Dunja Kukovec (SI), Katja Kobolt (SI)

Humour Works

After you clean your shoes at Jana Prepeluh (SI) prepare to enter the room No. 5 since artist Lejla Cmajcanin (BA) will share with you her experiences with EU immigration policy. If you will be lucky enough to get a visa you could amuse yourself with different Kits by Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkacova (SK), who will show you manuals using simple tools for getting a good gallerist, for romantization of economy or slowing down dialectic materialism, and even for a spectacular hairstyle. With Tina Smrekar’s (SI) Anti-Stress Techniques you could facilitate your everyday (coming up with creative projects and at the same time paying bills, facing constant deadline stress and adrenal fatigue, etc.) If you don’t want to use electricity at all out of environmental reasons or to be self-sustained and independent Polonca Lovšin (SI) can show you the easy way how to talk endlessly on the mobile phone or listen to your favourite music. If you want to move to another country but don’t have the right papers simply marry like Kitch (SI) did. To marry for love is one of those big lies since marriage is one of the simple impetus for state control, so even if you are in love marry out of hacktivist reason. Or maybe you date only online? You are not alone, Starke (BA) are open for cooperation with all willing souls, but first of all they have a poem for you and a beat for all night ritual. son:DA (SI) can literally draw you communication methods and connections implying absurdity and alienation of technologized modern society. Lala Rašcic (HR) requestions ‘what if reality’ of a physically invisible person. She is interested in question: If you are born invisible or your identity was erased how can you become an insider, how can you exist, or move, or even cross the border? The installation of loosely organised network Kanak Attak (DE) continues migration makeshift (and make-do) constructions, one person’s urgency for inventions of origins and destinations, fluidity and transformability, failure and potentiality. Another loose but extremely connected in attitudes and views – is the FAQ network. It is a rhizomatic home with a wide open doors for all Balkan’s Feminists, Activists, Queers and others. We are loose, but we can simply never lose!

www.humourworks.org

Dunja Kukovec and Katja Kobolt
Artistic directors of the Association for the Promotion of Women in Culture – City of Women.

Dunja Kukovec (1975), is art historian and free lance curator. She is open source advocate and is interested in collaborative ways of working. She has curated numerous exhibitions and as assistant curator, co-curator or project manager worked at events like Venice Biennial 2003, Manifesta 2000, 14^th and 15^th Ljubljana International Film Festival, 12^th and 13^th International Festival of Computers Arts.

Katja Kobolt (1977), Ph.D., is a free-lance cultural producer and publicist based in Ljubljana, researching on political implications on feminist (art) theory and cultural memory. She has written numerous articles and has been organizing many events in Slovenia and also abroad.

Dunja Kukovec and Katja Kobolt are since the beginning of 2006 art directors of City of Women International Festival of Contemporary Arts. At the moment they are expanding the City of Women production throughout the year. They are challenged to keep City of Women community based and open minded festival, where collaboration, discussion and creative networking are of the same value as representation and communication.

 

Humor Works Exhibition:

ANETTA MONA CHISA (RO/SK/CZ) & LUCIA TKACOVA (SK)

Kits (2007)

Installation

The installation Kits – commissioned by City of Women in 2007 – ironically refers to selection processes, curatorial practice, and art market where protagonists put themselves as arbiters of quality while building up predictable and subsequently exclusive art world. By changing simple everyday objects into tools for different actions are Anetta and Lucia promoting career strategies for commoditised art world crusade. The rebus like set ups will easily serve us as manuals for getting a good gallerist, for romantization of economy, for slowing down dialectic materialism, and even for a spectacular hairstyle.

Anetta Mona Chisa (Nadlac, 1975), a visual artist, curator and performer has attended Academy for Art and Design (AFAD) in Bratislava. As a curator she worked in Synagogue Centre For Contemporary Arts in Trnava and has since 2002 an assistant teacher position at the Academy for Art in Prague.

Lucia Tkacova (Banská Štiavnica, 1977) is a visual artist, performer as well as pedagogue. She attended AFAD in Bratislava. Cite internationale des arts in Paris (residence program) and Kforum Vienna (artist in residence).

As a performing duo they had several individual and group presentations in Bratislava, Prague and Krakow. Their works have also been presented in Vienna, Wroclaw, London, Birmingham, Trnava, Tbilisi, etc.

www.chitka.info

 

TINA SMREKAR (SI):

Anti-stress Techniques (2008)

Video, objects

Installation Anti-Stress Techniques inscribes itself to a broader context of work by Tina Smrekar entitled Surviver in which she deals with economic position of artists in contemporary art world. Exploring simple methods of how to facilitate every day of artists, which is oscillating between paying the bills and producing works of art, she came up with a bundle of relaxation tools: e.g. Blow Bubbles Until You Are Out of Breath or Let the Holes make You Whole (using a sheet of paper and a paper puncher).

Tina Smrekar (Ljubljana, 1978) completed studies of design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. In addition she was studying for at the University of Art and Design Helsinki and completed her Photography MA at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. She works in photography, video, installation and research projects as well as occasionally performance and curating. She attended many group exhibitions as well as her first solo show is just now to be seen in Siemens Artlab in Vienna.

www.sur-viver.org

 

KITCH (SI):

Living On A Border: Kitch Wedding - A Replica (2005)

Documentation of live art

Kitch is an artistic duo and a couple in love, which out of a necessity imposed by restrictive EU immigration policy became also a married couple. In order they could stay and work together they married and the wedding was a performance at the City of Women festival in 2005. Beside a performance a real wedding became political reclaim and a marketing act. Kitch wedding was structured as a post-post-modern state of exile, demystifying wedding ceremonies, playing with sexual orientations, and examining the political implications of the act of wedlock.

Kitch (Lana Zdravkovic – Mostar, 1974 and Nenad Jelesijevic – Gornji Milanovac, 1971) is a brand which produces art works both as an artistic group as well as individual artists. During 1999 and 2000 kitch^tm labelled and priced parts of a human body under its own trademark, and documented a sales strategy in a text entitled Art is Merchandise (2003). Kitch^tm has presented its projects in Ljubljana, Maribor, Helsinki, Belgrade, Alcoy, Chicago, Graz, as well as on the web. They are involved in various networks and work in the field of art, social sciences and activism.

www.kitch.org
www. livingonaborder.net

 

 

Son:DA (SI)

room Nr-9000.psd (2005)

mouse-computer-drawing / print on canvas

Characteristic motifs of this image are electrical cables and the rest of the electrical menagerie, such as outlets, telephones, a computer; in short, elements that represent connection and the communication methods of modern society. Impurity and hybridisation are characteristic both in their individual processes as well as at the level of content. All of this serves as criticism of the absurdity of technologised modern society and its alienation.

The tandem son:DA (Metka Golec – Maribor, 1972 and Miha Horvat – Maribor, 1976) is active in the areas of installations, computer drawing and audiovisual performance. They often replace traditional authorship with various forms of participation. They had numerous appearances at group exhibition, biennials, etc. all over the world; and their several solo shows are always including different media: sound performances, video installations, objects and paintings.

http://sonda.kibla.org

 

POLONCA LOVŠIN (SI):

The Solar Collection (2002)

Video, objects

Polonca Lovšin offers in her short video vignettes different strategies for quality life baring in mind the concepts that are shifting between self sustainability and environmental concern. She is interested in individual solutions and innovations combined with the DIY principal. In The Solar Connection we found out easy way of how to talk endlessly on our mobile phone and listen to our radio non-stop while running around the city without spending poisonous batteries or looking for electricity plug in.

Polonca Lovšin (Ljubljana, 1970) completed architecture studies at the Faculty for Architecture, sculpture program and postgraduate studies of sculpture and new media at the Academy of Fine Arts, all in Ljubljana. She works as an architect and a contemporary artist. She has exhibited at numerous occasions in Slovenia and abroad (Mess Hall, Chicago; EL PARTICULAR, Mexico City; Moderna galerija, Ljubljana; Hotel Paradiso, Liege and elsewhere).

www.lovsin.org

STARKE (BA):

Poljubac.com (2007)

Video

Starke are originally the electro band from Sarajevo. But their music and lyrics goes far beyond regular pop, rock or dance culture. They work mostly in the framework of DIY, they intend to stay independent, and are not interested to be swallowed by music industry. Their lyrics if full of criticism, irony and observations of technologised landscape and reality gaps. Starke will present the lyrics of Poljubac.com and a video which expresses their »concern« regarding the universal (self)indulgence of sexual urges on the web.

Starke (Andreja Dugandžic- dRe, Jelena Milušic – JeJe and djane Jasmina) use technology and electronic devices to stir up their everyday. They recorded melodies on an old synthesizer, and via a notebook, added drum’n’bass, disco, house and electro rhythms, and softened these amalgams with a bluevelvet voice. They started their live performances in 2007 and they have already performed in different countries in the Balkans, and around Europe.

www.myspace.com/starkemo

 

LALA RAŠCIC (HR):

The Invisibles (2005)

Mini DV/DVD

What is the ‘what if reality’ of a physically invisible person? Video The Invisibles could be read as a metaphor of an outsider or of someone with erased identity or as tricky work playing with urban (racist) myths in order to transcend them. Bureaucratic mechanisms, collective paranoia, surveillance systems power by technological devices are just some of contemporary absurdities Lala Rašcic is dealing with in her work.

Lala Rašcic (Sarajevo, 1977) is a contemporary artist. Recent exhibitions include ‘Heroes in Transition’, Angel Row Gallery (Nottingham, 2007); The Young Artists’ Biennial (Bucharest, 2006); ‘New Video, New Europe’ (The Kitchen, New York,2006) and many more. Recently, Lala Rašcic took part in the third edition of PILOT, a publication showcasing artists’ work which was launched at the Venice Biennale and will appear at the forthcoming Frieze Art Fair.

 

KANAK ATTAK (DE):

HOW TO GETto Europe (2007)

Installation

The installation HOW TO GETto Europe (commissioned by City of Women in 2007) is a statement about the migration regime, and in particular the border passage, that form a relationship between narration and interpretation: Storytelling, makeshift (and make-do) constructions, inventions of origins and destinations, insistence as well as fluidity; inventiveness, failure and potentiality.

The Kanak Attak anti-racist network came into being in 1998 with the launch of its manifesto entitled: Addressing questions of heritage and passport. Since that time the loosely organised network has been engaged in video-activism, theory production, research, performances, discursive rearrangements, speeches, agitprop actions, cultural hoaxing, image production and re-imaginations, sound & audio creation etc. Amongst the central issues addressed by Kanak Attak since 1998 were representational politics, the integration paradigm (no integracion!), »kanak operaism«, the right to have rights as well as the campaign for legalisation and the »autonomy of migration«.

www.kanak-attak.de

FAQ (Balkan):

FAQ Network (2008)

FAQ is a network of feminist, activist and queer festivals, initiatives and also individuals who are active in the Balkans, mostly in the region of ex-Yugoslavia. The FAQ network was established in 2007, at the Red Dawns Festival, in Ljubljana. Urška Merc who is a regular collaborator of Red Dawns and a part of FAQ is making the installation that will playfully present the ideas and interests of different “members” of FAQ Network. The network is open, loose and adds crucial value to ever more important cultural connections outside European union in the time of Europe becoming a fortress.

COWEB / COW RADIO and MOO Net label

City of Women will also present their independent online platform ciytofwomengoesweb.org, so called COWEB. It is a Zine for critical refelxions, MOO a net label and at the time of the festival also a Free online COW Radio. Helena Božic, a COW Radio editor will at Hack.Fem.East work on a radio show Humor Works. Humour Works radio show will be published on humourworks.org website. On exhibition it will also be possible to burn CD-ies with free music album Laugh Out Loud! published on MOO Net label.

 

Credit:

Humour Works is curated by: Dunja Kukovec. Curatorial advisors: Katja Kobolt, Taida Horozovic, Danijela Dugandžic, Nanna Heidereich. Production assistants: Jasmina Založnik and Urška Jež With a support of: European Cultural Foundation, City Council Ljubljana, and Ministry of Culture of the Republic Slovenia.