At the 57th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, Slovenia will be represented by the artist Nika Autor and the curator Andreja Hribernik.
Recently we have witnessed an intense and revitalised (re)appearance of newsreels as a form of radical guerrilla non-fiction film in committed cinema, which sprung from modern-day class struggle and worked to contribute to the process of social change.
In Slovenia, today’s newsreel work unfolds within an informal collective of creators (Newsreel Front) from the fields of film, culture, and socio-political criticism and art. Nika Autor works within the framework of the collective and her Newsreel 63 is an expression of social criticism – which is inherent to the very form of anti-newsreels – and takes the concept of trains, travel and the pursuit of happiness as the film’s point of departure.
Newsreel 63 follows newsreel-related practices and tries to position and understand a particular image – a shred of video taken on the once famous Belgrade - Ljubljana rail-line, where refugees now travel not in couchettes but between the train’s wheels. Newsreel 63 drifts into a visual investigation of railways and explores its historical, social and political narrative. What makes Newsreel 63 specific is the way it straddles the line between the traditional informative, committed anti-newsreel form and a more textually-driven and experimental cinema, guiding viewers through the story while leaving them to fill in the blanks with their own thoughts and reflections.
Intrinsic to the exhibition is a dedicated publication, edited by Nika Autor, Andreja Hribernik, Ciril Oberstar and Andrej Šprah, brings together scholarly texts as well as literary and visual elements.
Production: Moderna galerija /Museum of Modern Art plus Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana in collaboration with Koroška galerija likovnih umetnosti / Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška, Slovenj Gradec
