Gulag Institute for Contemporary Arts and Cultures

The Gulag Institute is a production unit for various art and art-related projects by a loosely connected collective of artists, among them Zoran Srdić Janežič, Gorazd Krnc, Jana Putrle Srdić, Ida Hiršenfelder, Neža Mrevlje and Aleksandra Saška Gruden. All of them are interested in various artistic disciplines and consequently such is also the nature of the Gulag Institute. It is not an art group as such, and its project feature many other artists and also social scientists, who thus form the periphery of this enterprise.

Primarily active within the fields of visual, sound and performative art, it also deals with poetry, puppetry and a few other forms of expression. Additionally, the institute puts great store in reflecting on questions of arts and art systems and has consequently organised several programmes to address this.

Background

In 1999 Zoran Srdić Janežić and some of his fellow visual artists founded Modri krog (Blue Circle), which was a vehicle for organising exhibitions, street art interventions and festivals for presenting their visual and multimedia artworks. In 2007, it was succeeded by the establishment of The Gulag Institute for Contemporary Arts and Cultures, which set its horizons of activity somewhat more broadly. Gulag's founders were the curator and writer on contemporary art Petja Grafenauer, the poet, visual arts producer and translator Jana Putrle Srdić, painter and video artist Gorazd Krnc and the aforementioned Zoran, who is a sculptor, visual artist, puppeteer and performer.

Projects

As a rule Gulag's projects merge various artistic genres like sculpture (among them inflatable sculptures), poetry, body-art, sound art, video, public interventions, performance art and so on.

Public interventions are possibly Gulag's most often used media of communicating their art, with the underlying themes being the issues of social control, underlying violence and intercultural repression. For example, in collaboration with MKC Maribor Youth Culture Centre, the Performa Festival and Maribor, European Capital of Culture 2012 Gulag co-produced the innovative street performance Intellectual Whores', which engaged 17 educated thinkers tho "whore" their knowledge on the streets of Maribor by discussing with their "tricks" poetry, sculpture, art films, psychoanalysis and other topics. A similar project was enacted during the Lighting Guerrilla Festival, when female intellectuals, artists and humanists offered their knowledge to passers-by in toilets-art objects designed by sculptors. A curious performance was the public intervention called "Sculptor's walk across Vienna with the octopus sculpture Towards Where Berneker's studio used to be", supported by Bildhauerisher Spaziergang, Akademie der Bildenden Künste.

The exhibitions organised by Gulag focus on emerging art with a special focus on the body, gender, sculpturing and new media. They featured artists such as Maja Smrekar, Mito Gegič, Urša Vidic, Otto Urpelainen, Sanela Jahić, Borut Savski, Gorazd Krnc and Zoran Srdić Janežič.

Zoran Srdić Janežič: Proteus anguinus Carnium by Zoks on Vimeo

A prominent place in Gulag's production is taken by poetry, combined with various other media of expression – video, visual and sound art, artist's books. They thus search for new ways to expose and radicalise poetry, which they also adress via workshops and public performances.

Staged works by Gulag include the theatre performance Little red Riding Hood, an innovative dance performance with shadow puppets for adults and children, produced at Stara Elektrarna - Old Power Station. Another interesting project was Ej bejba, kaj maš s to poezijo? / Hey baby, what’s with this poetry? – an experimental poetry and dance performance, which dealt with research on the act of writing and the social role of poetry.

Contemporary Art Tea Parties

These "parties" were organised from 2006 to 2009 and then re-launched in 2015. Previously they were done in co-production with KUD Mreža Arts and Culture Association and Alkatraz Gallery. The monthly meetings aimed to promote discussion and constructive dialogue about contemporary art and took place in Alkatraz Gallery. There were round tables about various topics such as contemporary art events, writing about art, activism, comic books, street art, presentations of young artists etc. In 2009 they accompanied the Biennial of Graphic Arts.

In 2015 they were re-launched in the form of discussions, lectures and seminars on contemporary art practices.

Theatre design

An independent part of Gulag Institute is its workshop for the planning and realisation of scenic design, the painting stage scenery, the construction of various mechanisms, three-dimensional objects, prototypes, and other facilities. It manufactures puppets, masks, mascots, props, scenic and costume elements for various theatres: SNG Drama Ljubljana (Scenes from an Execution), SNG Maribor (7 Stories), SNG Nova Gorica (Skurt), SLG Celje (The Flags), Mladinsko Theatre (King Lear), and other smaller theatres.

Publications

Gulag Institute publishes catalogues and artist's books which are usually part of an art project that includes different media such as Proteus anguinus Carnium which was presented at the exhibition Prints and Impressions (April 2012) at International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana.

Gulag also published Sculpture Project: Public Sculpture – Slovenian Square, Kranj [Kiparski projekt: Javno kiparstvo – Slovenski trg, Kranj] and an artist's book of 40 drawings of cat-like creatures (2008) by Zoran Srdić Janežič titled Tomislav Vrečar: I'm watching a friend in the morning, how he is playing with a cat after a poem by Tomislav Vrečar.

Gulag also runs a web magazine called G-Zine, a blog for reflections on modern art.

Partnerships and collaborations

Besides the aforementioned ones, regular or occasional partners of Gulag include Alkatraz Gallery, Strip Core (and its Lighting Guerrilla Festival), Škuc Gallery, Theremidi Orchestra, Young Ryhmes, Layer House, International Feminist and Queer Festival Red Dawns, MKC Maribor Youth Culture and others.

Its partner magazine is the literary journal Poiesis.

External links

Gulag Institute for Contemporary Arts and Cultures

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