New feature: ArtEssays

The section “ArtEssays” comprises archived texts about Urtica’s artwork / Odeljak “ArtEssays” sadrži arhivirane tekstove o umetničkom radu Urtice

Art and Crisis – Facing Bureaucrat

Our first YouTube video. This is a satirical art video on automated logic of bureaucracy and their response to economic crisis.

Shall the art/artist survive? Current environmental situation for art production considers high level of uncertainty, as a result of economic crises, artists’ precarious working conditions, instability or hostility of a surroundings. This usually results in high mortality rate of small art initiatives that fails to adapt to the institutional structure of super-ordinate cultural system. Find out what is bureaucracy doing to relieve effects of the economic crisis?
 

The Value Quest Bourse at 52nd October Salon

The title of this year salon is  “It’s Time We Got To Know Each Other”, curated by Galit Eilat and Alenka Gregorič. At the heart of this project is the question of how to generate responsibility? How can we respond in a responsible way, or how we can create a response, as cultural producers and consumers? The October Salon is the largest international exhibition of contemporary art in Belgrade, Serbia.

Urtica exhibits the installation Value Quest Bourse which includes three segments: The Value is Here (Vrednost je ovde), The Art In Liquidation (Umetnost u likvidaciji), The Indices of Fortune (Indeksi bogatstva).

The 52nd October Salon opened on October 20th and will last until December 3rd 2011. If you are near drop by, or go to http://valuequest.info and check what’s up at the Value Quest Bourse.

Info about exhibition at: 52 Oktobarski salon

Value Quest on May Day

On the occasion of the 1st of May we invite you to play an early version of Urtica’s online game Value Quest Bourse, an art-allegory of current state of socio-economic system. We created it as an amalgam of roulette, enterprise strategies, and stock market emphasized by the paraphrase of Marx’s statement: No one is free, the winners must compete, the losers must be exploited.

go to http://valuequest.info

Soft launch of the HoopUp

An art-educational tool focused on symbolic communication and social impact of the artistic message. Envisioned as self-organized network based on peer cooperation, this hybrid system incorporates the originally created online art-tool and the workshop, as well as wiki-based research platform for commons-based peer production.

If you are interested in symbolic communication and want to check your standpoints in communication take a tour of http://hoopup.net/
and its kin http://wiki.hoopup.net

2010 is running out, what’s coming up in 2011

Urtica held a workshop Kommunikation via Symbol in Ulm during September 2010. The workshop and ensuing exhibition were organised by Bundesverband Bildender Künstler (BBK) Ulm, with the support of Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IFA).

We had a great time with colleagues from Ulm, thanks to Vesna, Reiner, Gabriela, and the rest of BBK crew. It was also an opportunity to test our new collaborative platform HoopUp which is currently in production phase. The platform is focused on symbolic communication in virtual environment and it will be launched in 2011.

Here are few photos:

The Language

In UrticaZine we’ll use (WoldWide) English, although Serbian might pop up occasionally.

And to paraphrase one witty observation: there are few version of English: The British English which only a few people understand, The American English that quite a few people understand, and there is The WoldWide English that we ALL understand.

So, enjoy reading of UrticaZin despite to languageful aporias.