NIKA OBLAK & PRIMOŽ NOVAK | WORKSTEXTSCVCONTACT |
Becoming the spectacle
(text from solo exhibition And Now for Something Completely Different 10, Aksioma Project Space, Ljubljana, Slovenia)
A man is trapped inside a screen, walking endlessly. His movements, careful and repetitive, generate a rhythmic,
hypnotic sound. As he moves, the rectangular screen moves too, rotating like a big hamster wheel. Where do we come
from? What are we? Where are we going? is a kinetic video installation that playfully reflects on our
contemporary condition, depicting humans in a perpetual and pointless engagement with technological devices. Screens are
portals to other dimensions: they help us to learn, remember, create and connect with each other, but at the same time
they are powerful traps. Locking our eyes and our attention, monitors can become prisons, preventing us to establish
more profound and complex relationships with the world and the people around us. The more we use the machine, the more
we tend to resemble it: like Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, when he morphs into a human screwdriver, the man
inside the LCD adapts to the screen movements and limits, transforming himself into a gear of the mechanism. In a wider
sense, the work can also be considered a reflection on progress itself: we are constantly moving but making no real
advancement, forced into an hectic activity with no clear purpose. The title chosen for the project, which is taken
after Paul Gauguin’s iconic work D'ou Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Ou Allons Nous (1897), reinforces this
idea.
Nika Oblak and Primož Novak use technology as a a self-reflection tool; they build complex machines capable of bridging
the physical and the virtual, the digital and the mechanical, the natural and the artificial. Since 2003, they produced
a large amount of projects, including performances, films, photography and installations, that together constitute an
ongoing investigation on contemporary life, focusing on its most controversial aspects: the traps of consumerism, the
oppressive structures of work and politics, the ambiguous relationship between reality and fiction, the hidden perils of
an uncritical use of technologies. In The Box (2005), for example, we see the artists inside a tv screen,
trying to find a way out by pushing and kicking the walls. Their actions infiltrate the physical world by bending the
frame of the monitor, but they are never able to break out: the mass media system is a giant rubber wall that won't let
us escape its influence, no matter how hard we try. This idea of helplessly trying to establish a physical connection
between what's inside the screen and what's outside, opening a breach, remind us of The Last Nine Minutes
(1977) a seminal performance by American artist Douglas Davis. Like many other artists of the period, Davis was
engaging in a profound reflection about the rising world of telecommunication, considering its profound impact on human
consciousness and social relationships. Despite these similarities, however, Oblak and Novak's work is very different,
aesthetically and conceptually: humans today are not just exploring new tools of communication, they are completely
fused with them, to the point of not being able to recognize their true impact. To describe this new situation, the
artists build alternative machines, ironic devices capable of depicting in a very accurate way our daily life:
a circle of recursive actions that are both entertaining and exhausting.
In Endless Column (2017), which contains a direct visual reference to the work of media art pioneer Nam June
Paik but also pays an homage to avant-garde sculptor Constantin Brancusi, the protagonist tries to balance several
monitor on her head, in a circus-like performance. All of her attention is focused on the action of keeping everything
in place, without losing a single piece. In a world saturated with media contents, and surrounded by devices that
continuously demand our attention, we always feel challenged, chased, and in the process of missing something.
Distracted by this impossible task of managing everything, we slowly turn into entertaining machine ourselves, becoming
part of the global media spectacle.
Infinity (digital)
(text from solo exhibition And Now for Something Completely Different 12, Aksioma Project Space, Ljubljana, Slovenia)
The work by the duo Nika Oblak & Primož Novak entitled Infinity (digital) focuses on the influence of
contemporary means of communication on one’s life. Their artistic practice over the past twenty years has continuously
addressed the position of humans in the clenches of consumerist doctrines, media cacophony and popular culture. Along
the same lines, in their latest work they have created a spatial video installation consisting of screens, cables and
other heralds of everyday modern life.
Employing a good measure of humour and self-irony, the artists focus once again on the human being that is – no less
than in the past – caught up in the absurdities of daily routines and subjected to the conventions of tradition and the
patterns of dominant culture. Infinity (digital) shows the motif of running, symbolised by an ordinary man
involved in the multilayered mechanisms of today’s neoliberal reality. The image of the protagonist running in an
infinite and senseless loop from screen to screen can thus be seen as a manifestation of the myth of Sisyphus who, by
means of divine punishment, was condemned to repeatedly roll a boulder up the same hillside. With this gesture, the
artists point out people’s self-evident attitude to technological progress, show the imperative of adapting to all kinds
of changes and call attention to the loosening of basic humanistic values. Even though, in the last few decades, society
and technology have advanced to the degree that there is seemingly less and less monotonous work and jobs, the abundance
of everything that is available in the material and virtual world can still make one feel caught in the metaphorical
aimless run. Contemporary society worships constant fulfilment, whether through work or leisure activities. Subjected to
all kinds of stimuli, people today are consequently overloaded with activity. Regardless of whether it relates to one’s
job or one’s vacations and travels, activity is ever-present, such as on social media networks where there is a constant
absorption of information.
That is why the video’s protagonist, dressed in casual clothes, who persistently and endlessly runs through the screens,
can symbolize precisely this inevitable entrapment of individuals in the shackles of prescribed lifestyles and
activities, which they cannot resist – at least not without the risk of extreme social deviation or ostracization, The
monumental, white, spaceless environment of the video, into which the runner moves in an even straight line,
metaphorically suggests the self-evident fact that an individual is always subordinate to the collective – that is, to
society – and always has to adapt to it, for his or her own comfort. The infinity examined by the artists is highly
abstract and formless. But, at the same time, it is very familiar since people are consciously or unconsciously prone to
repeat patterns, which actually fulfil them and provide them with a feeling of security. The infinite run and its
monotonous sound could thus be a lucid depiction of the artists’ relation to the world and their own position in it.
Nika Oblak & Primož Novak, And Now for Something Completely Different 16
(text from solo exhibition And Now for Something Completely Different 16, Ivan Grohar Gallery, Škofja Loka, Slovenia)
The exhibition And Now for Something Completely Different 16 presents the works of visual artists Nika Oblak and
Primož Novak, who have been part of the contemporary art scene as an artist duo for twenty years. Their artistic
practice includes video, photography, installations, kinetic installations, spatial interventions and performance. The
exhibition at the Ivan Grohar Gallery showcases a selection of works from an extensive oeuvre, in which direct
implications for the current economic and social reality can be recognized. The two artists deal with the absurdities of
the modern world in a lucid and humorous way, while also exploring the complex mechanisms of today's neoliberal reality.
We have selected five projects that focus on controversial aspects of modern life (the pitfalls of consumerism, the
dangers of uncritical reliance on various technologies, the ambivalence between reality and fiction, repressive
structures of work and politics) and social relations. The works created between 2005 and 2020 highlight an individual
trapped in the wheel of a day-to-day routine, filled with repetitive protocols of (often) totally meaningless
actions.
The exhibition And Now for Something Completely Different 16 is an illustration of the present age, where reality
and the world of media are closely intertwined, while humanistic principles are (unfortunately) subordinated to economic
ones. The exhibited works are stories about individuals subjected to repetitive patterns, competitiveness, social media
presence, work, constant absorption of information and stimuli, which on the one hand provides them with a sense of
security, belonging and fulfilment, and on the other hand all this is a departure from one's own essence and the basic
humanistic values (the metaphor of "running on empty").
Room One features two works titled Where Do We Come from? What Are We? Where Are We Going? and Untitled,
and Room Two contains the works The Scream, Infinity and We Did This and That.
Where Do We Come from? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, created in 2019, is a kinetic video installation that can be seen as a reflection
of progress and an allusion to our constant use of technological devices. The male performer inside the LCD screen moves
continuously, but does not advance whatsoever. Trapped inside the screen and adapted to the way it moves, he keeps
walking and is transformed into a cogwheel tooth (in terms of suspension). This is when he becomes part of the device
and its slave. The unusual device alludes to the rat race, to endless and (often) senseless and even stressful
interactions with modern technology. The title of the installation is based on Gauguin's identically-titled iconic work,
the content, however, is a reference to Charlie Chaplin's film Modern Times.
The Untitled photo series
was created between 2010 and 2020. It is based on a concept that places both creators in different roles or contexts,
which is, in fact, a fundamental characteristic and constant (continuum) of their artistic practice. As part of this
photo series, they play around with the cliches that have been present in the art world for decades or even centuries.
The titles of the works are derivatives of typical, ever-present titles that are recycled in art constantly (regardless
of geographic location or ethnicity), Untitled, Fountain, Self-Portrait etc. The series consists of the
photographs Fountain, after Duchamp, Nauman, Signer and many other prominent twentieth-century visual artists, Homage
to Nika Oblak and Primož Novak, Untitled and Self Portrait (2061).
The 2015 video titled The Scream
is based on Edvard Munch's iconic painting The Scream. The video content is condensed, symbolically strong,
expressively shocking and meaningful. It presents a radical (timeless) symbol of human anguish. It shows the female
protagonist in deep concentration and then she screams out in pain and distress at the top of her lungs, thus breaking
the screen with her voice (the scream). The video reveals a personal, dramatic narrative, confronting one's own traumas
and the omnipresent, ever-topical existential questions. At the forefront of the story are the atmosphere and feeling
that evoke associations with German expressionism. The scream is a central symbol of expressionism, both in film and
theatrical performances.
Infinity (digital) is a 2020 video installation that (digitally) depicts running. The main protagonist, who is
shown running in an endless and senseless loop from screen to screen, can be seen as a manifestation of the myth of
Sisyphus. Sisyphus was condemned by God to repeat the meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see
it roll down again just before reaching the top. The two artists have used the gesture of perpetual absurdity to draw
attention to how people take technological progress for granted, to emphasise the necessity of adapting to all kinds of
changes, as well as to critically highlight the loosening of basic humanistic values.
The We Did This and That project, created between 2005 and 2007, consists of a series of 43 photographs and a
series of 13 videos. It is a humorous (pseudo) interpretation of achieving the Guinness World Records based on unusual,
almost absurd ideas. Nika Oblak and Primož Novak arouse the viewer's attention with spectacular and entertaining stunts
that are parables for the modern society's widespread obsession with success and fame. The sense of directness evoked by
the project is also characteristic of advertisers, reporters, authors of reality shows.
As a medium, video production has existed in Slovenia for almost half a century. It is a medium with its own specific
characteristics and is embedded in social and production frameworks. Its beginnings are closely related to conceptual
(alternative) practices; the latter used to use video as an element of artistic action and a means of documenting
various artistic practices in public. Nika Oblak and Primož Novak use video as an independent medium - as a
more-than-convenient means of expression for realising ideas that cannot be realised through any other media, as well as
the possibility of direct communication with the audience. Their works are self-reflexive, filled with a great deal of
irony and humour, as well as social criticism, with less emphasis on image manipulation and transformation. Their
complex stories in the context of artistic inter-medial practice come close to a film presentation. As such, they
establish an arc with home video production in the 1990s, which highlighted individual authorship, while video
"migrated" from alternative venues to galleries and film festivals.
Nika Oblak and Primož Novak's video stories are a synthesis of personal experiences, transplanted into a wider context,
where the two artists usually also take on the roles of the main protagonists. They draw inspiration from the real world
and imaginations, and share information through stories that the viewers may find entertaining, captivating, moving or
as something that helps them pass the time. The two artists have enriched the contemporary Slovenian art scene with a
fresh video genre that follows the feature film narrative. It is a combination of fiction and reality, which shows
fictional events in a documentary, yet thoughtfully structured, visually perfected and refined way. They present the
content in the form of documentary accounts - a subgenre of mockumentary prank docs, thus consciously blurring the
boundaries between film genres and video art, and co-creating the world in a participatory and interactive way.
The Scream and Its Echo
(text from solo exhibition And Now for Something Completely Different 7, Kresija Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Works of art generally reflect the zeitgeist in which they were created; the more effective ones furthermore
universalise their subject matter in order to be topical and comprehensible years, decades and even centuries later. In
1893 when Norwegian artist Edvard Munch first painted his most celebrated and iconic work The Scream its
appearance and its edginess prodded the very neuralgic points of society at that time. The painting caused unease among
the audience as it showed the unthinkable – the expression of pure emotion. Munch painted it at the height of the
Industrial Revolution and the Victorian era when the cultural code relating to public appearance and behaviour was
extremely stringent and rigid. In the late 19th century in (what is now) Norway, as well as in other parts of Europe, a
genuine display of emotions stood out in stark contrast to the expected norms of behaviour of responsible adults.
The Scream sets up a mirror to the severe and uniform society of the old continent, a culture that was at the
peak of its colonial hegemony against the rest of the world–importing cheap raw material and exporting rules and norms
of the so-called “civilised world”. Hence, the self-portrait reflects the artist's own anxieties and fears as much as
the collective state of mind. It is the ultimate display of primal and animalistic instincts of human
beings–characteristic increasingly suppressed in modern, urban societies. The Scream is (was) therefore a
subversive work of art.
The world, however, has not changed in essence in one century. Even nowadays, one
is a subject to number of social rules, conventions and expectations long perpetuated with significant help from
mainstream popular culture as well as political and economic propaganda. The societies of the so-called “developed
world” still export their basic social values (often by violently imposing parliamentary democracy and free market
economics) to already devastated, marginal countries of the so-called “third world”, even though these principles have
been proven unsuccessful and damaging again and again. The educated and engaged individual may be well informed
nowadays; nevertheless, he or she will also very probably be powerless and frustrated.
The homonymous work by the
collective Nika Oblak & Primož Novak, representing thoughtful paraphrase of Munch's The Scream, focuses on
similarly quintessential questions–be they intimate or political. In addition to uncensored expression of a human
being’s most basic instincts and feelings reflected in the painful scream of the protagonist of the video piece, the
installation may as well be understood and interpreted as a metaphor for the transiency of the superior position of the
privileged part of the planet at the expense of others. The work is set in the present, i.e. in the period of fast
communication devices and rapidly developing new technologies that largely distract one's attention from the dissolution
of the fundamental human and social values. The TV screen, on which the video is played, carries a powerful symbolic
message: it showcases the shameless manipulation by mainstream media; people's addiction to constant virtual
interaction; and the dominance of catchy, simplistic media content. Among the cacophony of all types and means of
communication available in the past couple of decades, television emerges as the ultimate medium that has irrevocably
marked the periods since the mid 20th century, unopposed and uninterrupted. Nika Oblak's & Primož Novak's The Scream
hints at their own disbelief in the prescribed world of everyday life, as seen in the media, while on the symbolic
level it radically breaks with this spectacular world, as much as it is possible. The cracked glass of the TV screen,
the consequence of the pitching scream, emphasises the fragility of television and other means of communication. They
can still be unplugged or broken by a man.
In their kinetic installations the artists have always wanted to see
beyond the usual self-evident status of contemporary technology and their works have always reflected their relative
scepticism towards the conventions and expectations of the society. In the past fourteen years of continuous creative
output the tandem has produced an extensive body of work including of videos, relational works and multimedia pieces
which testify to the absurdities of modern life; to the subjugation to conventions of tradition and popular culture; and
to contradictions within the world of art–with great sense of humour and self-irony. The exhibition presents works that
deal with the idea of expanding two-dimensional video into spatial installation by using advanced technological means.
In this way, the artists address an individual who is unavoidably part of the multifaceted mechanisms of the currently
prevailing neoliberal ideology with the inevitable entrapment of people in their everyday routines, reminiscent of the
monotony of operating machines. The kinetic video installations therefore indicate humanity’s seemingly self-evident
relationship with technological development, the imperative to adapt to any kind of change as well as highlighting the
prevailing economic principle, which is a consideration above scientific and humanistic principles nowadays. The works
showcased on the exhibition are therefore exceptionally direct, lucid and remarkably visual. In these works, the tandem
enacts a number of everyday routines, which are creatively interpreted and reflected in the repetitiveness of relentless
Sisyphean work.
The desert of the real, part V
(text from solo exhibition And Now For Something Completely Different 5, Kunsthalle Bratislava, Slovakia)
Nika Oblak & Primož Novak are an artist duo. They are representatives of the new, global art village, moving
from one place of the globe to the other, doing residencies, developing projects, exhibiting worldwide.
Slovenia’s art scene where they started their journey is vibrant internationally since the late eighties. In the
nineties, when Oblak and Novak were studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, the conditions for art were
improving on a monthly basis. Of course, as the whole world felt, in 2008 a crisis followed. In Slovenia it was as
unexpected as everywhere else, with the exception that we, the citizens, were for at least ten years brainwashed
into thinking that we are becoming the new Switzerland. In art this ideology at first felt like a time is coming,
when the artists will still be funded by the state, with no necessity to produce art for the nonexistent market.
There was this idea that art is produced, because it is important, because it enriches our lives, because it is good
for us. Not because it will have to be sold at some point. Not because artists also has to earn a living. Not
because there's this constant capitalist yearning to produce more and faster. Art was, for a short period of time in
the nineties and early in the new millennium, produced because it was Art. This brought forth many interesting
projects, artist’s art, people's art, smart and profound art working on various levels. The early projects of Nika
Oblak & Primož Novak came into being amidst this situation.
But of course this state of things did not
survive the crash. Today it seems that Nika Oblak & Primož Novak felt this before everybody else did. Already in
the beginning of the new millennium they depended more on the international scene, as they did on the local one.
Their works, be it appropriations of famous films like the videos Shund or Cab Driver , where they
took over all the roles from the actor to the director, or their hilarious series of photographs recreating the
weirdest Guinness records or even their apparatus Smartist , which was inscribing their names on every
surface it came upon, were already from the beginning very certain of the importance of the artists name and
presence which they mockingly exposed in their projects.
The form of the works by Nika Oblak & Primož Novak
is shiny, appealing, as if from an expensive western tabloid. This is not a fascination with the global pop culture;
it is a conscious use of the existent form of popular culture to make the ridiculousness of the reality even more
real. As Hermann Noering, curator and co-director Electronic Media Art Festival in Osnabrueck has written: »Oblak's
and Novak's work can be read according to their motto: 'contemporary art is nothing but a business but we take it as
a joke'. As artists they regard themselves as part of a social system based on unconditional consumption with a
capitalist face in which media present the pursuit of maximal accumulation of material wealth as the meaning of
existence. According to Guy Debord, an important reference for Oblak & Novak, consumer capitalism transforms
everything into a superficial spectacle. The consumer is more or less an appendage and the passive end point of the
product, whose promise of happiness already fades at the instant of purchase. But another product is always
immediately available to renew the promise. In this pseudo-world of harried consumerism reality becomes invisible
and repression latent. The media are the main vehicle of this 'society of the spectacle', controlling the
individuals' desires by means of stereotypes, images and ideology. Yet the content of the media is less decisive
than the fundamental structures of media itself. Structure in fact determines content. The form of media inscribes
itself into its messages. Media shape society.«
There is some terror behind the glossy surface. There is the
terror of impossibility, a terror of unfulfilled wish, a terror of Sisyphus who is pushing his rock to reach the top
of the mountain over and over again. Trapped in the television set the work speaks about the current, media society,
which spends much more time looking at screens of this or that sort, than contemplating in front of paintings,
turning book pages or feeling the space of an installation.
The pneumatic video installations form the
exhibition And Now For Something Completely Different 5. They expose the daily routine, artificially produced
consumerist needs and illustrate our existence as the monotony of operating machines. Despite their appearance and
this wider possible reading, the pneumatic video installations presented are also very personal works of art that
say as much about the artists as they do about society at large.
A short while ago at some symposium in Zagreb
a German art critic Hans Jürgen Hafner presented his paper titled Pfff. This was one of the rare and truly
personal lectures I have heard in recent years. He was hip, even hipster like, contemporary in his words and image
and his speech fitted perfectly to what Nika Oblak & Primož Novak bring to the audience with the exhibition
And Now For Something Completely Different 5. He has enough – he said standing in a dark hall of the Museum
of Contemporary Art with an inexcusable bear bottle on a speaking stand – of all the wishes, all the personal
investment in art, enough of fruitless theories that support the unfulfilled wishes of the art world and most of all
enough of money talk. Art is not strong enough to withhold that. It will never save the world, we should stop
hoping. It will not help the rivers of migrants. It will not persuade people to behave towards other people in
better ways. None the less, he still adores art. He finds it necessary for his wellbeing. The goal of art is for us
to enjoy it. It can make us open for new ways of thinking, acting and living, but the decision and the struggle is
not in the arts, it is in us, the observers. Art just opens up the door.
Art is always an elitist endeavour but
the elite are not the mighty and powerful as in the times of the Paris salon, when it was already a marketable good.
Today the elite which is dedicated to art is mostly an elite of possible free thinkers, a writing proletariat, an
audience of art villagers, of precariat, self employed artists, young university professors, exhausted curators,
lovers of sushi and I-pads who organize welfare events for the fugitives, people who understand what is happening in
Syria, but can’t do much about it, as they have their own struggle to attend to. They have to create, do yet again
another production – hence the number 5 in Nika Oblak & Primož Novak's exhibition title – answer a never ending
line of e-mails per day, set up exhibitions, travel, represent, produce, distribute and sell, if possible. Or get
grants, or take on new and new residencies ... On their way, this art proletariat is lucky to form new networks with
the likeminded of the globe, but these networks are not strong, as they have to be woven in a day, a week or a month
to answer to the funds given for the opportunity. To keep the fragile relationships alive it is necessary to rely on
the World Wide Web with all its youtubes, facebooks, gmails, instagrams, twitters and pinterests. This world brings
connections but also a constant flow of information, the needed and the unwanted ones.
Primož Novak & Nika
Oblak present the pneumatic video installations: Sisyphus Actions, Reality is Out, The Box and a new
production, presented in Kunstalle Bratislava for the first time with the title Border Mover. The
installations are seemingly a part of this world, but they are more than that. Technically based on a pneumatic
mechanism they are able to transmit the two dimensionality of the screen into 3D. The image seems to be strong
enough to move the border outside into the real world. In reality, there are the pneumatic mechanisms placed behind
an LCD monitor, and this is controlled by a computer and synchronized with the video. Still the works bring out an
unexpected sigh in the viewer. This sigh is a sigh of excitement, a small fulfilment of a child’s magic wish. Also
involved in the story of And Now For Something Completely Different 5 is humour which is specific for the
entire oeuvre of the duo.
The works by Nika Oblak & Primož Novak are communicative and inviting. They are
impressive when seen live and draw crowds of all generations wherever they are presented, since they are easy to
approach. People are curious of how they function, they are drawn to ask technical questions, which leads to
questions about what art is and whom it is intended for...
When the audiences are lured in and when the loud
laughter stops, the reality steps in. We get a story of a small man trapped in a box which he cannot get out of. He
repeats his actions, never quitting, never stopping until his last day, when the television stops working and the
laughter gives place to the awful silence of the desert that late capitalism has left behind.
Nika Oblak & Primož Novak, Reality Is Out
(catalogue text from exhibition MOVE Forward - New Mexican and European Media Art, Halle, Germany)
With their installations, videos and images, the Slovenian artists Nika
Oblak and Primož Novak query in witty and ironical fashion the consumerism
of modern capitalism and the way the media generate norms and realities.
In their new piece Reality is Out, Oblak and Novak create a reality, which
is not a complex of physical entities but rather a reductive sign. In one
performance video they build and paint a sign with the word "Reality".
At the end of the short performance they hold it up and issue the message
to the "outside". Their sign appears within the exhibition space,
whereas they themselves remain within the medial.
The duo's performance is not before an audience but rather repeats continually
in film on an LCD monitor in a box. The only problem is that the sign over
their heads is too large for the picture frame. By means of pneumatic mechanics
it edges out of the world of 2D video and into the world of the viewer.
"Reality" becomes an object and part of our three-dimensional
reality, or at least of what we prefer to regard as such. Reality has however
disappeared from the medial world of the performance; reality is out.
In earlier installations, Oblak and Novak already connected their performances
with pneumatics, joining the virtual space of the medial to the three-dimensional
space of the Real. With The Box, Box 2, Box 3 and Sisyphus Actions, short
film sequences are used to probe the spreading out of movement beyond the
picture frame into the world of objects. As protagonists in their own films
they can indeed stretch the rubber outer skin of their monitors, but they
can't escape them. They remain the content of their mediums and those mediums'
surfaces.
Reality is Out is the latest in a series of works characterised by machine-like,
unending repetition of scenes deploying factory rhythms. Nika Oblak's and
Primož Novak's humour is reflected in their works. A subtle wit is common
to all their videos, images and installations, illuminating the absurdity
and the blind spots of the Real in order to render cognitive understanding
possible. Instead of offering solutions the artists intensify the absurdity
until a means of illumination begins to emerge. Their occasionally black
humour combines with the melancholic sense of being stuck in a situation
with (almost) no way out.
Oblak's and Novak's work can be read according to their motto "contemporary
art is nothing but a business but we take it as a joke". As artists
they regard themselves as part of a social system based on unconditional
consumption with a capitalist face in which media present the pursuit of
maximal accumulation of material wealth as the meaning of existence. According
to Guy Debord, an important reference for Oblak and Novak, consumer capitalism
transforms everything into a superficial spectacle. The consumer is more
or less an appendage and the passive end point of the product, whose promise
of happiness already fades at the instant of purchase. But another product
is always immediately available to renew the promise. In this pseudo-world
of harried consumerism reality becomes invisible and repression latent.
The media are the main vehicle of this "society of the spectacle",
controlling the individuals' desires by means of stereotypes, images and
ideology. Yet the content of the media is less decisive than the fundamental
structures of media itself. Structure in fact determines content. The form
of media inscribes itself into its messages. Media shape society.
"The medium is the message", as we know since McLuhan. The system
message of media, their "operating system" itself, conditions
community, dictating norms, rules and codes of behaviour that barely anyone
can free themselves from. And it is not alone techno-media that form reality.
Already with the beginning of language, the first human-made images and
the emergence of writing human reality constructs itself according to the
requirements of these sign systems. Writing was the precondition for larger
systems of dominance, shaping trade in process of expanding and the states
in process of formation. Much later, book printing altered society and its
members, shifting class distinctions and pushing economic development. Oblak
and Novak play with this structural context. In Reality is Out, it is not
the protagonists who escape the media frame, but rather the sign "reality",
which breaks into reality while at the same time putting in question our
notion of reality.
Here they follow Slavoj Zizek, who has again and again emphasized with verve
that wit, jest and the openness of playful action can open up little windows
to "truth" for subjects in a constructed reality. Otherwise, the
individual, so Zizek closely following Lacan, is entirely controlled by
desire and from the triad of the Symbolic, the Real and the Imaginary. Human
wants are controlled by consumerism as the engine of modern capitalism,
while the media are both guardians and the tarted up world in which we live.
Global pop culture and American dominated cinema in particular are like
the photo wallpaper of this holding cell, concealing its true character.
The signs obtain autonomy; the world of signs becomes the simulacrum (Baudrillard)
of a world caught in self-reference. Reality remains illusion, since people
are unable to tell apart the Real from the Symbolic. At the instant the
"Reality" sign moves out of the box it designates the reality
of the viewer as such. The artists' hope of obtaining an instrument of knowledge
rests on this humoristic tautology. Like Zizek, Oblak and Novak also seek
artistic strategies to undermine the constant seduction, without resorting
to moralistic, ideological argument.
The combination of robot mechanics with message-bearing signs already belonged
to their praxis prior to Reality is Out. The mobile robots from Activists
(2011) carry signs with protest phrases reminiscent of occupy and outrage
movements, though chiefly appropriating the protest culture of the Situationist
International from the 1960s, in which Guy Debord was a central figure.
The machines make demands like "Defend The Right To Protest",
"Give Me Back My Future" and "Time's Up", moving freely
within the exhibition spaces of the art world. Consequent on their social
analysis, the artists view the machines as bearers of free social expression
and as the legitimate occupiers of public space, while humans petrify in
sedentary consumerism. The apparatuses lay claim to the subjective freedom
of volition that German romantic philosophers ascribed exclusively to humans.
In this sense, reality has "really" jumped out of the box, Pandora's
box, which serves not to conceal the uncanny but to cultivate our illusions.
Outside is the rule of the uncomprehended, disorder, horror. Reality Is
Out - but we prefer to remain inside.
Nika Oblak & Primož Novak, Absolutely Fabulous 5
(text from solo exhibition Absolutely Fabulous 5, MC Gallery, New York, USA)
Nika Oblak & Primož Novak humorously explore contemporary media in our
capital driven society as they dissect its visual and linguistic structure.
Their works draw parallels between the commercial and the art world. They
inhabit the role of standardized individuals within these worlds. Nika and
Primož"start from the premise: "Contemporary art is nothing but a business,
we take it as a joke.'' As we accept that the art world remains structured
as a set of multiple hegemonic systems, What is to be done? The two artists,
a couple in their private life, have been working as an artist"s cooperative
since 2003. They work with the notion of the artist as a brand: even their
notion of retrospective is ironically intoned: this is the fifth iteration
of the "absolutely fabulous" duo. They explain that the title Absolutely
Fabulous referred initially to their movie trailers Shund and Cab Driver,
and the series of posters Coming Soon. Although not all their Absolutely
Fabulous exhibitions were retrospectives, artists like to keep the title:
"We just like to keep the same title for several shows, since it is like
with a good movie, where no. 2 is made immediately when no. 1 succeeds."
Nika and Primož position themselves as protagonists in a media saturated
environments, rather than creators of fine arts products. In the practice
that comprises of video, photography, installation and new media they use
advertising visual tactics to lure the consumer " in this case to subvert
the seduction by activating the viewer"s response. There is no product that
is seductively pitched " the set of visual tactics are employed in a "emperor"s
new clothes" fashion. The title of the show becomes thus their artistic
credo: the dictate to be absolutely fabulous refer to constant competition
in our contemporary late capitalist consumerist society. The artists feel
the pressure: "We have to be the best in something, have the best lifestyle
or best car... Consumerism is keeping one in the frame of ego, we work more
and more to be able to shop more..." Art practice thus becomes a strategy
of resistance, accessible to the viewers. In the series We Did This and
That, Nika and Primož subverted the idea of endurance performance by replacing
it with an image. There is no action behind the image " the performance
never happened " it is simulated for the camera. This is their idiosyncratic
seductive representational strategy - alluring and arresting, the images
lure the viewers to consume them. In fact," there is no there there": actions
have never happened, the end result is the image showing the protagonists.
The reality of the image is the only one that exists " simulacrum prevails.
The metastases of enjoyment continue.
Nika Oblak & Primož Novak, Do They, or Don't They?
(catalogue text from exhibition Future Relevance, Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture / Urbanism, B10, Shenzhen, China)
Playful and inventive moments curiously unfold the ideas behind Nika Oblak
& Primož Novak. The humorous, films, sculptures, robots, question the
ambiguity of reality and fiction in the domain of everyday life. In copying
with and also playing with cultural phenomena they suggest the blurring
of reality in mediated society.
Protagonist and placing themselves at the centre of the work, they construct
situations to confuse and deliberately unsettle common perception. In this
new work "Activists", is a consequence of the circuits of power than representational
of true democracy. The idea of democracy has become globally autocratic.
The robots hold banners stating that democracy is a fallacy. What state
of governance does work, what does pure democracy look like?
The value of art and cultural production is also an important aspect to
their work. To reveal the systems that are ever omnipotent and that the
art world has become victim of. The construct of production not just only
in art is part of the Sisyphus effect of the global economy. The impact
on the market is a prospect for China. However, the consequence is critical
in an overlaboured and saturated market.
Nika Oblak & Primož Novak clashes together a parody of media, the world
of contemporary art and contemporary cults. Theorist such as Martin Esslin"s
Theatre of the Absurd is a text that analyzed with meaningful insights the
implicit philosophy behind the dark humour. Playwrights such as Samuel Beckett
and Eugene Ionesco, Esslin argues that their work conveys the stark reality
of existence, which the human condition is to seek purpose in a purposeless
life. Absurd drama attacks religious, political and social convention in
order to show the difficult truth.
Nika Oblak & Primož Novak, Sisyphus Actions
(catalogue text from exhibition Sculpture Today, Contemporary Art Gallery, Celje, Slovenia)
By employing the visual language typical of advertising and consumerist
mass culture, and through humor and irony, Nika Oblak and Primož Novak deal
with the society of late capitalism, of consumerism, of the general commodification
and of the media construction of reality. They speak about the commercialization
of society, about the decisive influence of mass media on the shaping of
public culture, about the media production of representative individuals,
about the expansion of fascination over celebrity, fame and success, and
about the non-critical individual who considers important those contents,
images and patterns presented as such by the media. They make fun of social
stereotypes and question, by way of parody, absurd and funny actions and
deeds, both their own position and role within the world of art as well
as the functioning of the world of art and, and above all, of its marketing
processes. They apply various kinds of media, in particular video, photography
and installation, and often take the role of the main and only actors in
their works, performing different roles and situational scenes.
Their most recent work, Sisyphus Actions, presented at this exhibition,
is a three-unit video installation composed of a rubber box, an LCD TV,
a pneumatic mechanism and a compressor. An accurate synchronization between
the digital image and the pneumatic system allows the 2D image to be transferred
into a 3D space: the consequence of each action performed by the artists
in the video results in a convexity on the box"s surface. The artists achieve
the illusion of the real and the state of absurdity by merging video image
with haptic effects and by continuous repetition of nonsensical actions,
respectively. Representing the state of being stuck in an endless situation,
the work is an allegory of the contemporary way of life, of the state of
being caught up in the consumerist mentality, in the desire for the new
and better, in a constant need for accumulating material goods. The work
speaks about the state of being stuck in an everyday routine where, as the
authors explain, people work more and more in order to be able to consume
more. Sisyphus Actions is a work in which the artists, who have been
working in tandem since 2002, reflect upon capitalist society through the
use of a purified and carefully thought out formal language, with attention
being paid to the smallest detail, and through the use of technology that
allows for innovative special effects.
Nika Oblak & Primož Novak, Absolutely Fabulous
(text from solo exhibition Absolutely Fabulous, Motorenhalle, Dresden, Germany)
The trailer of Quentin Tarantino's cult movie "Pulp Fiction" starts. Who
has seen it before, will be able to identify every single scene. But there
is this strange and striking similarity of the main characters: Nika Oblak
& Primož Novak themselves slip into all female and male leading roles
of the film, they copy setting after setting, using the title "Shund". The
same happens with the cinematographic advertisement of the classic "Taxi
Driver", here introduced as its new version "Cab Driver".
In their recent movie remakes, that are completes by stylish posters, Oblak
& Novak again ask the question for the source and the expiration date
of fame, but at the same time that of how the audience is influenced by
the media. They state: "In this way we subject ourselves to the influence
of mass media and materialize a common fascination with celebrities. As
actors of all parts in the trailer of a fictive, non existent film, we become
fictional superstars. Visually reconstructed trailer becomes like a de-ja-vu
of original, reflecting global pop culture and exploring the position of
an individual as a passive consumer of monopolized, one way communicated
media content."
That way and by means of popular reenactment-strategies, the artists from
Slovenija articulate media criticism, yet remaining entertaining. Furthermore,
this criticism does not happen from an elitist distance, but by a "complicit"
acting of the artists " who quote the ubiquitous desire to be famous, if
only for five minutes.
In that context, too, we can understand their series of short films and
staged photography titled "We did this and that". Here, Oblak & Novak
offer their personal version of "Guiness World Records" and invent numerous
curious competitive situations as "We stuffed 516 drinking straws in our
mouth and held them for 10 seconds for this photo". While demonstrating
the absurdity of related TV programms, the artist refrain refreshingly from
using a moralizing undertone. It is certainly more than a mere side
effect, that these works recall the bizarre experiments with body and material
as executed by Erwin Wurm, thus evoking the oeuvre of a successful colleague.
Yasmeen Baig-Clifford, curator and director VIVID Birmingham, UK:
Nika Oblak & Primož Novak, Recommended by Curators Worldwide
(catalogue text from exhibition MOVE - New European Media Art, Intecta, Halle, Germany)
"Contemporary art is nothing but a business; we take it as a joke."
The work of Nika Oblak & Primož Novak draws parallels between a society
driven by personal needs and capital and their own role as artists in the
contemporary art market. Infused with humour, their work adopts the visual
tactics and seductive constructions commonly employed in the mass media
to lure the consumer. A correlation is thus invited with the attention seeking
tactics employed by a particular strain of contemporary artist and the corresponding
tendency, widespread in media culture, to celebrate the glamorous, the successful
"fame" at all costs.
Oblak and Novak"s practice spans the moving image, photography, new media
and installation. Their use of commonplace communication media familiar
to the consumer creates a very direct relationship with the audience and
engages the viewer in a terrain which is accessible and familiar. But nothing
is quite as it first seems. Fact and fiction collide. For instance, in a
series of gleefully short videos inspired by globally popular films Pulp
Fiction and Taxi Driver, the duo produced shot by shot pastiches
of the movie trailers in which they take on all of the roles " including
Novak in cartoonish "blackface". Shund (2008) takes the original
trailer for Quentin Tarantino"s Pulp Fiction and remakes it, shot
by shot with a lo-fi twist. Toy cars and guns stand in for the heavyweight
originals, and the backgrounds are constructed from photo-collages incorporating
images culled from internet trawls. In this way, the artists dive straight
to the swelling image bank which is the internet and situate themselves
within it as fictional superstars of their own making.
The inane antics of the Big Brother generation are alluded to in their photographic
and video series We Did This And That (2007) in which they confront
our obsession with celebrity through 43 carefully constructed photographic
images and 13 videos, which appear to show the artists as record holders
through a re-staging of absurd and often futile feats recorded in the Guinness
Book of World Records. The playful undertone cuts across any potentially
moralizing stance, although the critique of our easy acceptance of the video
document as "proof" is clear. The futility of the re-staged acts introduces
a strong element of doubt. Should we believe in them?
The Box (2005), shown recently in the 2009 Sharjah Biennial is a
video installation in which the artists are trapped in a fictive space "
in this instance, inside a rubber encased monitor. Frustrated, they attempt
to physically beat their way out to the outside world. A pneumatic contraption
lies under the rubber and is timed to work in unison with the futile actions
of the human protagonists on-screen. As Oblak appears to punch at the walls,
the rubber film flexes and responds with protrusions. There are clear allusions
within the work to the position of the individual in terms of the technological
controls inherent in the mass media, and the grip the media has gradually
established over the individual through such controls. Preceding the residency
for EMAN by four years, the core theme of the work nevertheless isolates
the artists from the outside world through entrapment within a media construct
of their own making.
During their residency with VIVID, the duo playfully critiqued their own
commodity status. Utilising their tactic of taking on the roles of protagonists
in their own work, in Recommended by Curators Worldwide (2009), Oblak
and Novak have produced a billboard poster in which they feature as the
must have commodity. Beneath their image is the slogan "Recommended by Curators
Worldwide", a familiar rhetoric device used by advertising companies to
lend their product credibility.
In contradiction to the visibility and ubiquity associated with urban billboards,
Oblak and Novak chose to locate Recommended by Curators Worldwide
in a private arboretum within a secluded Welsh forest. Locating the work
in this way alludes to the perceived "need" to consume, and to the notion
of access to advertising being almost a statement of inclusion, of being
desired as a consumer and of being worthy of the goods advertised. Using
themselves as a "brand" within the work critiques the way in which the commercial
art world markets and packages artworks but at the same time, the perverse
location allows the artists to take control of the space and means of distribution.
In contrast to the struggle to break free seen in The Box, the artists
in this instance take full control of their space and of consumer access
to them. With full scale, face on images of the artists, the work is brazenly
discordant with its leafy surroundings. There is only an incidental audience,
an occasional passing rambler or solitary holiday maker. But hey " it"s
because we"re worth it.