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Brides on tour

Concept and devolopment : Michele Drascek and Maja Slavec / http://micheledrascek.blogspot.com /
Photography : Maja Slavec

Curator for the Brides on tour* stops in Gorizia (Italia) e Ljubljana (Slovenia), Michele Drascek, in collaboration with the photographer Maja Slavec, produced a work for the slovenian stage of the tour and for the final exhibition that will take place in Byblos Art Gallery, Verona (Italia).

Ho Kryptos tes kardias anthrophos (The hidden man of the heart) [I Pt 1,4] is a sentence that suggests to the women to take care of the hidden being that they bring inside of them. Two brides, two hidden beings.

[*Brides on tour is a unic and one-time trip of two brides thumbing through the Mediterranean area [bridesontour.fotoup.net]. Along the route they will stop to meet artists, associations , local craftswoman, museums and foundations, but also cultural and pacifist association with whom they will make some symbolic acts like the feet washing, the daily dress washing and also an interaction with them job. The purpose is to explore and raise every possible attestation with videos, photos and written diaries]

http://bridesontour.fotoup.net/tappe/11/lubiana-galleria-alkatraz

Women Beauty Power Less

Performance

Video documentation

A well-dressed woman is carrying with her a black box which has inside the sound of the countdown before the explosion of a bomb. She is walking with a resolute gait on the main street of Ljubljana during the rush-hour as a Suicide-bomber. With this action she is looking to provoke the people and attract their attention to this possible terroristic attack.

What happen? The people didn’t react to the provocation and they ignored the risk: they felt totally out of danger and they looked at her as an object of Beauty, not as an object of fret.
Someone on the street said “She got a bomb” and then the other pointed out “She is a bomb!” They recognized in her, in spite of all that, the Beauty and not the danger.

At present Slovenia is the president of EU Parliament. The importance of this political position is high. And for this political position also the possibility of a terroristic attack is growing more marked. But the media are not communicating this possibility to the people. So the people are living this political situation in a comfortable way. They are not touched from this important position. They are feeling safe, like nothing changed.

The media influenced the people with an image that is not the equivalent to the reality.
That means that we are now living in a complete simulated condition, where information tells us nothing about reality. The image of the Beauty remains the more important message of the media, in every field of life.
And the Beauty attract the attention of the people also in the street: it doesn't matter what a woman is carrying in a box, which sound is coming out from the box...she's beautiful! The reflection of the representation of the media works in every level of reality. The danger is not touching the people: it's unreal, it is a NON possibility.

Barbara Borčić:

http://www.gama-gateway.net/Tours/GT_PerformanceArt.pdf

S I T U A K T C I J A

Maja Slavec dedicated one whole year to the artistic project S i t u a k t c i j a. The artist followed the life of some women in them everyday activities, taking part in the simple actions of the day like privileged observer, but not intrusive. So we can see women portrayed in interior spaces of the house like kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms; but also during passing moments from room to room, or external from housing spaces, public spaces. In every case, the woman is alone.

Maja Slavec inquires into the real life and capture the situation (in Slovenian situacija) in which the woman is alone with herself. These are instants of intimate life (akt, naked; also in a broad sense) in which emerge subtly femininity and eroticism. Here, however, is completely absent any intention that leads to think of a voyeuristic look into intimacy. The woman isn’t a potential erotic object for outer observer.

In fact the artist deepens the topic of the self-perception of femininity and eroticism. And she speaks of the fear to loose this self-perception. In her photos, consequently, we can recognize a latent sadness. In this way the photographic memory of S i t u a k t c i j a records also sadness, which has a poetic value.

The artist specifies “There’s a sort of poetry in being sad. Sadness is poetic”. If poetry has a certain inclination for emptiness [Iosif Brodskij], S i t u a k t c i j a describes this inclination tactfully, succeeding in express exactly the poetry, not only the semantic, of the situations.

Just for this inclination to poetry built in the project concept, Maja Slavec photography, although portray real life moments, is not purely realistic like greater part of contemporary situation photography: it meet precise formal and aesthetic fundamental rules (composition, light) maintaining yet the absence of artifice in the representation of reality.

The final result is a photographic series in which there isn’t narrative will.

S i t u a k t c i j a brings in itself the quality of immediacy of the real life.

Michele Drascek

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14th International Festival of Contemporary
Arts City of Women

Surova Simbioza / RAW SYMBIOSIS animals_nature_culture
Gallery ŠKUC, Ljubljana, Slovenia

project: CARNIVOROUS fashion collection
fashion designe: Mirica Strnad and Nataša Brecelj
instalation and photography: Maja Slavec

http://www.myspace.com/carnivorouss