Marina Grzinic will be representing Slovenia at the Biennale of Sydney 2002, Australia

Biennale of Sydney 2002
Opening:Tuesday 14 May 2002 afternoon/ evening
Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney Australia

The exhibition project, Salon de Fleurus elaborates on the so-called
tactical position of the artist who conceals his own identity, the
strategies of postmodern art, and the post-Socialist condition of art. At
the very moment in which postmodernism proclaims the 'death of the author'
and the rise of anti-auratic art in the public realm, the art market becomes
ever more conscious of the monopolising power of the artist's signature, and
questions of authenticity and forgery.

Within the metaphors and fictions of postmodern discourse much is at stake, as electronic technology seems to rise, unbidden, to pose a set of crucial ontological questions regarding the
status and power of the human being. It has fallen to science fiction to
repeatedly propose a new subject that can somehow directly interface with -
and master - the cybernetic technologies of the Information Age. We can
perhaps suggest that the Salon de Fleurus project may be re-read or revealed
as a daemon, as something that disturbs the linearity of history, of art, of
science.

The best-known examples are Maxwell's daemon, Gödel's trickster,
and Haraway's coyote. Science and literature generate icons, agents,
monsters that help us to interface with the world (Marina Grzinic)

Production of the project presentation: Gallery of Contemporary Art, Celje,
Slovenia/director: Alenka Domjan

Saturday18 May, 2002
11-12pm
Art Gallery of NSW, Domain Theatre

Marina Grzinic (Slovenia)
Fiction reconstructed - Salon de Fleurus
In the installation of the Salon de Fleurus, curated by Grzinic, Picassos,
Cézannes and Matisses are exhibited before us. But rather than being
concerned with an individual item, the viewer is forced to become concerned
here with the system, not in the sense of a specific reconstruction of space
or an installation, but a reconstruction of a system of thinking-one that 80
or 90 years ago elaborated the institution of modern art as we know it
today.
Therefore, in the "New York" Salon, we can purchase not only
paintings but also furniture and all the items in both rooms. Every painting
sold is substituted with a copy of the same or with another from the same
period. Thus the Salon regenerates and transforms itself continuously.
(Freelance media theorist, art critic and curator, Research Fellow, Slovenia
Academy of Science and Art, Ljubljiana)

Museum of Sydney
Thursday 16, May 2002
1-4pm
Museums & Galleries Foundation and Museum of Sydney presents Both sides of
the showcase: The Fantastic Museum?

(Featuring Barbara Fischer, Marina Grzinic, Peter Hill, Luke Roberts)

A series of lectures that examine the interaction of artists and curators in
contemporary museum and gallery spaces. The artists and curators will
discuss the resonance of notions that underpin the historical museum with
the potentials that are inherent with the development of a more interactive
and participatory contemporary art museum. The Salon de Fleurus (Grzinic),
The Consulate of MU (Roberts), The Museum of Contemporary Idea and The Art
Fair Murders (Hill) all challenge the historical validity and authority of
the museum and its contents. Barbara Fischer and John McPhee will discuss
the successes and pitfalls of the museum in meeting this challenge.

Bookings essential. Contact Museums & Galleries Foundation on 02 9358 1760
or mgfnsw@ozemail.com.au.

Barbara Fischer (Canada)

The Effects of Simultaneity

The topic that interests me is twofold: on the one hand, I am curious about
the effects of simultaneity that are produced by electronic information
dissemination, especially concerning exhibition practices and local
audience. The simultaneous eruption of connected ideas seems to call for
greater networks of collaboration -- though physical matter and geographic
distance run up against this flow. Curatorial practice takes place in the
space of that paradox. The second topic has to do with the changing
landscape of "culture", the idea of the museum after cultural studies.
Again, the effects of simultaneity throw into relief old, new, and
diversifying cultural topoi, from x-treme sport to fashion to club cultures.
Is the museum/gallery just one of them, i.e. x-treme art? And/or can one
make a case for the museum as an integral site for various topoi?
(Curator, Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto, Canada)

Marina Grzinic (Slovenia)

Visual Art Culture from Slovenia, Central Europe and the Balkans
Establishing a new style of visual "writing" was a result of the conscious
visual reconfiguration of an "original" socialist alternative cultural
structure. What resulted were innumerable "explosive" contrasts and a series
of "technical imperfections" which attempted to comprehend the outer and
inner, sexual and mental, order and disorder, conceptual and political,
original and recycled space and time. There are two main strategies of
visualization, which reflect both history and the body in connection with
sexuality, and the social and historical corpus of different art practices.
(Freelance media theorist, art critic and curator, Research Fellow, Slovenia
Academy of Science and Art, Ljubljiana).


The above text has been reproduced with the permission by the artist Marina Grzinic.