Video

Video

VideoSlovene video development during the 1980s arose from two specific local subcultures: the Students' Cultural and Art Centre (later to become ŠKUC Association) and the Students' Cultural Forum Society (SKD Forum, later to become Forum Ljubljana). Both centres established video sections in 1982. Most of the video works made by video artists and groups active throughout the 1980s were ŠKUC-Forum independent video productions.

Punk culture and its artistic offshoots had a big impact in the shift of art mediums. At this time numerous new social movements, such as the gay and (somewhat later) lesbian movements, emerged from Ljubljana's underground. In this context, video established itself quickly as an appropriate medium of expression. Its simple handling and extremely fast production and reproduction made video one of the most popular and radical forms of media for the 80s generation.

Throughout the 1980s, artistic and documentary video projects were carried out by the student cultural organisations and also by the Cankarjev dom Culture and Congress Centre in Ljubljana within the framework of its International Video Biennal, which began in 1983 and continued through until the end of the decade. Since the end of the 1980s and especially in the 1990s, Radio-Television Slovenia (RTV Slovenia), as part of its culture and art programme, has been intensively producing artistic video projects, while independent film and video organisations or groups have mostly been involved in the production of commercials. The Information Centre of the Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, established in the 1990s, showed several Slovene video productions alongside programmes from abroad. Criticism, social engagement and variations in political and social themes coupled with experimentation in languages, images and technology are the major features of most Slovene video productions.

Video productions are not as easily classified as video art, video theatre, video dance, video performance, or video installation. Most projects could belong to one or to all these fields at the same time. Often a music video, because of its specifically-defined theme, could hardly be considered to belong to this category (eg Peter Veziak with Laibach, Borghesia, or Hard Cord Punk Collective, to name a few examples). Video art often deals with political or social themes (Marina Gržinič and Aina Šmid, Zemira Alajbegović with Neven Korda etc) and is frequently interdisciplinary, connecting with theatre, film, performance and music.

By the mid 1980s and in the 1990s, video films were not merely a means of expression but also a method of documenting political events. Documentary video projects - created by amateurs with VHS equipment and by independent film and video groups with professional video equipment - captured different periods of political and social struggle in Slovenia: for example the 'trial of the four' in 1988, where four journalists were tried for allegedly stealing and publishing Federal Army documents; the 10-day war in Slovenia in 1991 against the Federal Yugoslav Army; and at the end of 1991, protests against attempts to abolish abortion rights. The 1990s, with the democratisation of Slovene political spheres, witnessed new forms of investigative journalism which utilised documentary video materials. Video was now more visible in the mainstream cultural sphere and could be found in individual presentations, exhibitions and projections at the Information Centre of the Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, ŠKUC Association and DSLU galleries, MKC Maribor Youth Culture Centre and Radio-Television Slovenia (RTV Slovenia), as well as in the programming of commercial TV station Kanal A. It could also be seen at the Festival of Slovene Video in Idrija (1992, 1998) and at the Video/Film Dance Festival in Ljubljana (1991-1996).

Video was really pioneered within conceptual art practice. Nuša and Srečo Dragan, the first video artists in Slovenia, initially operated as a part of OHO, a group of Slovene conceptual artists. For them, video constituted an element of artistic action and at the same time was a documentation tool. It was mainly understood as a means of immediate interactive communication with the audience. It was not until the end of the 1970s that Miha Vipotnik explored the structure and aesthetic effects of the electronic image. With professional TV equipment and a synthesiser, he created a different kind of video art which focused on the manipulation and transformation of image and editing. This contrasted to the abundant video production and practice of the 1980s within the 'Ljubljana subculture', which was not easily placed in a high art context. In 1984 Brane Kovič wrote about the changed role of video and its new tendencies. Events within the society, state rituals, violence, sexuality, myths and taboos of the socialist system had become important references for the creators of art and art-documentary videos. They preferred to describe themselves within the context of the alternative (punk and rock) culture, using Disko FV and the ŠKUC Gallery as their main venues, rather than within the context of (modernist) art, even though several of them trained at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design. Such was the case with Dušan Mandić, at the time a member of the Meje kontrole št 4 (video) art group. In 1983 and 1984 he was the only one to write about the ŠKUC-Forum Video Production. Besides identifying the distinctive features of this, including mass production, he also defined the distinction between the 'formalistic approach to the medium' of video as seen in the 1970s and the 'socially active audio-visual research' of the 1980s.

Many video artists have also become event producers. Miha Vipotnik was one of the founders of the International Biennial VIDEO CD in 1983, which established video in the institutional sense. In the next three biennials he directed brought international video art to Slovenia, enabled communication with guest artists and curators, and gradually affirmed Slovene video production in the international arena. In the late 1980s, he also prepared several presentations of Yugoslav video in co-operation with American curator Kathy Rae Huffman. These were presented in Canada and the USA, accompanied by introductory notes and critical texts.

Nuša and Srečo Dragan also prepared several exhibitions, programmes and texts on Yugoslav and Slovene video. National television also played an important role in the development of video production in Slovenia. In the late 1980s, and especially in the 1980s, it became one of the main producers of video in Slovenia alongside ŠKUC-Forum (later VS Video and Forum Ljubljana) and some private video studios, including Video Production Kregar Studio (VPK Studio). The most significant private video producers today include Art Video Institute Ljubljana, Strup Productions, Video Production Kregar Studio (VPK Studio) and Zank.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a surge of events around the world presenting art from Central and Eastern Europe, and trying to place it within the European context. The Ostranenie International Video Festival (Bauhaus, Dessau 1993-1997) focused on media production from former eastern European countries. In the catalogue of the first festival, among the texts on video art, is Video from Slovenia by Marina Gržinić, an artist and curator of video programmes who also gave special attention to video in her other texts. In the late 1980s and 1980s, video became increasingly tied to individual authors. It established itself as an independent medium and as a constituting element of expression in multimedia projects and installations.

An overview of video production up to the mid-1980s can be found in the programme booklet for the travelling video programme From the Alternative Scene to Art Video. Video Production in Slovenia 1992-1994, published by SCCA-Ljubljana Centre for Contemporary Arts. High-tech manipulation and the generation of images alone no longer fascinate. Videos are rendered as complex stories, approaching film and theatre, and only in rare cases as a digital experiment. At the same time, video has become an indispensable element of intermedia and visual art practices. First screenings or premieres of videos are often held at the Mladinsko Theatre or at the Slovenian Cinematheque. Texts on video are written according to the context in which a video first appears, by visual arts or film critics or in the context of culture in general. Slovenia has several travelling video programmes, including Videospotting, a five-hour programme in five thematic units presented at the international exhibition Interstanding in Estonia and at the European Film and Video Avant-garde event in Budapest. Forum Ljubljana has also prepared a travelling video programme entitled In Search of Lost Time.