tanja ostojic

Introduction to “Vacation with Curator”:
Project by Tanja Ostojic

Vacation with curator is the fifth and attending to be the closing project in series with artist-curator relations topic I deal with since 2001. The whole series is named “Strategies of success / Curator series”.

1) The first one, “I’ll Be Your Angel” (June 2001, 49th Venice Biennale) was durational performance in collaboration with Mr. Harald Szeemann the “loaded name”, the director of the Biennale. “Venice Dairy” book and “I’ll Be your Angel” video came out of this project, showing me in the role of angel escort of the curator…

2) “Be My Guest” performance/installation was developed in the collaboration with Mr. Bartolomeo Pietromarchi chef curator from Fondazione Adriano Olivetti in Roma – I had elegant dinner with this young perspective curator that was followed by erotic Jacuzzi bath with Mr. Lodovico Pratesi art critic (Coriere de la sera, Venerdi…) and independent curator from Roma. “Be My Guest” video was produced from the documentary material from this  performance that was executed in the “Gravita 0” exhibition in the Pallazo delle Espozicioni in Roma (June 2001).

3) Multimedia installation “Strategies of Success” (September 2002, “22nd Memorijal of Nadezde Petrovic”, Cacak, Serbia) and (“In Tranzit” festival in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, June 2003). The installation forms elegant room with scarlet lights where one can lay down on bed and look at videos; sit at elegant cosmetic table and reed Venice Diary; take one of 2150 condoms - “This is exact amount of condoms that I used during my carrier in order to serve curators who helped me becoming famous” …

4) “Sofa for Curator” performance and video (Balkan Konzulat, Graz, Austria, October 2002) was the act of hosting and washing feet to Stevan Vukovic curator from Belgrade...

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 "Vacation with Curator” Project description:

Mr. Edi Muka, director of the second Tirana Biennale, influential and perspective curator from National Gallery in Tirana, Albania, accepted to collaborate with me on the “Vacation with Curator” project and he is willing to presented it on next Tirana Biennale that will open September 12, 2003. So we spend couple of days on Albanian coast in Ionian Sea. We were relaxing, swimming, enjoying sunshine, local food, we talked, danced and had fun. Many of those intimate moments were “by chance” captured by leading Albanian paparazzi.

Paparazzi photos will be sent accompanied with appropriate constructed texts to art magazines around Europe, as well as to the “yellow” magazines such as: German Galla, British Sun… I’m interested to see how they will react on the proposed materials. Skills of journalist are needed for producing “scandalous story”.

Book “Strategies of success / Curator series”, extensive documentation on project (including Vacation with Curator), extracts concerning the project from art and other magazines, theoretical texts written by philosopher, art historians and artist will be published by end of 2003.

Project goals:

Why such a radical strategy? The personal contemporary space of individuals and human relationships, in and out of art circles is in crisis.  How can one revitalize essential human values through art?

This piece, integrated in everyday life, poses potential ambiguous narratives concerning the scandalous artist and curators. It provokes an invitation/invasion, and questions the power structure in the art world.   Speculations of morality, and artworld strategy are spining out; while the press possibly constructs a media support for this. The structure of the piece is the process of mystery, both personal and public, encased in the glossy gossip of artworld whispers.

The opportunity to make an active/interactive artwork out of curators proves infinitely rich and complex. It allows me to blend the intellectual in a process-oriented work that snakes in and out of the language of the art system.

With this project I am very much interested to confront male domination in art system and the meter of mediation, interpretation and reinterpretation of artistic ideas, while working with PRESS and printed art media directly.

Time table:
The first part of the project, the vacation it self was executed during summer 2003 on various locations on Albanian seaside coast.
Second part of the project: mediation, will be executed during summer and autumn 2003, in collaboration with art magazines. Web site is already available on: http://www.tiranabiennale.org (Under Free proposals link)
Third step exhibiting of the project, autumn 2003. (venues in France and Albania confirmed).
Book:  “Strategies of success / Curator series” will be published by the end of 2003.

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