Artistic Interventions
Site Specific Public Art Project: Advanced Science of Morphology
Nada Prlja
Advanced Science of Morphology
Ongoing site-specific public art project since 2006:
27 flags, 140 x 250 cm (each)
Advanced Science of Morphology is a site-specific public art project presented during the symposium „Return to Europe. Talking Balkans“ and the festival „Musical Journey – Listening Balkans“ initiated by ERSTE Foundation. The project reflects the constantly changing political climate and subsequent reshuffling of the names, territories and visual identification of the South Eastern European countries. The project consists of 27 flags designed to merge the colours and symbols of the flags of newly created countries which have emerged out of the republics of former Yugoslavia. The flags are designed by ‚morphing‘ the five original symbols of Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Yugoslavia (the Yugoslav flag of the time, representing the union of Serbia and Montenegro, did not include the star of the original flag of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). In 2007, the ‚morphed‘ flag designs replaced the Yugoslavian flag with the morphs of the newly created Serbian and Montenegrin flags – the project continues. Several ‚morphed‘ flags based on the symbols of the newly proclaimed Kosova may also be included. This year‘s exhibition will include one more flag to result in a group of 27 flags – to symbolise the number of countries that currently make up the European Union. Nineteen of these flags are displayed at the front of the ORF Radio-Kulturhaus from 31 March to 9 April 2008.
Nada Prlja was born in Sarajevo (1971), moving at an early age to Skopje, Macedonia. Since 1999 she has been living and working in London. She graduated from the National School of Fine Art (A Levels) and from the Academy of Fine Arts, Skopje, Macedonia and consequently received an MPhil research degree from the Royal College of Arts, London, UK. Nada Prlja’s work deals with the complex political and sociological situations of the contemporary world. Her recent exhibitions include INIVA – Institute of International Art, London; Contemporary Art Platform, London; OPTICA 2007, Spain; Artneuland, Berlin (forthcoming); National Gallery of Macedonia and Museum of Contemporay Art forthcoming) in Skopje Macedonia; Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland; Soros Center for
Contemporary Art, Almati, Kazahstan, etc.
Presentation of Videos in the Foyer of ORF RadioKulturhaus
Sanja Iveković
Meeting Point, 1978, black and white, 6 min
The video deals with two realities clearly defined from each other – the interior space of the TV image and the actual space of the viewer. Two points serve as visual symbols referring to the relation between two opposites: one point on the forehead of the performer (a symbol for the “inner eye”) and the other on the screen, representing the external “point of view”. Method: 1. I dance to music in front of a static camera. 2. I play the tape and try to pause the video image at the very same moment when both points coincide. (from: Sanja Iveković. Personal Cuts, Silvia Eiblmayr (ed.), Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, 2001)
Sanja Iveković
* 1949, Zagreb, Croatia
Lives and works in Zagreb
Dalibor Martinis
Open Reel, 1976, 3 min 40 sec
In Open Reel, the artist hides and disguises himself behind his own image. While the video tape winds around a second reel, which in this case is the head of the artist, who is slowly rotating on a table, he gradually disappears behind a terrorist mask.
Dalibor Martinis
* 1947 Zagreb, Croatia
Lives and works in Zagreb
IRWIN
Black Square on Red Square, 1992, 10 min 10 sec
The video Black Square in Red Square is a persiflage of Kasimir Malevich’s Black Square, with which the Russian artist revolutionised art history in the early 20th century initiating Russian Suprematism and what was later called Constructivism. In a guerrilla performance supported by the KGB, the four members of the artists’ group IRWIN unfolded a 22-metre square of cloth on the Red Square in Moscow paying respect to Malevich. The video is a documentary about this performance from 1992, during which IRWIN set up temporary spaces as national messages in various countries.
IRWIN
Founded in 1983
Live and work in Ljubljana
Members
Dušan Mandič (Ljubljana, 1954)
Miran Mohar (Novo Mesto, 1958)
Andrej Savski (Ljubljana, 1961)
Roman Uranjek (Trbovlje, 1961)
Borut Vogelnik (Kranj, 1959)
1984 co-founder of NSK
