Ljubljana
MGML
Sanela Jahić
© Toni Mlakar

Cultural Centre Tobačna 001

Tobačna ulica 1
1000 Ljubljana

E kc.tobacna001@mgml.si

Information and reservations:
T +386 1 24 12 500
T +386 1 24 12 506
E prijava@mgml.si

Exhibition space is open according to exhibitions:
Tuesday–Friday: 11:00–19:00
Monday, Saturday, Sunday: Closed

Free entry.


Sanela Jahić

A manager among us

20. 9. 2016–20. 9. 2016

Reflecting the time of global capitalism, Sanela Jahić’s projects are dedicated to investigating relationships between man and machine and between worker and employer in the manufacturing process. Whereas in Tempo Tempo and I am spending my Capital the artist focused on class polarisation and the dehumanisation of workers as a consequence of the automated production process, the current exhibition shifts the aforementioned relationships into a more optimistic perspective.

The project "A Manager Among Us" showcases a video work and a series of graphics. It reveals the artist’s interest in cases of employee buyouts, where workers refused to put their own fate into the hands of others and consequently slide into passive acquiescence, but actively addressed the circumstances in which they had found themselves. 

The video "Mine, Yours, Ours" presents two successful examples of collective ownership, the companies Domel in Železniki and Gorenjski glas from Kranj, which are in the majority ownership of employees. The work of documentary nature is broadcasted on three channels. It consists of interviews as well as footages of production halls and office spaces, which the artist made during her many visits. In their stories the interviewees talk about the buyout, a step made out of necessity – mostly fear of the takeover and destruction of their business activities – about the importance of co-ownership for owner-workers, how the buyout affected their work, and last but not least, about the attitude of their companies to the market in the context of late capitalism. With the video, Jahić takes a large segment of her creative practice outside her studio and in so doing links the process of artistic creation to informative activity on the one hand and the factory-based manufacturing process on the other. 

The second part of the exhibition project offers the artist’s unique insight into the relationship between man and technology in the form of a social experiment. If in the previous years she discussed the worker’s entrapment in the manufacturing process as well as his or her subordination to machinery and norms, she now turns the logic to perform measurements on managers. With the use of highly accurate miniature sensors, attached to the hand of a management board member, she measures the firmness of grasp and the contraction of muscles in a handshake, a gesture adherence to the rules of hierarchy and considered to foster successful cooperation in the business sphere. The artist then translates the results of her analysis into a series of graphics Five Handshakes in the form of diagrams that allude to the work of Étienne Jules Marey and the time when chronophotography composed photograms into early examples of films for the bourgeoisie and the rising proletariat.


The project is part of the series that has been presenting Slovenian artists from the younger generation.

Colophon

Production: Museum and Galleries of LjubljanaExhibition curator: Alenka TrebušakArtist: Sanela JahičText: Alenka TrebušakDesign: Ajdin BašićPhotography: Matevž Paternoster/MGMLRealisation of the exhibition: Technical Service MGMLThe exhibition was made possible by: City of Ljubljana, Department for Culture


Thanks to: DEWESoft d.o.o. Slavko Pavlin, MGLC Andrej Primožič 

Cultural Centre Tobačna 001

Tobačna ulica 1
1000 Ljubljana

E kc.tobacna001@mgml.si

Information and reservations:
T +386 1 24 12 500
T +386 1 24 12 506
E prijava@mgml.si

Exhibition space is open according to exhibitions:
Tuesday–Friday: 11:00–19:00
Monday, Saturday, Sunday: Closed

Free entry.


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