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Barbara Borčić

Video. The Domain of Women Artists

From the 1980s until today, a number of women video artists have emerged in Slovenia, and most of them are still active in the video field in one way or another. Video seems to be the right terrain for women artists who use audio-visual technology as a tool, means of expression or working method. The lecture will present the situation of women artists in Yugoslavia/Slovenia after the WW2 and focus on video art practices by women in different periods and under various circumstances and conditions of production. The online video archive DIVA Station (produced by SCCA–Ljubljana) will serve us as a tool for glimpsing at some of the artworks of different genres and aesthetics, from video art, performance and video installation to music and documentary video as well as “video dance” and “video film”.

Barbara Borčić is an art historian, member of AICA, International Association of Art Critics, active in the field of contemporary arts as a free-lance curator and writer with a focus on performance and video art. Active in frame of SCCA–Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Arts as Director (1997–2015), Head of Video Programs and DIVA Station Video Archive, Program Advisor (2016–2022). She is the author of Videodokument: Video Art in Slovenia 1969-1998, the first systematic documentation and research of video art in Slovenia, important in framing terminology and setting theoretic basis for further research. She has curated numerous programs of video art in Slovenia (under the title Videospotting) and presented them worldwide, from Moscow, Cairo, Manila, and Berlin to London, Los Angeles and New York. She is the author of books, e.g.: Stvar / Thing: Marko Kovačič, Short History – Part I (1994) & Part II (2006); Bogdan Borčić: Grafike [Prints, a monograph], Galerija Božidar Jakac Gallery, Kostanjevica na Krki (2001); Celostna umetnina Laibach. Fragmentarni pogled [Gesamtkunst Laibach. A Fragmentary View] (2013).

She has curated a number of exhibitions, e.g. What Is to Be Done with Audio-visual Archives? (Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana, 2005); DIVA in Škuc Gallery (Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana, 2009); Race with Time. Performance and Video in Rear-View Mirror (Theatre Institute, Ljubljana, 2014; Grey Zone, Korčula 2015); Multimedia Practices and Venues of Production (Museum of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana 2017), Projected Visions. From art in the urban context to fiction and dystopia (e.city-Ljubljana), (Apollonia, échanges artistiques européens, Strasbourg, 2018), Emil Memon. Three Steps to Madness. Social Sculpture and Other Short Stories (Project Room SCCA, Ljubljana, 2019), Miha Vipotnik. Faces of Analogue / Quantisation of Red (Slovenian Cinematheque, 2020), 3 + 3 = 6 / Three women artists, three art practices, six decades (The City Hall Glass Atrium; Project Room SCCA, Ljubljana, 2019), Marko A. Kovačič. The Lost Horizon (Slovenian Cinematheque, 2022-2023).

She has regularly lectured and published texts in catalogues, magazines and books: e.g. Video Art from Conceptualism to Postmodernism, in: Impossible Histories: Historical Avant-Gardes, Neo-Avant-Gardes, and Post-Avant-Gardes in Yugoslavia, 1918-1991 (MIT Press, 2003); A Painter’s Visually Skilled Hand In Grasp of Technology and Engineering, Mehatron Noordung (Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, 2004); Manifesta in Our Backyard: Reflections on a Research Project (with Urška Jurman), The Manifesta Decade. Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe (MIT Press, 2005); Curatorial Practices in the Slovene Cultural Milieu, Curatorial Translation(EURO Center, Skopje, 2008); What Television Can Be, And What Artists Can Use It For, in: exh. cat. Amuse Me (City Gallery, Ljubljana,, 2013); The ŠKUC Gallery, Alternative Culture, and Neue Slowenische Kunst in the 1980s, in: NSK from Kapital to Capital. Neue Slowenische Kunst – The Event of the Final Decade of Yugoslavia (MIT Press, 2015); In the Name of Video. Women are coming!, Returning the Gaze (Cukrarna Gallery, Ljubljana, 2022); Jasna Hribernik.Between Film, Video and Space, Jasna Hribernik, l'avenir (City Gallery, Ljubljana, 2023).