Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 7pm
SCCA Project Room, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana, Slovenia

It’s almost twenty years now that Albania exited it’s dictatorial past and enthusiastically joined the new world order, that forbidden fruit – democracy and market economy – widely propagated as the bright future of humankind.

Talking from the perspective of today’s Albania, this lecture will tell the story of an attempt to built an independent art institution in a context of a total lack of governmental support and a hard core, profit driven, neoliberal market economy.

As an art institution still without its own address, TICA is an ongoing story of achievements and of failures, both important to learn from.

More about lecturers

August 15 – 17, 2010, Yerevan, Armenia
August 18 – 20, 2010, Ijevan, Armenia

SCCA-Ljubljana and The World of art regularly cooperate with AICA-Armenia association on preparation of International Summer Seminars for Art Curators in Armenia. The seminar each year brings together international art curators, critics and theorist to a series of workshops, seminars, lectures and public presentation, which centre around debates on aspects of art criticism, curating, cultural policy and critical practices.

The 5th edition of the seminar is going to be focused on a theme of community art and aesthetic communities which are subject to interpretations in different historical time frames, when the original meaning might be reinterpreted or even lost. Some of the questions raised, include the problems of reception and contextual translation of art works produced under different historical circumstances. In this aspect it is necessary to understand the role that the curator plays in translating the perceptual politics that perpetuate in the understanding of a work of art. What happens to the work of art when both its intended message and its addressee are lost? What becomes of a specific community in which the work is situated? What is the role of critics, curators, historians and writers, who exposes, reinterprets and repositions the communal work?

The program of the seminar is going to be comprised of two parts. The first part entitled Aesthetic Communities and Contextual Translation of Communal Art will take place in Yerevan from August 15th till August 17th, while the second part The Communal Function of a Monument will be held in Ijevan from August 18th till 20th.

The Program will accommodate daily lectures by invited specialists such as Victor and Margarita Tupitsyn, Julian Vigo, Vardan Azatyan and Joanna Warsza as well as round-table discussions and presentations by the participants.

Practical and theoretic educational programme World of Art, organised by SCCA, Center for Contemporary Arts – Ljubljana (Slovenia) since 1998 will also be part of a seminar. Ida Hiršenfelder, Digital Video Archive DIVA Station assistant at SCCA-Ljubljana, will in the frame of the seminar on the basis of a case study and some additional published sources open a discussion about the changing purpose of curatorial educational programmes and the reconceptualising the role of curators in the past decade.

5th Summer Seminars for Art Curators

Organisator: AICA-Armenia, established and registered under the name National Association of Art Critics, was founded in 2005. It is the national Armenian brunch of the International Association of Art Critics. The goal of AICA-Armenia is to re-establish the double responsibility of art criticism, spreading critical perception on artists and society in respect to art history, in all diversity of its contemporary expressions. Its activities include organization of conferences, seminars, public discussions, art historical research; production of critical and theoretical texts in printed and electronic media; defence of the professional copyright and moral interests of the critics; partnership and networking with international art organizations and implementation of exchange programs.
President of AICA-Armenia: Nazareth Karoyan
Member of AICA-Armenia: Angela Harutyunyan
Coordination and communication: Marianna Hovhannisyan
PR and Documentation: Karin Grigoryan

Volunteers and free participants: Shoair Mavlian (UK/Australia), Özge Çelikaslan (Turkey), Emanuele Braga (Italy), Maddalena Fragnito (Italy), Narek Tovmasyan (Armenia)

Partnerji: SCCA-Ljubljana / World of art, BM SUMA (Istanbul), Townhouse Gallery (Cairo) in SCCA-Alma-Aty

Participants: Elke Krasny (Austria), Armenak Grigoryan (Armenia), Michelle Kasprzak (Netherlands), Karin Grigoryan (Armenia), Xenia Nikolskaya (Sweden/Egypt), Arevik Grigoryan (Armenia), Patrycja Rylko (Poland), Marlène Perronet (France), Harutyun Alpetyan (Armenia), Adnan Yildiz (Turkey), Carmen De Michele (Germany), Gor Engoyan (Armenia), Nvard Yerkanian (Armenia), Natuka Vatsadze (Georgia), Liana Khachatryan (Armenia), Viviana Checchia (Italy), Sona Melik-Karamyan (Armenia), Ida Hiršenfelder (Slovenia), Pau cata i Marles (Catalan/Spain), Taguhi Torosyan (Armenia)

Supporter: OSI Transkaukazja Embassy of France in Armenia

MORE INFORMATION:
http://www.naac.am/html/htmeng/indexeng.htm

June 6, 2010
SCCA Project room, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana

The purpose of the workshop is to get acquainted with the history and theory of art critics and the practical tests in analysing the critic’s text. Lectures will be held in Serbian language.

More

Tutor: Miško Šuvaković

APPLICATIONS

The registration should be sent either to email address: svetumetnosti@scca-ljubljana.si, postal address or in person to: Zavod SCCA-Ljubljana, Metelkova 6, 1000 Ljubljana.

Price 20 Euro per workshop
(Price includes VAT).

The number of places is limited to 10 participants.

The closing date for applications: Thursday, June 3, 2010
(Applicatons will be accepted until places are full)

August 15-17, 2010, Yerevan, Armenia
August 18- 20, 2010, Ijevan, Armenia
Application deadline: May 15, 2010

AICA-Armenia is announcing the call for the 5th International Summer School Program for contemporary art curators, which will take place in Yerevan, in August 15-17 th and in Ijevan, in August 18-20, a city located in Northern Armenia and close to the Georgian and Azerbaijani borders.

The program of this year s Summer school with the theme Aesthetic Communities and Contextual Translation of Communal Art is comprised of a series of lectures, presentations and round-tables that center around the issue how is it possible to recapture or rather representationally translate communal reception to the Soviet art of Stalinism and beyond when the embedded specificity of communist community has itself undergone such a radical transformation? What is the role of the curator in the perceptual politics that perpetuates through and around a work of art? Can a work of art intended for a collective optical unconscious in the original context of its production create new forms of undetermined and situational communities when exposed, represented and reinterpreted anew? What happens to the work when both its intended message and its addressee are lost? What becomes of a specific community in which the work is situated? What is the role of the one –the critic, curator, historian and writer, who exposes, reinterprets and repositions the communal work? We would also like to pose the double question of communal art’s function within communities in which these works are physically located as well as the aesthetic communities that come into being temporarily around a work of art.

HOW TO APPLY?

The Program is structured to accommodate daily lectures by invited specialists, round-table discussions and presentations by the participants. The presentations should focus on curating and aesthetic communities or curating community art.

There is no fee for participation. However, the participants are expected to cover their own travel and accommodation costs. AICA-Armenia does not provide funding for logistics.

To participate, please send us your CV and a 300 word abstract of your proposed presentation.

All materials should be sent by May 15 to Marianna Hovhannisyan at the e-mail address: m.a.hovhannisyan@gmail.com

MORE INFORMATION

www.naac.am/html/htmeng/indexeng.htm

SCCA-Ljubljana and World of Art are permanently collaborating with AICA-Armenia in the field of curatorial education and practice.

SCCA-Ljubljana program is supported by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Municipality of Ljubljana.

The call is closed.

The school is intended for all who are interested in working in the field of contemporary art, regardless of experience, age and education.

The annual school program is internal and for a selected group of participants who will be chosen by open call. The course has two semesters:

• the first semester (April–June 2010) is dedicated to the acquisition of art –historical, theoretical and methodological skills
• the second semester (September 2010–May 2011) will be dedicated to critical and curatorial studies and practice.

The program includes lectures, seminars, workshops, research work, modules on the practical work of the curator, study excursions and practice in galleries. The process comprises the organisation of events, studio visits, meetings with curators, artists, theorists, and writers, and teamwork in conceptualisation and preparing an exhibition of contemporary art under the tutor’s leadership.

Fee: 400 euros (VAT included)

Send or bring your application form, CV, motivation letter and review of selected exhibitions of contemporary art (up to 40 lines) to SCCA-Ljubljana, Metelkova 6, SI 1000 Ljubljana, svetumetnosti@scca-ljubljana.si

The selection of participants will be in two stages. After the first selection, we will invite participants for an interview, to be held at the SCCA-Ljubljana on Thursday, April 1 and Friday April 2.

Performative reflection upon a queer art event

Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 7pm
Project Room SCCA, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana

Angela Harutyunyan’s talk is a performative reflection upon a queer art event. Entitled Coming to You Not to Be With You, it was organized in August 2008 in Yerevan, Armenia in the framework of Women-Oriented-Women’s network’s activities.

Through (un)constructing the specific spatial arrangements of the works within a given space, I will perform what I call a “topographical curating”. Through this (un)construction, I wish to claim an emancipatory potential in the coming together of an aesthetic community.

The talk will be accompanied with a presentation of visual materials, including video works. At the end of the talk, I will open up a discussion on whether it is possible to effectively articulate a politics of (mis)recognition through aesthetics without lapsing into the politics identity.

Queering Yerevan

Angela Harutyunyan has recently completed her PhD at the University of Manchester, UK. Currently she is Visiting Professor in Art History and Art Program Director at the American University in Cairo. She is the co-organizer of Summer Seminars’ Program for Contemporary Art Curators in Yerevan, Armenia and member of AICA -International Association of Art Critics. She has curated several solo and group exhibitions of contemporary Armenian art and has conducted numerous seminars, workshops and lectures as a visiting lecturer and curator in various international academic and artistic contexts. She teaches courses related to the history and theory of modern and contemporary art.

Saturday, November 14, 2009 (workshop)
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 (discussion)
Project Room SCCA, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana

On Saturday, 14th November 2009, a group of students gathered in a Project room of SCCA and with their mentor Petja Grafenauer they tackled the problem of writing about the exhibition of contemporary art. The introductory presentation for the participants was followed by the visit to the exhibition Around the world of art in 4.380 days in the Alkatraz Gallery, where they met with curator Saša Nabergoj and assistant Sonja Zavrtanik. The curator presented the concept of the exhibition, a selection of works, the project itself, the World of art programme and some of her own experiences in setting up the exhibitions. The group then returned to the Project Room to hear the mentor’s lecture on the establishment of modern art in Slovenia, and she also touched the topics of modernism, art institutions and project events in our area. Students become acquainted with important literature and they concentrated on further reflection on the themes of contemporary Slovene art. After a general lecture they returned to the topics of the exhibition which was later evaluated at home by the students who also wrote a text. The best critique will be published in the magazine Artwords; Petja Grafenauer also reminded them to have in mind a particular circle of readers and the status of the magazine while writing the text. In the final part of the workshop the students developed an in-depth debate on various artistic works from the exhibition, which served as a preparation for their individual work. The students delivered their texts on 19th November; they met again on Tuesday, 24th November 2009 when the mentor talked about each of the contributions and pointed out the advantages and disadvantages and possible revisions of their texts. Editorial work was then undertaken by the students and they discussed all the texts. Since all the students had already been in contact with contemporary art and theory it was easier for them to evaluate and articulate their opinion. After the workshop Petja Grafenauer and Saša Nabergoj selected the critique by Lara Plavčak to be published in the next issue of Artwords. Lara Plavčak Call for application

October 30 – November 20, 2009
Opening on Friday, October 30, at 8 pm
Alkatraz Gallery, AKC Metelkova City

Artists:
Lada Cerar & Sašo Sedlaček, Alen Floričić, Marko A. Kovačič, Tanja Lažetić & Dejan Habicht, Ivan Marušić Klif

Curator: Saša Nabergoj
Assistant: Sonja Zavrtanik
Exhibition design and set-up: Damijan Kracina
Production: Zavod SCCA-Ljubljana
Coproduction: Galerija Alkatraz / KUD Mreža

ACCOMPANYING PROGRAMME
Marko A. Kovačič: Sub-auction
Tuesday, November 10, at 8 pm
Alkatraz Gallery, AKC Metelkova City, Ljubljana

Exhibition view

Sub-auction by Marko A. Kovačič

Sub-auction (Video essay)

Around the world of art in 4,380 days is not a retrospective exhibition and the selection of works was not based on a democratic principle – equal presentation of every year. The curator presented all the works featured in eleven end-of-year exhibitions of the course for curators in a physically inexistent collection of the World of Art, which was complemented each year by new works produced by new groups of students with a variety of affinities. All generations were shaped by the programme, its requirements and guidelines, which were determined by mentors, the context of the institution – Center for Contemporary Arts SCCA–Ljubljana – and the only constant member of the World of Art, Saša (Glavan) Nabergoj. The first year she worked as an assistant, while all the following years she was the head of school and sometimes a mentor, always involved in the content and organisation of the programme at all levels. The criteria for selecting five works from a total of eighty-one were diverse: the role of the work in the artist’s body of work, position in the wider context of the course, and, vitally, the context of the Alkatraz Gallery which has hosted the exhibition for two years now.

Considering the scope of the programme, the World of Art has few public events, as due to the nature of work key processes take place in small group of students, although the events themselves would undoubtedly prove interesting to the wider public. We therefore decided to very carefully research the extensive and very precious audio and visual archive which has been complied from the very beginning, but has always been somewhat neglected because of the chronic lack of staff, time and money, creatively and chaotically (dis)organised and not accessible enough to researchers and students. Around the world of art in 4,380 days will provide an introduction into the future study and archive platform of the World of Art. Alkatraz Gallery will present the first part of the properly archived events, actions, lectures and exhibitions. A compilation of video essays which have been created by seminar groups since 2004 will be on display for the first time. We should also highlight the greatest jewel of the World of Art: the fantastic cacophony jointly created by a number of individuals who have taught, collaborated, debated, found and shared ideas, and shaped the art scene through shaping themselves.

Lada Cerar & Sašo Sedlaček, Toilets / Made in India, 2004

Alen Floričić, Bez naslova (Untitled) no. 01/01, 2001

Marko A. Kovačič, Europe (Rubbish Bin of History), 1997

Tanja Lažetić & Dejan Habicht, Govedji gulaš / Beef goulash, 1997

Ivan Marušić Klif, Bez naslova (Untitled), 1993-1995

www.scca-ljubljana.si/press/razstava-su/

Saturday, November 14, 2009 (workshop)
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 (discussion)
SCCA Project Room, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana

Application deadline: Monday, November 9, 2009

A work or a project of contemporary art is not bounded by a certain form, content or materials. As today, a work of art has not identifiable intrinsic properties and contemporary art is located in the hub of artistic, aesthetic, philosophical, sociological, political, media, science and many other discourses, those who would like to write about a project or an exhibition of contemporary art often find themselves in front of many seemingly insurmountable issues:

• How should I visit the exhibition?
• To what I have to pay attention?
• Where and how to get information that I need and how to use it?
• How to use this information?
• How should I start writing?
• Should I lean on the theory and in what manner should I use it?
• How to conceive a text?

A workshop will lead participants from preparations for the visit and tour of the exhibition to writing and complete extended professional texts on the exhibition. The best text will also be published in the professional press.

The workshop will be conducted in Slovene.

PROGRAM

Saturday, 14th November, 2009, 10:00-17:00

10:00-12:00
The first part of the workshop will start with the presentation of the participants. We will talk about their experiences with contemporary art and how these experiences could be used in writing the text.
The discussion will be followed by the lecture that will draw attention to the key elements of an exhibition which are to be taken under consideration before writing a professional text:

• its concept
• its intention
• the installation of an exhibition
• selection of artworks and other exhibited documents
• formal and contextual analysis of the exhibited works in conjunction with the exhibition
• broader social, political, cultural and institutional contextualization

12.00-12.30
Individual visits of the exhibition project
(Upon applying to the workshop, the participants will receive the materials about the exhibition and are expected to research them carefully before the beginning of the workshop).

12.30-14.00
Guided tour of the exhibition project, interviews with exhibiting artists and review of the materials generated at the exhibition.

14.00-16.00
Lunch break

16.00-18.00
In the second part of the workshop we will highlight the key points of the exhibition content and will start to prepare for writing the text. Afterwards the participants will write their texts at home.

Thursday, 19th November, 12:00
The participants send their texts to the mentor who goes through them, make corrections and give an opinion about each text. Later, the final texts are distributed among all the participants. They carefully read them and make comments.

Tuesday, 24th November, 10:00-14:00
The participants, together with the mentor, discuss each of the completed texts and choose the best one. In the following week the author of the chosen text prepares it for publishing in the specialized magazine.

Mentor of the workshop is Petja Grafenauer.

APPLICATION AND INFORMATION

The price for the workshop is 10 EUR for individuals and 30 EUR for representatives of the institutions.

Application deadline: Monday, November 9, 2009

Attach to the registration:

• a short biography
• a short text about why you wish to participate

The registration form should be sent to the address svetumetnosti@scca-ljubljana.si or brought personally to the address SCCA-Ljubljana, Metelkova 6, 1000 Ljubljana by November 9, 2009 (office hours: 11.00-15.00).

CONTACT
SCCA, Center for Contemporary Arts – Ljubljana
Metelkova 6, 1000 Ljubljana
Contact persons: Sonja Zavrtanik
tel.: 041 367 425, fax: (01) 430 06 29
e-mail: svetumetnosti@scca-ljubljana.si