-> scroll down for transcript
I was carrying a Pentax 17 with Kodak UltraMax 400 ISO
Lucija’s Instagram is here
Lucija wanted to send people here after listening
Lucija
Like we have a couple of those letters that they go like č š ž--
Gabrielle
Oh my god, do you know I watched like 1 YouTube video before I came. I was like, I'll be able to say like the basics, the hello, the thank you, the sorry.
L
Can you say it?
G
no, I can't. The only one I could say is 'prosti.'
L
Like, I'm sorry? 'Oprosti.'
G
OK, Because that's the easiest one that everything I was like, blocking it.
L
Because thank you is also kind of hard because it's 'hvala'
G
Exactly. The taxi driver was telling me last night, it was like, you know, when someone's telling you the rules of a card game and you just zone out?
L
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
G
Every time he said it to me, I was like ---???---
L
Yeah, no, Slovenian language is like a really, really like hard card game for everyone I think -- also for for us, because it has all these -- I don't know how that's called in English, but like, you know, you have like a plural and a singular and then we have one for two people.
G
Oh, really?
L
Yeah. Yeah. So everything has like the extra column for two people, yes.
G
What?! Does that make it... make more sense that a programme about friendship at the gallery, you know, it would come out of that?
L
I don't know, because for us, you know, it's like --
[jingle]
G
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Art Dates podcast, episode #2, My name is Gabrielle de la Puente, and for this episode I was sitting in Dobra Vaga Gallery along the river in the middle of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, with the artist and writer Lucija Klauž. It was hot outside. The river was like green, but not in a toxic way. Like green as in like the world's being honest, if that makes sense. Like it was such a beautiful capital city full of trees and like, dappled sunlight and shadow and colourful buildings and fountains that actually worked. Oh my God, I haven't seen a fountain that worked in Liverpool in maybe 20 years.
And I was there because I'd been invited to Ljubljana to give a lecture about my experience of friendship. This e-mail came through a few months ago from a group of curators who were at the end of a two year programme at the School for Curatorial Practices and Critical Writing in SCCA Ljubljana. So those curators were Julija Hoda, Kara Marušič, Eva Pušnik, Lucija Lunder, Tamara Pepelnik, Urša Culiberg, Svit Skobir Lampič,
and to conclude their programme, they were basically curating an exhibition and a series of events that focused on friendship. And it was sort of like how friendship operates in the art industry, how it can be a support structure, how we can share the load, how we can work in collectives to increase our opportunities or sometimes, you know, halve the opportunity because the money's split between people. And also like they were thinking, I believe, about whether friendship is a by-product of the art or whether friendship is the art.
And I was like, guys, hold up. I am on the cusp of starting this new podcast series called Art Dates where I just record myself hanging out with people in new places because like, deep down, I just want to make more mates. And I miss the community that I used to get from art back, you know, five years ago when my health was a lot better. So I asked if there was anyone local that I should go on an art date with. So a few hours before I gave my lecture on this like incredibly hot Saturday afternoon in, yeah, like maybe the most beautiful capital city I've ever been to, they Cupid-hooked me up with Lucija and with friendship in mind, let's get back to the date.
--
L
It's part of like this wider conversation that I think we keep on having here kind of, I mean here, maybe everywhere. But it's kind of -- we're all like very interconnected in like very different ways and some of them are less formal than others, and sometimes like this formal connection of either like collaborating because we're artists leads to friendship or sometimes it's the other way around. And then it's like, I think it becomes even more kind of complicated when most of us have like more than one role in this like artist, like culture space. It's kind of like, OK, I am an artist, but I'm also sometimes a curator, but sometimes I'm like the person that works in a gallery and sometimes I'm also like the person that writes reviews about contemporary art. And then I'm also a friend of these people, right?
G
Do you think it makes it easier or harder? Shall we sit down?
L
Yes, I think we need to sit down for this. I don't know like it can make it easier sometimes. I think because I have this, I think sometimes it's easier because your friends, they will understand that you are assuming all of these roles and you're also like an actual person.
And they will understand when you fuck up or you miss a deadline or you -- you know? And sometimes I think that makes it harder because you don't want to fuck over your friends, but it's sometimes easier to fuck over your friends than someone that doesn't know you and you're really scared and you're like, not sure if they're going to understand that this happened.
[Film camera shutter sound]
G
I'm kind of late editing this episode because I've been doing so many different things.
I've been writing reviews, but I've also been translating some letters from Spanish into English and I have been doing this Chilean cinema course and I've been looking at a new job maybe as well.
I told Lucija it was hard to research what she does before I came because she does so many different things as well, and she was laughing. But I feel like I always get on with those types of people. So she said that, you know, she's now finally feeling like it's less cringe to introduce herself as an artist. But the on top of that, she writes (except she did say the word art critic sounded horrible in English. I kind of love it personally). Lucia also works for a radio station. She works in the learning departments for galleries and museums. She runs like a reading group thing with a friend. And since September, she's also been working in the Dobra Vaga Gallery where we were sat. So like the sound of doors opening and closing in the background were the de-install of the current exhibition, which we will get to later. But as a side note, I just want to say that after episode 1, so many people were like, 'I love the background noises' and in a little bit as well we will go outside so maybe we'll hear beds or something.
--
L
I guess why I do all these things is also because in my artistic practice, like I'm really interested in this. Currently, I'm really interested in mind maps and diagrams and things that are essentially maybe, before they are artworks, they're kind of tools for you to make sense of things, from very practical things like how do I -- which reminds me of like all these YouTube videos that tell you like how to organise your morning so you're more productive, which I think is also problematic, but it's also like helpful, like if you're life is like --
G
Yeah, you make a system for yourself.
L
Yes. Yeah but I think yeah, it's really about when your life is like really in flux and like everything is very - - - it just comes and it goes and you're like the way you work is very precarious and you have like all these multiple sources of income and everything has to kind of come together and you need to like become like this boring grown up like right now and start to budget and do excel sheets and la, la, la. It's like really it's like a really boring thing kind of to think about, but also like really essential. And then, yeah, stuff like mind mapping and making diagrams that would be like really personalised to you and to a very specific issue, then can transfer to something very poetic actually. Like, you know, it can also exit out of this very practical, very useful, very productive mode to something where you're like, just kind of, yeah, like you're maybe you're not building like a system for yourself, but you're like just kind of putting thoughts into a some kind of network or like parts of thoughts or like things that really escape language at some moment.
And this kind of all came for me. I think it came out of -- I was before that, I was like doing projects that were a bit more like visual. But what was like really interesting to me were like things like travelling or just moving through a space and then I would try to kind of record that movement. It started with: I was making these videos of like I was taking hundreds and hundreds of images while travelling on a train from my hometown to Ljubljana, which is like 2 hours. And it's like the same train ride like -- chhchhchh -- and you're going back and forth and back and forth, and I was like, oh, it's like really empty time. This like 2 hours of my life on this train that might be 3 hours, we don't really know because this is how the rail world functions, like very badly. But it's also really beautiful kind of. You're somewhere where you wouldn't usually go. You wouldn't usually travel in that way if you were by a car or something, you were like going through places that you can only see like from this heightened position from a train. It's kind of beautiful. It's kind of romantic. It's kind of like a leftover of some kind of different timeline because it's like, it's very old and it's like, and yeah, I was like recording that with just my phone camera.
I was making these like really enlarged images and they were like weirdly nostalgic, even though they were completely pixelated, which wouldn't, I guess I wouldn't describe nostalgia like that. But you get this color that is kind of like grey and it's kind of desaturated and things start to happen in that.
And I was really working a lot with this material and making like video installations and stuff like that. But then I was kind of left still with this of recordings of these paths. And I know I had this idea where I wanted to travel with every bus line in the city, like from the end stop to the other end stop. I don't know how that's called. And I did like 2 of them even though it's like, I think it's like 30 of them ish. But when I did the first one, I did a zine, like a zine where I would record like things -- like write down things that I was thinking or seeing or remembering. And they would all get like their location from one stop to the other. And also like, I would record the time and everything and I made a zine with like these stories. I mean 'stories,' it's not very linear. It's not very like doesn't have a dramaturgical whatever. And I did this one and then I was actually talking to Kara and I was like, yeah, but now I have to make all of them and it has to happen like really fast.
And she was like, I don't know, maybe you will make another one in like 2 years and everything will be different because you will be different. I was like... smart.
But yeah, I think these are the things that I'm currently like really interested in. And also because my background is actually in video and later in photography, I think I would just also like to kind of get comfortable with making visual things again because I kind of, I don't know, when I went to art school, I kind of lost that. I was kind of became really scared to make an image or a drawing or --
G
What were you making in art school?
L
Not much [laughing]. Like really, it was so hard for me to make something. I don't know, I was just like thinking a lot and writing things down a lot and talking about them a lot... was just not making much. I mean, I was making some kind of video project. I made one short film and we had a lot of like printmaking classes, which for me was like, OK, I'm learning this skill. So I kind of feel a little bit liberated. So I did make stuff like that. I made this one piece where I was rewriting this Latin piece of text that you put in, I don't know, Indesign just to --
G
Lorem ipsum?
L
yeah, Lorem ipsum, just so you're like saying, oh, a text will be here, you know? And then I would I was putting this in like Google Translate back and forth and back and forth and it was just like grinding down language.
G
What does it even mean? I mean like in its plainest version.
L
I mean, I've been told that it doesn't mean anything anymore, like in a sense that language doesn't work like this anymore or that it never meant anything. People are really -- they don't agree, but it's like really dramatic. I think it starts with something about pain and like, it's really, it's like 'a lot.' But then, you know, the more you translate it, the more absurd it gets. Like, I don't know, and I don't remember anymore. But there were things like, I don't know -- it ended up being about TV or football, and I was like, that's impossible, guys. [laughing]. So I was doing like etchings with this, with this text and like rewriting it multiple times on the plate and blah, blah, blah. And that was really cool. It was really fun. Also, I think it was the first artwork I ever sold and I sold it here in this gallery.
G
Oh my God.
L
Yeah, yeah. Which was like really nice. So it's like it was here for like 2 years before anyone bought it, but then someone did. It was like, what the hell, guys? Where did you find it? I thought it's gone. Yeah, yeah. So I guess these are the things that I'm interested.
G
It sounds like, you know, doing the bus route, doing all of the different bus routes, like going over the train path over and over again, going over Lorem Ipsum over and over again, you like returning to something or like processing that thing multiple times?
L
Yeah, I think this repetition is really interesting. I think when I was first interested in it, it was like really through this academic lens of like something that is very pure and very clean, like this way of repeating something. But then after that, I think it's like now more grounding. And I also accept that it's like has some emotional value or it's more like -- it can also be a bit more personal because before it was really like, I wanted to keep it like really clean and like really --
G
like disciplined?
L
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was really thinking also a lot about that because I think it's really confusing when you can actually make art for like a lot of time because you're at school, it's kind of like -- it's really hard, but it's also really easy and because it's really easy, it's really hard because you're just like, what the hell? I was supposed to be like -- I am struggling, but it feels like I'm not doing anything, and then when I am doing something, I'm also not struggling in a way that I thought that I will be struggling and kind of -- it's kind of weird.
G
I understand. So you feel like you need to bring the discipline into it?
L
Like, yeah, it made me feel like kind of more calm, I think. And I would also like find an excuse to like struggle a lot. [Laughing] Yeah, No really. I was always like making some kind of stuff where I would be rewriting something for a long time or --
G
Which is like detention.
L
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I had this one exhibition I think was like 3 years ago and this curator like she came. I was making this where...
--
G
Lucija told me about a residency she was supposed to do in Lebanon but wasn't able to go because of the war in Gaza. So the work she ended up making sort of like took coordinates from Lebanon, mapped them onto Slovenia, and then Lucija travelled to each location, recording a voice note when she arrived that described how she arrived there. It made me think of just this general practice that artists have sometimes of like processing things. I think the first time I ever came across it was during Art Foundation where a tutor was describing to us the Alvin Lucier piece 'I am sitting in a room.' So it's like, I don't know if it's one of the first examples, but it's an example of data corruption art, or sound art, where this sound artist recorded himself basically saying like, [clip from the artwork] 'I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now.' And then he takes the recording of that piece, and he feeds it back into the thing he's recording on. [clip from the artwork]. And he does that over and over again until the version that he gets sounds, like completely distorted from the very clear speech he had at the beginning. So maybe I'll play an example now and hope that no one flags it for copyright. [final clip]. Yeah, sometimes I think, like when people ask the question, 'what the artists do?' I say, yeah, we do these things. It's completely normal.
--
L
I just like would transcribe this. After that, I was like on like this really long, like piece of paper that was like, I don't know, it's like 20 meters long in the end. And after I've transcribed it, I was like, OK, now I will like try to do this from memory like again and again and again. And then after you were like kind of, I didn't remember that much anymore, I started to -- it became like fiction, like being like, OK, what if I now like change this into a fictional story where I tried to describe how I came to the place that is actually in Lebanon like. And then at the end, I think in like 20 meters x 1m paper, I was just like the -- chhchhchh --
G
The whole thing/
L
Yeah, I was like, no, I have to put in the effort. I can't not do it.
G
It's so interesting. Because So it's like, the past few minutes of you speaking, if you played that to someone who was totally outside of art, it would sound like... crazy. But I understand it so much.
L
Yeah but it is really crazy and I think like these things are --
G
It makes sense though. I don't know, like...
L
I think it really has a lot to do with this, how you make space and like time to spend with this thing, because I think a lot of the times when you're like trying to justify that you are making something -- it's really for me, I don't know how it is for you, or it's just how to like accept that this thing will take time, that it's not allocated to an activity. And that's still like really hard for me to just be like, OK, maybe this thing that I need to think about or research, it doesn't have like a really, really prescribed way how to do it. And then if I just find this way to do it, that I just decided that this is how you do it, then I can spend time doing it.
G
Yeah.
L
But yeah, right now I, I think I've like become a bit more free from that.
G
Because otherwise right now you would be on the bus, you'd be doing that project of going through all 30 routes? Where like, you can take the time. We'd be on the bus right now.
L
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[film camera winding up sound]
G
This might be a good moment to remind people that this is audio. Yes, there's a transcription of the conversation on artdates.co.uk, woo, but there is also some photos because I've been taking a film camera on all of these dates. So if you want to see some photos, artdates.co.uk. The film photos have all been developed by Take it Easy Lab, which is a film development place in Leeds that I have been using for years. Now this isn't really like an ad. This is more of a thank you because they've agreed to do all the film development for the Art Dates podcast for free and I think that's super nice. So if you're thinking about getting some film developed and maybe you know, like in Liverpool, there isn't anywhere local to do it, I post my film rolls in an envelope to Take It Easy, they develop, I get back prints and also digital scans and they've given a code to listeners for ARTDATE10 to get 10% off. Literally I've been using them for maybe five years, so I can't, yeah, can't recommend them enough.
If you take a look at the pictures on the date I went on with Lucija, you'll get to see what Dobra Vaga Gallery looks like. It translates to good scale gallery because it's in the Central Market and it's right next to the fish market. It's not the type of space I'm used to seeing art in, but I sort of loved it. It felt like a tiny haven between all of the terrifying tourism that was happening outside of the doors that I was also sort of a part of. Yeah, something very peaceful about it, very light and airy, even though it was sort of half underground with windows opening on to the river.
--
L
10 year anniversary of Dobra Vaga gallery. I didn't used to live in Ljubljana back then but I have heard that the way it started, it's that they would do like a like a small exhibition where they would sell you art per kilo because it's 'good scale' and it's the market and stuff like that. We don't do that anymore. It's like not very sustainable. Yeah, sorry. [laughing] But yeah, like this place like still the architecture is exactly as it used to be, which means we have these vitrines where they used to put the fish in.
G
Oh, that's what..! OK, interesting, I thought that was part of this exhibition, but it's always there
L
No, this is always there because it's -- I mean it's concrete yeah. It doesn't go away.
G
This makes more sense now.
L
And the space is like this really long just yeah -- and it has these vitrines in the middle because this is the florists of the market essentially. And then, ahah!, I can tell you also, so this gallery we have like different programmes that we run here. 1 is one is called Artist Per Month, which basically just means that we have like a solo exhibition which is in the other room or we also do also an open call once here for Zine exhibitions and then one of these vitrines outside is also currently like a small zine exhibition because once a month, we do like this showcase of a zine, and the one that we're currently exhibiting is actually, it's actually a board game. It's called, I think in English, 'the most well rested person in the world,' something like this? And it's about, yeah, it's about rest and about sleep, and how like capitalism is basically telling you to optimize, and also like just how even like your sleep is commodified, and you are also like kind of guilt tripped because you don't sleep well and you and all the products you can get so your sleep will be better when there are obviously more pressing issues. Basically this board game, it's by, his name is Matej Mali.
And we invited him actually, because I met him because my friend Maja Bojanić, she's like my artistic like older sister --
G
cute!
L
Llike the person that like actually did like -- you know, when you need this person that does things before you do them or is like better than you in them so you can learn how to do things?
G
[laughing] Yes I do.
L
Because I'm the older sister like in my family and I kind of really needed one.
G
I relate to that so much. But I don't have like art older sisters, I have like mums.
L
Oh, that's also nice. Oh my God, Yeah. Are they like artists or like?
G
Yeah. What did your art sister teach you?
L
I mean, Maja, she's like 2 years older than me, but she had all this experience of studying abroad and like actually, you know, you, you kind of need this person that tells you how it actually is and like what things are hard and what things are possible. Or she was like one of those people who I could really like talk about my projects with and be like, OK, I'm developing this thing, but I don't know how to do it, or like how to get there or, does it even make sense, you know? I think it was like this moment in my -- I just didn't have so many people around me that I felt like they could share this with, and they would give me like feedback that I would be happy with, but like not in a way that it would be all positive. But just like that, you like really feel like you understand each other, but that also you're like really learning from this person.
G
Because as the older sister, you feel like you shouldn't need it, that you already know it.
L
Yeah and I think a lot of the times you also assume this position of knowing things. And you're kind of like -- it happens like really automatically. You want to be like helpful. And especially because these relationships, they're like, OK, they're friendship-relationships, but they're also artist-relationships, and then you're kind of, really fast, you assume this role of needing to be informative or useful or helpful or giving feedback to the other person. And you're also kind of concealing yourself. You're already like assuming this role of someone who knows stuff, even though, you know, ??? I dunno ?? But you're already doing it. You're already there. And then it's kind of sometimes hard, I think it's mostly hard, like for me to just make this, -- aha! I can also just be like clueless and kind of like -- I don't know how --
G
Be more of a tourist.
[camera shutter sound]
L
You took a nap longer than 90 minutes, you go 2 places back.
G
Okayyyy, oh yeah -2. You hired a night nurse for your baby and were able to get a good night's sleep, yeah.
L
You forgot to tape -- Oh my God, now the weird ones are starting -- you forgot to tape your mouth before going to bed, minus Two.
G
I can't believe people do that.
Špela Pečjak
Me neither. I think that I would literally die, just like -- I wouldn't wake up.
G
It's so like panicky and it feels like, what's the horror film where like people's mouths...?
L
For me it's just so scary that you would like take basic functions away from yourself like.
Špela
Exactly.
L
I don't know. But yeah, here we have all these gadgets.
G
Like the mouth tapey stuff.
L
Yeah, yeah, the mouth tape.
G
Oh my God.
Špela
You can take the last one and freak out.
[laughing]
L
There used to be there used to be a stack.
G
Thank you so much. Shall I try it tonight? I'll be like, I didn't sleep a wink.
--
G
Before we left Dobra Vaga gallery and after playing a bit more of that game, we had a look at the Artist per month section of the gallery where I saw work by Nejc Zorenč. The paintings were like the exact kind of shit I'm always hoping to see work that kind of like references the contemporary but is like sort of depressed about it, if that makes any sense. I think one of the titles of the paintings is Dopamine Maxxing. But yeah, it was kind of like work that included a lot of pattern and a lot of shadow and heaviness and like murkiness, but for example also had a bit of humour. So there was like someone taking a selfie in the reflection of a butt plug. There was a hare inside, like a rabbit, inside a mech with like, a big gun ready to shoot people. And then also like a crossword puzzle. And I thought, why have I never seen people paint crossword puzzles? Very, very satisfying to me. I've got a big painting bias. And then we finally left and we went back up to street level, and then that beautiful peace of the gallery stopped when a man looked me dead in the eyes and popped a balloon. And we had a walk through the centre of Ljubljana and past these bridges, these beautiful trees and, yeah, these intense public sculptures.
--
G
What are all the intense sculptures? Is it by one person or?
L
Like this? I don't know how this happened because -- we have to go here -- there are like 2, I think, two different sculptors, and they have so many sculptures. A lot of them are like mythical creatures. You have everything from, I don't know, probably there's a Poseidon or something somewhere, and then you have some kind of fish and stories from ancient Greece characters.
G
Does Slovenia have any of its own myths?
L
I think so. They're probably not like very Slovenian, they're more like very Slavic. There is this girl she's called Ajdovska Deklica. I think she turns into stone.
G
Why does she turn into stone?
L
Yeah, why does she turn into stone? Oh my God, I did not prepare.
G
I can pause at this point and I'll look it up. My niche interest of collecting myths.
--
G
I'm going to cut in again because it was funny. Lucija found an article about the myth, and we stood together in the shade while she, like, live-translated the article to me.
But yeah, I looked it up again later and yeah, it's a myth about how the Slovenian Alps are home to the Heathens, which is the name for giants who are as tall as spruce trees. One of them, a woman, would foretell the fates of babies before they'd even been born. But the rule of the giants was that they wouldn't share their prophecies with humans because that would mess with destiny and it would anger the mountain spirits. But -- and here I found two different stories about her -- the heathen maiden saw a prophecy about young boys that were about to be killed in an avalanche, and she went and told them about it so she could save them. The other was that she told a family their boy would grow up to become a hunter and he would kill Goldhorn, a legendary buck with gold horns who lives in the mountains. Either way, I was going to say depending on which story is true, but I don't know if truth matters -- to the giants, she had messed with fate and they were so angry they turned her into stone. So I looked it up when I got home and there is this like naturally occurring face in a mountain. So it's like all the stories were written in reverse to make sense of the face being there, and I read like this climbing blog where this man was saying like, he's climbed this woman's face so many times, and as a climber, the tradition is that you leave a piece of bread as you pass.
I think this type of stuff will come up more in episodes as we progress just because it's like a personal interest. And I'm actually going to be spending a month alone in Chile soon where I'm going to be researching mythology for a book that I'm currently writing. And I'll explain more about that as episodes go on. But it feels like mythology or just like a good solid myth is a souvenir for me. Like I don't need a magnet. I don't need a postcard. I just need like to take a bit of that world and the stories they tell each other away with me and then I'm satisfied. It like expands my brain a little bit. It expands the world. Everything feels richer for it. And I like seeing how those stories continue to influence contemporary life as well.
--
L
Golden -- it can't, there isn't a good translation -- but there is gold in the name. And we call this Zlatorog. It's like a golden-horn-er or I don't know. And it's like a very, that's a very Slovenian animal. Like there is there is beer that is called Zlatorog. There is the first Slovenian movie with sound that has like this in the name. It's like something that very prevalent like this image of this deer in the mountains.
--
G
And then I guess things got like a bit less me interviewing someone and more just a date.
We spoke about things like trying to learn all the flags, capitals, country names and outlines of countries in the world, and the games you can play online to try and remember that. We spoke a bit about like the stuff we would have spent our time on if we hadn't got sucked into the art industry.
--
L
And I miss like the music stuff a lot, like, because when you're like, 'oh, I will do visual arts!' Then a lot of the things that also fall away kind of. I was like, what am I supposed to do with this interest to sometimes sing or?
G
yeah, yeah, I did that with languages. And I'm like, why did I ever stop? I could be so good right now if I'd have carried on.
L
But I think that's like the thing that stops you a lot. Like, oh, fuck, if I was doing this for the last five years, I would be amazing. And then it's really hard to, yeah, just be like, this is the point I'm at, let's go from here.
--
G
And Lucija taught me some stuff that, you know, isn't high up on the tourist guides, which I had also avoided before coming because I didn't want to come to Slovenia thinking that I knew everything, I just wanted to ask questions.
--
L
I guess in the Balkans, yeah, you have like these languages that we kind of understand each other and we can kind of communicate with each other -- less and less obviously.
And there used to be this language, so it was called Serbo-Croatian. So it's like mixture of Serbian and Croatian language, and it used to be taught in schools and now it depends who you ask. A lot of people say, Oh, it was just mostly Serbian because there was the most power like in Yugoslavia, like concentrated in Serbia, because the main city was Belgrade. But right now it's not the language that anyone it's like learning or not learning, but nobody's taught this language anymore.
--
G
[laughing] And then when we finally arrived dot dot dot.
--
L
Can we enter? I think we should be able to enter, No? Oh my God, is it closed? We missed it.
G
Oh, no.
L
I'm so sorry.
G
No it's okay.
L
But I have to show you some art still. Come on, I'm not doing my job. Yeah, I think I know where we're going to go now and it's not far, at all.
G
And OK, yeah, one of the parts of the podcast that I'd like to make a tradition is asking people if when they finished listening, you know, is there somewhere that you want to send them? Like have you got any writeing online or any images or videos that you want to link to?
L
Uh huh. That's hard. That's a hard question.
G
And maybe like, you don't want to link anything of yours, but yeah, someone else's.
L
Just like somewhere. Well actually this is maybe -- yesterday, Špela, my co-worker in the gallery, she was looking for a book online to steal or to, you know, just read. And I realized that she didn't know about Anna's Archive. I don't know how like the laws were for stealing, for stealing stuff, movies and books are in your country, but I think people should like, really know about this.
G
It rings a bell it is but I can't remember what it is. Tell me about it.
L
Anna's Archive is just, it's like this shadow library or it's like Pirate Bay but for actual -- for books and for articles and for just things that are really hard to access because they're academic writing. Or yeah, I mean, I know this is like kind of controversial and maybe not like the best practice. I obviously want people to like earn money for the writing that they do. But if you're like a young person in like an academia or like, just you want to read interesting things, these resources are like, really important. And like Anna's archive still works. And it has like all this -- I don't know -- you can find a lot of like, full, full books, like online just to download.
G
This is good info.
L
Because I think if I had to like, borrow everything from a library or buy books at that rate, I don't think I could.
G
So you must read a lot? Do you like count how many books you read?
L
I used to do that when I was a kid and now, if I did it, it would be embarrassing and it would make me sad. I don't read that much. I think I read a lot, but I don't finish a lot of books. I read in like a very, you know, I don't know if you did that, but like for me when I when I read for projects, I think it's like a very different way of reading. And then I especially if I read for artistic projects, I read in like this way where it's like when something's like just does -- like, ah, OK, this is interesting, this is useful. And then I don't finish stuff. I mean, I do come back to it, but I don't know a lot of the times I just follow this like chain of associations.
G
It's like the mind map stuff, isn't it? You're like sort of collecting, harvesting what you need.
L
Yep, yeah. Which I think sometimes I start to think about that and I feel like, oh, maybe that's so wrong, but, you know, to, like, not consider the thing in its entirety. But I will leave this for some other time. Enough. You know, it has to stop somewhere.
G
Yeah, Yeah. But I'm like, so when we wrote Poor Artists, I kept thinking, I hope this is the type of book that people will underline and then like maybe they'll just hold on to that like 1 little bit and it seems to be what's happening.
L
Yeah, I think that's definitely happening.
G
So then it doesn't make me feel bad that people don't consider it as a whole, if that's what you know, they take that long a bit.
--
G
So we walked around the corner to Mala Galleria, which I think translates to small gallery where we saw a different exhibition instead.
--
L
We have to take off our shoes. Is that OK with you?
G
Yeah, that's fine.
L
This is an exhibition by Emira Bećirović. Like she's -- actually, we used to be school mates in art school, but she's was a sculpture student.
--
G
On the left hand side there was a big round table low to the ground with cushions all the way around it. The table was full of like crockery and I think flowers and biscuits and teapots and things like that. And there was a music player as well. And then on the right hand side of the space, there was big mounds of like, unprocessed wool from Slovenia. And there was a tapestry on the wall that was getting worked from the ground up and a little stool and a rug. And apparently at the opening, it was, you know, a space to socialise and a space to, like, eat and drink together and a space to make that weaving, you know, so it became part of, like, a performance, like an active thing that people did together.
I found an interview with the artist later on Vogue where she said that, like, both her parents are from Bosnia and she had spent every holiday there. But now that there's nothing left of that life, this exhibition is sort of like a recreation in part of those memories. And so when it comes to, like, the weaving, and I'll just read this quote out, it says that, you know, Emira had been researching the tradition of Balkan rugs. And then she says 'the patterns woven into rogues once carried powerful symbolism. Every element conveyed information and the rugs functioned almost like a kind of amulet. They told the story of the family that owned them, such as how many members it had or what they wished to be protected from.'
Yeah. And maybe that like, strikes me as people making their own mythology, the things that get passed down, and also just like how labour intensive of like a family souvenir that becomes. But I also found a mention in that Vogue interview that I want to read out because it really reminded me of the conversation I'd been having with Lucija where the writer spoke to Emira about one of her earlier performances. And then there's a quote from the artist that says 'I often talked with my grandparents over coffee and I calculated how many days had passed since I last saw them. I then translated that number into the cups of coffee I had missed sharing with them during that time. I weighed a cup of coffee and calculated that I had missed roughly 20 kilograms of coffee consumed together with them. My grandmother always ground coffee by hand in a grinder. So in my performance I ground 20 kilograms of coffee in the gallery.'
Yeah, again, labor intensive processes that artists, I think are drawn to, sometimes in order, as Lucija rightly said, to create a structure within which you can spend time thinking about that subject.
--
L
At the opening, she did like this whole feast thing and her mother made like a homemade burek. Like, you can get it here. But it's like, what is I think interesting is like, it's not a very Slovenian thing. It's more signature for our neighboring countries like Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia, and Slovenia is kind of where like -- I don't know where, like the least -- we have like this very complicated, I think relationship to being a Balkan country. We kind of want to be one, but we kind of don't want to be one. It's like weird, like you can get burek here, but it's always like a food that you eat when you at 3:00AM go home from the club. It's like something that you buy on the street. But like in other countries, I think if you, you can, you eat burek for breakfast or like your mum makes it and you like people eat it together at the table, and it's like really different. And I don't know, like my mum doesn't make burek. She doesn't know how to make one. We make strudel, which is like a bit more Austrian and it's different, but it's still like a rolled pastry with apples inside.
And then you have like stuff made from copper. The small one. This is for coffee, it's for Turkish coffee, because I think Emira also like has family, more stronger family ties like to these other countries, while a lot of -- we all have some kind of connection, but some people have like more of it. But a lot of the time, to have this last name that ends with ć, with this ć that has like not the whole check mark, but just half of it. You can still be like really negatively stigmatized because of that. Because it's kind of -- you're from these countries that are kind of more poor or whatever, because like Slovenia was like the country that was the first country to leave Yugoslavia because it was the most developed or, or like contributing the most money to this joint bank account, whatever. And there is like, there are still leftovers of this hierarchy kind of. But like many, many people that live here, that we all have some kind of connection or it's either like your grandma or your mom or your father that's coming from some place in Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, or you like go there a lot. I don't think you can avoid addressing these like cultural kind of like past conflicts or like very intense still like relationships.
--
G
It's sort of like it feels very destiny this trip looking back on it, because I nearly missed the flight to Slovenia from Manchester Airport because there was a problem with the trains. And I ended up like, roping in the two random women next to me who didn't know each other and we all ended up splitting a very expensive taxi to the airport to make it in on time. And then yeah, I had this prearranged date with Lucia, but we went to a pizza restaurant with everyone from the event before I ever like did any work on this trip, and it was so chill. I just kept saying to people like, I keep forgetting that I'm about to do a lecture because we were sat there drinking like blueberry juice and like half-bitching about this event that we were going to see later that night. And then I give this lecture about friendship and how my relationship being in a duo has been so important to me and without the collaboration, I don't think I would have been able to stay in the art industry at all. We then all meet up later for that event, which is as bad as we think it's going to be.
I end up going to sleep early, I wake up super early and I'm like, wow, I've got this Sunday where I could do like anything in the world. I ended up getting on this coach to Lake Bled. This thing happened where like the coach arrived in the centre and then no one got up to leave. This girl who I'd been sat next to and hadn't said a word to the whole time, she just looked at me and she said like, like why is no one getting off? And I said I don't know! And she she said, will we go together? And I was like, 'OK, then' and two of us got off the coach and proceeded to spend the entire day together where like we went to the castle, we went on a toboggan, we had cake. We queued for this thing for ages, and like the people next to us in the queue who we ended up getting speaking to who lived in Liverpool, we're like, oh, we thought you two were best mates. But we were like, no, we've just met on the coach and not even on the coach, like at the end of the coach. And it just this girl who was 21, she was doing an Erasmus exchange. She was from like the middle of France, like a small town of 20,000 people. It was like the perfect fairy tale ending to this solo trip that actually I had sort of gone on alone on purpose because I wanted to test my health and my energy and my independence and see if, like, I could survive a trip on on my own. Because, yeah, later this year I'm going to Chile and I've had like a lot of health anxiety around that, which I don't even know if it's fair to say it's anxiety because it is just like about the practicalities of having a chronic illness and not having your support system around you. So yeah, this entire little trip for me was supposed to be a test run, but it ended up just being like, wow, you can try and go somewhere on your own, but you do end up just speaking to fucking everyone -- in like the best way possible. I sort of lost every yeah, I just still don't really want to say anxiety, but every fear about going to Chile alone. And it left me thinking like if I've made this many friends on a 2 day trip to Slovenia, what is going to happen when I go to Chile for a month. It's made me really excited. So yeah, really happy to have hung out with Lucija for a few hours. Really grateful to the curators, really grateful to Take It Easy who have that code ARTDATE10 for 10% off film development.
And if you listen to this and you feel like you've had a hang out too, then I'm grateful to you for listening. I'll see you on the next episode of Art Date, and I'll just leave you with this little clip of me and Lucija walking to the pizza restaurant after we'd had our art date.
--
L
Oh, there is this sculpture that I hate.
G
I kind of love it.
L
That's OK, I forgive you.
G
Maybe -- do you wanna, right, can you take a picture of me with this?
L
Yeah, of course.
G
It's all set up
L
So just press play,
G
I don't want to get wet.
L
Oh yeah, that's lovely.
[jingle]
*
and now some links to the programme I was brought over for, the exhibitions we visited, plus the interview with Emira Bećirović in Vogue:
🇸🇮 https://www.galerijaskuc.si/exhibition/friends-with-benefits/
🇸🇮 https://dobravaga.si/dogodki/matej-mali-najbolj-spocita-oseba-na-svetu/
🇸🇮 https://dobravaga.si/dogodki/nejc-zorenc-no-lessons-learned/
🇸🇮 https://vogueadria.com/emira-becirovic-exhibition-prepleteni/
[and now some bonus pictures of the day after the art date]