G. Vrhovec-Sambolec. Curated by Duba Sambolec, professor at the Art Academy
of Trondheim (NTNU).
HELIUM is a project providing a wide collection of Sound Art.
=46or this fourth edition we have invited a Slovenian curator, living in
Norway, to take a dive into the arena of Sound Art in her home country.
Slovenia, a smal! l country situated in the middle of Europe and a part of
former Yugoslavia, although being saved from the ethnic wars, nevertheless
was its closest neighbor during the critical years. The flourishing
Slovenian scene of sound art and art made for Internet has grown in a quite
different soil and out of a different political necessity than the art from
Northern Europe, thus giving a surprising and fresh expression in spite of
dark undertones.
HELIUM#4 offers a playful and free approach to sound accompanied by rich
imagery. For fu! rther information please contact: BallongMagasinet,
mailto:red@ballongmagasinet.com


On the artists presenting works at H E L I U M #4

Joze Barsi (b.1955) is working as an artist and art-professor and Bojana
Piskur (b.1970) as a curator and artist, both are based in Ljubljana. Their
piece for HELIUM#4 is created as an imaginary trip along a subway-network.
At the differ! ent stops one is given the opportunity to stop at some of
the places the artists have been visiting on their travels around the
world. Their correspondence consists of soundscapes and written impressions
- small stories and poetical texts from everyday life. All texts are
presented as e-mails; as in this example that reveals how the work came
into being: "I am dead tired. I am back from New York. I have this guy from
MOMA saying... "I am...and I have been working in this beautiful museum for
25 years, you can see Picasso in here". I have sounds from the subway and
some music as well".

Tanja Vujinovic Kusej (b.1973) is working in the field of video and
installation. Since 1996, she has presented interventions, video
installations and other works at various galleries, artist-! run centers
and public spaces in more than thirty individual and collective exhibitions
(Germany, Yugoslavia, Scotland, France, Slovenia etc.).She was studying at
the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade and at Kuns! takademie Dusseldorf
where she has been guest student of Jan Dibbets. She currently lives and
works in Ljubljana, Slovenia.



At HELIUM#4 she presents two works Dialog and Variola Vera.
Dialog consists of everyday sounds that can be played back by clicking on
images showing details from the artists home. The piece is giving insight
to the most intimate parts of the artists life - putting attention to
details that one tend to overlook. Variola Vera is based on a film by G.
Markovic: A motion feature telling the story of the last major smallpox
epidemic in Europe. This film was a source to anxiety for a whole
generation. For HELIUM#4 she has made a loop of a scary moment from the
film that together with a dialogue raise a tension by the potential
understanding or not understanding of what is said. The foreign language
is!  transformed into abstract sound units that might bear dangerous
meanings. Today the work is going even further in actuality in the context
of the latest treats of potential bio weapon attacks.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Breda Kralj's (b.1966) artistic activities span from directing and
performing in theatre to music, animation, computer- and net-based works.
Her work also includes exhibitions as well as documentary video spots,
one-woman dance performances and participating in Demo parties signing her
work with the pseudonym Sofia. Her five pieces presented at HELIUM#4 are
called A Room/Izba and they are all thematically interconnected. Within
their vignette like form, ! one can trace the remains of old Slovenian
folklore: Traditional lace-work and
outdoor wooden-window-shutters are contrasted with everyday sounds and
break-beats in a commercial style. Elements from national music refers to a
specific place that when mixed with electronic sounds links the past with
present time.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Katarina Pejovic (b.1962) has worked as a stage director in professional
theatres as well as with independent theatre groups. She has authored Radio
and TV plays and published essays and reviews on theatre and literature.
=46rom the mid-90's she has been involved in multimedia-projects such as
performances, installations and web-castings. On her work PRO -
Do-it-Yourself Protest Kit, presented at HELIUM#4, Pejovic states:
"Politics has once again made an entry in our everyday lives. On one hand,
globalization is sharpening to extremes in almost all essential issues as
identity, aut! onomy, ecology, freedom and survival. On the other, some
regions that nurture the tradition of ethnic tensions and economic
instability prove to be a fertile ground for the destructive outbursts of
that same globalization, getting caught in smaller or bigger wars and
dictatorships. Internet allows the creation of a planetary community making
campaigns and disseminating petitions on issues that might bring people to
the streets. There is probably no one with an e-mail address that doesn't
receive daily information on political subjects along with appeals for
reaction. The sense and effect of those actions are embedded by their very
presence in our lives. PRO is a possible meeting point of those two ways.
It is an individuals view. Is it ambivalent? Ironic? Engaged? Superficial?
Mocking? Ridiculous? Provocative? It is up to you to decide. Or let it be
decided for you".
----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
---
Tao G. Vrhovec-Sambole! c (b. 1972) has background from studies in
philosophy in Ljubljana, clarinet studies at the Music Conservatory in
Trondheim and studies in composition at the Royal Conservatory in The
Hague. In the mid nineties he started co-working with Marko Peljhan, and
entered the visual art scene with performance and music. Thereafter he
continued to collaborate with different artists, making music for
installations and multimedia performances. In 1999 he formed the ! group
TILT together with Tomaz Grom, and released the CD Dvojnik/The Double.For
HELIUM#4 he presents a work in progress called Investigation "a!". It can
be an instrument, a game, a piece of music or a sound-scape. It is based on
translating letters directly into sounds. A visitor can type in any text,
select from different sound alphabets, structure them in time, press PLAY
and listen to the result. The question that the artist want to arise is
whether this makes any sense at all, or if the outcome could happen to
become music.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.ballongmagasinet.com/helium

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
on the curator of Helium #4

DUBA, DUBRAVKA ANA SAMBOLEC


Duba Sambolec was born in 1949 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She had been a
freelance artist till 1992. Since then she is the Head of Sculpture
Department at Kunstakademiet i Trondheim, Norway. Duba has been exhibiting
at numerous national and international group shows and she have had until
now 29 one-woman exhibitions. She was invited artist to the International
=46estival of Contemporary Arts, City of Women, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2000,
Aperto `88, Venice Biennial in!  1988, Italy and Sao Paulo Biennial in
1985, Brazil.

Her art covers sculpture, video, photo and sound installations.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
----

Duba Sambolec                                                     =20

Trondheim, Ljubljana, December 2001


Detour

I am inclined to make a detour that is mapping the state of affairs today.
I find this necessary in order to locate the position and role of art today
and with it, my choice of artists.

My interest in art and artists in general and also presented here is
focused on such articulations, which correspond to the particularities of
our time that are conditioning our way of living and consequently, our
reasoning and sensitivity.

Recently I heard the news on the radio: Pierre Boulez was arrested at an
airport in Switzerland, with charges of a terrorist criminal act. He came
to a symposium for a long weekend and should have delivered a talk, etc.
Instead, he was imprisoned and accused of a crime. Some thirty years ago,
he publicly stated that all Opera Theaters should be blown up. On the back
cover of his book Orientations, we read: =ECBoulez is (arguably) the laureat=
e
of post-war European music, and his public utterances are part of the
permanent record of this era=EE. (College Music Symposium, =A9 Faber and Fab=
er
Ltd and the President and F! ellows of Harvard College, 1986).

This event provides us with a historical orientation and with a sense of
rapid changes. A paradigm of our time is a shift from the once troublesome,
but still possible discourse between provocative artists and the
institutions of law and order; (Boulez was not charged nor imprisoned when
he made the statement). A significant informative indicator is the
paranoiac acting out of the institutions that are the guardians of law and
order, which understand a thirty year old statement as a criminal act
therefore the real danger for the fundamentals of our society. The event is
also enlightening to contemporary reasoning of individuals in general, and
artists in particular, that employ different strategies and methods for
possible critical opposition to mainstream ideology today. To be sure,
computers are selecting and marking out people that use w! ords such as
=ECblow up=EE, =ECdestroy=EE, =ECattack=EE, etc. So, farewell to the =ECgood=
 old
avant-garde=EE, (we have said this already, but what happens to the
neo-neo-avant-garde?), good bye freedom of speech and personal expression.
Moreover, when you debate or make statements publicly, do not use any
metaphors. Even if Boulez really meant what he stated and was not speaking
metaphorically, we know that he never blew up any Opera Theater.
=46urthermore, maybe you are already in the police records, but in case you
might not be, then, from now on, you may upgrade your self-protection by
watching your words, if you want to avoid being arrested and imprisoned on
your future travels.

Experience is in ruins. May we utter this zeitgeist statement? Recent
tourist industry offers of tours to war zone countries, to flooded Berlin
underground bunkers or to dangerous slums of large cities, are indicators
of the Western hunger for the =ECreal thing=EE. Of course, the tours are
successful and are founded on the wishful tourist=EDs trust in the
organizers, who should at the same time provide them with, and protect them
from, the real traumatic experience. Nevertheless! , there have been some
casualties on such tourist travels. We could go on with examples of the
same kind. In the meantime, we may not ignore a phenomenon of growing
paranoia and people=EDs demand for control, increased surveillance and
disciplinary politics, all in the name of personal security. If the real
direction of technology is =ECcomfort and control=EE then we may answer the
above-mentioned question. Yes, experience is in ruins or better, experience
has already been moved into the utopian, therefore unreachable locus. It
might just be desired in the post-human condition of indifference that is
determined by technology adoration and accompanied by hyper-boredom. People
do want to leave their imperfect bodies and persist on dreaming of
imprinting (human) biology on technology.

Now, all the above reasoning would be correct if we were already totally
globalized and everybody lived in towns such as Disney town Celebration in
=46lorida, USA. In addition, all people on this planet would have to have
robots that inhabit their homes, working places, their bodies, etc. To be
realistic, this scenario of our possible future is still valid.
=46urthermore, in the globalization process we are realizing that we ha! ve
to deal, if we want to communicate without =ECcasualties=EE, with people=EDs
different understanding of time, which is conditioned by the status of
experience that is not yet improved by prosthetic devices and eased by
smart tools. Most people=EDs existences are bound to materiality, gravity an=
d
friction between the body, the other body and the outside material world.
At least we are certain that our lives are still determined with finitudes
such as death, disease and sexuality. Maybe we should look at the human
race from this perspective: what does experience mean to different people
at different places today?

In global communication that is bound to cultural background of the
involved performers, where values priority systems play a crucial role in
reaching the objective, which is understanding, we are facing friction and
controversy rather than a smooth transport of meaning via language
understood by everybody. Therefore, futuristic =ECvisionary hopes=EE investe=
d
into smart machines that overcome these cultural, therefore ideological
differences, show to be short in managing the culture translation issue.
Another aspect of smart machines in action points to the satisfaction of
imperialist appetites. The result might be the bombing of the
=ECundisciplined other=EE or the sell out of =ECinhuman=EE weapons to=
 everybody who
needs them. Nowadays the words =ECcivilization=EE and =ECto be civilized=EE =
are
used as our property and they do not signify ! non-Western societies.
However, both words are synonymous to =ECjust wars=EE that are being fought
again and are in opposition to the =ECevil in the world=EE, all in the name =
of
one universal truth meaning one universal civilization.

=46or me, the USA bombing and the Boulez story are the events that point out
our role in shaping the history of the near future. The interpretation of
and the reaction to these events might take us on different courses.
Therefore, we should have a critical distance towards any hysteric actions
that might lead us into the rule of hyper-controlled and over-organized
police states. On the other hand, did I miss something, are we there
already?



Tour

=46ive artists at Helium#4 edition cover different fields of interest in
their art. However, there are links between their concepts. The decisive
parameters that indicate similarities are the ways in which the artists
decided to treat the visitor to the site in the communication process, and
the character of narration that they offer them on screen.



Tanja Vujinovic Kusej and collaborators Joze Barsi & Bojana Piskur are
sensitive towards their daily living. The streams of thoughts inside their
heads are interlaced with
the_________________________________________________________________

 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   | (a) (c) (o) (u) (s)
(t) (i) (c) ( ) (s) (p) (a) (c) (e)  |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   | information channel | for net.broadcasters
http://xchange.re-lab.net  (Xchange)  net.audio network xchange
search/webarchive: http://xchange.re-lab.net/a/