Galanterie Mécanique / Fil d’argent

Kinetic installation and musical performance
25Th International Biennial Of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana
Jury Honorable Mention

The collaborative and complex installation projects of Meta Grgurevič and Urša Vidic are based on a multimedia vocabulary that explores the boundaries between stage and gallery installations. They cross-pollinate the specific codes and signs of both the art space and the theater, breaking the boundaries between them. Moving between history and memory with deliberate playfulness and wonder, their mechanised environments, at the edge of narration.

One of their most recent projects “Galanterie Mécanique / Fil d’argent”, was a symphony of kinetic objects and music performance that contemplated the relationship between man, machine, collaboration, corporation between individuals, and the position of the individual within wider social modernity as expressed in the 1936 film Modern Times and its embrace in the Russian theatre system of Vsevolod Mayerhold. These anxieties and enthusiasms continue to be reflected in the new industrial age, in which everyone has to do their part in order for the functioning system to continue as a complex, living organism.

All the elements, including object, music, and lights are tightly interconnected and mutually reactive. This creates the atmosphere of a mechanical ballet or classical music concert. (Deborah Cullen, Curator)

CREDITS:
Authors: Meta Grgurevič, Urša Vidic
Music Performance: Bowrain, Left Finger
Electro Engineering: Martin Podlogar, Tomo Markočič
Construction of Individual Elements: France Petač
Photography of Installation: Urška Boljkovac