Vlado Gotvan Repnik - babaLAN



[ slovensko ]


Vlado Gotvan Repnik, Robi Klancnik, Stefan Doepner, Igor Stromajer, Janko Mandic, Gorazd Borucky, Lana Katarina Gotvan with friends

AQUART - STEAMART + Uxi Pixi Pancakes

BabaLAN's project is focused on further development of his his interdisciplinary studies wherein he tries to unlock the questions of time, memory, body, transitory nature of human existence, obliteration, etc… His project, which one could define as a collective gesture or a joint venture of involvement and co-participation, could at the same time be seen as a theatre play, an exhibition, a performance, an interactive installation. It lays bare some of the most relevant questions concerning the placement of human body in a technological environment. BabaLAN's piece is represented through a form of a huge transparent cube with an installed water heater inside of it, which generates steam and constantly blurs viewers' vision of what is happening inside the box. The box itself is closed and inside bodies sweat, circulate and try to maintain balance. One part of the project is for the public who enters the box and in there tries to adjust to a new technological environment. Another part is babaLAN's performance inside the box during which he draws from on its wet walls. The steam which is constantly being produced inside, erases his drawings almost simultaneously while babaLAN draws new images and the viewer can only try to keep up with the drawings by memorizing them as they are being drawn and erased almost all at once. BabaLAN thus discovers a radical way to point out that transience doesn't only apply to language and stage, but also plays a role in visual arts.

The outside of the box works as a sort of a lighthouse: it rejects the light and the images, which are being projected on its walls. One could see this as returning of the memories to where they are coming from - the viewer's gaze. The viewer is thus placed in a position of someone who is projecting onto the artwork and the artist and receiving back her/his own projection as exactly what it is - her/his own gaze itself.

Aquart exposes one of the key questions modern art is facing today - the question of positioning. Namely, art of the 21st century cannot be positioned in a particular field, discipline, area or formal style. The positioning of art should be understood as crossing over, as a place in-between. Materials, techniques and the logic of representation applied by and in Aquart, are thus a manifestation of crossing over in transient time spots and stopping at in-between locations.

Aquart FILMI Aquart FOTO
children's sections










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www.babaLAN.org, 2006



project development:
aquart . introductory initiation . gfest 2002 . slovenian coal-mine museum over škale pit nearby velenje . aquart . france 2004 . reasearch of heating surfaces . festival borderline . maubeuge . execution of the sections balkan runners + persian carpets . aquart . research of nutrition sections . festival exit in paris . execution of the artefacts muvrvosake1 + barvilla2 . first and second stage of ropeography concluded . aquart . maribor 2005 . jealous presentation of attempted results . implementation of warm and digital children's sections. development of third-level steamography . internet . aquart = the cube . estonia . november 2005 . continental breakfast festival in tallinn . integration of exposed intermediacies . a cube of tea in-between estonian landscapes . ljubljana . what does the cube do when it rests . aquart 2006 . houses of parliament . europe . temporality of the automatized aquartis on a deck of an ocean liner 2007 .

1 muvrvosaka = murva/mulberry tree + vrv/rope + musaka/musakka
2 barvilla = barva/colour + barilla




Production: GVRbabaLAN and Maska Production

Since 2002 Aquart is supported by The Ministry of Culture of the Repuvlic of Slovenia, Municipality of Velenje, Municipality of Ljubljana, KC Ivan Napotnik and Velenje Coal Mine, Maribor Art Gallery, Neonart, Masion des arts de Creteil, Tallinn Art Hall Foundation