Order form

Zdenka Badovinac: Authentic Interest

01.10.2010 |

ZDENKA BADOVINAC: AUTHENTIC INTEREST

Authentic Interest is the 28th book to be published in the Transformacije series and the fourth in the series opening a discussion on curatorship and contemporary (visual) arts. In it, author Zdenka Badovinac, the current director of Moderna galerija/Museum of Modern Art, develops the concept of “authentic interest” as a mode of commitment of a contemporary art institution, which in relation to remembrance in the context of the Post-Fordist, globalised world maintains a certain loyalty to difference that it establishes locally, and by opposing the mechanisms of economic or political domination endeavours to provide the local an equal dialogue with the world.

The first chapter, Museum, is composed of texts in which the author defines and analyses the concept of a museum of contemporary art. The selected texts describe the state of the art world in the last decades, the relation to the past and the connection between the original and the present concepts. The central part of the chapter is composed of four texts that elucidate contemporaneity and its museum. The chapter is rounded off by two texts that describe the modes of operation that Moderna galerija/Museum of Modern Art has chosen under the specific socio-political conditions in Slovenia. The texts in the second chapter, which is dedicated to Eastern European art, are arranged so as to go from the general to the specific. The first part of the chapter defines the concept of Eastern European art. There follow texts on the Arteast exhibitions, which examined the questions of body, form, the specifics of historicization and self-historicization, and the Eastern European woman. The chapter ends with specific analyses of two authorial practices in contemporary Slovenian art that touch upon the questions of the socialist past, society and politics. The last two texts belong to the conception of Eastern European art, but as authorial poetics they, of course, extend much further, which both analyses point out.[...]

After numerous decades of the 20th century when most of the Slovenian art world followed quite closely the dominant international currents, Authentic Interest points out that the Slovenian contemporary art world has created its own discourse. It is connected to the globalised art world, but is at the same time specific, since it is based also on the local characteristics and interests.
(Taken from the Afterword)

Maska, Institute for Publishing, Production and Education
Metelkova 6
SI-1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia
Europe

Tel.: + 386 1 431 31 22
        + 386 1 431 53 48
Fax.: + 386 1 431 31 22
info@maska.si