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Former City / Summer School as School

External activities |   Yane Calovski’s presentation Former City at Summer School as School | organized by Stacion Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina | Boxing Club, 11 July 2017, 19:00 h

Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina is pleased to introduce the presentation of Yane Calovski and Angelika Stepken, part of the Public Program of Summer School as School 2017.

Yane Calovski’s presentation ‘Former City: Burning of a Modernist Past’, has a starting point in the following statement:
Every time we experience loss of something associated with our collective history, be that a document, a building or a person, we feel that we’ve also lost our footing both in the present and the future. It is a disconcerting, disorienting and ultimately, debilitating experience. When that which is lost is an important modernist archive of a former state institution (privatized since the mid 90’s) we are not sure where to direct the anger, disappointment but also our reawaken sense of responsibility to do something and regain the ground and the possibility of critical discussion.

The presentation will focus on the process leading to Former City (2018) the newest research project/installment of the missing archive of the Urban Plan for Skopje designed by Kanzo Tange and Associates in 1963/65 and in close collaboration with a number of local and Yugoslav architects and urbanists.
Following Master Plan (2008) and Obsessive Setting (2010), Former City derives from the aftermath of the fire in April 2017 that destroyed the former State Institute for Urban Planning and Architecture in Skopje and the civil action (initiated by artist and supported by numerous individuals, state and independent organizations in the field or art, architecture and culture) to retrieve, select, organize and label the documentation saved from the ‘bunker room’ of the Institute where all projects files were neatly filed over the years. Having received a permission of the current owners of the Institute of Urbanism, a process of cleaning, selecting and archiving of material from the ‘bunker room’ has been undergoing. This resuscitation of the material will ultimately lead to creating a ‘post-fire collection’ accessible to the public via the institutional mechanisms of the State Archive of the Republic of Macedonia and the City Museum of Skopje.
Former City will also deal with the unsalvageable remains of the ruined and contaminated printed matter, redrawing documents, photographs and objects, addressing the inaccessibility of history and making visible, accessible and discursive the narrative of the modern rebuilding of the city and its aftermath.

Yane Calovski (1973, Skopje) studied sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, (1992-1996) and earned a BA from Bennington College (1997). He participated in the post-graduate studio programs at both the CCA Kitakyushu (1999-2000), and the Jan van Eyck Academy (2002-2004), and holds Masters degree in media and culture production from Linkoping University in Sweden (2010). Calovski’s practice is concerned with tradition of research and translation, relating empirical ideas to art historical reference analysis leading in work situated in the site-specificity of a new cultural and political geography. Calovski has exhibited, screened and published his context-oriented and drawing-based work internationally including: Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Modern Art in Krakow, Bauhaus Foundation Dessau, Kunsthalle Bregenz, Salzburger Kunstverein and Tate Britain among others venues. He has also shown at the 56. Venice Biennial – Pavilion of the Republic of Macedonia (with Hristina Ivanoska, 2015) Helsinki Photography Biennial 2014, 2nd Project Biennial D-0 ARK Underground 2012, SpaPort International 2010, Manifesta 7 (2008), PR 04, Manifesta 3 (2000). He has also been presented at the FRIEZE London, Art Basel, Vienna Art Fair, Istanbul Contemporary and ARCO Madrid. For his practice, he has been awarded ORTung 2012 Fellowship, Allianz Kulturstiftung 2004 Fellowship, the Pew Fellowship in the Arts 2001, among other recognitions. Calovski is a co-founder of Press To Exit Project Space (www.presstoexit.org,mk). He lives and works in Skopje and is represented by ŻAK | BRANICKA in Berlin. www.zak-branicka.com

Angelika Stepken will present Villa Romana, a german artists’ residency in Florence which tries to operate in different contexts: the local and the global South.
Villa Romana is understood as a “weak” institution appreciating individual research and exchange on social and political perspectives.

Angelika Stepken has been director of Villa Romana since late 2006 giving a new profile to the today 112 years old institution. Before she was directing the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe (1998-2006) and working as a free lance writer and curator on international scale. Recently she curated the IfA international travel exhibition “Future Perfect” which this year tours through several museums in South America. In 2015 she published “On One Side of the Same Water – Artistic practice between Tirana and Tanger”. This year a monography about the Italian artist Ketty La Rocca is going to be published by Revolver Publishing.

Full schedule of The Public Program of Summer School as School 2017 can be found at: http://www.stacion.org/en/Public-Lectures-and-Presentations-2017