We extend our invitation to join the accompanying programme of the Igor Zabel Award 2024, a two-day seminar on November 28 and 29, 2024 at the Museum of Modern Art (MG+) in Ljubljana. At the Seminar, recipients of this year’s Igor Zabel Award and Grants will present their work and, more broadly, discuss how art and theory from Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe can contribute to the world in these times of exacerbating crises. You are also welcome to join this year’s Igor Zabel Award Ceremony presenting the 2024 Igor Zabel Award and Grants recipients, on November 29 at 20:30 CET in Sokol House, Tabor in Ljubljana.
Edit András, art historian, art critic, and curator is named this year’s Igor Zabel Award Laureate. Irfan Hošić, Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu, and Natalija Vujošević receive the 2024 Igor Zabel Award Grants.
More information: https://award.igorzabel.org/eng
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SEMINAR
28.–29. 11. | MG+MSUM, Ljubljana
We live in an era of intensifying and increasingly intertwined crises and catastrophes that damage both human and non-human life and well-being, and give rise to oppressive and violent politics and ideologies. In this context, the 2024 Igor Zabel Award and its accompanying Seminar celebrate practices that are life-affirming, transformative, and locally embedded as well as build transversal collaborations, activate emancipatory legacies, and resist violence and discrimination, cynicism and resignation.
Thursday, 28. 11. | Museum of Modern Art (MG+) | 15:00–16:30
Transformative Cultural Practices
The panel will explore the concept of curating the periphery and discuss conceiving the recent history of informal and independent artistic and cultural practices from Central and Eastern Europe as a resource for creating a transformative culture of appreciation.
15:00–15:10 / Introduction / Urška Jurman (Igor Zabel Association programme manager), Martina Vovk (director of the MG+MSUM), and Kristina Božič (journalist)
15:10–15:30 / Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu / From Ruthless Criticism of Modern Institutions to a Transformative Culture of Appreciation
The practices of ruthless criticism and speaking truth to power have been long hailed as a transformative and ethical approach for modern public intellectuals. However, I have learned a very different lesson from living in proximity to war, and going through paradigmatic and systemic changes during an era of permanent crises. I have come to believe that critical work should primarily advance the articulation of hope. In this spirit, I propose conceiving of the recent history of informal and independent artistic practices and critical cultural works from Central and Eastern Europe as a collective resource that can be used for the necessary work of revaluation after devaluation, and thus for developing a new culture of appreciation that will be sensible to the fusion of sense and needs, and will have a transnational and transformative reach.
15:30–15:50 / Irfan Hošić / Curatorship and the Practice of Total Engagement
My presentation will provide insight into the protocols framed by the research, teaching, art-curatorship, and social engagement that I have developed over the last fifteen years. In an attempt to understand how scholarly work can be fermented into rooted practice, I will discuss recent political, social, and cultural conditions in the city of Bihać and, more broadly, throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the concept I name “curating the periphery”.
Some of the main issues and methods that I have worked with to stimulate local context and discourse are related to political teaching strategies, the production of public space, and creating new safe zones. These issues and methods are also materialized in projects such as the socially-engaged action #DeffendGallery (2015), the establishment of the KRAK Center for Contemporary Culture (2020), and my recently published book Image of Crisis (2024), to mention only a few.
15:50–16:30 / Discussion
The conversation between Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu and Irfan Hošić will be moderated by Kristina Božič.
Friday, 29. 11. | Museum of Modern Art (MG+) | 10:00–11:30
Locally Situated Knowledge Production
The panel will present examples of archival research and curatorial work connected to neglected collections and archives from the socialist Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav periods and discuss if (Eastern European) regionalism is still a valid perspective/method for writing art history.
10:00–10:10 / Introduction / by the moderator Bojana Piškur (curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova)
10:10–10:30 / Edit András / Region or Not Region: That is the Question.
As an art historian, critic, and curator who has always argued for the importance of local and regional context and the recognition of differences and specificities in the use of theory and art practices in diverse geographies, I will develop my talk around the following questions: Is (Eastern European) regionalism still a valid perspective/method for writing art history? What, if anything, are the specificities of the Eastern European region and what can it offer to the world today?
10:30–10:50 / Natalija Vujošević / 1989: Between East and East is 36.1 km
In the lecture, I will present my research and curatorial work connected to neglected collections and archives from the socialist Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav periods. I will focus on two subjects of my research: the collection of the Art Gallery of Nonaligned Countries Josip Broz Tito (1981–1995) and the archive of the Cetinje Biennials (1991–2004). I will discuss these two historical cases, reflecting on their simultaneous unfolding and overlapping and the way the crossroads of 1989 divided these cases into two significantly different “worlds”.
10:50–11:30 / Discussion
The conversation between Edit András and Natalija Vujošević will be moderated by Bojana Piškur.
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The Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory acknowledges exceptional achievements of curators, art historians, theorists, art writers, and critics whose work supports, develops or investigates visual art and culture in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. Named in honour of the distinguished Slovenian curator and art historian Igor Zabel (1958–2005), the award has been conferred biennially since 2008 in cooperation with the initiator of the award, ERSTE Foundation (Vienna), and the Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory (Ljubljana).
A three-member international jury selects the laureate and recipients of three grants based on proposals given by ten nominators. With total prize money of EUR 85,000 it is the highest and most prestigious prize for cultural activities related to Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.
Production: Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory and ERSTE Foundation
Partner: Museum of Modern Art+Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana
