15. International Festival of Contemporary Arts -
City of Women
Regina José Galindo:
Artist's Talk
Presentation and video screening

Saturday, October 17, 2009, at 5pm
Project Room SCCA, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana

15. International Festival of Contemporary Arts - City of Women will take place in Ljubljana from October 9 to October 18. This year's edition is entitled Global South. One of the invited artists is Regina José Galindo from Guatemala.

Regina José Galindo will present her work in the Project Room SCCA on Saturday, October 17. The artist's talk will be accompanied with the screening of her videos ?Quién puede borrar las huellas? / Who Can Remove the Traces (production: R.J.G., 2003) and CRISIS dignity (production: Futura, Czecz Republic, 2009).

?Quién puede borrar las huellas? / Who Can Remove the Traces
(foto: Victor Pérez, produkcija: R.J.G., 2003)

CRISIS dignity (foto: Francisco Toralla, produkcija: Futura, Češka, 2009)

Regina Jose Galindo is a visual and performance artist. Her live art often deals with physical endurance and suffering, thus commenting the political unrest and societal gaps related to her country, Guatemala. She has exhibited worldwide, in galleries, museums and biennials, and after Harald Szeeman invited her to 49th Venice Biennial, she was awarded the Golden Lion two years later, at the 51st Venice Biennial.

15. International Festival of Contemporary Arts - Global South
October 9-18, 2009

The Global South

The modern division of the world as it exists in the economic and social-political sense of the word brought forth a sharp split between the rich, developed, and dominant North and the poor, undeveloped, and exploited South. The former seems to extend its influence over all countries, unable to meet the conditions of those developed, regardless of their geographic position. On the other hand, the global South and its massive markets await as an oasis, offering true opportunities, great challenges for economic growth, profitable investments and generous profits. Regretfully, however, entrance into this promising massive market is possible for only a relative minority of the world population, which itself introduced the free/deregulated market, democracy, neo-liberal economic system, and even went as far as to use the story of capitalism by presenting it as the only possible alternative in order to legitimize all that. The centuries old processes of colonisation, decolonisation, and neo-colonisation of the Third World prepared fertile ground for the forthcoming economic invasion, which acquired universal dimensions on the wings of globalisation and has inundated the entire world as never before, reaching out to even the most remote and hidden places of the globe. It soon became obvious, however, that this very process is a harbinger of destructiveness just like many other historical processes undertaken in the name of progress. As a result, the international community is forced to face various acute problems, including poverty, ecological disasters, human and civil rights violation, discrimination, ethnic and regional conflicts, massive migrations of refugees, hunger, violence, and diseases. The field of culture and art proved itself far from immune to the general trends of globalization due to a specific distribution of thought, moral standards, and ethical values. The distribution in question took place through information networks, which were monopolized by the prevailing type of culture. Despite this fact, what nevertheless has succeeded to coexists on the sidelines are certain artistic practices with a critical stance, contemplating the modern mutated vision of society, which abolishes history, differences, identities, and specifics. What remains to persist and insist is art, which reflects upon wider or merely local and violence-soaked images of the peripheral Global South. It is for this reason that we decided to invite artists from all artistic genres and many peripheral continents to participate in this year's festival and thus contribute to the contemplative and discursive arena evolving around the issue of the Global South with their own discourse on political-social and cultural reality.

Mara Vujić

The event is prepared in collaboration with City of Women.

No Nails, No Pedestals is presenting authors, working in the field of contemporary artistic practices (installations, performances, video, interdisciplinary & web projects). The artists can present their works by using different media and program tools for presentation on computer screens, television sets and wall projections. The audience is encouraged to reflect the works and intervene in the discussion and thus add to the interpretational level of artistic practices with their feedback.