& Young Art in Slovenia
(Traditional Contemporary)
http://www.ljudmila.org
Ljudmila (Ljubljana Digtal Media Lab) is an open-access media laboratory, an initiative of the Open Society Institute - Slovenia. (link) Ljudmila supports education, research, and work in the following fields: internet, digital video, electronic arts, digital and analogue radio, communications, hardware production and interdisiplinary integration. Ljudmila operates an indipendent and non-profit internet dial up service and is presently developing a wireless indipendent IP service. www.ljudmila.org server hosts more than 120 websites focused on civil initiatives, art projects and media activism.
The majority of young from Slovenia are not so kin about media art. It`s interesting that lots of people in our country are somehow staying in the fields of classical art May be that`s the problem of education and cultural politics? But there are some artists who use new media for artistic expression. We don`t have any real media departement at our Accademy of Fine Arts, but we have Ljudmila instead. There are places in Slovenia where you can surf over the internet for free. Guys from Ljudmila did manage to achive this status in this places in Ljubljana esp.Vuk Cosic (link) broke down the profitable cyber caffe politics. And that`s good! Ljudmila has established itself over the years of activism with Vuk Cosic, Luka Frelih (as a hacker) and Marko Peljhan as most known and established artists. Vuk Cosic (http://www.vuk.org) One of the first initiator of syndicate, net time, c3 etc. He constructed an ascii camera and more...Marko Peljhan (http://www.makrolab.ljudmila.org) Atol project was presented at Documenta X.
Ljudmila is expanding. We can not imagine contemporary Slovene Art without Ljudmila`s team. They are good background of many other projects.
Some Artists of my generation are connected with media within their artwork. I`ll mention few. Jaka Zeleznikar (link) doing his interactive poetry and web pages, Damjan Kracina (link) evokes the question of traditional and contemporary as many others. He`s doing a group exhibition in Vienna with Vuk Cosic, Marko Peljhan and others. Darij Kreuh (link) is exploring the space of virtual reality as an art projects. he was also participant of Crossing over Festival in Sofia (co+ / co++). Ziga Kariz (http://www.kapelica.org/kariz) My Good friend and schoolmate. He had a lots of exhibition over the country and abroad. We had some projects together (This Town Ain`t Big Enough For Both of Us in P74 Gallery and This Town Is Even Smaller as the second part in Celje) Teror = Dekor is his latest project with interactive Carlos for the kitchen which is going to be presented at this year bienalle for young contemporary art in Rome as ECLIPSE (http://www.ljudmila.org/eclipse/) with their porno- kitchy installations.
