RE:akt! Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Re-reporting with Lucas Bambozzi, Vaginal Davis, Janez Jan a, Janez Jan a, Janez Jan a, Eva and Franco Mattes (aka 0100101110101101.ORG), SilentCell Network (Mare Bulc, Janez Jan a, Bojana Kunst, Igor Stromajer); curated by Domenico Quaranta :: March 25 – April 17, 2009 :: Book Launch and Opening: March 25, 2009; 7:00 – 9:00 pm :: Galerija kuc, Stari trg 21, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

During recent years the term re-enactment and the practices it refers to have enjoyed increasing success in the artistic context. On one hand, the success of re-enactment appears to be connected to a parallel, vigorous return to performance art, both as a genre practiced by the new generations, and as an artistic practice with its own historicization. On the other hand the term re-enactment accompanies two phenomena that at least at first glance have very little in common: re-staging artistic performances of the past, and revisiting, in performance form, real events be they linked to history or current affairs, past or present.

RE:akt! Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Re-reporting tries both to research on the complexity of this concept and to get rid of it, approaching re-enactment not merely as live action role-playing or living history but rather as a strategy for cultural critique, analysis and artistic expression. RE:akt! — meaning not only to act again but also to respond to / to react upon and Regarding: act! — confronts current ideological and intellectual canons, power structures, policies, and distribution channels by re-enacting selected historical and culturally relevant events. Through processes of analysis, deconstruction, re-enactment and re-reporting, the intermedia research and presentation project RE:akt! examines media s roles in manipulating perceptions and creating postmodern historical myths and contemporary mythology.

Thus, RE:akt! Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Re-reporting, curated by the Italian art critic and curator Domenico Quaranta, will collect ten different approaches to the concept of enaction: from Ich Lubbe Berlin! (2005, SilentCell Network), a take on the 1933 burning of the Reichstag building in Berlin, which explores the contemporary meaning of symbols such as the Reichstag itself, and of concepts such as communism and terrorism; to Das KAPITAL (2006, Janez Jan a), a performance which re-stages the 1968 occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces with the languages of popular street artists; from C’ tait un rendez-vous (d ja vu) (Janez Jan a in collaboration with Quentin Drouet), a project that plays with the paradigmatic history of a well known artwork, the film C’ tait un rendez-vous by Claude Lelouch, from cinema verit to media fiction; to VD as VB (2007), a series of actions in which Vaginal Davis, the grande dame of the queer underground in Los Angeles, dialogues with Vanessa Beecroft’s performances. In Mount Triglav on Mount Triglav (2007), the three artists Janez Jan a, Janez Jan a and Janez Jan a re-stage a well known performance of the OHO group from the late Sixties, recently appropriated by the IRWIN group for their Like to Like Series (2004), performing it on the Mount Triglav itself, and then translating it into a monumental golden sculpture; while in Slovene National Theatre (2007), Janez Jan a translates an infamous fact of recent racism against Gypsies known in Slovenia as the Ambrus case – into a piece of theatre, re-invoicing it as it was featured by the mass media. In their Synthetic Performances (2007), Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG reenact on the virtual platform of Second Life a series of historical performances that are all but virtual, raising issues such as body, violence, sex and pain, thus exploring the meaning of these very issues in a virtual world. In SS-XXX | Die Frau Helga (2007), Janez Jan a (in collaboration with Dejan Dragosavac Ruta) again adds details and proofs of evidence to an urban legend recently circulated on the Net and mainstream media, concerning the presumed creation of a cyber-sex doll by the Nazis.

Thus, performance and reenactment are far from being the only strategies adopted in RE:akt!, which also involves strategies such as documentation, remix, re-invoicement, reconstruction and remediation (such as in the project The Day Sao Paulo Stopped 2009 by Brazilian artist Lucas Bambozzi), and media such as photographic print, video, media installation and even architecture (such as in the project Il porto dell’amore, by Janez Jan a (in collaboration with Bor Pungercic), an homage to Fiume as an example of pirate utopia).

March 25, 2009: kuc will host the presentation of the book RE:akt! Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Re-reporting featuring the co- editors Janez Jan a, artist and director of Aksioma and the italian theoretician Antonio Caronia. The book was published on March 2009 by FPeditions and includes contributions by Rod Dickinson, Jennifer Allen, Jan Verwoert, Antonio Caronia and Domenico Quaranta.

March 28, 2009: SS-XXX | Die Frau Helga (2007), by Janez Jan a will be presented in a solo show at the Fabio Paris Art Gallery in Brescia, Italy.

On May 22, the exhibition will travel to MMSU Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka (Croatia).

Production: Aksioma Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana; Galerija kuc

Supported by: the European Cultural Foundation, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Municipality of Ljubljana the Italian Cultural Institut in Ljubljana. The programme of Galerija kuc is supported by the Ministry of Culture of Republic of Slovenia and the City Council Ljubljana-Cultural department.