Igor Zabel Award 2024 / Seminar

We live in an era of intensifying and increasingly intertwined crises and catastrophes that damage both human and non-human life and well-being, and give rise to oppressive and violent politics and ideologies. In this context, the 2024 Igor Zabel Award and its accompanying Seminar celebrate practices that are life-affirming, transformative, and locally embedded as well as build transversal collaborations, activate emancipatory legacies, and resist violence and discrimination, cynicism and resignation. Recipients of this year’s Igor Zabel Award and Grants will present their work and, more broadly, discuss how art and theory from Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe can contribute to the world in these times of exacerbating crises.

PROGRAMME

Day 1  ⁄  28. 11.

Transformative Cultural Practices  
15:00–16:30 / Museum of Modern Art (MG+), Ljubljana

The panel explores the concept of curating the periphery and discusses the recent history of informal and independent artistic and cultural practices from Central and Eastern Europe as a resource for creating a transformative culture of appreciation.

15:00–15:10 / Introduction / Urška Jurman (Igor Zabel Association programme manager), Martina Vovk (director of the MG+MSUM), and Kristina Božič (journalist)

15:10–15:30 / Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu / From Ruthless Criticism of Modern Institutions to a Transformative Culture of Appreciation

The practices of ruthless criticism and speaking truth to power have been long hailed as a transformative and ethical approach for modern public intellectuals. However, I have learned a very different lesson from living in proximity to war, and going through paradigmatic and systemic changes during an era of permanent crises. I have come to believe that critical work should primarily advance the articulation of hope. In this spirit, I propose conceiving of the recent history of informal and independent artistic practices and critical cultural works from Central and Eastern Europe as a collective resource that can be used for the necessary work of revaluation after devaluation, and thus for developing a new culture of appreciation that will be sensible to the fusion of sense and needs, and will have a transnational and transformative reach.

15:30–15:50 / Irfan Hošić / Curatorship and the Practice of Total Engagement

My presentation will provide insight into the protocols framed by the research, teaching, art-curatorship, and social engagement that I have developed over the last fifteen years. In an attempt to understand how scholarly work can be fermented into rooted practice, I will discuss recent political, social, and cultural conditions in the city of Bihać and, more broadly, throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the concept I name “curating the periphery”.

Some of the main issues and methods that I have worked with to stimulate local context and discourse are related to political teaching strategies, the production of public space, and creating new safe zones. These issues and methods are also materialized in projects such as the socially-engaged action #DeffendGallery (2015), the establishment of the KRAK Center for Contemporary Culture (2020), and my recently published book Image of Crisis (2024), to mention only a few.

15:50–16:30 / Discussion
The conversation between Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu and Irfan Hošić will be moderated by Kristina Božič.

Day 2  ⁄  29. 11.

Locally Situated Knowledge Production

10:00–11:30 / Museum of Modern Art (MG+), Ljubljana

The panel presents examples of archival research and curatorial work connected to neglected collections and archives from the socialist Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav periods and discusses if (Eastern European) regionalism is still a valid perspective/method for writing art history.

10:00–10:10 / Introduction / Bojana Piškur (curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova)

10:10–10:30 / Edit András / Region or Not Region: That is the Question.

As an art historian, critic, and curator who has always argued for the importance of local and regional context and the recognition of differences and specificities in the use of theory and art practices in diverse geographies, I will develop my talk around the following questions: Is (Eastern European) regionalism still a valid perspective/method for writing art history? What, if anything, are the specificities of the Eastern European region and what can it offer to the world today?

10:30–10:50 / Natalija Vujošević / 1989: Between East and East is 36.1 km

In the lecture, I will present my research and curatorial work connected to neglected collections and archives from the socialist Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav periods. I will focus on two subjects of my research: the collection of the Art Gallery of Nonaligned Countries Josip Broz Tito (1981–1995) and the archive of the Cetinje Biennials (1991–2004). I will discuss these two historical cases, reflecting on their simultaneous unfolding and overlapping and the way the crossroads of 1989 divided these cases into two significantly different “worlds”. 

10:50–11:30 / Discussion

The conversation between Edit András and Natalija Vujošević will be moderated by Bojana Piškur.

The award acknowledges the exceptional achievements in the field of visual art and culture in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It has been conferred biennially since 2008 in cooperation with the initiator of the award, ERSTE Foundation (Vienna), and the Igor Zabel Association (Ljubljana).

Partner of the Igor Zabel Award 2024 programme: MG+MSUM