Lost Highway Expedition, exhibition at Skuc Gallery
August 14 – September 07, 2007
Curators
Alenka Gregorič, STEALTH, Normal Architecture Office, Patrick Ward
Artists:
Kasper Akhøj (Denmark), Jane Calovski & Hristina Ivanoska (Macednia), Khadija Z. Carroll (Australia), Ivan Kučina (Serbia), Tanja Lazetić (Slovenia), Wietske Maas (Holland), Kader Muzaqi (Kosovo), Normal Architecture Office (Serbia, Switzerland), Pilar Ortiz & Amanda Dora (Chile, USA), STEALTH (Ana Džokić & Marc Neelen) (Serbia, Holland), Patrick Ward (Great Britain), Velimir Zernovski (Macedonia).
The summer exhibition in Škuc Gallery presents projects created before, during and after the Lost Highway Expedition (LHE): a planned mass movement of individuals who between 30 July and 24 August 2006 mapped a path through Ljubljana, Zagreb, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Skopje, Pristina, Tirana, Podgorica and Sarajevo. The LHE is a self-organised exchange of knowledge and resources, a temporary society that travelled through the dynamic territories of the Western Balkans last year. In every town on the road the LHE contributed to projects and issues significant for the future of local organisations and their respective contexts. With no pre-defined goals, the project is still evolving in a dynamic process of interactive collaboration between all the contributors and host organisations – Škuc Gallery (Ljubljana), Platforma 9,81 (Zagreb), Kuda (Novi Sad), Prelom kolektiv and School of Missing Studies (Belgrade), Press to Exit (Skopje), Exit ICA Gallery (Pristina), PROJEKTOR (Podgorica) and Pro.ba (Sarajevo).
The exhibition in Škuc Gallery presents over 15 artists from all around the globe, from Denmark to Kosovo, from Australia to Chile. The projects respond differently to the contextual framework established in the initial phase of the Expedition. The curator Alenka Gregorič then invited five artists to contribute to the next stage of the exhibition. After their works were exhibited in Škuc Gallery, they were invited to participate in the selection of works submitted in response to the open call for Lost Highway Exhibition projects. Therefore, their collaboration transcended the traditional limits of artistic presentation in a gallery, as they also became the selectors and authors of the exhibition in the context of the gallery. Through video, installations, photography, posters and paintings, the exhibition puts forward 12 different positions, all developed on the theme of the Western Balkans. The projects respond differently to the brief which outlined the basic guidelines and sought interpretations of the region:
"The presentation of the Lost Highway Expedition – a dynamic project with an open structure - combines existing information and projects, and offers an insight into new projects connected with the expedition. The intertwining of the one and the other can survive in the context of mutual collaboration, questioning, suggestions, and compromises. The projects created before, during, and after the Expedition respond differently to their regional environment, called the West Balkans in this case. An informal coming together of countries which once marched under the same flag, and their neighbour Albania, yields both 'retro' as well as future-oriented projects, views, and strategies.
The exhibition at Škuc Gallery, only one link in the long chain of narratives weaving together the Europe Lost and Found project, seeks to present works which do not re-interpret the forgotten stories of the former Yugoslavia and Albania, but look towards (semi)-fictitious stories of the future.
The exhibition should transcend the presentation of mere artefacts of the LHE experience, from which many viewers might be excluded. It should cohere as an entity with a limited number of exhibits, which will exceed the number of its nominal parts. This can be achieved through presenting work that is attentive to building on the concepts that instigated the Expedition."
More information on the Lost Highway Expedition project available at www.europelostandfound.net
The Lost Highway Expedition and Lost Highway Exhibition are part of Europe Lost and Found (ELF), an interdisciplinary and cross-national research project that likes to imagine economic, political, and cultural geographies for a future Europe. It will unfold with mass expeditions, first across the Western Balkans, then through continental and Mediterranean Europe, in order to make a comparative exploration of Europe’s cultures and ethnicities, its hybrid landscapes and parallel economies. Through analysis and visual documentation of urban and cultural landscapes, dynamic and SMS-based mappings, interdisciplinary research projects, discussion forums, a pan-European cultural contest, as well as independent studies, the project will seek innovative phenomena and positive signs of co-existence for the future.
|
