Video from Slovenia

The eighties were witness to a renaissance of the video medium in Slovenia. However, this is not to suggest that we can speak about the birth of video art in the Yugoslavia of the seventies. Then, only the porductions of Nusa and Sreco Dragan from Ljublijana, and Sanja Ivekovic and Dalibor Martinis from Zagreb were known. There was no "Yugoslav" video, as such, only, as in the eighties, video productions which were the products of individual urban centres throughout the Yugoslav republics, i.e. of Ljubljiana, Zagreb, Belgrade, Skopje and Sarajevo. Thus the shift from the nation of "Yugoslav video" to "Slovene video" which occurred almost overnight, we could say, does not present a difficult changeover. Furthermore in the eighties, aesthetically, video in comparison with local film-making and its visual style, could not in any way allude to a "national" unifying style designating "Slovene video production" .

The beginnings of the Slovene video renaissance during the eighties were linked to the local pehnomenon of alternative- or sub-culture. The phenomenon of such alternative- or sub-culture was focussed around the work of two art-cultural orientated students centers in Ljubljana: the Students' Cultural and Art Center (SKUC) and the Students' Cultural Forum Society (SKD Forum). In 1982 both centers established a video section, which became the basis of the SKUD-Forum independent video productions. Most of the first video works made by video artists and groups active throughout the eighties until today (Marko Kovacic, Zemira Alaibegovic and Neven Korda, former members of the multimedia group Borghesia, Marina Grzinic and Aina Smid etc.) were produced by Skud-Forum independent video productions.

It is within the specific context of a new youth "sub-culture" and punk culture during the eighties, in Ljubljana, that the rebirth of the video medium and video art in Slovenia should be understood. Punk culture, and its artistic off-shoots in general, provided shifts in the medium of art..

At this time numerous new social movements such as homosexuals and, somewhat later, lesbians, emerged from Ljubljana's underground. In this context video established itself quite quickly as an appropriate medium for the expression of professional video equipment (VHS), its simple handling, extremely fast production and reproduction - repeated performing of new messages - all this has made of video one of the most popular, and radical forms of media for the eighties generation. Judging by productions (in the last decade more than one hundred non- commercial video art projects were produced), video art is an established institution in Slovenia; however its production conditions are still largely marginal. Slovenia has a few video producers but no one involved in video distribution. It also lacks a network of curators and editors who could represent video art within cultural institutions.

Throughout the 80s, artistic and documentary video projects were carried out by the afor mentioned student cultural organizations - SKUD-Forum, and also by the Cankar Culture Center in Ljubljana, within the framework of its video biennial - The International Video Biennal - whuch began in 1983 and continued throughout the 80s. Since the end of the eighties and especially in the nineties TV Slovenia, as part of its Culture and Art Programme has been intensively producing artistic video projects, while independent film/video organizations or groups have been mostly involved in the production of commercials. The Information Centre of The Modern Gallery in Ljubljana, established in the 1990, showed several Slovenian video productions and programmes from abroad, and might offer new prospects for the nineties.

At the moment what we are left with are still "weird" individuals, enthusiasts, mostly video artists, who with much love and assiduity cling to the field with others/outsiders and are therefore forced to be the critical and theoretical promoters of their own work.

In spite of these and other production difficulties, including the gap which is threatening the growth of video production, particularly in the context of the post independence (1992/93) economic crisis, we can say that the richness of strategies for visualization and narration that Slovenian video art constitutes an atonomous paradigm within art. This paradigm can be defined and understood as a new economy of seeing. The "art video" in Slovenia reconstituted and recreated levels of history and of contemporary creativity in art and culture as well as social activities. Critics berated this, commercial and also (partly) experimental film productions in Slovenia, as lacking in substance. Criticism, social engagement, variations in political and social themes on the one hand, and experimentalism in languages, images and technology, etc. on the other, are the major feature of most the Slovenian video productions.

All this tells us that video production in Slovenia is the product of very distinct themes and formal characteristics. Video productions are not easily classified as say "music spot", video art, video theatre, video dance, video performance or video installation, etc. Most of the projects could belong to one or to all these fields at the same time (Marko Kovacic, Natasa Prosenc, Marko Kosnik, Mirko Simic, Jasna Hribernik, Igor Zupe and Saso Podgorsek, etc.) Sometimes, a music spot, because of its specifically defined theme could hardly be considered to belong to this category (Peter Veziak/Laibach, Borghesia, Hard Cord Punk Collective etc.). Video art often deals with political themes (Marina Grzinic and Aina Smid etc.) and because of its interdisciplinarity - video's connection with theater, film, performance, music - it becomes extremly important in terms form and content, and for further explorations of those very art spheres it itself manipulates.

This is also true when speaking about documentary video projects - a document quickly changes to being a momento to an idividual work, or to a period in time. In the mid 80s and in the 90s video films were not merely a means of expression, but also a method of documenting political events. Documentary video projects/cassets, (realized 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 - four journalists were tried for allegedly stealing and publishing Federal Army documents; the ten 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 nineties, with the ten-day war in Slovenia and the democratisation of Slovene political spheres, have been witnessing new forms of investigative journalism (Iztok Abersek, Kasna Hribernik/Peter Zohec, etc.) which utilise documentary video materials.

Video offers "authentic" historical, emotional, artistic, political views on events, perspectives, conditions, bodies, practices, languages and topics narrated through the perspectives of its authors.