Difference between revisions of "KiBela Art Space"

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Jure Zadnikar's exhibition Towards the sun in the KiBela Art Space, 2008

KiBela Art Space is one of several sections of KIBLA Multimedia Centre. Since its establishment in 1996, Aleksandra Kostič, its main curator of the show room and nowadays the president of Ace Kibla, together with colleagues Peter Tomaž Dobrila, curator Maja Vuksanović and others have created a very well-defined programme of Slovene and international art – or "transnational" art, as they do not like to classify art by nationalities. The programme-oriented gallery goes beyond traditional exhibiting boundaries, it connects various visual media ventures with audio communications, telecommunications, interactive technology, even with contemporary dance and theatre – an extraordinary programme for Slovene dimensions which has brought KiBela to international success.

The famous Australian artist Stelarc claims that Kibla "is the best cyber space in the world", artist Eduardo Kac, who works at the Art Institute of Chicago, "something like this doesn't exist in United States" and Joseph Tabby, university professor and writer, "I came to visit Slovenia, because I'd heard about KIBLA."

Background

KiBela Art Space was developed within KIBLA Multimedia Centre together with KiBar (an Internet café), the Kibela.Tif graphic studio which produces KIBLA's flyers and publications, and Za:misel Bookstore. In the second half of the 1990s plans for KiBela began to take shape with the help of experience and common knowledge – in a time when the emergence of new technologies and artistic approaches had already become self-evident and necessary when planning a contemporary gallery.

Location

KiBela is on the ground floor of Narodni dom in Maribor and was renovated in January 1999 with the purpose of installing visual and other forms of art. KiBela cooperates often with other spaces and institutions and sometimes prepares site-specific projects.

Concept

"Contemporary, multimedia and intermedia related", the fundamental concept of KiBela Art Space is that of "liberating and connecting traditional and electronic art media, presenting artistic (non)messages and artist+ (ir)responsibility, integrating art with science and technology and establishing new aesthetics and an ecology of the mind."

KiBela has worked towards establishing links between alternative and established art and culture, between young and older generations, between the domestic and foreign art scene, between classical and electronic media, between art, technology and science and between different aesthetics and thinking.

Programme

In over 10 years of operation KiBela has held more then 200 social art openings, performances, presentations and other art events and developed an exclusive approach to installing art in the space: whether by content or by the use of (new) media in technically or architecturally challenging ways, KiBela's space has accommodated a wide variety of art aesthetics. Since 2004 all of KiBela's events – more than 100 – are superbly visually and textually documented on KiBela's online archive.

KiBela is also a multi-purpose entertainment space for organising seminars, presentations, round tables, press conferences and rich cultural programmes, including exhibitions, theatre performances, video projections, concerts, literary readings, debate clubs, etc.

Exhibited Artists

The gallery collaborates and presents the recent works of international, national and regional multimedia and visual artists following the curated programme of house and external, freelance curators.

The list of artists who have been presented at KiBela reads like a who's who in contemporary art and especially, new media art. Pioneer and innovative artists who are at the forefront of new media art, whether from abroad or from Slovenia, have been exhibited alongside young and emerging artists. KiBela's website has an extensive archive of artists presented since 2004 as well as photographs from the exhibitions.

International cooperation

Through KiBela's distribution channels many Slovene artists have been presented over the years in different art spaces around the world. Thus KiBela as an art space is known as a partner of many international projects of similar organisations from Graz, London, Zagreb, Belgrade and the United States, having the aim of presenting new approaches through intermedia as well as classic fine arts.

One of the recent projects X-OP - eXchange of art operators and producers. It goes about gradually growing network of artists, researchers, operators, producers and centres with the aim to establish a European platform for creation of art and exchange. By long-term cooperation the partner centres are establishing and further developing infrastructural and information supportive environment in relation to information technology, digital culture and art creation in wide aspect from art production and presentation to research and education. Alongside Kibla and KiBela are in the partners consortium Museum Lapidarium (Novigrad, Croatia), Media in Motion (Berlin, Germany), Egon March Institute (Ljubljana, Slovenia, MoKS – Kunsti ja Sotsiaalpraktika Keskus, Center for Art and Social Practice (Mooste, Estonia), CIANT – International Centre for Art and New Technologies (Prague, Czech Republic), Politechnic of Tomar (Tomar, Portugal), MAA – Taidekoulu, Art School (Helsinki, Finland), Apartment Project (Istanbul, Turkey) and Rahmenwerk – Transforming Freedom (Vienna, Austria).

In 2009 they held sessions in Berlin, Novigrad and in the Philippines on the Asia-Europe New Media Art Symposium. As it goes about the project from Ace Kibla, the role of the KiBela Art Space is to give its exhibiting place for presentations – like the improvisational audio-video performance between Tengal (Manila), Marko Batista (Ljubljana), and Ana Pečar (Maribor), what happened in November 2009.

International Art Fairs

Since 2009 KiBela attends international art fairs. In July 2009 KiBela was hosted on the Art Vilnius 09 fair, the very first international art fair in Baltic region, which happend as part of the European Capital of Culture 2009 in Lithuania. KiBela as the only Slovenian gallery presents two Slovenian artists of the younger generation: the sculptor Boštjan Novak and the painter Jure Zadnikar. In September 2009 KiBela took part on curated fifth edition of Preview Berlin - the emerging art fair presenting computer controlled instalation Robot Partner 0.2 - Automated Table Modification by Stefan Doepner, German artist, living and working in Ljubljana.

Publications

Since 1998, starting with the essays collection of Eduardo Kac with titles Teleporting An Unknown State and Telepresence, Biotelematics and Transgenetic Arts, KiBela published more than 25 publications. The recent ones: the catalogue Performing Pictures from Geska Helena Andersson & Robert Brečević, the catalogue AES+F: Action Half Life, catalogue Sonic from Ksenija Čerče, the DVD Digital commune in Maribor, the DVD with the title Zapri oči in glej from Alenka Pirman and others.

Exhibition space

Dimensions: 132m² (8.7m x 15.2m x 3.5m H) vaulted space with 6 columns, incorporating 20 linear metres of wall space; installation system: hammer-and-nail installation, sculpture pedestals; lighting: halogen lighting system; climate control: none; sales policy: sales not permitted; security: security system installed

External links

Gallery

David Carson's Paganini of Typography, a creative workshop/exhibition in the KiBela Art Space, KIBLA Multimedia Centre, Maribor 2002

All about Lesotho new media project by Vlado G. Repnik, Robert Klančnik, Lana K. Gotvan and Stefan Doepner in the KiBela Art Space, Maribor 2006

Junction protocols exhibition by Dragan Živadinov, Dunja Zupančič and Miha Turšič, KiBela Art Space, Maribor 2007