Photo: Miha Peterlič
Lenka Đorojević & Matej Stupica
Neur-o-Matic
analogue media-art installation
Neur-o-matic is a series of twelve identical situations depicting the average generic working environment of the cognitive precariate whose labour is embedded within the absurd static environment of communication capitalism. Sub-conscious gestures dictated by the information technology trigger ideological operations inside the time-space medium whose time is increasingly shorter and space increasingly dispersed.
The authors of the exhibition have, in close cooperation with engineers Brane Ždral, Simon Bergoč and Boris Košak, sculptress Neža Jurman and audio artist Staš Vrenko, stripped the phantasm of information and knowledge cornucopia to its naked essence, its absurdity, whose insatiable desire is directed towards destruction. The installation's mechanism is set up in such a way that the former will partially auto-destruct during the exhibiting period and portray the fragmented and destructive effects of excessive production. All twelve situations are connected into a network which triggers the banging of hammers on clones. The central operating centre is similar to a web environment embedding each of twelve work stations. The visitor is like an operator who is unable to control his or her actions, since every push of a key is destructive. The only means of resistance and transformation of inert excessive production and action is a radical departure from the system and complete inaction.
The installation was realised in collaboration with: Neža Jurman, Boris Košak, Martin Lovšin Schintr, Blaž Božič, Simon Bergoč, Tina Dolinšek, Brane Ždralo, Luka Frelih, Staš Vrenko, Jure Gruden, Ida Hiršenfelder, Bojan Stefanović, Miha Kelemina, Guillermo Algora, Nejc Bahor, Blaž Božič, Primož Čučnik, Jasmin B. Frelih, Karlo Hmeljak, Željko Hrs, Dejan Koban, Marko Mlačnik, Tjaša Koprivec, Mira Lampe Vujičić, Ivan Lotrič, Dušan Merklin Mick, Ana Pepelnik, Tone Škrjanec, Polona Torkar, Andreja Štepec, Urša Dolinšek, Polona Torkar, Nina Sever, Sara Šabjan, Julijan Strajnar, Tilen Nedanovski, Uroš Veber, Tina Dolinšek
production: Art and Science Laboratory; Project Atol Institute, Ljubljana
coproduction: Museum of Transitory Art, Ljubljana; Moderna galerija, Ljubljana
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Matej Stupica is an intermedia artist of younger generation active in the fields of visual and intermedia installations. He graduated from ALUO in 2014 with a work titled Escape from Alcatraz. During 2010/11 he studied at the VŠUP Academy in Prague in the studio of Jiříy Černický as part of a three-month student exchange. He has been present in Slovenia and abroad with individual and group projects, interventions and exhibitions. Since 2006 he has been publishing illustrations in the Saturday's edition of Dnevnik newspaper - Objektiv. He exhibited at the 8th and 11th Slovenian biennale of illustration, where he received the Hinko Smrekar Award and a special praise of the jury for newspaper illustration. For his work in the field of visual art, he has received the ALUO Award for special artistic achievements in 2009 and the student's Prešern award for painting in 2011. His latest exhibitions were also part of the 7th Triennial of contemporary art - U3, Resilience. He is living and working in Ljubljana.
Lenka Đorojević is an artist and a curator. Her work explores the relations between contemporary theory and philosophical thesis as pertaining to various forms of mediated visual, which is shown in her works either directly or through the inclusion of processuality of such a media into her intermedia installations and theatre sceneries. She has graduated at the Academy of fine arts in Trebinje, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2008 and has undertaken additional education at the International summer academy in Salzburg. She finished her master degree at ALUO in Ljubljana in 2013. Lenka has finished the two-year School for curators and critics of contemporary art World of art at the Centre for contemporary art - SCCA in Ljubljana and is a collaborator of the culture and humanism editorial board of the student radio - Radio Študent. She is a co-founder of the Association for audio and visual art OFFTIR, which was publicly presented for the first time at the 7th Triennial of contemporary art - U3, Resilience. She is living and working in Ljubljana.
In addition to their individual practices, Lenka Đorojević and Matej Stupica have also been active as an artistic duo since 2012. They have received the OHO award for their installation Monomat in 2015.
