Exhibition: Bitja v novejšem slovenskem kiparstvu at Kranj

Group exhibition Bitja v novejšem slovenskem kiparstvu now touring at Kranj

by ZSJ

Exhibition Horsepower at Kapelica Gallery 16.December 2016

On 16th of December 2016 exhibition of Horsepower was open and Kapelica Gallery

Robotic performance and opening of exhibition

Horse power: The Poetics of Movement is an intermedia situation established so that one can reflect on technological progress in the post-humanistic context.

The horse in the installation is a hybrid robot (hybrot) with perception and movement intelligence that is powered by a bioreactor. In opposition to cyborgs (organisms equipped with electronic extensions) the hybrot is an organism created from equal shares of electronic and biological elements. The hybrot is neither alive nor dead, it lies somewhere in between, somewhere where neither life nor death count, in a space governed by categories that are beyond human range.

The bioreactor is fuelled by the chemical processes in the rotting meat which cause the changes in the impedance or in the ratio between the alternating current and the current in the electric circle. The hybrot is a technical, scientific and cultural problem that addresses experimental science on three levels. The first problem deals with establishing a stabile chamber, which would, through chemical reactions, produce not merely electrical current (volts) but also a sufficient flow rate (amperes) to put the horse in motion. The second problem is of a mechanical or construction nature, for the materials need to be extremely light if we wish to have the slightest chance of moving the horse with the small electric current that is produced by the bioreactor. The third problem is how to develop the hybrot in the direction of an independent, self-sufficient moving-touching object, which does not merely move, but also responds to its environment with ultrasonic and infrared sensors. The bioreactor in the installation includes decaying meat, which is not viewed from the position of fear, but from the position of its potential. In this installation the fear that a person feels when confronting unpredictable nature and inevitable death, is used as a capacity for new life, in a new temporal and logical succession.

The term horse power is not applicable merely to the power of the internal combustion engines used in motor vehicles, for it is also linked to numerous other cultural meanings, as the horse has been, since the beginning of civilisation, either a symbol of military and patriarchal power (sculptures of horsemen) or a symbol of cultivated nature with the domestication of “wild animals” and control over natural forces (cave paintings). Both perspectives are based on strictly hierarchical and anthropocentric relations in which the horse is merely a subject of control.

Horse power: The Poetics of Movement is a space of hope, not a space of demands and conditional sentences. In this project artists, scientists and technology experts strive towards the so-called “soft power” approaches which encourage cooperation and unforced operation that will drive technological progress forward. They wonder whether it is possible to set a mechanism into motion without coercion. Through experimental practices they try to realize the mechanisation and technology, which would not be based on the subordination of nature, but on listening to it. They research and consider driving power, which would not necessarily comply with human expectations, but would follow the potential of biological organisms. Technological progress is the goal of their experiments, however this progress should follow the laws of existing organisms.

The suspense created by the expectation of the (anti)potentiality as to whether the horse will move or not, also includes the poetics of uselessness. A horse that has served as a tool for moving mankind since the beginning of civilization, has now became an independent being that is useful only to itself.

Ida Hiršenfelder

by ZSJ

Exhibition Pointe à l'oeil - De dans une Baisse l'horizon in Ljubljana

Pointe à l'oeil - De dans une Baisse l'horizon is a project from 2012 which was presented at Vetrinje castle at Maribor. I'm glad that now it is presented in the Gallery of Faculty of Economics in Ljubljana and will be opened through September.

In the artistic project with a title Pointe à l'oeil and subtitled as De dans une Baisse l'horizon (A drop into the horizon) the artists Jiri Kočica and Zoran Srdić Janežič are dealing with the connections and interactions between science, art and society in the broad meaning of the word. The conceptual starting point of the project is a historical overview of the connections between philosophical ideas and their influence on society. Ideas were used and are still today as a starting point for impacts on mental horizons of both individuals and the masses. We can read these impacts as the indirect impact of cultural policies and the relationship between financial, political and military power - ordering the use of certain views in society through media or as direct impact through institutions of education and visual art projects - as well as direct effects of political ideologies.
The outlined artistic direction of the project lies on the axis: nature - culture – ideology. While nature binds to the biological state of things (the issue of human nature), culture on the relationship of the cult (religion), while ideology is based on questioning of philosophical concepts, religious foundations and ideological connections of an active policy on the basis of ideological models. They are not based on the transition from the current society or its traditional status, but as the ideological construct. They want to address the state of things in society that is not necessarily discursive or even as compromise solutions. You could say that ideology, in essence, does not recognize dialogue and indirectly shows the perverse effect of exploitation of certain conditions in the social structure, marked by such deviations from the intention of changing the name of progress - even at the expense of existing social rights.

As an integral part of Western society in an art project in Pointe à l'oeil are represented two projects: one of the Enlightenment in the early parts of the philosophers Francis Bacon (1521-1626) and René Descartes (1596-1650) and their impact on epistemology and in a more comprehensive impact on the philosophy of John Locke (1632-1704); and other of the anti-Enlightenment, the central figure of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and its impact on the development of modern political, sociological and educational thought as well as in the French Revolution. Tracking postmodernism from its origins in Bacon, Descartes, Locke, Rousseau (ie. in periods prior to the Enlightenment) all over Immanuel Kant (1924-1804), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), Michel Foucault (1926-1984), Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Richard M. Rorty (1931-2007), etc. It reflects the changed paradigm of intellectual property guidelines leading up to the point of narrowing philosophical-political and artistic view in a single point, which represents the end-point of perspective (vanishing point).

The project Pointe à l'oeil as the end point of this perspective is presents one of the last alive postmodern philosophers Slavoj Žižek (1949). Žižek in this symbolic position occupies the end of diagrams of historical links between philosophers and the content of the pipette to Žižkov portraits. These are literally the smallest possible portraits, we can create from the viral DNA technology, called DNA origami. The final image of DNA origami is big of some 10 nanometers, as low relief visible with the atomic force microscope (AFM). At the end of the symbolic point of constriction of philosophical-political and artistic view of the project Žižek's portrait is almost the last place, which is visible only through the (science) medium and not with the naked eye.

portfolio

by ZSJ

Sculptural performance Trail (Pot)

I'm developing a performative genre of sculptural or artistic walk for a long time. Some of my first sculptural walks were from the time of my studies at Academy of Fine Art and Design (where I was making big toy boat from polystyrene to sail it on Ljubljanica river). Performative moment is characterized as ephemeral event - what stays remains like a statue or installation witnessing the moment and narative. On Sunday 4th of September 2016 I walked from Koseze Pond and across the Golovec Hill on a trail better known as The Trail of Remembrance and Comradeship (Slovene: Pot spominov in tovarištva, acronym PST), also referred to as the Trail Along the Wire (Pot ob žici), the Trail Around Ljubljana (Pot okoli Ljubljane), or the Green Ring (Zeleni prstan). I walked some 12 km of a gravel-paved recreational and memorial walkway (whole: almost 33 km). On my back I had statue of sewn fabric in the form of a star (also one of the symbols of the Trail). Bag was filled with 25 kg of sand which was dribbling out.

Sculptural walk was a part of series of art event of Artist Society Ljubljana: Art on the street (Umetnost na ulici), and was produced by Institute for Arts Gulag. Sewing of a sculpture was possible with a help of Sandra Birjukov.

by ZSJ

Blog for project Horse power is created

Hello,

For this year, an intermedia project Horse power is planned. We will use the technology of bioreactors - and from the decomposition of horse meat, we should get enough energy to move horse-like a robot. The blog is on the link: http://art-horse-power.blogspot.si/

by ZSJ