Ljubljana: ‘Lost Territories’
Fernetici / Fernetti, video still, 2008
Ljubljana has currently no major exhibition space for contemporary art, with the exception of important independent spaces such as Skuc Galerija and P74. Although both galleries have socially and politically relevant shows on display, Mala Galerija, the contemporary art affiliation of the momentarily closed Moderna Galerija, presents the most compelling one: Lost Territories.
Considering every European nation as having a larger territory in its memory, sometimes extending beyond its present day borders, artist Saso Sedlacek regards territory not only as an abstract notion. In our everyday life, it is in the first place a piece of real estate: the house or apartment in which we live.
Trieste and its surrounding area is a historically traumatic region for both Italy and Slovenia. Once a grand cosmopolitan Austro-Hungarian city, it lost its central European setting after the First World War and became gradually a declining Italian harbor town. Trieste was the window onto the world for many Slovenes and consequently it permanently marked Slovene culture. Being close to Ljubljana, the two cities grew apart over the years.
With Lost Territories, Saso Sedlacek proposes to bring the two cities back together, imagining that eliminating the border in people’s minds would be mutually beneficial. He provokingly states: “In Kosovo, Albanians bought overpriced real estate from the local Serbian population for several decades and consequently established an independent state. Real estate in Trieste, which is an hour’s drive away from Ljubljana, is at the moment cheaper than in Slovenia. Today there is no longer a need to create new countries or officially move the borders in Europe. As is evident in Kosovo, these can be moved simply from one apartment to another.”
The exhibition is based on research into specific aspects of the elimination of the border between Italy and Slovenia caused by the Slovenian inclusion in the EU in 2004. The artist designed a new flag that combines the respective flags of both countries and hung it for one day at the border between Italy and Slovenia.
Lost Territories displays this flag as well as a video that documents the action. Different available real estate in Trieste is on display while a computer allows the visitor to go online and actually buy the property. Dealing with environmental issues in the broadest sense of the word, Saso Sedlacek redefines common notions of Slovene national identity within global trends of technology, ecology and the ideological void after the transition period.
Here for Saso Sedlacek.
