Maja Hodošček: Promised Land

Video, 10 min, 2010

The video Promised Land results from the artist’s collaboration with construction workers, immigrants from other ex-Yugoslav countries. These are predominantly men living away from their families, who came to work in Slovenia because of poor economic conditions in their home countries. In their new environment they have been exploited, underpaid or have even gone unpaid for their work, despite having signed employment contracts.

The artist invited them for lunch. The video shows food being prepared (onions being sliced, meat being cut up) while the audio documents the group’s conversation over lunch. Besides the issues already mentioned, it also foregrounds moments of interaction, of the group’s laughing together and swapping stories of day-to-day life, thus dismantling the usual representations of immigrants. 

Maja Hodošček: Little Girl

Video, 20:43 min, 2012

The artist made the video Little Girl together with her little sister Zala Ožek (now 16) at the primary school Zala was attending at the time. Taking on the role of cameraman, Zala filmed her schoolmates at class and during the breaks, as well as their interactions in the school corridors. The main part of the film consists of conversations between Zala and two of her classmates, revealing how these children see and reflect their position in the education system, where they see themselves in the labor market in the future, and how they understand a person’s possibilities for active involvement in politics and society. Hodošček structures her footage separately, steering the narrative into reflection on this generation’s potential social and economic position in a future marked by the current unstable political, social, and economic circumstances. The video also broaches questions about the education system within the neoliberal paradigm, raising doubt as to its potential as a means for a person’s self-realization, proposing instead non-institutional forms of education.

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Maja Hodošček (b. 1984) works in the media of video and installation, exploring social relations in the policies of exchange and collaboration, with special emphasis on speculative modes of representation in relation to the documentary. To this end, she focuses on the concept of work as a means of self-realization, the dynamic of work and labor processes, their transformative potential, and the position of a subject in the organization and structure of labor.

Artist's web page: www.hodoscek.com