humourworks.org

…could you lend me some money for registration… I can’t get a visa… no, I can’t, I work all day…
I don’t have time… no, I don’t have health insurance… yes, I’ll write the article this afternoon after
work… no, once again I don’t have time this weekend… I didn’t get the job, because I didn’t manage
to arrange a permanent address… no, I can only do it on the black… yes, he does pay me something…
no, they didn’t give us anything to sign, nor any days off… yes, they took the one that didn’t have a
degree…for me, the only real free time is when I don’t do what I am supposed to.

Humour Works is an international curatorial and artistic project which elucidates the positive and negative
consequences of precarious – uncertain, difficult, toilsome - working conditions, in particular in
the context of the old »Eastern« – or to put it differently: »the new« Europe. The year-long project is
comprised of four research and performative stations that follow one after another. After stops at Bratislava
and Sarajevo, the project is presented in Ljubljana, prior to heading for its journey’s end in Berlin.
The artistic programme is specifically formed within local contexts, and aimed in particular at reflection
and reciprocal perception.

In lieu of a long editorial – and to save your time – we shall just provide this note: Help yourself to a free
copy of the Humour Works Reader at the opening. With the assistance of intellectuals as well as artists
– such as Betty Blue, Sibylle Hamann, Maša Hilčišin, Urška Jurman, Monika Kleck, Gorazd Kovačič,
kpD, Katarina Pejović & Boris Bakal, Efthimia Panagiotidis, Katja Praznik, Kazimir Malevič, Nebojša
Mikerević, Joanne Richardson, Borut Savski, Lana Zdravković and Amra Zulfikarpašić – who lead a
precarious existence, this publication maintains that in addition to being an economic category, work
has also become a political and cultural one. As to who works – and as what, where and how - not only
affects communication and self-understanding, but also the identity politics of nations and Europe as
a whole.

Humour Works is developed by City of Women (Ljubljana), in collaboration
with Space Gallery (Bratislava), Cure Foundation (Sarajevo) and the
Kanak Attak initiative (Berlin).

Humour Works exhibition

The series of photographs by Melanie
Bonajo entitled Are All Cliches
True? is a record of unexpected stage situations, blurring the
border between the real and the dreamlike. With the help of the established
genres of portrait and fashion photography, the artist plays with the fact that
the material can never be fully subordinated. Given the cases of addiction to a
variety of apparently subordinate objects (or tools), the appearance is merely
superficial, whereas in truth we are actually enslaved by such things and in
effect we are the ones who are actually being subordinated. Take the example of
contemporary consumer behaviour, and a situation in which a person has the
feeling that they are the subject making a choice; this is yet another
aberration. Namely, the very option of choice is the one which forces us into a

purchase in the first place. By bringing personal pain and
collective burden to the fore, Melanie Bonajo reveals the contradictions of
contemporary life.

Through the Private Collection
II space installation, Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia
Tkacova respond to the commodification of art in an attempt to
derail the monopoly of galleries that put a price on art, dictate market values
and set themselves up as the arbiters of quality. Hailing from Eastern Europe,
a region with post-transition economies marked by the western values of
hegemony and globalization, Chisa and Tkacova decided to disrupt the
capitalistic art machine by stealing piecemeal from famous private galleries in
Paris, Berlin, London, Vienna and New York. Conceived as a piratical gesture (a
volatile and intentional disruption of the existing artist-curator-collector
chain), the work undermines capitalist market orthodoxy and engenders an autonomous value zone.

Valie Export’s 1976
series of photographs entitled Homometer II was
a response to the issue of why work can’t provide a living. A long time ago the
artist discovered that depictions, images and pictures are not created in order
to express an imaginary unity, but to portray - in particular - difference,
variety and contradiction. It is the ontological difference between the image,
object and subject that actually represents the junction or the starting-point.
In documenting a street action, the artist walks around town with a loaf of bread
hanging in front of her belly in order that passers-by can cut off slices.
Export’s artwork or action is a continuation of her 1971 investigation entitled
On
the Mythology of Civilizing Process, in which she
focused on the interpretation of symbols; her work thus also speaks of a
psychological experiment with symbols and behaviour.

In its mixed media installation entitled HOW TO GETto Europe, the Kanak Attak
anti-racist network addresses trickery, manhandling and manipulation
at border crossings. With a couple of large posters, photo stories, and a
questionnaire, Kanak Attak’s main topic of »How to« continues with
provocativequestions such as: What is a critical art practice today? How can
activism be effectively established?
What are the advantages and drawbacks of group dynamics? And
the first answer to all of these is definitely No
integración
or autonomy of migration!

Through re-enactment in a video film, kpD
(kleines postfordistisches Drama) addresses the burnout syndrome as
a result of »forced« labour on several projects simultaneously, no genuine real
free time and irregular payment, etc. The Kamera Läuft! (Rolling!) video
project was based on interviews with various cultural workers and addressed the
desires and perspectives of overworked and »jammed« individuals, as well as
their working day which becomes ever more flexible and largely autonomous. By
way of various individual stories and social perspectives, the
video reveals where and how the workers are troubled the most.

In an atmosphere flooded with »We want foreign, we don’t
have our own«, when we sink our claws in e-euro T-shirts, while Slovene textile
industry is laying-off women workers, Barbara Kapelj Osredkar
got this passionate nostalgia for the times when she used to bury
herself into her grandmother’s boxes filled with »coloured« faces of Slovenian
movie stars, mixed with various propagandistic commercial advertisements. In
the midst of this romantic dream, there were these images of women who –
instead of inciting the making of phone calls – invited you to do the laundry,
cook or work in the field. The interactive animation Tvoja (Yours) does not revive the faces of
long-forgotten women, but ironizes the ideological interpretation of women’s
work in (Slovenian) history.

Based on her own experience as an artist lacking in formal
education, Jana Prepeluh will - via a shoe cleaning
street action entitled Pri Tleh (Down To
Earth) - be researching the attitude to non-material or manual work
by overworked alienated individuals in a contemporary society in which work is
still associated with social status. The artist wants to investigate prejudices
– looking up to, or down upon – towards others, as well as people’s notion and
perception of moonlighting in public.

At various locations around the city during the festival,
Jana Prepeluh will provide special shoe cleaning services – aimed also at those
who believe it is for real. After all, it really is about cleaning shoes.
Testimonies to the event will be available in the gallery through the recordings
of conversations between Jana Prepeluh and her customers.

In front of Škuc
Gallery; Thursday mornings in front of the Parliament; 5th October at 7 pm in
front of the Cankarjev Dom; as well as
elsewhere in the city, including the Ministry of Defence and Ministry
of Internal Affairs.

During the festival, Dr. Keka will provide
preventive and curative interventions as well as treat minor dental-health
ailments suffered by precarious cultural workers. Dr. Keka »suggests« the
following: »In
light
of the global objective and subjective globalisation of the subject, in the
self-consciousness of a multiple body aware of its
non-existence, neither at a zero level of the subject nor in the material world
of
a group of people waiting for a number eight bus, or in the hopeless product of
recording the process of awaiting your turn in a
dental waiting room, the artist-dentist – who is actually that third thing – considers the immanence of
ripping out of the vicious circle of her practise-existence as the agent of
capital, and just records the process-result of this (imp)personal
(non)production.«

Applications shall be accepted
between 15th and
30th September
at workshop@cityofwomen.org
or by phone on +386 40 548 154. The number of free
treatment and check-up applicants is limited.
Treatment will be provided on Saturday 5th and Sunday
6th as well as on Saturday 13th October  from 3 pm to 7 pm.

Gwendoline Robin: Short Story 
Between 9 pm and 10 pm, during the opening, diligent
pyromaniac and artist Gwendoline Robin will
blow the main engine, the hard disc or perhaps all of it together. Be not
afraid, this time it won’t be about your head!

Saturday 6th October, 6 pm

Tatiana Bazzichelli: Hack the Gender! Pink networks of tactical and playful
strategies – lecture In Italy in 1980 a series of reflections on
sexuality and identity created a seminal network embracing several individuals
and groups who propose their bodies so that it can be used within critical
territories, journeys beyond boundaries and out of rigid and constraining
mental frames. Under such a perspective, sexuality becomes an open, playful and
radical code of communication, no longer based on woman-man gender
confrontation, but an expression of flexible and floating identity, manifested
in the complex connections of networks. In emulating the hacker, combining and
recombining hard- and soft-ware into more critical and all-encompassing technologically queer
digital communities, with gender activists subverting rigid cultural paradigms
and creating new in-between cultural zones – a collaborative cutup, or cultural
collage, combines hacker ethics, political activism and independent (sexual)
culture.

The lecture will be in English, a written translation in Slovene
will be provided.

Sunday 7th October, 6 pm

Humour Works screenings
- film and video programme, followed by a discussion
The video films being screened were selected by the
international curatorial team, comprising of City of Women, Cure Foundation,
Kanak Attak initiative and Space Gallery.

The selection shall be made from amongst the artivist videos
produced by groups and initiatives, such as Girlswholikeporno (sex
work), Kanak TV (migrant work), Candida
TV (post-transition), Kassa Boys (cultural work)
and Cure (gendered work in civil initiatives).
The screenings will be followed by a discussion aimed at making a diagnosis as
to the situation locally and illustrating the most exposed groups.

NomadSPACE
The NomadSPACE truck-gallery
will drive to Ljubljana from Bratislava; hidden within are artworks on the
subject of humour. As to where you can visit it, and what is to be seen or
heard within – let this remain a surprise until its publication on the website.

http://priestor.crazycurators.org

Produced
and organized by: SPACE projects | residency lab | store
In
collaboration with: City of Women