Difference between revisions of "P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute"

Revision as of 20:49, 9 March 2010

The P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute is the umbrella institution for activities of the internationally renowned Slovene artist Tadej Pogačar and his adherents. Nowadays it runs two independent spaces in Ljubljana: the P74 Centre and Gallery and the Kapsula Gallery. It is the founder and organiser of the OHO Group Award. Lately it has turned its focused to artist books with the aim not only to produce, present, distribute, and sell them (to international art fairs, in both exhibiting spaces, and by the Internet), but it also forms the Collection of the artist book of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute. Last but not least, the institute is the grounding for the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art (PMCA) – Pogačar´s variegated and rich art production, known internationally for its methodology called the "new parasitism".

History

The historical base for the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute was the series of Tadej Pogačar's art projects entitled the Museum of Contemporary Art realised in the beginning of the 1990s, what was in 1993 renamed and established as official institution named the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art (PMCA). Since then many projects were accomplished and further branches of the institute were formed: in 1999 the P74 Centre and Gallery was opened at Prušnikova 74 in Ljubljana's Šentvid neighbourhood, on the periphery of the Slovene capital. To bring the gallery activities in many senses closer to the public and with the intention to be the player of the (international) art market the Kapsula Gallery was opened in 2008.

PCMA

PMCA became renowned for the reworking of the logotype of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the theft of the introductory speech of the director of the Guggenheim from its homepage.

PMCA functions as a virtual institution which exists without its own space and employees, but rather merely settles into territories, locations and networks and feeds off the juices of institutions and operates according to the principles of new parasitism. Its operation is so oriented into the analysis and deconstruction of the symbolic centres of power and the search for parallel models of cultural, economic, and social operation. The PCMA establishes inter-specific relations with institutions and social groups in order to enforce changes in the operation with the analysis of relations and actions within the systems. In recent collaborative projects PMCA deals with the research and analysis of alternative urban strategies, parallel economies, and human trafficking in selected urban areas.

Numerous interventions into the other museum collections followed, including the collection of Ljubljana's Museum of Modern Art; Tretjak’s African Collection at Koroška Gallery of Fine Arts, Slovenj Gradec; the collection of the National Museum of Contemporary History Ljubljana; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Naturmeuseum, Rotterdam; Mucsarnok, Budapest; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Max Liebermann Haus, Berlin.

The PMCA received wide media attention and fame with the organisation of the 1st World Congress of Sex Workers at the 49th Venice Biennale and of New Parasitism at the Padiglione dei Sex Worker in Giardini. It has cooperated on a number of international manifestations on the Tirana Biennale (2005), International Biennale of Contemporary Art Prague (2005), São Paulo Art Biennial (2006), International Istanbul Biennial (2007), and the Biennial of the Canary Islands (2009).

One of the most echoed projects of the PMCA was Kings of the Street (1995), also one of the first artistic street actions with Ljubljana's homeless people, as well the on-going collaborative trans-disciplinary project CODE:RED (1999/2000-2010).

Besides 6 thematic editions of the review Journal for Anthropology and New Parasitism, 2 editions of the thematic newspaper Sex Worker, the PMCA published in 2007 the most comprehensive survey to date of the work of PMCA as a book entitled The Best is Yet to Come. It includes essays of Zdenka Badovinac, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Miško Šuvaković, and Igor Zabel that discuss the beginning of the PMCA, strategies of parasitism and its historical and cultural significance, and situate the practice within the local and international context. The book is distinguished by opulent image documentation, divided into chapters by early actions, the major projects carried out between 1994 and 2005, and concluding with a look at the PMCA's recent projects in the time or still (some) not being presented to the public.

In January 2009 on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the PMCA, the P74 Center and Gallery featured the exhibition This is not America – 15 Years of P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art, with the summit of the discussion about the museum with Charles Esche, curator, writer, director of the Van Abbemuseum (Eidhoven, NL) as a guest. The exhibition clearly showed, how in a decade and a half, the PMCA has created, organised, and coordinated numerous events, actions, public interventions, performances, exhibitions, projections, round tables, and how it has been a "guest" of museum collections, galleries, schools, universities, personal homes, public spaces, streets.

Call for applications of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute

Beside the open call for applications for the OHO Group Award awarded to a young Slovene artist under the age of 35, which the Institute organises in cooperation with the Foundation for a Civil Society from New York, the Institute also annually invites local and international artists to express themselves in artist book and video formats.

Call for entries of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute: short video

Since 2008 the institute makes a public call for entries to artists creating 5-minute videos. Since 2010 the call for proposals (deadline for 2010: March 15th) addresses local and international artists/video makers. Another novelty is its thematic focus. The first thematic focused edition exposing the notion of the lifestyle (Simple Living) with the aim of reach the notion of simpleness. Twelve art works selected by a jury will be featured in the Jakopič Gallery in the autumn 2010 within the international multimedia festival BLIND DATE, which will be accompanied by a catalogue.

Call for entries of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute: artist books

Since 2004 the PMCA is systematically supporting and popularising the production of artist books and artist editions of national and international authors. The call for entries is usually published annually in the second part of the year, out of which the jury (consisting each year of new members) chooses an artist on the basis of the most interesting proposal/concept to publish her/his artist book with the assistance of the institute. Within this programme the institute has published the artist books of Andrejka Čufer, Matej Stupica, Jure Engelsberger, Mladen Stilinović, Zora Stančić, Dejan Habicht, Tadej Pogačar, Boštjan Pucelj, Vlado Martek, Jaka Železnikar, Andreja Džakušič.

P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute Collection of Artist Books

Above mention artist books constitute the core of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute Collection of the artist book. In last years the Institute acquired by the exchange or the purchase more than 170 artist books of national and international authors, which are occasionally featured within events prepared by the Institute and its exhibiting spaces.

Since 2007 the PMCA regularly prepares seminars about artist books, where many (inter)national authors have offered their theoretical or practical views on the topic of artist books, what is usually followed by the open discussions. In 2007 the Croatian artist Vlado Martek gave a workshop entitled The Artist Book as an Aspect of Activism. In the same year two further seminars were held by the British artist, author, and publisher Anthony Auerbach; and the Slovene artist Marko Pogačnik a member of the avant-garde group OHO, active in the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s, who talked about the theme of books as creative tools, where he presented also the concept of the edition OHO (1965-1968).

P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute and the international art fairs of artist books

P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. presents and sells artists books by the artist being represented not just as the part of the programme of their space Kapsula Gallery and by Internet, since 2009 it presents and sell the selected authors also on the international art fairs as on the Miss Read in the Kunstwerke Berlin and by Printed Matter organised NY Art Book Fair in P.S.1, Centre of Contemporary Arts in Queens. P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. represents artists such as Mladen Stropnik, Dejan Habicht, Tanja Lažetić, Balint Szombathy, Tadej Pogačar, Vlado Martek, Boštjan Pucelj, Jacob Fabricius, Mladen Stilinović, Zora Stančić, etc.

External links

@@ Line 52: / Line 52: @@
 Beside the open call for applications for the [[OHO Group Award]] awarded to a young Slovene artist under the age of 35, which the Institute organises in cooperation with the Foundation for a Civil Society from New York, the Institute also annually invites local and international artists to express themselves in artist book and video formats.
-====Call for entries of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute: short video====
+===Call for entries of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute: short video===
 Since 2008 the institute makes a public call for entries to artists creating 5-minute videos. Since 2010 the call for proposals (deadline for 2010: March 15th) addresses local and international artists/video makers. Another novelty is its thematic focus. The first thematic focused edition exposing the notion of the lifestyle (Simple Living) with the aim of reach the notion of simpleness. Twelve art works selected by a jury will be featured in the [[Jakopič Gallery]] in the autumn 2010 within the international multimedia festival BLIND DATE, which will be accompanied by a catalogue.