The new authored book by Janez Strehovec Contemporary Art Impacts on Scientific, Social, and Cultural Paradigms: Emerging Research and Opportunities. will be published in May 2020 with the IGI Global.

Academics and students can utilize coupon code IGI40 for a 40% special discount. This discount can only be used when ordering directly through www.igi-global.com.

What distinguishes this book from other monographs on the social specificity of contemporary art is, first and foremost, the point of departure in art service, rather than in stable artwork as the artefact. The introduction of art service as a key concept of contemporary art enables a novel understanding of art as a cognitive, high-skilled, and performative practice oriented towards tasks, research, knowledge-making, and problem-solving activities. As a cognitive practice, art works hand in hand with other fields of the knowledge society and brings competitive knowledge to the world, knowledge that differs from the knowledge produced by the science-as-we-know-it and is set in the nearness of the knowledge produced by the activities of citizen science and civil society. The contemporary art service can also be applied to political tasks; such service is more subtle than traditional political devices and can be used as a significant tool in civil society engagement (e.g., art activism). The devices of art activism, such as subversive affirmation, making strange (defamiliarization), and detournement (introduced by the French Situationist movement), can be deployed in civil society and social media political struggles as well. Devices that are of importance in the inner life of art institutions, like branding and referring to art projects formed by canonic creators (as a kind of underlying asset), can be significant in financial markets, too. Rather than being an artist-genius separated from everyday people, the contemporary artist is a cognitive worker included in the hacker class (Wark, 2004) and the knowledge society.

– Janez Strehovec: “Moving Images, Moving Words. On Refashioning Film in Electronic Literature”. In: Suwara, B., and Pisarski, M. (Eds.), Remediation: Crossing Discursive Boundaries. Central European Perspective, Berlin, Bratislava: Peter Lang & VEDA, Publishing House, 2019.

– Janez Strehovec: “Beseda-podoba-telo: razširjeno besedilo in nove modalnosti branja in izkušanja teksta“. Slavistična revija, 67(1), 2019, pp. 1-15. Access: https://srl.si/ojs/srl/article/view/2019-1-1-1.

Izšla je nova knjiga članice INM dr. Mojce Puncer Medprostori umetnosti, in sicer pri Založbi Sophia (Ljubljana, 2018).

Knjiga bo predstavljena v okviru okrogle mize, ki bo v petek, 23. novembra 2018, ob 12h na Pisateljskem odru Društva slovenskih pisateljev 34. slovenskega knjižnega sejma v Cankarjevem domu (Velika sprejemna dvorana).

O knjigi: http://www.zalozba-sophia.si/katalog/2018/medprostori-umetnosti

O dogodku: http://www.knjiznisejem.si/index.php/domov/za-obiskovalce/program?dogodek=umetnostbesedeoumetnosti:produkcijaumetnostiinumetniskega

Tema kolokvija / The theme of the colloquium: Literatura v preseku družbe, družba v preseku literature / The Crossroads of Literature and Social Praxis

Program in povzetki / Program and Abstracts: http://sdpk.si/datoteke/Vilenica%202018_Program.pdf

*

Maja Murnik: Sodobne slovenske dramske pisave in družbenoangažirane uprizoritvene prakse / Contemporary Slovenian Stage-plays and the Political

Abstract

The paper stems from the awareness that in the recent decades it has no longer made sense to distinguish strictly between drama and theatre as we are dealing with “no-longer-dramatic texts” (Poschmann) and the no-longer-theatre or the postdramatic theatre (Lehmann). In the crisis of representation and the dramatic form, performative dimensions of texts come to the foreground, as texts become Barthesian open texts – heterogeneous, performative structures which are open in terms of meaning.

In the paper, we will analyze examples of “no-longer-dramatic texts” by Simona Semenič in the light of their social engagement and politicality, and we will complement these by tackling their recent socially engaged stagings in Slovenian theatre, where the textual part plays a significant role (e.g. Metamorphoses 4: Black holes, Republic of Slovenia, Odilo. Obscuration. Oratorio) and which range from simple political agitation plays to complex treatments of social themes. Who do these projects address and what are they trying to achieve?

We need to understand the scope and power of their politics and their social commitment in the light of the position of art and theatre in contemporary society, including the context of contemporary postpoliticality. Where are the loci of power today and how are they addressed by contemporary Slovenian drama and theatre; what is their stand towards them? Which strategies and tactics do Slovenian drama and theatre use in the process and what is their message for us?

*

Janez Strehovec: Slovenski literarni nacionalizem kot ideološki aparat države / Slovenian Literary Nationalism as an Ideological State Apparatus

Abstract

By applying the researching devices of media studies, art theory, critical theory, philosophy, Marxian theory, cultural anthropology, and cultural studies as a theoretical background, this research paper aims to explore the Slovenian literary nationalism as one of the key Slovenian ideological state apparatuses. The criticism of literary nationalism is not directed towards literary works and the activity of writing, but to institutions that form a literary-ideological, interpretative and propaganda context in which the literary production takes place. Literary nationalism contributes to the Slovenian ideology whose stability is guaranteed by the coexistence of the cultural archaism, and the neoliberal economic and technological modernization. In Slovenian left-wing culture one can encounter political activity of the Janez Janša group of artistic activists who use cultural institutions as an alibi (and financial sponsor) for their application of the subversive affirmation, which is directed to pure political goals. The general conclusion of the analysis of both phenomena demonstrates that in Slovenia occurs cultural extremism which is politicized in its left- as well as right-wing version; its exploration is essential for the understanding of the post-communist Slovenia as well as a novel role of politicized contemporary art and literature in the present.