K-9_topology

6. Dezember 2018, 14.00 Uhr Interface Culture Lecture Room, Domgasse 1, 3.OG, DO.03.27

Interface Cultures lädt zum Gastvortrag von Maja Smrekar.

Short-Abstract
Maja Smrekar is going to present the K-9_topology opus, comprised of four individual art projects: Ecce Canis (2014, spatial installation); I Hunt Nature, and Culture Hunts Me (2014, performance); Hybrid Family (2015/16, durational performance); ARTE_mis (2016/17, project in a biotechnological laboratory). Those projects stand for a transcendence of the dichotomy human:dog into its hybrid shape. The work uses co-evolution between a human and a dog as a matrix to ask the following question: What defines humans as a superior species in the ecologically ruined, over populated and economically compromised world?

Long Abstract
K-9_topology opus addresses the co-evolution between humans and dogs and confronts us with the question that is being posed by humans everywhere: what defines us as a superior species in an ecologically destroyed, overpopulated and economically compromised world?

The artwork K-9_topology which has been emerging between 2014 and 2017 is comprised of four individual art projects: Ecce Canis (2014, spatial installation); I Hunt Nature, Culture Hunts Me (2014, performance); Hybrid Family (2015/16, durational performance); ARTE_mis (2016/17, project in a biotechnological laboratory).

The exhibition ECCE CANIS (Kapelica Gallery, 2014) presented the visitors with the smell of serotonin, which was biotechnologically extracted from the blood of the artist and her dog (taken by a veterinary at the regular medical check-up). This hormone is one of the key parameters that defines reciprocal tolerance, which has been developing ever since people started cohabitating with wolves (from which dogs evolved) 32.000 years ago. The regulation of this hormone as one of the selection pressures of living with dogs, was developed in humans and is symptomatic of the reciprocal tolerance in our culture.

In the performance I HUNT NATURE, AND CULTURE HUNTS ME (Bandits-Mages, 2014) Smrekar developed a situational communication with wolves (Jacana Wildlife Studios – Saint Montaine, France). With the help of renown ethologists – experts in the field of animal behaviour research – the artist tried to establish her animal position within a wolf pack. The performance artistically contextualised Maja Smrekar’s artistic poetics with historically referential projects / performances by Joseph Beuys (I Like America, and America Likes Me, 1974) and Oleg Kulik (I Bite America, and America Bites Me, 1997).

During her three month seclusion HYBRID FAMILY (Freies Museum Berlin, 2015/16) the artist used a special diet and mechanic stimulation of her breasts to prepare her body for feeding her young with drops of colostrum. In the public presentation which took place in the form of prearranged visits in the studio at the Freies Museum in Berlin, the visitors could witness the feeding of a young puppy while discussing the reproductive freedom and the role of women in a heteronormative society.

The project ARTE_MIS (Kapelica Gallery, 2016/17) represents the final part in the K-9_topology series. It addresses the potentiality of co-evolution with an attempt of human/dog hybridisation. This potential hybrid is an artistic attempt of questioning the current biotechnological possibilities, from which the impossibility of the mythological human-wolf figure emerges in all its poetics. The human-wolf figure can be found in all cultures as the ultimate other. In the gesture of potential hybridity humans are once again reunited with nature, from which we excluded ourselves with the dynamic culture-nature opposition which appeared with humanism. Consequently nature became something else, and humans positioned themselves at the top of the pyramid from where we dominate all living organisms.

Maja Smrekar
was born 1978 in Slovenia. She graduated at the Sculpture Department of Fine Art and Design Academy in collaboration with the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and holds Master of Arts in Video and New Media. She has been involved in dog behaviour studies and canine sports training for the last six years. Her work presents transdisciplinarity by applying different mediums, formats and contents as cross sections in creating a dialogue between humanistic and natural sciences. She has been awarded at the Cynetart festival 2012 by the European Centre for Arts Hellerau (Dresden/Germany) and Honorary mention at the Ars Electronica festival 2013 (Linz/Austria). She is the winner of the Prix Ars Electronica - Golden Nica 2017 in Hybrid Art. In 2018 she was awarded Prešeren Foundation Award – the highest national award for the artistic achivements by the Republic of Slovenia.