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It struck me how transiency (and even the thought of a possible failure) of a political idea on occasion seems more comic and more tragic that the inherent transiency of a human life.
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Foundation of Endeavour centres on Jasmina Cibic’s ongoing investigation into the idea of political gifts of culture, exploring their role within national and political structures during moments of European crisis in the 20th century. The exhibition in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ljubljana (MSUM), curated by Igor Španjol, comprises several of Cibic’s recent works: All the Power that Melts into Noise, Foundation of Endeavour, The Spirit of Our Needs, and the 20’ art film project The Gift. The author argues that the multipartite exhibition succeeds in conveying often overlooked manifestations of “soft power” formidably well, thus shedding light onto the historical, anthropological and sociological facets of political gifts and also suggesting relevant considerations on the significance of notions such as “public art”, “internationalism”, and “national culture”.
Tito’s relaxed manner towards the camera can also be seen as frank admission of the ruling regime that the photographs are indeed made and constructed rather than being a neutral documentation of reality.
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Among older generations within the territory of former Yugoslavia, May 25th is still remembered as Youth Day; the holiday that once marked the birthday of the federation’s life-long leader, Marshal Tito. An exhibition of Tito as a photographer by his personal photographer Joco Žnidaršič opened on May 25th, 2020 at Galerija Fotografija in Ljubljana – incidentally, just a few kilometres away from the hospital where Tito had died exactly four decades ago on May 4, 1980.
To be honest, I am shy and people frightened me. Animals only pooped on your shoes.
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Macinnis’ photographs of various groups of animals are so striking because all the animals assembled in front of the camera seem to be most willing to accept the camera’s gaze and the power relation implied. Animals are usually hard to photograph, because they are not particularly collaborative, unpredictable in their movements, and tend to flee the frame. Macinnis’ protagonists pose and look straight into the camera. They appear tame, pacified, ‘civil’, patiently awaiting their pictorial equivalent. As in all well-managed and representative group photos, there are no obvious signs of disorder or potential subversion. Macinnis’ patchwork families look friendly and demonstrate unity and a sense of aesthetic order. Macinnis’ photos allow for a reflection on group photographs and their specific arrangements. At the same time, they make one painfully aware of the disciplinary nature of the photographic act. Posing and freezing in front of the camera is a cultural practice that had to be trained and appropriated. Narratives from the beginnings of photography prove that. By looking at Macinnis’ fully disciplined animal models, one realizes how much of our own unruliness we had to give up to fit into the photographic system.
- Keywords: animal group portraits, anti-photographs, composite images, discipline
Facial recognition technology, which seeks to identify the shape of the skull beneath the skin and tissue of the face, is based on the assumption that it can be anything that occurs on the surface of the face, a potential camouflage, while the bone structure underneath it is impossible or at least very difficult to transform.
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Facial recognition technology, which seeks to identify the shape of the skull beneath the skin and tissue of the face, is based on the assumption that it can be anything that occurs on the surface of the face, a potential camouflage, while the bone structure underneath it is impossible or at least very difficult to transform.
The usual practice of portraying the dead before cremation at Manikarnika Ghat becomes an indicator of the unusual and exotic Indian culture, and although taking posthumous portraits has a long and continuous tradition in the Western world, we seemed to have forgotten about this art form.
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The usual practice of portraying the dead before cremation at Manikarnika Ghat becomes an indicator of the unusual and exotic Indian culture, and although taking posthumous portraits has a long and continuous tradition in the Western world, we seemed to have forgotten about this art form.
The author places his own decision to withdraw to the outskirts into his relationship with the world and keeps returning to his authorial treatment of various peripherals, physical or mental. Even though his works, because of their motifs, often pass into the realm of the sublime, they nevertheless very realistically discuss nature, which has, even after all the interventions during the anthropocene era, managed to withhold and survive.
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Although the interpretations of Koštrun’s works and his entire opus are undeniably multifaceted and open to different interpretations and readings, the article suggests that all his word does share a common meditative stillness and sense of solitariness. Peter Koštrun’s opus lingers on the intersection of pristine nature and cultural landscape, on the intersection of the impact of humans on the environment and the insignificance of the individual in relation to nature. Even if Koštrun’s photographic motifs allude to archaism and romanticism, and are at first glance connected to the tradition of photographic pictorialism, they are in their essence distinctly modern, attached to the reality of the here and now. His expression is completely non-narrative in the classic sense of photographic representation, as the images do not tell a linear story, but are dedicated to visual language, which is (as opposed to the written word) always ambivalent and layered.
- Keywords: Anthropocene, landscape, melancholy, mortality, nature photography