ARTM Online Content

OHO Interviews

ARTMargins publishes  two new interviews with formers members of OHO, David Nez and Milenko Matanovi?. The Slovene OHO group, which formed in the late 1960’s, consisted of Milenko Matanovi?, David Nez, Marko Poga?nik, and Andraž Šalamun. It belonged to the wider Slovene OHO movement and regularly collaborated with this wider circle of intellectuals and artists. After very intense three years of working together, the members of OHO decided no longer to pursue success in the art world, trying instead to live closer to nature and to explore spirituality. Today OHO’s legacy represents one of the crucial references for Slovene contemporary … Read more

Rearview Mirror: New Art From Central And Eastern Europe (Review Article)

REARVIEW MIRROR: NEW ART FROM CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE, THE POWER PLANT, TORONTO, JULY 1, 2011 – SEPTEMBER 5, 2011; THE ART GALLERY OF ALBERTA, EDMONTON, JANUARY 28, 2012 – APRIL 29, 2012

Identificatory scenarios abound in Rearview Mirror: New Art from Central and Eastern Europe, which is co-produced by The Power Plant Art Gallery in Toronto and the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton. As the site of a subject’s first encounter with their own image as Other, the mirror appears in both literal and figurative guise in a number of the works on display here. And yet the … Read more

The OHO Files: Preface

The Slovene OHO group, which formed in the late 1960’s, consisted of Milenko Matanovi?, David Nez, Marko Poga?nik, and Andraž Šalamun. It belonged to the wider Slovene OHO movement and regularly collaborated with this wider circle of intellectuals and artists. After very intense three years of working together, the members of OHO decided no longer to pursue success in the art world, trying instead to live closer to nature and to explore spirituality. Today OHO’s legacy represents one of the crucial references for Slovene contemporary art. A major Slovene prize for young artists has been named after the group.

In … Read more

The OHO Files: Afterword

The publication of Beti Žerovc’s interviews with David Nez and Milenko Matanovi? marks a significant moment for art historians such as myself who have researched OHO both as a cultural phenomenon and as an artistic collective. The most prominent historians of OHO have included Tomaž Brejc, Igor Zabel, and Miško Suvakovi?. All of them did important work reconstructing the group’s various formations and activities between 1965 and 1971, and assessing its legacy. A reevaluation of the OHO’s role in the history of post-war artistic culture was spurred by Igor Zabel’s 1994 OHO retrospective at Ljubljana’s Moderna Galerija. Since then, more … Read more

The OHO Files: Interview with Milenko Matanović

ARTMargins Online publishes exclusive interviews with former members of the Ljubljana-based OHO Group, which formed in the late 1960’s and consisted of Milenko Matanovi?, David Nez, Marko Poga?nik, and Andraž Šalamun. It belonged to the wider Slovene OHO Movement and regularly collaborated with this wider circle of intellectuals and artists.

Milenko Matanovic is an artist and community organizer, founding the Pomegranate Center, whose mission has been to develop an effective model for helping communities prepare for the future using collective creativity, meaningful engagement and powerful collaboration. Matanovic began his career as an experimental artist in the late ’60s in his … Read more

The OHO Files: Interview with David Nez

ARTMargins Online publishes exclusive interviews with former members of the Ljubljana-based OHO Group, which formed in the late 1960’s and consisted of Milenko Matanovi?, David Nez, Marko Poga?nik, and Andraž Šalamun. It belonged to the wider Slovene OHO Movement and regularly collaborated with this wider circle of intellectuals and artists.

David Nez was born in 1949 in Massachusetts, USA. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He joined OHO in 1968, participating in exhibitions, happenings, photo projects and films. At first, he created objects, followed by environments and installations. Notable among OHO’s “Summer Projects” are his … Read more

Dispatch from Bucharest

Preparing for my first time back in Romania after 7 years I was filled with a certain anxiety: those stray dogs I remembered wandering the streets in packs, the beggars on every street corner, the guilt one feels for being a “privileged foreigner” amidst all the poverty and misery.

And yet my one week stay, undertaken thanks to a grant from the Romanian Cultural Institute, was filled with surprises: on the surface at least everything looked like a county on the cusp of change. Bucharest was vibrant and alive with an amazing energy, and specifically the art scene was in … Read more

The Hidden Decade: Polish Video Art 1985-1995 (Book Review)

Ukryta dekada. Polska sztuka wideo 1985-1995 / The Hidden Decade: Polish Video Art 1985-1995, eds. Piotr Krajewski, Violetta Kutlubasis-Krajewska, WRO Art Center, Wroclaw 2010, 336 p.

Given the contributions of feminism or New Historicism, the statement that there is no such thing as complete and cohesive ‘”great narrative” appears to be a cliché. When writing a history, especially the first historical outline of an art field, one will inevitably get involved in the politics of inclusion and exclusion (the canon), and one will have to answer questions such as: who is speaking? and from where? Such questions evidently beset … Read more

Václav Kadrnka in conversation with Natascha Drubek

Natascha Drubek discusses Eighty letters (Osmdesát dopis?, CZ, 2011, 75 min) with the film’s director, Václav Kadrnka.

 

 

Václav Kadrnka was born in 1973 in Gottwaldov (now Zlín), Czechoslovakia. In 1987, when the ?SSR was not touched by perestroika, yet, his mother filed an application for emigration to the United Kingdom. Her husband had already fled to England earlier. The family was reunited in 1988. When 1989 brought political changes in his homeland, Kadrnka revisited Czechoslovakia. In 1992 he decided to stay. From 1999 to 2008 he studied to be a film director at the Film and TV School … Read more

Interview with Karel Och

The International Film Festival (Mezinárodní filmový festival Karlovy Vary) is held annually in the Western Bohemian spa town of Karlovy Vary, (formely also known as Karlsbad). This A-festival in the last 15 years gained worldwide recognition and has become one of Europe’s major film events. Notable programme sections are East of the West (a selection of films from the former Soviet bloc) and an overview of the Czech and Slovak films made during the past year. Natscha Drubek talks to Och about the festival. http://www.kviff.com/en/news/

Made during the 46th edition of the International Film Festival Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, in … Read more

Interview with Urszuła Antoniak

The Polish born director talks to Natascha Drubek about the symbolic place of the Hospital, about Death as the only portal to spirituality in Western societies; about unconscious Catholicism; windows in art and voyeurism in Code Blue; the cleanliness of Berlin hospitals; the non-existence of female sexuality; and the withholding of permission to use a DVD cover of the film Doctor Zhivago in Code Blue.

Made during the 46th edition of the International Film Festival Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, in July 2011.

Urszuła Antoniak was born in Czestochowa. She studied film production in Poland and graduated as film … Read more

Agency Gendered: Deconstructed Marriages and Migration Narratives in Contemporary Art

Throughout the past two years and in three consecutive exhibitions the Budapest Ludwig Museum has displayed parts of its collection, with an accent on recently acquired or rarely seen artworks. The show Kind of Change, which ran between March and May 2011, offered pieces purchased by or donated to the Ludwig between 2009-2011. The museum’s board selected works by Hungarian artists who have already entered the national canon of contemporary art, or who have made a name for themselves internationally, as well as works by a younger generation of East-Central European artists who are anticipated to become household names on … Read more

Interview with WHW Collective (Zagreb)

What, How & for Whom/WHW is a curatorial collective formed in 1999 and based in Zagreb. Its members are Ivet ?urlin, Ana Devi?, Nataša Ili? and Sabina Sabolovi?, and the designer and publicist Dejan Krši?. WHW organizes a wide range of production, exhibition, and publishing projects. The collective directs Gallery Nova in Zagreb. “What, how, and for whom” are three basic questions that are central to any economic organization. They also concern the planning, concept, and realization of exhibitions and the production and distribution of artworks together with the artist’s position in the labor market. “What, how, and for whom” … Read more

Lev Kuleshov (Dir.), “Proekt Inzhenera Praita” (“Engineer Prite’s Project”); “Velikii uteshitel’ (O. Genri v tiur’me)” (“The Great Consoler (O’Henry in Prison”) (DVD Review)

Proekt Inzhenera Praita (Engineer Prite’s Project), Directed by Lev Kuleshov, 1918, 30 Minutes; Hyperkino commentary by Nikolai Izvolov and Natascha Drubek-Meyer. RUSCICO: Kino Academia 1 (2 DVDs);

Velikii uteshitel’ (O. Genri v tiur’me) (The Great Consoler (O Henry in Prison), Directed by Lev Kuleshov, 1933, 91 Minutes); Hyperkino commentary by Ekaterina Khokhlova. RUSCICO: Kino Academia 3 (2 DVDs

The life and career of Lev Kuleshov pose certain paradoxes. Kuleshov appears in every account of early Sovietcinema and is typically cited—along with Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Vertov–as one of its true pioneers. Kuleshov, who was born in 1899, was also the youngest … Read more

Raša Todosijević in Conversation with Dietmar Unterkofler

Dietmar Unterkofler: You will represent Serbia at this year’s Biennale in Venice, while Tomislav Gotovac will be Croatia’s representative and Marina Abramović will also be there for promoting her Cultural Center in Cetinie (Montenegro). So, three of the key figures of the 1970s avantgarde scene in the former Yugoslavia will be present in Venice. Do you think this is a signal for the late rehabilitation of the still marginalized generation of conceptual artists of the 1970s?

Dragoljub Raša Todosijevi?: I think we can’t speak of a real rehabilitation, and even if so this is only partly true. I think it … Read more

Interview with Artpool Cofounder Júlia Klaniczay

In 1979, Júlia Klaniczay co founded Artpool together with the artist György Galántai. From 1976 onward she was a participant of many art projects concieved by Galántai within the framework of Artpool. Klaniczay is in charge of Artpool’s archives and publications. From 1977 to 1992 she was also the editor-in-chief at Akadémiai Kiadó, the publishing house of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Klaniczay has authored several articles and seved as a researcher for the alternative art scenes of the 1970s and 1980s. Since 1992 she has been the director of the public nonprofit institution Artpool Art Research Center in Budapest.… Read more

Uzbek Elegy: The Films of Ali Khamraev

Along with Andrey Konchalovsky and Otar Iosseliani, Ali Irgashaliyevich Khamraev (in Uzbek, Ali Hamroev; b. 1937) is one of the great survivors of Soviet New Wave Cinema. Since 1964, Khamraev has been active in numerous genres, from the Romantic Comedy to the Political Drama, and from the Western to the Art-cinema Parable, to the TV mini-series. The son of a Tadjik man and a Ukrainian woman, he typified Soviet poly-nationalism, working for studios across Central Asia and Russia, from Tadjikistan to Moscow. Since the fall of the Soviet Union he has also lived for a time in Italy. Kent Jones … Read more

Yael Bartana Screening at Gene Siskel Film Center (SAIC)

Conversations at the Edge, Gene Siskel Film Center (SAIC), Chicago, March 4 – April 14, 2011.

Yael Bartana, known for her politically charged films and videos that explore Israeli culture and Jewish identity, will represent Poland at the 54th Biennale of Art in Venice, the first artist of non-Polish nationality to do so. Her project, and Europe will be stunned, co-curated by Sebastian Cichocki and Galit Eilat, “calls” for the return of Jews to Poland and the rebuilding of a multicultural society, as explored in her previous films Mary Koszmary/Nightmares (2007) and Mur I Wieza/Wall and Tower (2009). The … Read more

Interview with Aneta Szylak

Aneta Szylak is a curator and writer, and co-founder and current director of Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdańsk. After co-founding and running the ?a?nia (Bathhouse) Centre for Contemporary Art (1998-2001). she pursued a career as an independent curator and researcher. In 2005, she received the Jerzy Stajuda Award “for independent and uncompromising curatorial practice.” Syzlak has taught and lectured at many art institutions and universities. including New School University, Queens College. New York University, Florida Atlantic University, Goldsmith College, and Copenhagen University. She held the position of a guest professor at the Akademie für Bildende Künste in Mainz. Currently … Read more

Edit András (ed.), “Transitland. Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe 1989-2009” (Book Review)

Transitland. Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe 1989-2009, Edit András (ed.), Budapest: Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art / ACAX, 2009

“Video,” writes the editor of the volume, Edit András, “was pretty much the medium of transition (…) it was the first liberal media of the period (…) the strand of visual arts that through its inherent characteristic, kept and reflected recent history to the utmost.”(Transitland. Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe 1989-2009, Edit András (ed.), Budapest: Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art / ACAX, 2009, p. 226.) András’s volume Transitland. Video Art Read more

Aleksandr Medvedkin (Director) —“Счастье / Happiness” 5th DVD of RUSCICO Academia Series. (DVD Review)

Happiness,  Directed by Alexander Medvedkin, 1934, 95 minutes, 1.37:1 Aspect Ratio. Moskombinat, Vostokfilm Mosfil’m

Like many cinephiles I became familiar with Alexander Medvedkin’s work through Chris Marker’s wonderful documentary, The Last Bolshevik, that featured a tender portrait of the topsy-turvy Soviet director. I emphasize “Soviet” as I was continuously astounded as to how Medvedkin got away with his earnestly over-determined socialist sketches that equated Soviet modernity with naïve folk culture. Some of the images from Medvedkin’s 1935 film Happiness really stood out in Marker’s essay with their striking iconography and ridiculous approach to socialist realism. The film style borrows … Read more

Interview with Petra Feriancova (Interview)

Petra Feriancova lives and works in Bratislav. She studied at the Accademia delle Belle Arti, Rome, Italy and Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava. Her work has been exhibited at many venues, including the Secession Museum in Vienna (2010); Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2009); HIT Gallery, Bratislava (2009); and the Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne (2008). In 2010 Feriancova was awarded the Oskár ?epan Award (2010).

Daniel Grún: I want to start by asking about the way you work with the modern methods of documentation in the natural sciences, particularly the way you trace the breeds in connection with their … Read more

Gabriella Csoszó in Conversation with Hedvig Turai (Interview)

Gabriella Csoszó (1969) is a Hungarian artist currently living and working in Budapest. Csoszó displays a unique series of photographs, specifically portraits, which examine identity and individuality. Csoszó uses texts, fragments, and often installations to accompany her pictures. She is presently exhibited at Paris Photo by Raday Gallery. Most recently, Csoszó has been experimenting with landscapes, deteriorated buildings, and construction sites that reveal traces of the recent past, on the Cold war period. Currently she is working on the photographic recording of the Georg Lukács Archive in Budapest, focusing on its history with curator Lívia Páldi.

http://www.fotokontakt.hu/csoszo.html

Hedvig Turai: How … Read more

R.E.P. Group in Conversation with Larissa Babij (Interview)

The R.E.P. (Revolutionary Experimental Space) Group, which debuted in 2004 with art-protest actions during the Orange Revolution, is now one of Ukraine’s best-known young contemporary artist collectives. Its members each maintain their own artistic practice in addition to producing projects together. Also acting as curators, they continue to play a significant role in highlighting the activities of other Ukrainian artists of their generation, especially those involved in social-political activism. In recent years, R.E.P. has been attracting more attention abroad, taking part in exhibitions in Hungary, Russia, Sweden, Estonia, Italy and other European countries. http://www.rep.tinka.cc/

Larissa Babij: Tell me about your … Read more

A Conversation with Attila Pőcze and László Gergely (Interview)

László Gergely is a founding member of Lumen Photography Foundation and Lumen Gallery (since 2002). He lives and works in Budapest. The term Tehnica Schweiz is used for his collaboration with Péter Rákosi (since 2004).  Tehnica Schweiz is a member of POC – Piece of Cake, an international network of photographers (www.pocproject.com). Gergely László is an alumnus of ICP – NYC and has exhibited at many institutions in Europe, including M?csarnok (Kunsthalle, Budapest); NBK Berlin; Witte de With (Rotterdam); Norwich Gallery; and the Vienna Secession.

Attila P?cze opened Vintage Gallery (Budapest) in 1996. He studied car design at … Read more

The Editors About Hungary’s New Media Law

As expressed in this special issue, since the political changes of 1989 and Hungary’s subsequent membership in the EU, there has been a significant transformation of the country’s cultural atmosphere, avenues of discourse and forums for artistic expression. The diversity of the articles appearing in this ARTMargins Hungary Focus issue are indicative of this reshaping of the cultural environment. Yet in contrast to this transformation, in July of 2010 the Hungarian parliament established the National Media and Communications Authority; on December 21st a national Media Council was established. At the beginning of 2011 the laws resulting from this legislation came … Read more

Piotr Piotrowski About His Resignation from the Polish National Museum

Recently the Director of the Polish National Museum in Warsaw, Piotr Piotrowski, resigned after the museum’s Board of Trustees rejected his ideas for the further development of the museum. The Board of Trustees had offered Piotrowski the position only two years earlier on the basis of what Piotrowski called his project for “a critical museum.” Some local observers think that the Board of Trustee’s rejection of Piotrowski’s plan was related to his controversial exhibition ’Ars Homoerotica‘; others believe he had to resign because the museum staff couldn’t accept his development strategy.

The interview podcast here was recorded … Read more

“ЯКЩО / ЕСЛИ / IF”, PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art (Exhib. Review)

“???? / ???? / IF”, PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art, May 21 – July 10, 2010

The presentation of Ukrainian contemporary art in the exhibition ???? / ???? / IF at the PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art in Russia–the first such comprehensive display outside of Ukraine’s borders–appeared to be a political act. The initiative of the Moscow-based curator, Ekaterina Degot, raised immediate suspicions. How will a Russian curator, essentiallyan outsider, approach the task of showcasing Ukrainian art in her native country? How will the exhibition address the long and complicated shared history of the two neighboring countries? What are the … Read more

Snapshot: Erika Deák Gallery, Budapest (Article)

The Erika Deák gallery was founded in 1998. Before this, Erika Deák lived in the United States for almost a decade. She graduated from Temple University, Philadelphia, and was working in several art galleries in New York City, while writing for different art magazines.

After moving back to Budapest in 1998 she opened her gallery in a small apartment on the third floor of a residential building in Buda. It was one of the first commercial galleries in Budapest. The first exhibit was a collaboration with the Ludwig Museum, Budapest. While the museum exhibited the large-scale installation works of Spanish … Read more

Shifting Perspectives on Curatorship (Article)

Introduction

A filmmaker, visual media artist, writer, teacher, curator and co-editor of ARTMargins, Allan Siegel has been involved in the experimental film movement and is one of the founding members of the documentary film collective Newsreel. He has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has exhibited work in New York, Chicago, London, Montreal, Pécs and Budapest, and is currently a lecturer in the Intermedia Department at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts.

In Hungary, prior to the political changes of 1989 (and then still for a good number of years afterwards) the practical opportunities for … Read more