My short documentary “Complicating the Narrative”, which was made on behalf of APIS Institute about the D.rad project and its collaboration with artists’s, premiered at TJ Boulting Gallery in London on October 23, followed by a discussion about art’s role in academia, making research accessible through art, and the potential for artists and researchers to collaborate effectively.
One third of the ESoDoc – European Social Documentary workshop, which I’ve been fortunate enough to attend with 17 other professionals from 16 different countries, is already behind us. It’s been an intense, as well as invigorating and inspiring learning curve for me thus far, learning more about linear and non-linear storytelling techniques, gaining new insights on social impact strategies and much more… so looking forward to all that comes next!
Check it out on www.esodoc.eu
Istanbul. Faces of freedom.
Year:2023
The book Istanbul, Faces of Freedom, is a delicate and beautiful volume of photography and essays, exploring the idea of freedom in an urban setting. Cities of earlier origins, like Istanbul, must have represented spaces of freedom already in Antiquity, thus outcompeting almost by a millennium the contesting central European concept which came to life in the High Middle Ages. Dubbed The Great City of Istanbul, today a modern megapolis, has been a city ever since its first Greek name Lygos gave way to Bizantium.
Its outstanding history as the center of different worlds, the crossing point between the Asian and the European culture, a place of direct contact between previously unfamiliar regions and civilizations, which’s been capable of absorbing, entangling, or fusing the encountering cultures – the multilayered mixture of different cultures and traditions, makes this city on the Bosphorus Strait extremely special, if not unique.
Istanbul stretches beyond our imagination, which in the European view derives from residual orientalist fantasy. While this book, shaped by a handful of in- and outsiders who struggled with the triangle in-between–metropolis–freedom in the first half of 2020s, takes this position into an account, it hopes to contribute to the endless expressions of Istanbul by trying to capture its different faces, glimpses in the ever-changing structure of a city, and thus invite the viewer/reader to explore the initial question of freedom in the city’s air and embrace its many stories.
Authors: Manca Juvan, Oto Luthar
Other authors:
Photographs and poem: Manca Juvan
Essays by: Sehnaz Layikel Prange, Oto Luthar, Görkem Özdemir, Hugh Pope
Conversation with Mladen Dolar: Oto Luthar and Görkem Özdemir
Individual contributions: Nafiz Aksehirli, Maaz İbrahimoğlu, Gülen Sungur
Editors: Oto Luthar, Manca Juvan
Copy Editor: Jeff Bickert
Design: Sara Badovinac/Prapra Studio
Publishing House: Založba ZRC
Publisher: Institute of Culture and Memory Studies
ISBN: 978-961-05-0716-1
Year: 2023
Language(s): English
Specifications: box 29,7 × 20 cm 224 pages
Print run: 300
Printing: LUart d.o.o.
On September 14, 2022, I’ve talked with Taiwanese photographer Simon Chang, as a part of the Xue Xue online photography festival.
The discussion was vibrant and 2hours passed within a blink of an eye.
You are invited to watch a documentary about the Voice of the People initiative, which I’ve been filming for the past months on Youtube now.
The documentary on the biggest civil society mobilisation in Slovenia, resulting from recent threats to democracy in the country, was produced to create a historical record of a civil society movement that significantly contributed toward the highest voter turnout in the last 20 years. In June 2021, Slovenia was placed on the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist, which issues alerts on countries where there has been a recent and rapid deterioration in civic freedoms. The Slovenian government has sought to delegitimise the work of civil society actors by publicly vilifying them and cutting crucial funding resources. Therefore April 2022 Slovenian parliamentary elections were crucial in determining the future of democracy in the country.
The abovem-entioned threats forced the civil society to respond. More than 100 CSOs (civil society organisations) have backed an initiative called Glas ljudstva (Voice of the People). It designed joint action to encourage public participation in election debates, monitor the electoral process, inform citizens, and mobilise them to vote. When the documentary was filmed, the outcome of the elections was unclear. Nevertheless, it followed the strongest mobilisation of civil society in Slovenia, presented the views of some of the most visible representatives and created a historical record of the elections that had the highest turnout in the last 20 years.
The documentary was produced by APIS Institute, as part of the NEXUS project. The first screening of the Voice of the People documentary took place on Friday, May 27, 2022 at 5 p.m. in the ZRC Atrium, Novi trg 2, Ljubljana. There was a conversation with Katarina Bervar Sternad (PiC), political scientist Tjaša Pureber, Primož Bezjak (Activists and Artist) and Mojca Žerak (Voice of the People), about the initiative and how civil society can organize and move forward to continue building, strengthening and maintaining the potentials that have been formed in recent years. *The premiere event was prepared by the APIS Institute with the support of ZRC SAZU.
On the World Refugee Day, on June 20, 2022, the charity sales exhibition In Ukraine / From Ukraine, which I’ve curated and helped organize, opened in the ZRC Atrium.
The works speak about Ukraine through, but also beyond, the images of war, and were created mainly by Ukrainian documentarians and artists, who have documented and interpreted the cultural and social life in the country, its landscape and the events of the Russian invasion of Ukraine before and after February 24, 2022.
Photographs and multimedia projections are complemented by works of art by Ukrainian artists living in Slovenia, who expressed their experience of the attack on Ukraine through artistic creation and personal stories. Most of them fled to Slovenia from the horrors of the war, while their husbands remained in their homeland. Those who are (still) living through the current events in Ukraine speak to us through their works of art, presented in the projection entitled “Still in Ukraine?”. The works are on view and FOR SALE until 30.6. 2022.
Funds from the sale are intended for Ukrainian artists and direct humanitarian aid in Ukraine. Thank you to everyone who was with us at the opening. You are cordially invited to view the exhibition with an open mind, an inclusive view and a wide heart.
** THANK YOU I would like to thank everyone for their support, the APIS Institute team (Romani Zajec and Nataša Kotar) for their help with production and organization; to everyone else who made the exhibition possible with the accompanying program: to all the artists who trusted us and created their works for the exhibition or allowed their use, representatives of the Ukrainian community for the initiative, all the help and support: Oleksandr Lotokhov, Anna Miklashevich and Olga Moroz , ZRC SAZU – the co-organizer of the event, Irena Naglič for him, the organization ADRA Slovenia for support in the sale of works of art for humanitarian purposes, the company ARTIKO d.o.o. for the press, to the curators of the In Ukraine exhibition: Ira Lupu and Fred Ritchin, dr. Nena Močnik for organizing the webinar, Music for the future: Ukraine project. Slovenia. Europe, which was created in the humanitarian-colored synergy of the Slovenian Youth Orchestra and the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine – for it Nina Stankovič and Živa Ploj Peršuh, Galerija Fotografija and Cankarjev dom for borrowing frames, Jasna Gabrovšek for help with translations and text editing, and the Red Cross of Slovenia for help in proofreading and translation editing.
In the media:
Applied Nostagia exhibition, combining the works of two photographers (my own and Nemanja Pancic’s) who for a week exchanged cities (Ljubljana and Belgrade) opened yesterday in Belgrade’s Gallery Padobrod.
Photos: Irena Herak
This past summer my colleague Nemanja Pancic and I “swapped” cities – I spent a week in Belgrade and Nemanja in Ljubljana.
Currently and up to November 1st 2021 there are some of otherwise many photographs taken on this occasion on show at Galusovo nabrežje in Ljubljana. The exhibition “Applied Nostalgia” was curated by Dragan Kujundzic on behalf of the project initiator, the Ministry of European Integration of the Republic of Serbia.
Thank you also to the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in Belgrade for the recommendation and the friendly reception.
You are kindly invited to the first international festival of contemporary photography Kranj Photo Fest, where there will be plenty of interesting photo related events.
One one of the exhibitions on view there is also my work from Istanbul, titled Istanbul, Faces of Freedom, which has been created in collaboration with dr. Oto Luthar and the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU).
Maybe you can join us for the opening on August 25, or perhaps you want to take the opportunity to hear us photographers conversing about our work and photography – it will be happening on Friday, August 27.
For the detailed program, please check HERE.
I am sharing some visual snapshots from a recent photography workshop I lead between July 5-11 2021, which was part of the Summer school of Visual Ethnography at ZRC SAZU.
It was a great, although, of course, very intense experience for students and mentor(s), but in a week interesting and good photographic stories were created!
Click HERE to read and view more images.
