Introduction to New Media Art in Slovenia
The local terminological context
The term intermedia dates back to the mid-1960s and its use is largely connected with the writings of Dick Higgins (1938–1998), one of the co-founders of Fluxus. Among the fundamentals on which the movement was based is the departure from the established art genres and the use of new media, intermedia or non-media to blur the boundaries and thus refuse classification by way of the traditional canon. Over the years, intermedia has been used interchangeably with multi-media. Intermedia, however, has become preferred for expressing the interdisciplinary character of the art practices and activities to which it refers.
The habitual use of the term intermedia in today's Slovenian context could be attributed to its regular use by the public calls of various institutions. The term became embedded in the vocabulary in 2003 when the Ministry of Culture established the Section for Intermedia Arts (later, intermedia art was placed under the wider and unifying Creativity Directorate), thus naming its open calls the same way. In general, it combines all artistic practices that use unstable, variable and dynamic media (or technologies) to express themselves in interdisciplinary ways and cross and fuse boundaries of traditional media or genres. Thus categories such as interventions in the public space could be included.
Historical forerunners
The first intersection between art and science in Slovenia can be traced as far back as to the beginning of the 20th century and the pioneer and visionary of cosmonautics Herman Potočnik (1892–1929), known under the pseudonym Herman Noordung. His work has influenced many artists and researchers, not least Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick. However, the ultimate forerunners of new media art can be found rather in the experimental artistic avant-gardes from the beginning of the 20th-century (dadaism, constructivism, futurism).
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Hermann Noordung depiction of a space station habitat wheel. Hermann Potocnik (1892-1929), also known as Herman Noordung, created the first detailed technical drawings of a space station, 1929
The iconic "Space Station Habitat Wheel" by Herman Potočnik Noordung, 1929.
In Slovenia, one of the most recognised representatives of that period is Avgust Černigoj (1898–1985). He was an early mentor to Edvard Zajec (1938–2018), a pioneer of computer art. It was with Černigoj where Zajec could focus on the significance of the processual aspect of art instead of the product itself. Zajec, who was partly educated in the USA, started incorporating computer graphics in his artistic practice in the late 1960s and constantly searched for two-way communication between the author and the viewer.
From the aspect of processual and conceptual art, the same period was marked with the presence of the neo-avant-garde OHO group (1966–1971). Founding OHO members were Marjan Ciglič (1944–), Iztok Geister (1945–) and Marko Pogačnik (1944–) who along with a great many of their later collaborators belonged to the various fields of art creation, from fine art to literature, film making, critical view and theory. They combined the primary areas of their work in an intermedia manner and are known for their objects, installations and happenings documented on film and with photographs.
Pioneers in the video realm
The first historically canonised artistic video in ex-Yugoslavia, now considered the first Slovenian video, (The White Milk of White Breasts, 1969) was recorded by Nuša and [[Srečo Dragan] (1967–1988), a tandem also a part of the wider platform of the OHO Group.
In the late 1970s, video artist Miha Vipotnik (1954–) began collaborating with the Slovenian national television. There, he completed Videogram 4 (1976–1979), which marks the beginning of experimental video and multimedia art in Slovenia. By manipulating and transforming images, he combined them with sound and movement to synthesise complex media messages. In 1983, Vipotnik established VIDEO CD, the first international video festival in Ljubljana (1983–1987), organised by the Slovenian republic's fairly young Cankarjev dom, cultural and congress centre. In 1986, video gained recognition through Auto-vision, the first programme on video art on national TV made by Vipotnik and Marijan Osole-Max (1956–). By using decontextualised, widely distributed images as a critique of the ruling culture, video production could be presented in clubs and alternative galleries.
Other prolific artist duos experimenting in video include Zemira Alajbegović and Neven Korda - ZANK (1982–) and Marina Gržinić and Aina Šmid (1982–), among individual artists Rok Sieberer - Kuri (1965–) and Ema Kugler (1956–) are prominent, all working in the alternative art scene.
Videodokument, online version
The archive of video art from 1969 to 1998 was first gathered in the project Videodokument.org, developed within the scope of the SCCA-Ljubljana (the former Soros Center for Contemporary Arts – Ljubljana Documentation Programme). It was followed by DIVA Station, a research and study archive of video and new media art, still active today. It is a vital source for retrospectives and thematic screenings, such as the one of Vipotnik's opus organised and hosted by SCCA-Ljubljana with Slovenian Cinematheque in 2020.
A collection of the DIVA Station at the SCCA-Ljubljana Centre for Contemporary Arts
The first platforms
New media art in the 1970s and the 1980s researched and reflected the different uses of analogue and digital technologies and their artistic as well as social implications. The connection between art and the socio-political goals could only be established in the alternative subcultural scene which, although sometimes intertwined with the institutional one, was much more flexible and adaptable.
An important organisation that supported the experiments and new media art was ŠKUC Association, short for Student Cultural and Art Centre. Envisaged as a counterpart to the dominant exhibition policy of the established national galleries and institutions in Slovenia, Škuc Gallery opened in 1978 with a retrospective show of OHO Group. The interdisciplinary installation Hidrogizma by Jani Osojnik (1951–), Iztok Osojnik (1951–), Dušan Pirih Hup (1952–2008) and Vesna Černivec (1951–) was set up there in 1979. Hidrogizma was among the first experiments of combining sound with fine arts and was in fact a big scale water instrument that foresightedly posed questions about the postdigital and global understanding of the world. Since its beginning, Škuc Gallery has been a platform for multimedia projects such as Casus Belli by Marko Kovačič (1956–) in 1983.
Visual artist, performer and collector Marko A. Kovačič in his studio at Metelkova mesto Autonomous Cultural Zone in Ljubljana
The theatre group FV-112/15 (1981–1989), known for combining aspects of theatre and disco, operated under the ŠKUC-Forum protectorate in three locations throughout its history: the student dorms in Ljubljana's Rožna dolina (Disko Študent), Šiška district (FV Disko) and Kersnikova ulica (K4). From FV formed the multimedia "music-body band" Borghesia. Active in the same years, the band was crucial for the group's connection to video art, using monitors, cameras and VHS recorders as early as 1982. ŠKUC-Forum's Video Section was led by Marjan Osole - Max (1956–) who later founded Studio TDS Brut and was the initiator of the ATV "alternative television".
ŠKUC began publishing several magazines and publications in 1972. Visual and concrete poetry was also published in Tribuna Magazine (1951–2018) and Problemi Journal (1962–). Theoretical texts and reviews were published in specialised magazines such as Ekran, Magazine for Film and Television or the now-defunct Sinteza: Magazine for art culture.
The new technology, however, was an integral part of the performances and installations by Ema Kugler, Marko A. Kovačič, Bojan Štokelj, and Marko Košnik (who founded the Egon March Institute in 1986), and of work by the Neue Slowenische Kunst groups (including music and graphics by Laibach, fine arts by Irwin and Sestre Scipion Nasice Theatre directed by Dragan Živadinov, who later developed Noordung Cosmokinetic Cabinet). The new media art and the use of technologies within the NSK endeavours questioned the notions of authorship and originality in the arts and orchestrated the creation of the Gesamtkunstwerk artworks, culminating in the Krst Pod Triglavom [Baptism under Triglav] performance, staged in Cankarjev Dom in 1986. For more chronology, please, read the New Media Art Timeline article that covers the 1992–2007 period.
Development and production modes
The new media art has changed the landscape of creation as well as that of cultural management and production. Several new media art projects and their exponents (the HEXPO Festival of self-organised cultural forms in 2000, for example) reiterated the significance of the tactical use of technology – new media that promote creation and imagination, participation and choice over representation, spectatorship and consumption.
It was characteristic of new media artists that they had to develop their own technological means of expression, and because of this working process they started to build their own new systems of production and communication. The main protagonists of today’s Slovene new media arts are internationally-acclaimed artists (and theorists) who attained impressive and pioneering achievements during the 1990s, when they also managed to establish their own creative artistic platforms: Marko Košnik (Egon March Institute), Marko Peljhan (Projekt Atol Institute), Igor Štromajer (Intima Virtual Base), and Davide Grassi (Aksioma Institute).
During the last decade the new media artworks have been slowly incorporated in the acquisition policies of the Slovene public art museums (Museum of Modern Art and Maribor Art Gallery, for example) and the ministry's funding policy encourages co-productions on a national and international level.
Artistic background
The first generation's artistic point of departure was performing arts (theatre in the cases of Peljhan and Štromajer, and music/sound in the cases of Košnik or Savski); some individuals also started to emerge from Academy of Fine Arts and Design (Kreuh, Kracina, and later Sašo Sedlaček, Polona Tratnik, etc.) and to collaborate with graduates of the Faculties of Computer Engineering in Ljubljana and Maribor (ArtNetLab). Of all the artistic disciplines, new media artists are the most internationally involved as far as project co-production (artistic collaboration as well as funding) and education is involved: while the older generation lectures in Europe, America and Asia, the young generation has taken interdisciplinary studies (sound, visual arts and media arts) in such places as London, Graz, Vienna and Venice.
Institutions and venues
During the 1990s creative diversity in the field of new media art was backed up by the emergence of a handful of organisations and producers, including Ljudmila - Ljubljana Digital Media Lab, Kapelica Gallery and KIBLA Multimedia Centre. Today all of them are renowned in international new media circles for their participation in the new media festivals, conferences and networks (for example, ISEA, Ars Electronica festival, Transmediale Berlin, Dutch Electronic Arts Festival (DEAF), SEAFair in Skopje, European Cultural Backbone (ECB), European Multimedia Forum, Webby Awards), where they have promoted and sought new models of co-production as well as new funding sources, both locally and internationally.
Other important venues for the presentation of new media art since 1992 have included P74 Centre and Gallery (which has promoted emerging artists) and occasionally Škuc Gallery and the Mala Gallery, while bigger overview exhibitions were shown at Museum of Modern Art. In Maribor, KiBela Art Space at KIBLA Multimedia Centre also presented several new media art projects. The Slovenian Cinematheque was an important venue for audio-visual projects. At the same time Slovenia acquired two festivals dedicated to new media art, and several others that included new media art projects. Established in 2001, Cyberpipe in Ljubljana was another vibrant new media art catalyst. The M3C Multimedia Centres Network of Slovenia, set up in 2004 with state and European support, has a growing membership of 23 multimedia arts organisations.
Spearheaded by the international new media festival Speculum Artium, organised by the Delavski dom Trbovlje Cultural Centre, the Trbovlje, New Media Setting (TNM) was set up in 2009, turning the town of Trbovlje and the wider Zasavje coal mining region into a venue for new media art, with information technology, robotics, bio-mechanics and virtual reality in focus.
