Background
The venue is located at the premises of the Maribor textile factory MTT, which had been closed in the 90s and remained unused since then. Its vast grounds were opened during the time when Maribor was the European Capital of Culture 2012 and it was first initiated in November 2012 with the Soft Control: Art, Science and the Technological Unconscious, an international art exhibition with a conference, workshops and lectures.
Programme
The KIBLA Portal has put on display a very diverse set of works, ideas and performances which were gathered from all around the world. Some of the exhibition projects, all of them of a international character, organised by KIBLA Portal were:
The aforementioned Soft Control exhibition and conference, which – by way of exhibitions, performances, lectures, workshops and screenings – dealt with the discourses and contexts of technology, science, arts and contemporary techno-culture; the Materiality in the Portal display that dealt with the concept of materiality through a diverse set of works of art - both the established canon of Slovenian and international art as well as the works of young, ambitious and promising authors - and some almost forgotten and overlooked artists; the international exhibition that dealt with the First World War called Memory of Violence – Dreams of the Future 1914 -18; and XXY which dissected the cultural-political conglomeration of identity and the political landscape of Europe, especially Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.
A curious project was done in collaboration with the Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor, which invited its students and alongside them some established artists, to create especially for this exhibition and venue developed drawings.
Invited artists and curators
Some of the curators involved in the KIBLA Portal were Dmitry Bulatov, Sanja Kojić Mladenov, Petra Varl, Žiga Dobnikar and Aleksandra Kostič (among other things the director of MMC KIBLA and Portal).
One would be hard pressed to come up with a representative list of artists, as both the venue concept and the venues capacities themselves dictate for the place to feature numerous artists. Yet, some of the artists from abroad were Marina Abramović (RS/US), Suzanne Dikker (NL), Matthias Oostrik (NL), Jimmy Loizeau (UK), Brandon Ballengee (US), Paul Smith (UK), David Bowen (US), Andrew Gracie (UK/ES), Kuda begut sobaki (RU), Stelarc (AU), Bill Vorn (CA), Lana Čmajčanin (BiH), Boris Pramatarov (BG), Marcel Mališ (SK), Ana Pečar (SI), Bogdan Girbovan (RO), Anca Benera (RO), Arnold Estefan (RO), Visualizing Palestine (LB), Vessna Perunovich (RS-CA), Magali Sanheira (FR), ábor Fülöp (HU), Libuše Jarcovjáková (CZ), Max Sudhues (DE), Martina Grlić (HR), Magda Tothova (SK), Chto Delat (RU), María Elínardóttir (IS), Oliver Pietsch and Goran Tomčić.
Of the artists from Slovenia, a ery incomplete list would include Nataša Berk, Maja Hodošček, Nika Autor, Mark Požlep, Ervin Potočnik, Borut Peterlin, Mojca Oblak, Mina Fina, Laibach, Marko Jakše, Mitja Ficko, Tadej Vindiš, Tanja Lažetić, Damijan Kracina, Vlado Repnik and Matija Bobičić.
Festivals and other events at KIBLA Portal
Since 2013, the Maribor Electronic Destination International Festival takes place at Portal, as does the KIBLIX Festival. In 2013 and 2015, respectively, the KIBLIX Festival and the International Festival of Computer Arts (IFCA) merged their efforts and stage a joint festival exhibition at the vast halls of the Portal. KIBLIX has, among many others, brought here works and performances by Vlado G. Repnik, Bojan Gagić, Miodrag Gladović, Ghislaine Boddington, Servando Barreiro, Olaf Val, Tania Candiani, Yann Leguay, Unstatic, Random Logic, Elisabeth Schimana, graška elektronska eksperimentatorska, Angelo Vermeulen, belgijski intermedijski umetnik in avtor serije DIY vesoljskih ladij Seeker, C-Drik Fermont, metropolitanski nojzer, Kathy High, newyorška bioumentica, ter William Myers, inovator na področju biodizajna, Electric Indigo, and Žiga Pavlovič.
Some of the artists presented at MED were Andy Stott, Cut Hands, Cut Hands, Wolf Müller, Dodecahedragraph, Mono Scarves and Kaganovich.
International cooperation
The Materiality exhibition featured three foreign European partners – WYSPA Institute of Art (Gdansk, Poland), VESSEL (Bari, Italy) and Instituto Polytechnico de Tomar, (Portugal). The French Institute in Serbia and the Goethe-Institute in Belgrade, in cooperation with the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina (MSUV), initiated the project Memory of Violence and Dreams of the Future.
The Soft Control project was the most internationally ambitious thing, and was done in cooperation with Ars Electronica, Impakt – Utrecht, Netherlands, MediaArtLab – Moscow, Russia, National Centre for Contemporary Arts – Kaliningrad Branch, Russia, Prometheus – Kazan, Russia, Experiments in Art and Technology – E.A.T., Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto, Centre for new media culture RIXC Riga, Latvia (LV), International Centre for Art and New Technologies CIANT, Hangar, Centre for research and production for the visual arts, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka, Dom omladine Beograd, O3ONE and even more Slovenian partners, from University of Maribor, Faculty of Medicine and Scientific Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts to Koroška galerija likovnih umetnosti (KGLU) Slovenj Gradec.
See also
- KIBLA Multimedia Centre
- KiBela Art Space
- KIBLIX Festival
- International Festival of Computer Arts (IFCA)
- Maribor Electronic Destination International Festival