ART CITIES:Ljubljana -Low Budget Utopias

The Moderna galerija in Ljubljana is the Slovene Νational Μuseum of Μodern and Contemporary Art. In November 2011 it reorganised its activities into two large units, Moderna galerija ((MG+), located in the original building in the city centre, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (+MSUM) in the army barracks, now part of a newly established museum quarter at the Metelkova street.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Moderna galerija Ljubljana Archive

The exhibition “Low-Budget Utopias” presents works that come largely from the Museum’s Arteast 2000+ Collection. This is the eighth installation of the collection in which is developed the notion of the collection as a tool. In the present exhibition the collection and the Museum is explained as tools that help usto sustain a utopian consciousness. The exhibition considers the specific nature of utopias in Eastern European art, an art that works predominantly in low-budget conditions. The Arteast 2000+ Collection speaks about the difference between culture and art, and specifically about the fact that Eastern European art has more to do with the contemporaneous art of other cultures than with defending any “pure” local traditions. “Low-Budget Utopias”, ask us what museum model best serves the predominantly poor conditions in which artists and institutions in the post-socialist world must work and at the same time pursues an interest that sets otherness above identity, knowledge production above unambiguous cultural trophies, and the process of becoming above institutionalization. In response, the exhibition offers the utopistic concept of the sustainable museum. Unlike the wealthy, and still for the most part Western, museum, which endlessly accumulates objects from all over the world, the sustainable museum can survive only by constantly developing its own knowledge and combining the emancipatory experiences of its environment with experiences from other parts of the world that today face similar urgent issues. In the exhibition we discover that the low-budget work conditions experienced both by the museum and the artists in a regions covered by the Museum’s Collection are continually imposing themselves on us as something permanent and that, to overcome them, we must find the potential that exists within these same conditions, without, however, actually consenting to them.

Info: Curators: Zdenka Badovinac and Bojana Piškur, The Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (+MSUM), Maistrova ulica 3, Ljubljana, Duration: 26/4-11/9/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.mg-lj.si