code flow - events
House Art (2004-today), a work in progress by Dimitrina Sevova
Opening: 22 September 2006, at Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2006-08-26
How to install:
I have not made a specific drawing, because the installation is simple. I don't have specific wishes about the space. The only important thing is that the canvas is not on a wall, but rather somewhere across the space, hung by transparent threads to the ceiling, and correspondingly fastened to the floor with the same transparent thread (if this is possible). The canvas has metal rings (eyelet holes) along the top and the bottom with 15 cm between them. The width of the canvas is about 1.32 m. The height is about 1.20 m. The book I imagine on some appropriate pedestal, whatever you use in the museum, at a height at which people can leaf through it comfortably, somewhere near the canvas, preferably to the side.
2006-05-25 (see also the Maska 2023+ site, although without the links added below)
Dear Nives, dear Elise,
Thank you for your kind invitation! It will be a pleasure for me to participate in your project Maska 2023, as well as the CD-ROM.
The title of my work is "House Art" - a mixed-media installation with five documentary video interviews with my neighbors in the house where I live now in Switzerland, who have no professional contact to art. It's an allusion to Art House, and deals with the role of art in the daily life of average people, in which the pathos of art is lost in kitschified objects, mass production, entertainment and memories. The questions raised are about the role and the moral of contemporary art in the everyday life of people around me. One of the arguments often heard in favor of contemporary art is that it is socially engaged and accessible to a broad audience. Similar confusion and misunderstandings, funny and stupid situations are the same as those with my neighbors in Bulgaria. I started working on this project 2004, but since then it has not been completed, although part of the video material and many photos are done, along with a detailed description of the project.
My choice from the Maska collection for a work to be exhibited alongside my project is Oliver Musovik's work "Neighbors".
I will send you the detailed description of the project these days (I'd like to rework it slightly), along with CV, etc. Please find the PDF files with the title page and with three comics strips created from video stills of three of the interviews I’ve made.
As a sort of advertising/PR for the finished work, I was thinking of
printing the three strips on canvas (each about 1 meter wide) to include
in the 2006 exhibition - 2023, since you will be a very rich and
important institution and I will be famous and an important figure in
the art world, you will cover all expenses for editing, installing,
hotel, fees, pompous opening (of course with the President of Slovenia!
:-), etc. Should I print the PR images on canvas here, or should I send
you PDF's to have them printed locally? Or do you prefer reducing their
size to A4 laser prints? I will send you a few sentences about the PR
strategy in the next few days.
Would you like to have the description of the project cut down to one page, or a complete folder with the documentation (a dozen of pages, including further video stills, photographs and drawings). Do you need a budget for 2023? How should inflation be taken into account? :-)
I'm thinking of contributing a version of the same project to the CD-ROM.
With my best regards,
Dimitrina
2006-03-15
Dear Dimitrina Sevova,
. In 2006 100th issue of Maska, performing arts journal, will be published. Maska was founded in 1920 and was, in its formative period, being published for only a year. The journal was again issued in 1985 and continues with its publications since then; in the last seven years three times a year as a double issue.
.. In all its existing periods Maska was not only a companion, a chronicler and a documentarist of performing events but their influential co-creator as well. Critical stance, introduction of novel themes and different approaches, which is what Maska pursues, have always been considered as opening up the opportunities of performing and wider artistic creativity, which is always responsibly and inextricably intertwined with time and space. Reflection is never understood as a mere glance into the past nor as a reserved look from aside. Theory and reflection are part of creative critical practise, and precisely their critical stance, strict terminology and unyielding argumentation may open up new possibilities for thought and artistic attitude.
... The 100th issue of Maska will be dedicated to the analysis of the current situation of contemporary performing arts in Slovenia, and will also include contributions of Slovenian and foreign experts.
.... Along 100th issue of Maska we are preparing the publication of 200th issue which would, with this pace kept, come out in 2023. The 200th issue will include contributions from artists who had been covered by Maska from 2000 to 2005. The idea of this particular publication is to conceive a reader, a catalogue, a venue, a virtual festival of projects as the artists would imagine them for the year 2023.
Editors and writers of several most prominent international magazines from the field of performing arts will be invited to reflect on the contributions also from the perspective of the year 2023, which will give way to addressing the future of performing arts and art in general in the most direct of ways.
..... Since You are among the authors Maska wrote about in the last five years, You are kindly invited to participate in the 200th issue with the project as you would conceive it in the year 2023. It can be presented in written or graphic form, as a music or video recording, or in any other form.
...... The 200th issue will be published in September 2006 in form of a CD-rom with contributions as a supplement to Maska's 100th issue. The printed version will see the light of day in 2023.
....... At the same time contributions will be exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art at the exhibition 2023+, which will, beside contributions for the 200th issue of Maska, include works focused on the future from the Museum's international collection 2000+.
........ Send us Your contribution by May 15th 2006 at the latest. As already mentioned, You are free to choose the medium that You find most suitable. Let us stress again that our interest is in the ideas to be realized in 17 years thus we do not ask for projects already developed but projections about what Your work might be in year 2023, when You are seventeen years older.
......... Due to exceptionally demanding logistics, high preparation and production costs, and limited funding available a fee for Your contribution, unfortunately, cannot be paid according to merit. Therefore, we offer You 5 copies of 200th issue as well as this year's Maska issues. At the same time You are more than welcome at all the events taking place on the occasion of Maska's 100th issue due to happen in September 2006 in Ljubljana, Slovenia .
.......... We hope that You will accept our invitation and join us in this adventure. With regards,
Emil Hrvatin
Maska's Editor in chief
See also the list of invited artists on the Maska 2023+ site, as well as the list of proposals received.