U3 Triennial of Contemporary Slovene Arts
Because of renovations to the Museum of Modern Art the sixth, most recent, U3 was postponed until June 2010 and entitled Idea for Living [Kako živeti]. It is curated by Charles Esche, current director of the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, Netherlands) and curator and co-curator of many international exhibitions around the world including biennials such as the 2nd RIWAQ Biennial (Ramallah, Palestine; 2007 and 2009), the 9th International Istanbul Biennial of 2005, and the Gwangju Biennale (Republic of Korea; 2002).
About editions
The curator of the first U3 was the Slovene art historian and critic Tomaž Brejc. The second triennial of 1997 was curated by Peter Weibel, a multimedia curator and writer active at Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe. Themes were dislocation, discommunication, medialisation, contextualisation, and a critique of the museum institution and art system. The third triennial of 2000 entitled 'Vulgata', was conceived by Slovene gallerist and curator Gregor Podnar (see ŠKUC Gallery and Gregor Podnar Gallery), and featured the Slovene national identity based on social constructs. Among others it exhibited works of Marko Peljhan, Tadej Pogačar, Alenka Pirman, Vuk Čosić, Marko Kovačič, Damijan Kracina, Darij Kreuh, and Maja Licul.
The 4th Triennial of 2003 with the title Here and There was curated by Christine Van Assche, a new media curator from the Musée national d'art moderne at the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris. It concentrated on the concept of the museum, based on the supposition that museums have changed tremendously over the last fifty years. The shifting concept of museums was presented in 20 projects: prints were exhibited on billboards throughout Ljubljana (Sašo Vrabič), a video was broadcast on TV (Davide Grassi, Igor Stromajer and Brane Zorman), the exhibition included projections on the façade of the museum (Martin Bricelj), a music performance in a theatre (Random Logic), a project on the Internet (Andreja Kulunčič), and a project involving visitors' cell phones (Vuk Čosić). Further artists included Bojan Brecelj, Tomaž Gregorič, Dejan Habicht and Tanja Lažetić, Janez Janša (formerly and nowadays again known as Žiga Kariž), Borut Peterlin, Franc Purg, Tobias Putrih, Son:DA and Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec.
The curator of the 5th edition of U3 (from 28 December 2006 to 4 March 2007) was Jurij Krpan, artistic director of Ljubljana's Kapelica Gallery. The exhibition was divided into 4 modules: in the first one only the presentations of works comprehended as good practices to draw attention to the unexploited possibilities for improving production capacities in the field of visual practices were shown. The second module featured the exhibition of 11 selected intermedia art projects as Viktor Bernik, BridA, Srečo Dragan, Nika Oblak and Primož Novak in collaboration with Stefan Doepner, Mark Požlep, Sašo Sedlaček and others. The third module, featured in the central room of the triennial, dealt with the analysis of the 20th-century production and public presentations. The fourth module consisted of panel discussions, talks and performances. Several representatives of international art institutions, centres, organisations and networks presented their artist-in-residence programmes.