Jelena Vesić
Critique and Exhibition Practice (counter-exhibitionists, non-representationalists, communitarianists and discussionists in (post) Yugoslav space of the 1970s and now)
Magacin u Kraljevića Marka, Belgrade, 9 April 2015, 8 – 10 p.m.
This lecture will deal with the “critical writing” in the exhibition space, assuming that each exhibition presents a kind of “scripted space” generated through communication and socialization, sometimes a joint action – as the space of both the stage and the everyday life, or their mutual interconnection. We will look at the examples of experimental and alternative forms of exhibition practice, focusing on several “cases” of artistic and curatorial critical interventions performed in (post) Yugoslav space of the 1970s and now. We will analyze the ways by which these critical gestures produced the context of exhibiting break with the linguistics of normality of the classical exhibition-making, based on spectacularization of individual artworks and the figure of curator, and open up the space of debate towards broader social and political reality.
Jelena Vesić is an independent curator, writer, editor and lecturer. She was co-editor of Prelom – Journal of Images and Politics 2001-2009 and co-founder of independent organization Prelom Collective 2005-2010. She is active in the field of publishing, research and exhibition practice that intertwines political theory and contemporary art. She is also co-editor of Red Thread – Journal for social theory, contemporary art and activism and member of editorial board of Art Margins.
Vesić explores the relations between art and ideology in the field of geopolitical art history writing, focusing on experimental art and exhibition practices of the 1960s and 1970s in former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe. She also writes on artistic labour and practices of self-organisation in the environment of cognitive capitalism.
Her latest curatorial projects are based on experiments with the form of lecture-performance, immaterial quality of the exhibits and story telling. Some of these projects are: Oktobar XXX: Exposition–Symposim–Performance (2012/13), On Undercurrents of Negotiating Artistic Jobs – Between Love and Money, Between Money and Love (2013/14), Exibition on Work and Laziness (2012-2015).
Vesić also co-curated exhibitions and co-edited books for: Lecture Performance (Museum of Contemporary Art and Koelnisher Kunstverein, Cologne-Belgrade, 2009/2010) and Political Practices of (post-) Yugoslav Art: RETROSPECTIVE 01 (Museum 25th of May, Belgrade, 2009/10).
