At CAA's 99th Annual Conference in New York from February 9-12, 2011, the ARTspace Media Lounge presents a roster of innovative video programming, with selections made by renowned artists, professors, and curators specializing in new media; they are shown on a continuous loop during the conference, featuring a different hour-long program each day.
An outstanding program is lined up for New York, featuring videos assembled by nine curators, including Boshko Boskovic, Alexander Campos, David Familian, Claudia Hart, Martha Kirszenbaum, Karen Moss, Aily Nash, Debra Riley Parr, and Catherine Sullivan. The framework for the program can best be described by the title chosen by the organizers, Band of Outsiders, the irresistible title of Jean Luc Godard’s 1964 film, which prompts the notion of a collective challenging of boundaries. The goal is to reflect the independent and adventurous mettle that has always characterized art production in New York City.
The video program Not So Distant Memory, curated by Boshko Boskovic, comprises of an hour-long presentation of video works from the territory of what used to be Yugoslavia. The approach is topographical and takes as a starting point remembrance of a place that has expired in history. The process is a simple one: connecting the dots of national groups that once cohabited within a construct through the basis of video art. Aesthetics are politics and in featuring artworks from ex-Yugoslav republics and provinces (Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia) there is a danger that the exhibition be perceived as an excessively sentimental yearning to return to a past period that once existed, namely The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1943-1992). One is fully aware that returning to the past is an irrecoverable process and the aim of this presentation is to showcase the production of recent artworks that happen to be framed upon a territory that once existed.
The works contain a multitude of voices and perspectives: from the performative and more politically engaged to the lyrical and humorous. The focus is not on developing an overarching theme or conclusion yet experiencing works from a particular region that is often neglected or esentialised by the western contemporary art world.
Participating artists in the exhibition are: Danilo Prnjat (Montenegro), Marija Djordjevic (Serbia), Renata Poljak (Croatia), Boris Glamocanin & Sandra Dukic (Bosnia & Herzegovina), Mladen Miljanovic (Bosna & Hercegovina), Borjana Mrdja (Bosna & Hercegovina), Leban-Kleindienst (Slovenia), Alban Muja (Kosovo), Zoran Poposki (Macedonia).
