Maja Smrekar

Every day at noon we place a speaker into an open window sill directed towards the exterior of the government across the street. In a manner of a civil defense siren tone we play a 90-second sound of Internationale - the anthem of mobility in times of immobility. The action parallels Federico Fellini's Amarcord, where in 1930s Italy a gramophone wired on the town church campanile, plays a recording of the Internationale, but it is soon shot down by Fascists.

Our activity that will last as long as the lockdown, started 19th March 2020, when the Slovenian government announced they raised salaries for ministers and state secretaries 30%, while any solutions of solidarity for all the rest of the civil society have not been solved at all. Additionally, the sound causes our dog companion Byron to sometimes jump on a window sill. In this effect he evokes a correlation to the Russian avant-garde that compares proletarians to animals as important contributors to the production of freedom.

Bio

Maja Smrekar (1978, Brežice, Eslovenia) is an artist whose work tackles ideological structures in society. Grounded in sculpture, her practice based artistic research has allowed her to lead collaborations in developing cross-conceptual productions, as well as contributions to knowledge exchanged within lectures, talks and texts.

She has presented her work in Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (Ljubljana), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Musée de l`Homme (Paris), Het Neuwe Institut (Rotterdam), Latvian National Arts Museum (Riga), Milton Keynes Gallery (Milton Keynes), Hyundai Motorstudio (Beijing), Zürcher Gallery and Frieze (New York), transmediale (Berlin), and Ars Electronica (Linz).

Smrekar's work is part of Arteast 2000+ collection (Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana). She was featured in Das Echo der Zukunft (2019) documentary produced for ARTE. In 2017 she won Prix Ars Electronica - Golden Nica in Hybrid Art. In 2018 she was awarded Prešeren Foundation Award -the highest national award for artistic achievements by the Republic of Slovenia. Maja Smrekar lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia.