PRESENTATION OF THE LJUBLJANA GROUP
15 July 2016
Ljubljana group activities are centred around the education and mediation department of the MG+MSUM (Moderna galerija, Ljubljana).
The core of the group consists of five people:
Adela Železnik
, senior curator for public programmes at the MG+MSUM,
Lucija Cvjetković
, educator at the MG+MSUM,
Dana Terzić
, artist and educator at the MG+MSUM,
Ksenija Kumer
, free lance educator,
Đorđe Balmazović
, artist and member of the
Škart collective
from Belgrade. For the specific project with the migrants in the asylum home in the neighbourhood, the group is joined by the architect
Anja Planišček, a
professor at the Faculty of the Architecture and Design in Ljubljana and a group of her students.
The third partner of MG+MSUM is the
Livada elementary school
, a school in the suburbs of Ljubljana, where 85% of their pupils are of foreign, usually migrant origin, and we have been collaborating with them for already 8 years.
The Ljubljana group is not homogeneous and its members are »institutional« and »non- institutional« people. The reason why we work together is that we all operate in the field of critical education and in this way we can combine different methods and experiences Fields of our research is a potential reform of the elementary school curriculum, migrations, exclusion etc.
The current projects we are working on at the moment are connected to the neighbourhood of the
Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova
, residental part of Ljubljana called Tabor, where in the last five years various small scale alliances were established. For example, for more than 2 years a close collaboration with some members of the Home for Elderly People and local associations in cultivating the museum garden. In 2012, together with the non-profit organisation Bunker and other agents in the area (schools, galleries, organizations), we constituted an association called »Cultural District Tabor«, with the aim to identify our common interests, to collaborate more intensely and to react to some urgent issues. Such issue appeared in February this year when the state authorities accomodated a group of asylum seekers in the temporary asylum home in the area of Tabor. There have already been such state institutions in Slovenia before, also one on Ljubljana outskirts but, as the result of more and more restrictive EU migrant policy, the number of asylum seekers in Slovenia increased, so they were accomodated for the first time n the Ljubljana city centre, which caused riots in our neighbourhood. As the Moderna galerija once joined forces with the activists when bringing children from the degraded outskirts of Ljubljana, called Rakova Jelša, inhabitted mostly by migrants from Bosnia, on the boat to the city centre (Social Centre Rog), we now keep collaborating with the
Frontabrezmeja / FrontWithoutBorders
network of activists to find the ways how to overcome the fear and barriers in mind to open the common space for all.
We operate locally but collaborate also internationally, especially within the confederation of the museums
L’Internationale, part of which is also Moderna galerija.
We presented our activities at the seminar on
Constituencies
in Liverpool.
http://www.mg-lj.si/en/visit/1262/glossary-of-common-knowledge-constituencies/
Second step was to make contacts with the asylum centre, where we are collaborating with students of architecture and design to re-decorate and adapt their living space.
We had several meetings at the University of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana, the students, together with the asylum seekers (one of them is an architect), volonteers and their social worker. Finally we presented the idea and now we are going to implement it .
Simultaneously, Member of the Škart collective Đorđe Balmazović and Adela Železnik work on maps of migrations, together with the asylum seekers Đorđe Balmazović is drawing the ways they came to Europe. The purpose of those maps is to use them as a way to involve school children in the debate about the migrants, their identity, the causes they left their countries. We had a series of meetings, talking about those maps presented in the asylum home and at the ehibition in the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, we are going to introduce them first in the new school year at the Elementary School Livada.
Adela Železnik
holds an MA in Art History from the University of Ljubljana and was a visiting student at the University of London, Goldsmiths College, London. She curated two exhibitions of Tacita Dean (1994, ŠKUC Gallery; 2004, Mala galerija, Ljubljana) and took part at the Private View exhibition, curated by Paul O’Neil at the London Print Studio Gallery and Kent Institute of Art and Design, 2002. Since 1993 she has been working at the Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, as a curator for education and public programmes (from 2011 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova). Participative projects in collaboration with artists include My Beautiful Home, Moderna galerija, 1995 (Jože Barši and Tadej Pogačar); All But Appearance, Moderna galerija, 2000 (Žiga Kariž, Damijan Kracina, Darij Kreuh, Anamarija Šmajdek); Transfers, Moderna galerija, 2005 (Polonca Lovšin); This is Me, 2006 (Dejan Habicht); You and the City. Diaries of a Future Avant-garde, 2008-2009 (Jeanne van Heeswijk), Showroom / Meeting Room, Backroom. Ultimate Audience, Mestna galerija / City Gallery, Ljubljana, 2010 (Apolonija Šušteršič), Reading seminar with Jože Barši (2012-2013). She collaborated with the Radical Education Collective, 2007-2009. She writes about art education and participation within the museum context.
Lucija Cvjetković
is an art historian and sociologist, she works at the Moderna galerija as an educator and organiser of children’s activities.
Ksenija Kumer
is an art historian and free – lance educator. She develops activities with animation for different children .
Dana Terzić
is an artist. She graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana in painting. She works at the Moderna galerija as an educator, animator, receptionist.
Đorđe Balmazović
(ŠKART)
1965, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, now Serbia, lives in Ljubljana and Belgrade
Djordje Balmazović engages graphic design, art and activism in his work. He is a member of Škart, a collective established in 1990 in Belgrade. In the past years the collective has organized and participated in many activist events, as well as in Poetrying (Pesničenje) and in self-organized choruses (Horkeškart, Proba). Since 2013 they have been working with children (in homes for unatended children) and asylum seekers in asylum centers in Serbia.
More about the maps: http://www.mg-lj.si/en/exhibitions/1592/dorde-balmazovic/
Anja Planišček
is graduated at the Faculty of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana, and concluded her post-graduate study at the na Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. She teaches at the Faculty of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana, she is interested in the social aspects of architecture and urbanism.
http://www.mg-lj.si/en/exhibitions/1379/2005-2015-planiscek-caks-architecture/