MoTA Museum of Transitory Art

MoTA LAB first opened its doors during the Sonica Festival in 2016. The place then exhibited site-specific installations by Staš Vrenko, Nonotak (FR), Nikola Uzunovski (MK), Anne Katrine Senstad (US) and others.

Dealing in experimental and technologically inquisitive arts, MoTA serves as a production vehicle for setting up music concerts, audiovisual acts, visual art exhibitions, public interventions, art residencies and an abundance of other artistically charged activities (as of recently it also bestows the TESLA Award). Its programme predominantly takes place at various Ljubljana venues, yet also on the web and very frequently around the world.

This non-profit cultural organisation was founded in 2007 as a continuation of the CodeEp art collective and enterprise. Besides partaking in various international endeavours, MoTA cooperates with dozens of Slovene organisations, venues and festivals, among them the Speculum Artium Festival, the Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory, the Sploh Institute, and Kino Šiška.

Venue

MoTA styles itself as a museum without a permanent collection or a fixed space, but as of 2013 it does run its own venue. First there was the now defunct MoTA Point, which housed a dense programme of concerts and exhibitions and was used as an occasional working space for resident artists and workshops. It got closed in spring 2016, but a new location was established in the Šiška neighbourhood soon after, called the MoTA LAB.

Most of the bigger MoTA's productions are taking place at the Kino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture.

Music, sound art and audio-visual productions

Since its inception MoTA has been running a diverse programme of concerts, focusing on contemporary electronica and improvised music. As a part of the Sonica Series, the Spring Festival (2001–2012) and several of its more sporadic projects it booked the likes of Fennesz, Senking, Blixa Bargeld, William Basinski, Teho Teardo, Keith Rowe, Plaid, Clark, and many others. In a somewhat different vein the Sonica Classics series stages artists like the minimalist pioneer Charlemagne Palestine, the idiosyncratic lute player Jozef Van Wissem and the cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir. For a time MoTA was also setting up live cinema events (held primarily at Kinodvor Cinema) called CinemaScapes. Some of the featured artists were Olga Mink and Scanner, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, Mira Calix, and Byetone.

MoTA's biggest production is the annual Sonica International Festival of Transitory Art. Featuring AV and music performances, art installations and lectures, Sonica presents artists like Tim Hecker, Rashad Becker, Emptyset, Marina Rosenfeld, Herman Kolgen, Ryoichi Kurokawa and Random Logic. The festival traditionally utilises different Ljubljana venues like the MoTA Point/LAB, the Slovenian Cinematheque, Tovarna Rog, the Križevniška Church and Klub K4.

Installations and other contemporary art projects

MoTa boasts an extremely varied programme of art projects that frequently, in one way or another, feature sound among their primary components. Some of the featured artists are Nonotak, Oliver Ratsi - ANTI VJ, Karina Smigla Bobinski, Nik Nowak, Jan Vormann, Les Liens Invisibles, Bram Vreven, Svetlana Maraš, the Greta Rusttt arts collective, Lenka Đorojević and Matej Stupica (who presented the OHO awarded installation Nevromat) and Irena Tomažin (with her audiovisual installation Faces of voices / noise, inspired by the question "What would a portrait of a certain voice look like?"). Many of them were invited to hold lectures, set up workshops and cooperate in the Artist's Talk discussions.

Nevromat [Neur-O-Matic], an installation by Lenka Đorojević & Matej Stupica that got the OHO Group Award in 2015

Martin Bricelj Baraga art

Martin Bricelj Baraga, the director of MoTA Museum, is a highly prolific author himself. His works are often large-scale installations set in public spaces and unusual architectural contexts.

Among his works are The Cyanometer, a monolith that gathers data of the blueness of the sky and the quality of air and visualises them; the Moonolith, an interactive monument that reflects the Moon and star constellations on its surface; the Darkstar, a large interactive piece on which more than 30 artists, programmers, architects and musicians collaborated; and RoboVox, an 8m high robot set on a public square, to whom one could send telephone messages which he would then read aloud.

CYANOMETER - A Monument to the Blueness of the Sky by MoTA - Museum of Transitory Art on Vimeo

Baraga collaborated with the renowned musician Olaf Bender (aka Bytone, DE) on a kinetic sound sculpture consisting of a matrix of 99 black balloons and called Neunundneunzig (99). He also collaborates with MoTA's producer Neja Tomšič on Nonuments, a long term project of research and artistic production that deals with monuments, landmarks and other symbolically laden public spaces. In addressing this Tomšič was awarded a fellowship at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, with which they realized the Nonument 01: McKeldin Fountain project in collaboration with Lisa Moren and Jaimes Mayhew at the Transmodern Festival in Baltimore.

He presented his works at Némo (FR), Kinetica Art Fair (UK), TodaysArt (NL), Glow Next (where Baraga got awarded the first prize in 2013), ICA (UK), Galerie Fernand Leger (FR), Sonar (ES), Columbia University (US), Fact (UK), Centro Cultural Recoleta (AR), Kunsthaus (AT), Kaapelithas (FI), etc. His works were written about in such media outlets like Wired, Architecture Daily, Design Boom, boingboing.net, Pecha Kucha, New York Art Magazine and Harper Collins.

MoTA artist agency

MoTA has a longer history of representing artists abroad, starting with the director Martin Bricelj Baraga himself. Other artists collaborating with MoTA were also Irena Tomažin, Miha Ciglar, and Neja Tomšič; they were featured in the High Zero and Transmodern festivals (US) and hosted by the Current gallery in Baltimore.

The year 2015 marks MoTA's semi-official entry into the art world as an agency, primarily with the aim to promote SHAPE platform (see below) artists. Its profile is accordingly broad and is featuring audiovisual works by the Serbian duo WoO and Incredible Bob, large public scale installations by Baraga and Nik Nowak, the London based club act Spatial, and a selection of sound based gallery works – Faces of Voices.Noise by the vocalist Irena Tomažin.

The SONICA x Series regularly stages events abroad to promote Slovenian and SHAPE artists on international stages. So far Sonica x Series took place in London, Trieste, Venice, Wroclaw, Maribor and Baltimore.

Impermanent Museum collection

Over the years MoTA has established its so called Impermanent Museum collection Arte/Facts. Featuring a selection of works by artists that they’ve worked with since 2007, these are not really works as such rather than parts or residues of an artistic process. Some of the artists included are Jan Vormann, Karina Smigla-Bobinski, Adam Basanta, Zimoun, Nik Nowak and Stephen Cornford. MoTA presents this collection at art fairs, among them the Supermarket Art Fair in Stockholm in 2015.

Created by the artist Stavinsky, the Black and white Rubik’s Cube functions as a "minimalist meditation on the radical repolarisation of the east and west of the postcoldwar Europe".

International partnerships

MoTA is (or has been) involved in various international networks and partnerships. Among them is T.R.I.B.E. – Transitory Research Initiative of the Balkans and Eastern Europe, which started as a residency network in 2012 and connected Ljubljana, Prague, Istanbul and Nicosia. It hosted more than 15 artists and researchers, organised two symposiums and resulted in a publication Exercises in transitory art.

Another network MoTA got involved in is called Artecitya brings together artists, architects, town planners and citizens for, as they say, with the aim of improving the quality of life in cities through technological and artistic innovations. Within Artecitya, MoTA is developing the Arcade Gallery, a sound gallery located in the centre of Ljubljana, which commissions sound compositions especially for this location.

MoTA was also part of the ALIPI: Advancing Light-driven Public Interactions project, of the ICAS – International Cities of Advanced Sound network, of the GALA Green Art Lab Alliance project, the Swiss Music Day 2015, and numerous others. In 2017 it started with the MAPS – Mapping and Archiving Public Spaces, aiming to identify, map and archive public spaces that may be a part of our cultural heritage – yet identified as such.

Transitory network and the artist-in-residence programme

Since 2008 MoTA has been running an artist-in-residence programme in Ljubljana for media, sound or visual artists, curators and researchers. So far MoTA has hosted and produced the work of more than 15 artists, among them Jorge Rodriguez Gerada, Felix Thorn, Julien Bayle, Lexa Walsh, Alex Toland, Gabey Tjon a Tham, Marina Rosenfeld, and Ohira + Bonilha. Some of these residencies were done in collaboration with Ljudmila - Ljubljana Digital Media Lab, for example Nedine Kachornamsong and Yuri Landman. In 2010, MoTA established the Transitory Network of residencies in Eastern Europe.

The SHAPE platform

The SHAPE project is a 3-year initiative that (re)unites 16 European non-profit organisations active within the ICAS – International Cities of Advanced Sound network to create a platform that aims to support, promote, and exchange emergent musicians and interdisciplinary artists with an interest in sound. SHAPE stands for “Sound, Heterogeneous Art and Performance in Europe”.

48 musicians and artists are chosen annually to participate in a mix of live performances, residencies, workshops and talks across member festivals and special events. Under the auspices of SHAPE MoTA, for example, presented Slovenian SHAPE artists within the Sonica x Series in partnership with the Apiary Studios in London and Spazio Aereo in Venice.

The Artists's Talk project

In 2010, MoTA launched the project Artist Talk, an online portal for publishing, disseminating and archiving high quality video recordings of interviews and lectures given by artists, curators, theorists and others working in the fields of art, activism and theory.

This initiative, still an on-going series of live events, is a product of three contemporary art and new media centres from Eastern and central Europe (MoTA Ljubljana, CIANT Prague and WRO Wroclaw). It is based on the idea of free distribution of ideas and knowledge. A partial result of the interviews conducted as a part of Artist's Talk is the book Outerviews, first presented at the 15th WRO Media Art Biennale in Wroclow.

Gregor Zemljič (of Random Logic) and Rashad Becker conversing during the Sonica Festival in 2015

Tomaž Brate Reading room and Mediatheque

In 2009, MoTA and Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana have opened a reading room and a mediatheque in the Jakopič Gallery, which consists of a vast collection of books belonging to Tomaž Brate (1963–2008) as well as the MoTA book collection. The reading room serves also as the MoTA info point with information on resident artists, current, past and future projects, and archives.

External links

International partnerships and networks websites

Various MoTA art (co)productions

Gallery

Nevromat [Neur-O-Matic], an installation by Lenka Đorojević & Matej Stupica that got the OHO Group Award in 2015

Nevromat [Neur-O-Matic], Lenka Đorojević & Matej Stupica, produced by Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory and Projekt Atol Institute, 2014. An OHO Group Award winner.

Nevromat [Neur-O-Matic] by Lenka Đorojević & Matej Stupica, produced by Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory and Projekt Atol Institute, 2014

In 2013, MoTA Museum of Transitory Art invited the Berlin based artist Jan Voorman for a residency. The project he worked on at that time, called Dispatchwork, consisted of a series of somewhat surreal interventions into public space.

Karina Smigla-Bobinski (DE) worked as an artists in residence at MoTA in 2013. She developed an analogue interactive installation called ADA, "a post-industrial creature, visitor-animated, creatively acting artist-sculpture, self-forming artwork".

Gregor Zemljič (of Random Logic) and Rashad Becker conversing during the Sonica Festival in 2015

Martin Bricelj Baraga's project Moonlith, a Monument to the Moon and the Stars, presented at Ljubljana's Republic Square in 2015

The visual duo Izland, aka Gašper Milkovič Biloslav and Marko Vivoda, ran a workshop on analogue visuals at Sonica, 2015

Created by the artist Stavinsky, the Black and white Rubik’s Cube functions as a "minimalist meditation on the radical repolarisation of the east and west of the postcoldwar Europe".

A 3.3-metre installation dubbed Cyanometer, created by Martin Bricelj Baraga. Located at the Ajdovščina Square in Ljubljana, it is 'measuring the blueness of the sky' as well as showing data on air quality and the main polluters.

For the Sonica International Festival of Transitory Art's closing night, MoTA opened its new space to the public with the Sonic Pavillion exhibition, 2016.

Japanese vibraphonist Masayoshi Fujita performing at Kino Šiška in the context of Sonica Classics concert series, 2016

MoTA LAB first opened its doors during the Sonica Festival in 2016. The place then exhibited site-specific installations by Staš Vrenko, Nonotak (FR), Nikola Uzunovski (MK), Anne Katrine Senstad (US) and others.

Lawrence English at MoTA Museum of Transitory Art, 2017.

Radical Ear 02, workshop led by Lawrence English where participants got the necessary expertise from the fields of field recording, sound documentation, manipulation of field recordings and sound archiving, 2017.

Neja Tomšič, MoTA Point and international projects coordinator, 2016.

A light installation, set up by the duo Nonotak at MoTA Lab during the 2016 edition of the Sonica Festival

Supported by Sally Golding's visuals, Matt Spendlove (aka Spatial) is presenting his bass heavy electronica live set at Sonica, 2016

Moderator Luka Zagoričnik and the three speakers were joined onstage for a discussion by Matt Spendlove aka Spatial, SONIC.ARCHITECTURES Symposium at Slovenian Cinematheque organised by MoTA Museum of Transitory Art, 2016.

Sonica International Festival of Transitory Art at Tovarna Rog, 2016.