The Closing Stop

10 September 2013 > 22 September 2013 You are cordially invited to the opening of the documentary exhibition: Metelkova revived! part of the 20th Anniversary of ACC Metelkova and other events in the exhibit - research project The Closing Stop (run by Alkatraz Gallery and SCCA - Ljubljana) and other events of the 20th Anniversary of ACC Metelkova.

The teams of the Alkatraz Gallery and The World of Art (SCCA – Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Arts) present:

The Closing  Stop

exhibit - research project

A review of the visual scene of ACC Metelkova City

10^th – 22^nd September, 2013

Exhibition, open studios, auction of artefacts, workshop for children, open archives

Participants:

Exhibit-research project has been going on since 2011 in co-operation with the team of the World of Art (SCCA – Ljubljana; Center for Contemporary Arts), the Alkatraz Gallery, and the creators from ACC Metelkova City. Its intention is to explore the history of Metelkova’s visual scene, and the current visual production of the ACC Metelkova City. Within the 19^th Anniversary of the ACC Metelkova City we prepared the Mid-Stop, showing a review of the current state of the visual art production at all its versatile levels with exhibitions, open studios, public speeches and interventions, as well as screenings into the Metelkova public space.

Programme:

Tuesday, 10^th September, from 2:00–4:00 p.m., Open Studios, Participants: Rok Barborič, Belatehnika & Beladona, Iskra Beličanska & Matej Bizovičar & Vladimir Leben, Boštjan Drinovec, Tina Drčar, Mitja Ficko, Meta Kastelic, Neven Korda, Borut Korošec, Damijan Kracina, Miroslav Matek, Jaka Mihelič, Rajko Miladić, Boštjan Novak, Miran Pešič Pešo, Terrah, Dejan Pfeifer Stripi, Uroš Weinberger. Pešci (Infanrty) building, Hlev (Stables), Hangar, Garage

Some of the participants (Rok Barborič, Iskra Beličanska & Matej Bizovičar & Vladimir Leben, Meta Kastelic, Neven Korda, Damijan Kracina, Miroslav Matek, Boštjan Novak, Miran Pešič Pešo, Dejan Pfeifer Stripi) who take part in Open Studios project, are also cooperating within   U3 - Triennial of Contemporary Art in Slovenia: resilience.

Tuesday, 10^th September, at 7:00 p.m., Auction of Artefacts; Guided by: Goran Medjugorac - Gogi, Hlev (Stables) building

Tuesday, 10^th September, at 9:00 p.m., Metelkova Revived!; the opening of a documentary exhibition at the 20^th Anniversary of ACC Metelkova City, the Alkatraz Gallery, Hlev (Stables) building.

From Wednesday till Friday (11^th – 13^th September), from 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., Tea-house and Reading-room in the Project Room of the SCCA–Ljubljana, Metelkova 6

Thursday, 12^th and Sunday, 22^nd September, at 7:00 p.m., public guided tours of external interventions at ACC Metelkova City, (12^th September; guided by Jadranka Plut and Simona Žvanut (CANCELLED because of illness, new date: 9th October, at 5pm in front of Celica Hostel); 22^nd September, guided by Saša Nabergoj and Sebastian Krawczyk).

Friday, 20^th September, at 5:00 p.m., Mosaic Workshop for Children with Edvin Dobrilovič, ACC Metelkova City yard

The programme of 20th anniversary of ACC Metelkova City can be found here


At The Closing Stop


Exhibit-research project has been going on since 2011 in co-operation with the team of the World of Art (SCCA – Ljubljana), the Alkatraz Gallery, and the creators from ACC Metelkova City. Its intention is to explore the history of Metelkova’s visual scene, and the current visual production of the ACC Metelkova City. Within the 19^th Anniversary of the ACC Metelkova City we prepared the Mid-Stop, showing a review of the current state of the visual art production at all its versatile levels with exhibitions, open studios, public speeches and interventions, as well as screenings into the Metelkova public space.

The Closing Stop is upgrading the discourse on the Metelkova visual art production with a research into – not only its history – but the historical memory of the entire ACC Metelkova City. We have started with exact arranging and registration of the extensive textual, visual, and audio archive. The task of organizing and complementing/completing the archive is not very spectacular, yet the one rounding up our work of the past two years most sensibly, which is why we have decided to present it at several levels. We have to point out that we have shot a series of 27 video recordings with artists working at Metelkova, as well as with those whom we hah assessed as key ones, but are no longer creating at this venue. We were interested in the history of Metelkova, not particular artistic practices. Personal histories, subjective views, multiplicity of narratives. The video essays wish to preserve the stories of the Metelkova protagonists, who complement, overlap, and also oppose one another.

Have you ever attended an auction of artworks? Serious faces, tightly-tied ties, bourgeois interiors, predictable scenario of the event. Metelkova has created its own version of painting and sculpture marketing, besides the traditional function, also including the added Metelkova value. Just imagine people from all walks of life (serious collectors, Metalkova goers, journalists, rubberneckers, winners of the system’s transformation, with fat wallets etc.) inside a damaged building and a hyperactive auctioneer, whose appearance is actually a noisy performance: long before stand-up comedy was given its name, the Auction of Artistic Artefacts had had its loyal fans. The main actor - Goran Medjugorac - Gogi - became a cult personality for his improvised inserts, witty comments, and unique characteristics of Metelkova artists. At the 20^th Anniversary we will hear once more his legendary for a farthing you can get… And the bizarre meeting of underground art and serious business will continue.

In the past, the space of Metelkova offered several unique projects, tied to various fields of creativity. We understand the restaging of the Auction of Artistic Artefacts as part of the research process, as well as a kind of reminiscence of the past events and the possibility to witness the living history of Metelkova.

The exhibition Metelkova revived ! shall offer an insight into the history of Metelkova through the words of its creators. Due to the unobstructed sincerity and the slackness of the interviewees we understand them as a precious and unique presentation of the diversity that Metelkova offers, so we have exposed them by placing them in a special place at the main exhibition of the Anniversary at the Alkatraz Gallery. You will be able to make yourself comfortable on a cosy sofa, watching the video essays; the recordings of the stories of each individual, and convince yourself of the complexity and diversity of Metelkova. The walls of the Alkatraz Gallery will be riddled again – however, this time only symbolically, with the abundant archive photographic material that will lead you through the twenty years of Metelkova, proving that it is a living organism, constantly changing. For those who do not yet know what Metelkova looked like in the past, the photographs will represent a journey in another world with no water or electricity supply, where creative process follows its own principles.

Twenty years of the production of visual art at Metelkova deserves a special analysis from the aspect of art history. Saša Nabergoj has, in an extensive work entitled Gesamtkunstwerk Metelkova City, published by the Paper for critics of science fantasy and new anthropology (Časopisu za kritiko znanosti, domišljijo in novo antropologijo) (volume XL, 2013; in honour of our anniversary entirely dedicated to Metelkova), put forward a thesis that ACC Metelkova City and its users with the architectural, constructional, artistic, and crafty interventions in its public space and the exterior of the buildings in the last twenty years changed it into an integral artefact of Metelkova. She has hulled out the key points of the process of its construction, and placed them into a wider historical, social, political and cultural frame in an attempt to define the constitutive elements of the artistic practices and procedures of the construction of the Metelkova art community. In the text, she proves that we should regard the integral artefact of Metelkova as a work-in-progress, where singular segments sometimes disappear or, are slowly covered by interventions of others, whilst some are – right from the very beginning – intended as temporary. Exactly this principle that completely opposes the traditional understanding of conservation of cultural heritage is, according to her opinion, the key one. A PDF publication is what we offer at the website of The Closing Stop.

A great deal of our attention has been devoted to visual interventions into public space. They have started as an initiative of Metelkova artists (e.g. composing of mosaics on the Hlev (Stables) building and the arrangement of today’s Hajlends (Highlands) park). Ever since 2004, and most of them, have been financially and organization-wise, taken care of within the frame of the Urban Projects of Visual Art (Urbanih likovnih projektov) of the KUD Mreža. The interventions into public space at a symbolic as well as concrete level combine all the operational shades of their authors from the past as well as the present; that’s why it is especially important that we have – in collaboration with singular authors – prepared, until now, the most precise records of all these interventions. We have added over fifty photographs of singular artistic interventions, and comments, attempting to describe how they came about most precisely.

A tearoom and reading room for the archive documentation on Metelkova will come to life in the Project Room of SCCA and its freshly arranged garden, the remnant of the most recent project of Studio 6, Liminale of the Association OFFTIR. Sipping tea or coffee, you will be able to look through some rare volumes of the publications on Metelkova, read about and explore the history of this unique phenomenon.

Wishing to make the widest possible public aware of the twenty year long history of this incredible junction of alternative, urbanity, culture and visual art, we have also conceived guided tours that will disclose the less obvious side of the Metelkova phenomenon, requiring specific conditions for creation of contemporary art. With the help of selected photographic material, we will guide you through a turbulent

history of Metelkova from its squatting in September 1993 until today. Then we will look for key artistic interventions together, and talk about the process of creation and development of the specifics of the Metelkova image of visual art – about the integral artefact of Metelkova.

Welcome to the closing stop – that it is not!

Sebastian Krawczyk, Simona Žvanut