Video, body, politics, Marina Gržinić
Marina Gržinič Mauhler PhD, researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the scientific and research centre of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art, Ljubljana. She also works as a freelance-curator, critic and media theoretician. Together with Aine Šmid, she has been involved in creation of video-projects, short films, installations, web-sites and cd-roms since the early eighties.
Through examples from works by Zvonka Šimčić, Ema Kugler and Marina Gržinič/Aine Šmid, Marina Gržinič uses emanations of ideological discourse to follow the development of women's video over last two decades in Slovenia. Zvonka Šimčić's work mirrors the beginning of sexual emancipation in Slovenia through a prism of video media. Struggle for human rights, demands for democracy, sexual liberalism (gay & lesbian) represent this ideological input from the eighties in Zvonka Šimčić's video.
In 'Bilokacija' (1990), Marina Gržinič and Aina Šmid juxtapose two realities, two places: in the process of editing, a documentary recording the demonstrations in Kosovo has been blended with an "artistic" video work by these two artists. Marina Gržinič explained the idea with her need to fill a gap, i.e. lack of documents and information about this event (the demonstrations in Kosovo underwent a strict censorship at the state tv).
Ema Kugler's 'Homo Erectus' (2000), presented in full (44 min.), represents an up-to-date view of the relationship between economy of body and politics, of the issue of hybridisation (of sex, race) in the ideological pattern of multiculturalism. Eme Kugler's video is characterised by its narrative-like and film-like nature and it presents a new status of video, which gradually ceases to be solely a form of visual expression, short forms and limited production ability.
www.ljudmila.org/quantum.east/
www.eda.ucla.edu/events/spring01/mauhler/mauhler.htm