Video Art in Slovenia

The beginnings

In Slovenia, video art emerged as a medium within conceptual art practice. Nuša and Srečo Dragan, Slovenia's first video artists, initially worked as members of OHO, a group of Slovene conceptual artists. For them, video served both as an element of artistic action and as a documentation tool, understood primarily as a means of immediate, interactive communication with the audience.

It was not until the end of the 1970s that Miha Vipotnik began exploring the structure and aesthetic possibilities of the electronic image. Using professional TV equipment and a synthesiser at the Televizija Slovenija, he developed a distinctive approach to video art, focusing on manipulating and transforming the image and editing.

Video as an alternative medium

The development of video art in Slovenia during the 1980s arose from two specific local subcultures: the Students' Cultural and Art Centre (later ŠKUC Association) and the Students' Cultural Forum Society (SKD Forum, later Forum Ljubljana). Both independent centres established video sections in 1982. Most video works produced by artists and groups active throughout the 1980s were ŠKUC-Forum independent video productions.

Punk culture and its artistic offshoots had a significant impact on the shift in art mediums. At this time, numerous new social movements, such as the gay and lesbian movements, emerged from Ljubljana's underground. In this context, video quickly established itself as an appropriate medium of expression. Its simple handling and extremely fast production and reproduction made video one of the most popular and radical media for the 1980s generation.

The abundant video production and practice of the 1980s within the 'Ljubljana subculture' was not easily placed in a high art context. In 1984, Brane Kovič wrote about the changed role of video and its new tendencies. Events within society, state rituals, violence, sexuality, and the myths and taboos of the socialist system became important references for the creators of art and art-documentary videos. They preferred to describe themselves within the context of alternative (punk and rock) culture, using Disko FV and the ŠKUC Gallery as their main venues, rather than within the context of (modernist) art, even though several had trained at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design. Such was the case with Dušan Mandić, then a member of the Meje kontrole No. 4 (video) art group. In 1983 and 1984 he was the only one to write about the ŠKUC-Forum Video Production. Besides identifying its distinctive features, including mass production, he also defined the distinction between the 'formalistic approach to the medium' of video seen in the 1970s and the 'socially active audio-visual research' of the 1980s.

International programming and establishment of the medium

Miha Vipotnik was one of the founders of the International Biennial VIDEO CD, first held at Cankarjev dom in 1983, which established video within an institutional context. In the next three biennials he directed, the event brought international video art to Slovenia, enabled communication with guest artists and curators, and gradually affirmed Slovene video production in the international arena. In the late 1980s, Vipotnik also organised several presentations of Yugoslav video in collaboration with American curator Kathy Rae Huffman. These were shown in Canada and the USA, accompanied by introductory notes and critical texts. The biennial continued until the end of the decade.

Video production in the 1990s

Since the late 1980s, and especially during the 1990s, Radio-Television Slovenia, as part of its culture and art programme, intensively produced artistic video projects. Criticism, social engagement, and variations on political and social themes, combined with experimentation in language, images, and technology were the main features of most Slovene video productions.

Video films were not only a means of expression but also a method of documenting political events. Documentary video projects - created by amateurs with VHS equipment and by independent film and video groups with professional video equipment - captured various periods of political and social struggle in Slovenia: for example, the 'trial of the four' in 1988, when four journalists were tried for allegedly stealing and publishing Federal Army documents; the 10-day war in Slovenia in 1991 against the Federal Yugoslav Army; and, at the end of 1991, protests against attempts to abolish abortion rights. The 1990s, with the democratisation of Slovene political spheres, saw new forms of investigative journalism that used documentary video materials.

Video became more visible in the mainstream cultural sphere and appeared in individual presentations, exhibitions, and screenings at the Museum of Modern Art, ŠKUC and Fine Artists Society galleries, the MKC Maribor Youth Culture Centre, and RTV Slovenia, as well as in the programming of the commercial TV station Kanal A in its early years. It was also featured at the Festival of Slovene Video in Idrija (1992, 1998) and at the Video/Film Dance Festival in Ljubljana (1991–1996).

Avoiding classification

In the late 1980s and 1990s, video became increasingly tied to individual authors. It established itself as an independent medium and as a constituting element of expression in multimedia projects and installations.

Video productions are not as easily classified as video art, video theatre, video dance, video performance, or video installation. Most projects could belong to one or all these fields simultaneously. Often, a music video, due to its specifically-defined theme, can hardly be considered part of this category (e.g. Peter Vezjak with Laibach or Borghesia). Video art often addressed political or social themes (Marina Gržinić and Aina Šmid, Zemira Alajbegović with Neven Korda, etc.) and was frequently interdisciplinary, connecting with theatre, film, performance, and music. Videos were presented as complex stories, approaching film and theatre, and only rarely as digital experiments. At the same time, video had become an indispensable element of intermedia and visual art practices.

Archiving and research

First screenings or premieres of videos are often held at the Mladinsko Theatre or the Slovenian Cinematheque. Texts on video are written according to the context in which a video first appears, by visual arts or film critics, or within the broader context of culture. Slovenia has several travelling video programmes; some of these derive from Videodokument, the first systematic research into video art in Slovenia, conducted by SCCA-Ljubljana between 1994 and 1999. Since 2005, this has been enhanced by the DIVA Station, an ongoing physical and web archive of video art. In today's new media sphere, the scope has expanded from video art to media art and (short) film. In 2014, the Museum of Modern Art established the Web Museum, designed as a repository for digital audiovisual contemporary art and time-based art, which also provides online access to audiovisual materials.