The Last Five-year Period

We are not doing so well in this country. However, no matter how much talk there is about the end of nations, Slovenes and Slovenia are on everyone's lips. Furthermore, we are not going to allow talk about artists not breathing with the space they live in. Before us lies a selection of nine videos and art movies created within the past five years and which in different ways refer to the Slovene identity. They show us who we are, such that we will find it easier to reflect upon what needs to be changed and where we need to persist with what has been achieved. The artists have achieved this in such a manner that by means of the medium used they stir up our mind as well as our senses. The selection is based on the conclusion that many videos made in our local environment over the past five years offer in at least one of their possible interpretations a clear connection with issues related to the identity of a nation. Lately, through demonstrations and other forms of active interference with the established national structures, the question 'Who are we?' has become a collective one. It is being asked by each and every citizen feeling the effects of the poor functioning of systems in the state. It is artists who speak of such publicly and who by means of the carefully considered tools available to them create the archives of subjectivity. These video archives should be opened as often as possible and displayed to viewers. The selected projects are not an overview of Slovene video over the past five-year period, but are rather a selection with a topical theme, which has become clear in the process of reviewing the works. The objective of the exhibition has a double nature. The space of Tobačna 001 CC places video in a non-place, in a dark cinema, as the selected artworks, whose structure is based on a story, require viewing the individual recordings from their beginning to end. Viewing a video in a simulated cinema in a gallery offers an experience different from that on a computer screen, as the former sucks us into the image while a home screen expects of us constant shifting with regard to what we are looking at and disperses our attention throughout the entire surface. The original videos by Nika Autor, Jasmina Cibic, DDR and Amir Muratović, Tomaž Furlan, Janez Janša, Janez Janša and Janez Janša, Polonca Lovšin, Anja Medved, Nika Oblak and Primož Novak, Marija Mojca Pungerčar and Sašo Sedlaček are divided into three projection cycles, which present possible answers to the following questions: Where do we live?, How do we live?, and With whom do we live?.