DISCUSSION EVENINGS

24. 4. 2018, at 11 a.m.

March for Science – public platform

In its third edition, the public platform, organized by the March for Science Organizing Committee, will focus on the development potential of research, the understanding of science in the general public, and the ambivalent attitude of politics towards creative work in general.Unfortunately, politics is capable of thinking and exposing science – much like culture – mostly at a declarative level. However, when it should provide researchers with a living space and working conditions, it reveals a surprising discomfort and misunderstanding of the developmental and emancipatory potential of research, or of the systematic creation of new knowledge.

Admission free.
Information: info@bunker.si, +386 51 269 906

11. 4. 2018, at 8 p.m. (The Old Power Station) – artist talk

12. 4. 2018, at 10 am (Nova pošta) – workshop

Walid Raad is an artist and a Professor of Art in The Cooper Union (New York, USA). We are happy to finally host him in the Old Power Station in Ljubljana for an artist talk (11.4.2018 at 8p.m.), where Walid Raad will present his two long term ongoing projects, The Atlas Group(1989-2004) and Scratching on things I could disavow.

The Atlas Group is an art project about the protracted Lebanese wars.  With this project, Raad created stories, documents, and characters to think about the possibilities and limits of writing the history of the wars. Initiated in 2007, Scratching on things I could disavow examines the recent emergence in the Arab world of new infrastructures for the visual arts and engages how economic and military conflicts affect art, culture, and tradition.

Biography

Walid Raad is an artist and a Professor of Art in The Cooper Union (New York, USA). Raad’s works include The Atlas Group, a fifteen-year project between 1989 and 2004 about the contemporary history of Lebanon, and the ongoing projects Scratching on Things I Could Disavow and Sweet Talk: Commissions (Beirut). His books include WalkthroughThe Truth Will Be Known When The Last Witness Is DeadMy Neck Is Thinner Than A HairLet’s Be Honest The Weather Helped, and Scratching on Things I Could Disavow.

Raad’s solo exhibitions include the Louvre (Paris), The Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), ICA (Boston, USA), Museo Jumex (Mexico City, Mexico), Kunsthalle Zurich (Zurich, Switzerland), The Whitechapel Art Gallery (London, UK), Festival d’Automne (Paris, France), Kunsten Festival des Arts (Brussels, Belgium), The Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin, Germany).  His works have also been shown in Documenta 11 and 13 (Kassel, Germany), The Venice Biennale (Venice, Italy), Whitney Bienniale 2000 and 2002 (New York, USA), Sao Paulo Bienale (Sao Paulo, Brazil), Istanbul Biennal (Istanbul, Turkey), Homeworks I and III (Beirut, Lebanon) and numerous other museums, biennales and venues in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas.

Raad is also the recipient of the ICP Infinity Award (2016), the Hasselblad Award (2011), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2009), the Alpert Award in Visual Arts (2007), the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2007), the Camera Austria Award (2005), a Rockefeller Fellowship (2003), among other grants, prizes and awards.

For additional information please visit: www.scratchingonthings.comwww.theatlasgroup.org

Submission free.

Made possible by:
Trust for Mutual Understanding, The Relationship, Imagine 2020 network, European Union – Creative Europe Programme

24. 8. 2017

On the 20th anniversary of the Mladi levi festival, our state of mind is marked by – remembering the Gramsci’s maxim – pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will. The circumstances are increasingly pressing and difficult for the festivals like ours, and on the other hand, we find them increasingly necessary. Therefore we feel that we have to diagnose well all the pressures on the festival, to anticipate all the problems and at the same time to believe in the power of festivals, in the power of socializing events, where art is used to create transformative moments or states.

Of course, the purpose of anniversaries is to look back, but more importantly, to try and chart the future course of the festivals. What are the challenges that await them, how are we supposed to profile them at the time when almost anything can be called a festival, how to resist the pressures of commercialization, confining to local environment, how to resist curating dictated by financial, geopolitical and logistical circumstances. In the near future, we see two key driving forces in the development of the festivals: connecting with tourism – where we believe in nano‑ and microtourism, that is sustainable tourism rather than in mass tourism – and preserving the position of internationality, of exchange, rather than growing nationalism and populism.
In the coming months, we will organize a series of discussions, lectures and presentations on the future of festivals, and this year’s Mladi levi festival will host a roundtable discussion on the topic of festivals and cultural tourism. We will talk about how to establish a link between tourism and festivals in the next two years, when culture will be at the core of Slovenia’s national tourist strategy, in a way that would benefit culture and tourism, and above all, visitors to art events and tourists.

Speakers:
Janez Leban, president of the Festival Sajeta, Union of Associationa of yound and creative Tolmin
Deborah Pearson, performing artist, co-founder of the festival Forest Fringe
Anže Zorman, journalist and editor at Culture.si and Kulturnik
Tjaša Pureber, coordinator of Asociacija
Tanja Hladnik, Initiative of film festivals of nongovernmental organisations

Moderators:
Nevenka Koprivšek, Alma R. Selimović

In collaboration with: Društvo Asociacija

every Thursday, February – June 2016

26. 11. 2014

The topic of the symposium is related to the release of Slovenian translations of two books by Paul Mattick: Business as Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Capitalism and Art in Its Time. The first book presents an analytical image of the contemporary crisis as the crisis of capitalism, while the latter places art in the context of the present moment, even though it is not, like in modern aesthetics, only context. We are inviting participants who are attracted to the political economy of the »world of art«, not only in the context of the »world of art« but also as the basis of its past and present antagonisms.

Organization: Slovensko društvo za estetiko, Inštitut za delavske študije
In cooperation with: Založba Sophia, Založba Studia humanitatis
Supported by: Bunker, Ljubljana

More information: www.delavske-studije.si

every Thursday 2014/2015

Elektro Ljubljana Union Hall (entrance at the Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana)

Numerous traditional theories of state, which developed within the horizon of historic materialism, were immersed either in the debate about the base and superstructure and thus reduced to economism, or they considered the state as the tool in the hands of the ruling class, whereby only the class division was taken into account and not the special social form in which classes refer to one another. Theoretic and politically productive conception of the state is the one which distances itself from the views above and seeks the essential characteristics of the bourgeois state as a distinctive political form for transferring social matters.

More information: www.delavske-studije.si

28. 1. 2014

The forthcoming What do others have to say? discussion evening will follow the performance All Together Now! and the current theme it tackles, namely revisiting the reasons for migration. The conversation will delve into the same theme by addressing the question of what departure actually means today, amidst a difficult economic situation globally speaking, which means that migration as such no longer represents an automatic solution for one’s problem. In this respect, would departure then not merely be seen a gesture of putting off the same difficulties for a certain time? Why are there more restrictions of movement for people rather than capital? What kind of experiences do immigrants to Slovenia and emigrants leaving the country have? Where and what in this respect could have been defined as the space of freedom, just as we see this very space alarmingly shrink by the minute? The conversation about these issues, emanating from the perspective of critical creativity, will be hosted by the Kitch duo.

3. 4. 2014, at 6 p.m.
10. 4. 2014, at 6 p.m.
17. 4. 2014, at 6 p.m.

Year 17 of the Institute for Labour Studies entitled Socialism will revise the conditions and circumstances of the emergence of real-socialisms of the 20th century – from the October and the “lost” German revolution up to the World War II and the post-war polarisation of the blocks – and also the economic contradictions of the systems formed, their different developmental dynamics and reasons for their collapse. We will form our premises from the critique of political economy and the analysis of historical materialism. One of the essential questions tackled will be the Yugoslavian model of socialism, requiring critical evaluation of the formation and development of self-management, movement of the unclassified, debt crisis.

More information: www.delavske-studije.si

23. 5. 2013, 8 p.m.

Katarina Stegnar’s Lecture Performance entitled Double game will be followed by the discussion evening: And what do others have to say?, where we will discuss about the content of the performance: the longer-term issues of human development, excessive consumption, economic instability, changes in the understanding of the dogma “more is better”…

Anchor of the debate: Andreja Kopač, dramaturgy
Guests: Katarina Stegnar, author and performer, Lučka Kajfež Bogataj, climatologist, Tibor Rutar, The Workers and Punks’ University, Andrej Lukšič, Faculty of Social Sciences

12. 5. 2013 – 17. 5. 2013

Also this year a part of the programme of the international Subversive forum, which will be organised in Zagreb, will be streamed in Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana. The debates and round table discussions will be addressing the Utopia of Democracy, among critical speakers Oliver Stone, Chantal Mouffe, Yanis Varoufakis, Tariq Ali and Slavoj Žižek are expected.

The live-stream will take place in English.

22. 4. 2013

The art critic, festival producer, dramaturg and theoretician Tang Fu Kuen, the curator of the Asia Dance Platform, will present the current trends in the development of contemporary dance in Asia and the artistic collaboration between Europe and Asia, as well as talk about the theory of contemporary dance, which is much too often focused on Europe and can by no means capture the diversity and complexity of the Asian performative traditions, philosophy and modalities.

The lecture and talk will be presented as a part of the Discussion Evenings in Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana entitled And what do others have to say?.

March 8, 2013, at 9:00 p.m.

Discussion Evening

At times, feminism is neatly put away into a box of former century struggles. The fact is, however, that the struggle for women’s rights is still necessary today, the only difference being that the areas of struggle have changed. Discussion evening, tackling new fronts of feminism, will address the new horizons of gender inequality, the manners in which the latter is manifested in the present day society and ways to fight against it.

February 13, 2013, at 9:30 p.m.

Via Negativa’s performance entitled Just the Beginning, triggering contemplation on the role we play in a representative democracy, will be followed by a debate evening Representative Democracy in the Light of the Current Political Situation. The debate will expand the contemplation initiated by the performance in an informal manner and address issues such as parliamentarianism, the concept of representativeness, our influence on making political decisions or, better yet, the lack of such influence, and the current self-organised initiatives, demanding reforms.

The debate will be hosted by Lana Zdravković, researcher and activist, and Nenad Jelesijević, art critic and researcher, both of them known as the performing duo KITCH, in collaboration with Tjaša Pureber, journalist and researcher, Žiga Vodovnik, political science expert, Via Negativa and all the event visitors.

December 4, 2012, at 7:00 p.m. 

The performance entitled I Say What I Am Told to Say will be followed by a conversation with members of Beton Ltd., hosted by Lana Zdravković and Nenad Jelesijević/KITCH.

Art is neither a decorative element nor the amusing side of society, but rather an arena of encounters in the aesthetics of performativity. A conversation on the role of an artist in the sphere of the collective, accompanying the staging of a performance by Beton Ltd. in Ljubljana, will thus take the above premise for its referential framework.

We will delve into a debate on formal as well as content-related sides of a performance and manners of collective creative process, and most importantly, on the existing resemblances between this collective creative process on the one hand and long-term processes striving to construct a collective entity within social movements on the other. What can one possibly learn from creative obstacles encountered in artistic process? Where to look for neuralgic points of contact between art and politics? How to transfer a creative experience of this sort into an arena of continuous resistance, imposed upon us by the present moment, marked by an increasing exploitation of the ever poorer majority by the wealthy minority?

November 14th 2012, at 7:00 pm

Art is offered as a part of the curriculum in primary and secondary schools in more than one course, yet courses in contemporary art represent a fairly small part of the curriculum. The artistic literacy and personal experience that contemporary art can provide are very important for the education and development of the youth.

In the past there have been quite some projects, which tried to connect programmes in primary and secondary schools with contemporary art, with artists, at some schools individual teachers are moving mountains with their extracurricular activities. All these efforts have exemplary positive results, yet at the system level things are changing rather slowly. How to connect contemporary art and schools in a way that the co-operation will not be dependent only on the enthusiasm and individual initiatives? Is that even necessary and in times of “cuts” possible?

Anchor of the debate: Mojca Dimec
Guests: Andreja Kopač, Maja Delak, Katarina Slukan, Enya Belak

The October conversation evening will tackle the theme of cities and urban districts as spaces propelling creativity in their inhabitants, inspiring and motivating them to bring new ideas to life while becoming active agents in their environment. Art in this light thus stands as engine of positive change and permanent improvement. Examples of related good practices will be displayed at the exhibition The City Speaks, held under the auspices of the 23rd Biennial of Design in the National Museum of Slovenia. Guided tour of The City Speaks exhibition will be held on Monday, 15th October at 5 p.m. by artist Raheel Mohammed. The tour will be followed by a thematic conversation in Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana.

Aidan Cerar, host of the conversation, will speak to Raheel Mohammed and Graham Sheffield, Director Arts for the British Council, and to many other local experts from the areas of urbanism, sociology of space and artistic practices…

The conversation will last approximately 90 minutes and will be held in English language.

It will be followed by snacks, drinks and music.

In cooperation with: BIO Ljubljana, British Council Slovenia, Imagine 2020

In the frame of the Subversive festival a conference The Future of Europe is also held in Zagreb. Some of the greatest thinkers of our time will be invited to share their reflections on the today’s world. A part of the conference will be live-streamed in the Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana; lectures and round tables will be accompanied with debates in spring evenings.

Come and think with us with pleasure!

  • Monday, May 14th

19.00: Saskia Sassen: The Global Street: Making the Political (lecture)
21:00: Slavoj Žižek: Signs from the future (lecture)

  • Tuesday, May 15th

19.00: round table The long Wave of Dissent: from Social Forums to Occupy // Bernard Cassen, Samir Amin, Eric Toussaint, moderator: Toni Prug
21.00: Tariq Ali: The Rotten Heart of Europe (lecture)

  • Wednesday, May 16th

21.00: round table Commons in Europe – old or new battleground? // Michael Hardt, Costas Douzinas, Ségolène Pruvot, moderator: Vedran Horvat

  • Thursday, May 17th

19.00: Renata Salecl: Passion for Ingnorance (lecture)
21.00: Michaela Hardta: What to do in a Crisis? (lecture)

  • Friday, May 18th

19.00: Christian Marazzi: From communism of capital to capital of communism (lecture)
21.00: Gayatri Spivak: Future, pasts, languages, Balkans (lecture)

  • Saturday, May 19th

19.00: round table The Future of Balkans // Boris Buden, Renata Salecl, Dubravka Ugrešić, moderator: Igor Štiks

www.subversivefestival.com