Part of the screen of the SND by Sara Bezovšek
Discoursor 005
9 January 2023 | 18:30 | seminar, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova
You are invited to attend the presentation of an artwork by the artist Sara Bezovšek, and a talk by Boštjan Špetič about selected successful digital conservation and restoration interventions that he has participated in at the Slovenian Computer History Museum.
The event is moderated by Jaka Železnikar, the organizer of the Discoursor series.
On Tuesday, 9 January 2023 at 6:30 p.m. at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova. (Before Discoursor 005, Discoursor 004 will take place in the same room from 5:00 p.m. to 6:15 p.m.)
6:30 p.m. presentation of the exhibited work
6:45–7:30 talk
7:30–7:45 discussion/Q&A
A short informal meeting until roughly 8:15 p.m.
Exhibited work
SND, 2020 – ongoing
An interactive website named SND leads its visitors through possible futures of our planet. The content that the artist has found online forms a complex and visually saturated narrative which follows the premise of a typical Hollywood film. There are numerous additional links and other content that visitors to the site can use for their own exploration of given topics and for choosing their own paths that can lead them to a variety of different futures for humankind. SND is an ongoing project and currently encompasses seven subsites: You Are Here, Human Extinction, False Utopia, Overpopulation, Evacuate Earth, Nuclear Winter and Through the Wormhole. In an era marked by doomscrolling, conspiracy theories, climate change-related anxiety and political tensions, in which we often question our way of life and wonder about our near existence, SND depicts the general feeling of unease and helplessness that we experience whenever we see what is going on in the world.
The artist collected visual material, found online in the form of short videos, memes, photographs, gifs, emoticons and various external links (which allow the viewer to explore the given themes on their own), and collaged it with her own works, thereby creating a complex and visually saturated narrative that follows typical Hollywood film premises and takes the viewer from an idyllic situation to scenes of natural catastrophes, alien invasions, nuclear explosions, meteorite collisions and other possible situations. After the apocalypse(-s) the viewer can choose their own narrative and freely explore all of the given possibilities.
- text from magazine ETC, where SND was showcased
Sara Bezovšek
Sara Bezovšek is a visual artist focused on new media, experimental film and graphic design, in which she also holds an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. She has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions, among others in Ljubljana at the Aksioma project space, Kamera in Kino Šiška, Ravnikar Gallery Space, Osmo/za, sloART, DobraVaga, P74, SCCA-Ljubljana and Ravnikar Gallery Space, online in Feral File, in Maribor at Kiblix and MFRU, in Koper at IZIS and at the Metronom gallery in Italy. SND has been showcased at the online biennial The Wrong Biennale and on the online platform Do Not Research. Bezovšek was the recipient of the Prešeren Award for Students in 2018 and was nominated for the OHO Young Artist Award in 2022. She received the main award at the Ljubljana Short Film Festival (FeKK) for one of her short films in 2021, and the Vesna award for the best Slovenian experimental film in 2022. In 2023 she is working on a project for the research platform [permanent beta] of the Swiss gallery Fotomuseum Winterthur.
Boštjan Špetič
The head of the museum collection of the Slovenian Computer History Museum, ambassador of software heritage at Software Heritage, entrepreneur and mentor of startups, Boštjan Špetič currently lives in Slovenia but has close ties to New York, where he lived most of the last decade. Špetič currently works as a product specialist in Outbrain’s development team, mentors several entrepreneurs, serves on the board of directors of Rock Content, and runs the Slovenian Computer History Museum.
Slovenian Computer History Museum
The Slovenian Computer History Museum in Ljubljana has been operating since 2004. Its collection now comprises more than 6,500 items of hardware, software and related objects from the history of the development of computing in our country and abroad. Through its collection and related programs, the museum aims to help the general public better understand the degree to which our society is information-based and digitized. At the same time, the museum encourages individuals to become engaged and deliberate co-creators of its work.
The Slovenian Computer History Museum Laboratory keeps the crucial parts of the museum collection in working order, and ensures connections can be made between current and obsolete technology. As a UNESCO Software Heritage Ambassador, the museum advocates for the recognition of computer software as part of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.
