IAAC Lecture Series – Maja Smrekar

Date: Monday, 4th of March, 2024
Time: 19.30h (CET) 

Location: ITNIG (C. de Pujades, 100, 08005 Barcelona) & Zoom

> Register to watch the lecture on YouTube

Maja Smrekar is an artist and an assistant professor at the University of Ljubljana – Academy of Fine Arts and Design. Her work has been established in the international art and science milieu. In her projects she explores the potentials of technologically and scientifically rooted processes and materials, such as from biotechnology, ecology, ethology, artificial intelligence, soft robotics, etc. Her practice has allowed her to lead strong collaborations in developing productions that include cross-conceptual staging of hybrid art, performance, installations, site-specific, and video as well as contributions to knowledge exchanged within artistic teaching, talks and texts. She exhibited in the following spaces: Kunsthalle Vienna (Austria), ZKM Karlsruhe (Germany), Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing (China), MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome (Italy), Zuercher Gallery / Frieze New York (USA), RMIT Gallery Melbourne (Australia), etc. and festivals: Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), Click festival (Elsinore, Denmark), Transmediale (Berlin, Germany). In 2017 she was the recipient of the Prix Ars Electronica – Golden Nica 2017 in the Hybrid Arts Category (Linz / Austria). In 2023 she received the Follow Fluxus – After Fluxus grant for contemporary artists by the Hessian State Capital of Wiesbaden and the Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden (Germany).

Abundance of Otherness

Artist talk on Maja Smrekar’s work that derives from an interdisciplinary artistic research, exploring intersections between the human and the animal and intertwining these contexts with technology. Smrekar stems from the premise that humans and their environments mutually colonise each other. In her attempts to challenge these relations, she constructs situations that happen on a (micro-)political level and furthermore on a molecular one. She interconnects nature, technology and interspecies communication, as well as the correlation between the exploitation of the natural world and the oppression of other. Drawing inspiration from different media, including performative elements, such as durational and photo performance; Smrekar extends her work into micro performativity that emphasises on the processes within the human body, including the nonhuman subjectivities.