Projects of co-workers
KOLEKTIVA: Selected videos
Nightly screenings

July 12 – August 8, 2012, every night from 9 p.m. onwards
Night display window of Centralna postaja, Koroška cesta 5, Maribor
Opening view: Thursday, July 12, 2012 at 9 p.m.

We would like to inform you about the exhibition project of the art group KOLEKTIVA and Vesna Bukovec, SCCA-Ljubljana's webmaster and member of the art group.

Art group KOLEKTIVA (Vesna Bukovec, Lada Cerar, Metka Zupanič) is exhibiting within the Video module of Centralna postaja (Central Station) in Maribor, Slovenia.

List of videos:

• First Impression, July 12–21, 2012
• Hiteti ali biti temeljit?, July 22–31, 2012
• Special Place in the City – Graz, August 1–8, 2012

First Impression
2004, 9', no sound
July 12–21, 2012

KOLEKTIVA was invited by the art group Yolk from Nottingham (Ljubljana's sister city) to make a new work involving citizens of Ljubljana and somehow presenting them to the citizens of Nottingham.
The video is based on a stereotyped understanding of people around us. One usually creates a certain impression of a person that he/she first meets. It is commonly known that a person creates an inner image of another person in first two hours after they met. We secretly recorded random people at the main public square Prešernov trg in Ljubljana on a given day. Each of us wrote down her first impression of them. Than we asked a friend to interview observed people. In the video we present a mixture of real identity and three different imposed ones. The video was screened on a façade of an old cinema in public space of Nottingham .

First Impression on Vimeo

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Hiteti ali biti temeljit?
2004, 3' 25''
July 22–31, 2012

The work is a result of a public action of KOLEKTIVA performed on a residency in Nottingham, UK in 2004. The title is a Slovene sentence, which was publicly displayed in the centre of Nottingham city. Each word has its English translation and phonetic transcription, taken directly from a Slovene-English dictionary. Each word has several translations, which generate subtle differences in meaning. The phrase cannot be translated exactly, leaving space for people to compose their own sentence. The video shows random people trying to pronounce these Slovene words. The structure of power held by native speakers of dominant world languages (such as English) is subverted, as we ask them to pronounce Slovene words.

Hiteti ali biti temeljit? on Vimeo

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Special Place in the City – Graz
2006, 38'
August 1–8, 2012

The video is part of a project made on a residency in Graz, Austria. We asked selected individuals to present to us their personal special place and tell us a story about it. In a solo exhibition we presented these places in various layers: through a narration (video), with personal objects borrowed from participants and related to special places, as historical facts and as marked locations on a map of the city.
The focus of the project is based on two aspects, the first being the intimate perception of individuals’ stories. In the video we intertwine two spaces – a personal special place and a place of everyday routine (such as workplace, home, etc.) A psychological element is present in observing an individual and its personal history linked to a location. Watching unique portraits of inhabitants and their disclosures offers a voyeuristic pleasure and a possibility of identifying. The second essential aspect is the city. Stories of individuals provide a new or different reading of places, and uncover multiple meanings created by the experience and memories of the inhabitants.
Project's website: www.special-place.net.

About KOLEKTIVA

KOLEKTIVA’s work is based on research of various aspects of communication, inter-personal relationships, and everyday life. In their projects they search for all kinds of personal stories and are interested in both storytelling and voyeurism at the same time. As a group they create projects in response to given situations. They frequently collaborate with the public. They invite different individuals, passersby or specially targeted groups to collaborate and they include them in their projects as a source or co-authors of the work. The artists understand the process of art making as a mixture of imagination, negotiation, exchange and cooperation.
In ten years of collaboration Vesna Bukovec, Lada Cerar and Metka Zupanič presented their group works in several solo exhibitions and participated in significant international group shows in Slovenia and Europe. KOLEKTIVA is mostly known for different projects within their platform Special Place in the City for which they gain international recognition.
Besides working in KOLEKTIVA all three authors work as successful solo artists. Metka Zupanič and Vesna Bukovec also curate video screenings and exhibitions of international contemporary video art in collaboration with the Photon Gallery.

www.kolektiva.org

Production: Centralna postaja, Zavod Kolektiva
Selector of Video module by Centralna postaja: Aleksandra Saška Gruden

Centralna postaja is supported by European Capital of Culture Maribor 2012.

www.centralnapostaja.si

[Published July 11, 2012]