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UCL and the gallery Calvert 22 have collaborated to organise three exciting events exploring the practice of the Slovenian art collective IRWIN/Neue Slowenische Kunst
Irwin, Kapital, 1991, Installation view, Clock Tower Gallery, New York, Courtesy
Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin/ Ljubljana
IRWIN are arguably the most influential art movement to emerge from the Balkan region in the latter half of the 20th Century. These events run in parallel to the new exhibition on at Calvert 22, which is the first major UK exhibition of IRWIN, the visual arts component of NSK, founded in Ljubljana (Slovenia) in 1983. This ambitious exhibition will feature seminal projects from the past twenty years. Neue Slowenische Kunst was established in what was then Yugoslavia. Concerned with the political unrest in the region at the time and issues of national identity NSK projects broke through the limitations of the visual arts. Highly collaborative and based around a constant flow of ideas, NSK provided a platform that brought together theatre, music, painting, literature, philosophy, design and performance, reaching into society at large.
20 year anniversary of NSK Moscow Embassy: Anthony Gardner
Thursday 10 May, 7pm, Free
To mark the 20-year anniversary of IRWIN's seminal project NSK Moscow Embassy - a month-long, live installation held in a Moscow private apartment - Anthony Gardner, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Melbourne, gives a talk and tour of the exhibition.
Self-historicisation as Artistic Practice: The Case of IRWIN
Workshop with Saša Nabergoj (SCCA Ljubljana)
Friday 1 June, 10am - 5.30pm, Calvert 22, Free. Light refreshments provided
This workshop explores the strategy of artistic self-historicisation, focusing on the particular case of the Slovenian collective IRWIN and their project East Art Map. Participants will spend the day at Calvert 22 within IRWIN's Time For A New State exhibition. The programme will focus on placing the work of IRWIN in a socio-political, ideological and cultural context, while also offering an overview of their artistic practice. The workshop will address the notion of historicising both in the context of IRWIN's work and from the wider perspective of its implications for art historical and curatorial practices.
Archive as Strategy: Conversations about Self-historicisation across the East
Symposium - East Art Map: History is Not Given. Please Help to Construct It
Saturday 2 June, 2-6.30pm, Pearson Lecture Theatre,
University College London, Main Quad, Gower
Street, (North-East Entrance). Free.
Speakers include Charles Esche, Gediminas Gasparavičius, IRWIN, Saša Nabergoj, Milena Tomić and Jonah Westerman, Klara Kemp-Welch.
This symposium will explore IRWIN and their project East Art Map in relation to strategies of self-archiving, self-historicisation and re-enactment in Eastern European art. It will involve an afternoon of presentations from established speakers and postgraduate researchers engaging with issues surrounding IRWIN's practice, EAM, archival tendencies in Eastern European art, and the legacies of these practices today (with specialists exploring the legacies of the project in relation to artistic and curatorial practice, art institutions and the writing of art history).