LabSUs – Open platform of curators, artists, writers, theoreticians

Laboratorium of Curatorial Practices
Season 10

The doors of the Škuc gallery will be open every day for presentation of art projects, ideas and concepts: art and theory production, actions, talks, engaged debate and articulation of personal viewpoints as well as for a complex evaluation of what is presented, for casual chat and sincere talk, criticism and empathy! Visit the reconstructed “Škuc’s bar” !

June 23-29, 2007
Open from 10 am. Free entrance!
Škuc Gallery, Stari trg 21, Ljubljana, Slovenia


ARTISTS are especially invited to Open studio daily between 12 am and 7 pm! We will welcome you, always prepared for a dialogue about your art practice, ideas and concepts, their presentation and production!

LabSUs also offers:

Saturday, June 23
10 am: Coffee and Art – chatting away with breakfast
12 am-7 pm: Open Studio
8 pm: Laboratorium at “Škuc’s bar” – presentation of LabSUs and party

Sunday, June 24
12 am: Internet for Artists – advice and instructions
12 am-7 pm: Open Studio
8 pm: Programmatic policy of the Škuc Gallery – discussion

Monday, June 25
12 am: Art in the city – guided tour through graffiti and street art in Ljubljana
12 am-7 pm: Open Studio
8 pm: Curatorial education – discussion on World of Art, School for Contemporary Art (SCCA-Ljubljana)

Tuesday, June 26
12 am: Video wall – presentation of Slovene video production
12 am-7 pm: Open Studio
8 pm: Video in the gallery – discussion

Wednesday, June 27
12 am: World of art and children – discussion and kindergarten
12 am-7 pm: Open Studio
8 pm: Outside/inside: school, system, students, mentors – discussion

Thursday, June 28
12 am: Art in the gallery – guided tour through a selected exhibition
12 am-7 pm: Open Studio

Friday, June 29
From 12 am: Day of joy and art – talk, poetry reading, discussion, gastronomic pleasures and party
12 am-7 pm: Open Studio


LabSUs is a word pun indicating an open platform with two main coordinates:

  • laboratorium as a real and metaphoric space in the field of art with loose space and time determinants
  • lapsus as a reversal, allowed to exist because of the belief in the inspiration of mistake, slippage, extreme situation, which crushes the routine of working and enables an overturn of an existing system, evading supervision and contemporary ideological paradigms.

The core of LabSUs consists of seven laborants of the Laboratorium WoA who, with their presence in the Škuc Gallery during seven days, set up a space for discussion, reflection and dialogue between artists, curators and critics, theoreticians, interested public, economists and politicians.

LabSUs will initiate discussions, reflect on curatorial strategies and practices, work on production and presentation of art projects as well as interpret, critically and theoretically contextualize or articulate conditions of productions, presentation and distribution of contemporary art.

It will also present the documentary material of the ten years’ activity of the World of Art. LabSUs is an endeavour to create situations which enable the participation and inclusion of both individuals and groups into debate, reflection and dialogue.

LabSUs restores “Škuc’s bar” from the 1980’s as a possible impulse and motivation.

LabSUs is not a group, the emphasis is on individual engagement and responsibility in expressing and articulating opinions and development of conditions for exchange of knowledge and experience.

LabSUs developed from:

  • organized and spontaneous meetings of the laborants
  • questioning of the status, position and practice of the curator
  • dissatisfaction with the existing ways of production and the museum/gallery formalized framework for presenting and distributing art production
  • re-questioning the collaboration between artist and curator
  • dissatisfaction with the focused, »instrumentalised« exhibition practices, that do not offer time for research, reflection, discussion, constructive leisure and disorder
  • emphasis on content instead of on organization
  • understanding the symbolic and physical gallery space not merely as a service for presenting production but, above all, as a space for dialogue, discussion, formation of ideas, action and reaction.

It is public, because it believes in people, it doesn’t believe in hermeticness and expands the discussion onto individuals and all (dis)interested pulic.

It’s target audience are all those who ask: curator, theoretician, artist, writer – who is that? / what is that? / where is that? / because of whom? / what do they do? / ….?

Objectives:

  • establishing a dialogical nature of the work of curator, writer, theoretician, artist
  • establishing protagonists as an element of connection between artist/art-society-audience/visitor-institution/gallery-media-education system
  • problematizing curatorial practices and, in this context, the World of Art school for curators
  • revitalization of the Škuc Gallery as a space of discussion and meeting, at the same time problematizing the programmatic policy of the gallery
  • an endeavour to work, rejecting the non-constructive tendency for the necessity of production and rejecting the strictly structured time frameworks
  • different ways of expanding the knowledge on art, mediating knowledge and exploring strategies of radical education

LabSUs promises to do anything it possibly can so that there would be as many constructive situations and mistakes as possible.

It offers the work of curator, theoretician, artist and writer, the possibility for presentation and production of art projects, individuals ready for action, debate and engaged articulation of personal viewpoints as well as a complex evaluation of what is presented, casual chat and sincere talk, criticism and empathy.

Laboratorium are: Ivana Bago, Petja Grafenauer Krnc, Petra Kapš, Monika Ivančič Fajfar, Vasja Nagy, Mojca Puncer and Jaka Železnikar

Laboratorium is a research into the structure and possible ways of participating in the world of art and beyond it. On the one hand, it consists of a formal group of individuals who, in the frame of the SCCA-Ljubljana World of Art, School of Contemporary Arts, reflect, analyse, contextualise and evaluate the now ten-year long activities of the World of Art. On the other hand, Laboratorium wishes to encourage theoretical and critical analysis and reflections on relevant issues, placing them into public debate.

The public activities of Laboratorium take place at the Project Room SCCA, discussions and reflections between the participants also take place on the Internet (through forums and mailing lists), and regular informal meetings. Laboratorium is conceived experimentally, in order to avoid the monotony of formal workings within the system and to encourage constructive thinking and analysis of curatorial practices in the past and also the present. At the same time it is focused on artists, theoreticians, writers as key protagonists within the field of art, inviting them for an open debate.


Please address any wishes, comments, advice and questions to: labsus.su@yahoo.co.uk

Experimental project of the Laboratorium WoA 2006/2007
World Of Art, School of Contemporary Arts

LabSUs thanks to: Barbara Borčič, Vesna Bukovec, Dušan Dovč, Brigita Drevenšek, Gorazd Krnc, Tevž Logar, Saša Nabergoj, Sabina Salamon


Press

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