Boris Beja
Another Evening
spatial installation, video, 8:32 min, 2014
The visual image of fireworks evokes pleasure and joy of celebration, while the audio effects of explosions, an everyday part of life in various war zones, create the effect of fear. The spatial installation evokes the state of anxiety where the question of safety is constantly at odds with the individual’s experiences and memory. Should I enjoy freely these visual images or should I rather confront the anxiety of others as they are re-living their fears and anxieties in this exact moment? Fear is often associated with a certain behavior of fight and avoidance, while the anxiety works as a consequence of threats we feel as unavoidable and see as uncontrollable. Fear is almost always about future events, like the worsening of one’s situation or the continuation of an unbearable situation.
Technical assistant: Andrej Učakar
Boris Beja
Between the lines
spatial installation; pencil, paper, sound 60 min, 2014
This project is about the idea of spare time, which has been most commonly associated with the idea of freedom. However, from the point of view of neoliberal capitalism, spare time is committed to unfreedom and recognized as a field that has no limits as to its economic exploitation. The recurring graphite tracks: lines, boundaries, limited by the space alotted to the staff and by the duration of the musical piece, are acts of a process the artist used to time and space track his life and work. His work focuses on the relationship between work time and spare time from the point of view of daily work of a worker practicing art. The installation is the result of cooperation between two artists, a musician, and a visual artist, spending their time creatively.
Plot layout: Primož Stražar
Artist's statement: [PDF: Boris Beja: Vrtača [Sinkhole], poem]
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Boris Beja (1986) first graduated in 2009 from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering from Graphic Communications, University of Ljubljana and then graduated again in 2013 from Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts, Uni - versity of Ljubljana. He has had a number of individual exhibitions and has collaborated on several group ones. He has received some awards, among them the 2012 Prešeren Student Award for sculpture and, in the same year, the highest award for a contribution to the sustainable development of our society, the Slovene Human Resources Devel - opment and Scholarship Fund. Beja is also a critic and a curator. In his work, he unites various visual practices into an aestheticised, direct address with an emphasis on social criticism. From 2010 to 2013, he was writing articles on the subject of culture for the web portal Planet Siol.si.
