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Day Two:
From Cultural Research to Design
Yane Calovski Presentation Yane's work shows that contemporary conceptual art could create new and innovative scenario and surface for indigenous creative knowledge to interact with history and society. Yane's practice is concerned with tradition of research and translation, relating empirical ideas to art historical reference analysis leading in work situated in the site-specificity of a new cultural and political geography. In the presentation he introduced his documentary video work entitled "Anthem". The work was commissioned for an exhibition “Inquiry into Reality: The disappearance of public space” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade in March 2007. The work is a reaction to the collective need to recognize a celebratory tune conceptualized and specified to unify the national, cultural, political and individual pride of people troubled with recent issues of identity and perspective. In the case of Serbia, one cannot escape the recent and turbulent political history as a subtext of their cultural identification. The music and text were arranged by young composer Drashko Adzic and performed by recent graduates of the Music conservatory in Belgrade. With "Anthem", Yane tried to raise a serious proposal of a new symbol that does not have a deep-rooted cultural and political pretext. At the same time the work also suggests a need to search for a new sense of conceptual identification where ultimately a highly nationalistic pretext found in folkloric tradition could be brought face to face with concepts deriving from different histories, such as the history of conceptual art practices. Eventually Yane appropriated Robert Barry's text artwork as the lyrics for the "Anthem". Barry's conceptual ideas match perfectly with the Balkan situation, they speak of transformation of matter and form. He is addressing the form as perpetual motion, through its instability and ephemera, and he relates it's to that which we recognize as a sensation of ambiguity articulated as process. So the model "Anthem" Yane produced did not only sit in a comfortable zone to celebrate the cultural pride. It was in fact a platform to open and encourage a public dialogue on what are the meaning, use and purpose of the national anthem.
Biography The work of Yane Calovski (Skopje, Macedonia, 1973) often deals with places of history, and collects local vernacular culture, such as stories and songs, for re-creation. Yane has exhibited and published his collaborative, context-oriented and drawing-based work internationally including: The Drawing Center (New York); Manifesta 3, (Ljubljana, 2000), Museum of Contemporary Art (Skopje); AR/GE Kunst, Bolzano (Italy); Nova Galeria, Zagreb (Croatia); Contemporary Art Center (Vilnius); Konshallen Brandts (Denmark), Kronika (Poland), and others venues. He has studied sculpture and architecture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania (1992-96); Bennington College (1997); and has participated in the post-graduate studio programmes at the CCA Kitakyushu, Japan (1999-00) and the Jan van Eyck Academie, The Netherlands (2002-04). For his practice, he has been awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (2001). He established and directs of "Press to exit" project space in Skopje, Macedonia, and is the founder and editor of D (d is for drawing) magazine focusing on contemporary drawing. |
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