Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje is joining the CIMAM family! Our hard work, exceptional dedication and care for our collection, stepping out of our borders and onto the international scene, our rich programme and The Large Glass Magazine, have been recognized by CIMAM – The International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art.
CIMAM is the only international community that represents the interests of modern and contemporary art museum professionals and that provides the resources and the necessary exchange platforms for the best development of the museum activity. This membership further establishes MoCA Skopje’s place among the most renowned contemporary art museums of the world.
The Russian team of artists, critics, philosophers and writers Chto Delat – (What to do) donated a work of art to the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje. Their video “Becoming With the Museum” will be exhibited as part of the permanent exhibition, which will open this year at MoCA.
In their statement on this occasion, they said:
Ever since we got to know The Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, we fell in love with its space, the relationship between the indoor and outdoor views, its different layers, and its unique collection. We used the chance to work with the space in a performative way, revealing these inspirations.
Museums are spaces where we encounter the accumulation of different art pieces combined in one display, offering the viewer a multiplicity of experiences. They are built in order to amplify it. The Contemporary Art Museum in Skopje is the best example with its vantage position over the city, with its elegant cement and glass surfaces which help us feel and engage with artworks in a decent and proper way.
We worked in this amazing space for 5 days with a group of young artists and we conceived a performance around the exhibition spaces which reflects the relation of the seminar’s participants to the selected pieces of artworks. We wanted to link the macro narrative of different art works (when and how they are created, their social meaning, etc.) with a micro-narrative of every performer who was challenged to explain with her body and lyrical text the relations to the work and thus create a transformative and refreshing mapping of the museum and history of young generation which activate the transformative potential of museum.
The Dutch visual artist Jonas Staal and the Russian collective of artists, critics, philosophers and writers “Chto Delat” donated their works of art to the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje, so that the museum’s art collection is enriched with several very significant works.
The artist Jonas Staal donated his installation “New Unions 2016” (New Unions 2016 – 2019), which is part of the exhibition “All that we have in common” curated by Mira Gakjina and Jovanka Popova. The Russian collective “Chto Delat” donated their video “Becoming With the Museum” for the permanent exhibition, which will be open this year at MoCA Skopje. This video was produced by “Kontrapunkt” and developed as a performance as part of the program of “Krik Festival” that in 2017 took place in Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje.
The New Unions installation by Jonas Staal is an artistic and political campaign that departs from the current political, economic, humanitarian, and environmental crisis of Europe with the aim of assembling representatives of transdemocratic movements and organizations to propose scenarios for new future unions. Staal is an artist whose work deals with the relation between art, propaganda, and democracy. He is the founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit (2012–ongoing). Together with Florian Malzacher he co-directs the training camp Training for the Future (2018-ongoing), and with the human rights lawyer Jan Fermon he has initiated the collective action lawsuit Collectivize Facebook (2020-ongoing). With writer and lawyer Radha D’Souza he founded the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (2021-ongoing) and with Laure Prouvost he is co-administrator of the Obscure Union. His projects were exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the M_HKA in Antwerp, the Modern Museum in Stockholm and the Nam June Paik Art Center in Seoul, as well as the 7 Berlin Biennale, 31 S Саo Paulo Biennale and 12 Taipei Biennale.
The video donated by Chto Delat documents the process in which they works with a group of young artists and creates a performance, which shows the relationship of the participants with the selected works of art from the collection of MoCA Skopje. The work connects the macro-narrative of different works of art (when and how they are created, their social significance, etc.) with the micro-narrative of each performer, who through his body and lyrical text explains the relationship with the selected work. The work is a refreshing map of the museum and the history of the young generation that activates the transformative potential of the museum.
The collective Chto Delat (What is to be done?) was founded in early 2003 in Petersburg by a workgroup of artists, critics, philosophers, and writers from St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod with the goal of merging political theory, art, and activism. The name of the group derives from a novel by the Russian 19th century writer Nikolai Chernyshevsky, and immediately brings to mind the first socialist worker’s self-organizations in Russia, which Lenin actualized in his own publication, “What is to be done?” (1902). Chto Delat sees itself as an artistic cell and also as a community organizer for a variety of cultural activities intent on politicizing “knowledge production”. They advocates for the equality of all people, fighting against various forms of patriarchy, homophobia and gender inequality. They convey their ideas through: film, theater performances, radio programs, murals, public campaigns and seminars. The Russian collective Chto Delat has collaborated on Documenta 12 in Kassel in 2007, the 11th edition of the Gwangju Biennale in 2016, the Internship Program at the Garage Museum in Moscow in 2017, and exhibited their works the 12th Shanghai Biennale 2018; Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (2018); MUAC (The Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo), Mexico; COW BERLIN (2017 and 2015), San Paolo Biennale (2014); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2014); Tate Liverpool, Liverpool (2013); House der Kultren der Welt, Berlin (2013); 10th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2012); Statalice Kunstel, Baden-Baden (2011); Klnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2011); New Museum, New York (2011); Modern Gallery, Ljubljana (2011); Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2010) and others.
Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje is pleased to be a partner in the Manifesta 14 Western Balkans Project: Co-Producing Common Space and Shaping Formations of Solidarity in the Western Balkans and Beyond, co-funded by the European Union.
As part of the program of this project, the Museum of Contemporary Art will be the organizer of series of program activities, discursive and exhibitional program. The discoursive program, starting from 2021, will focus on the function of museums of contemporary art in the “New Reality” era, which is shaped by related events during 2020 and 2021, such as pandemics, locks, closed borders, nationalist government responses, hostile environmental policies, protests, etc.
The International Foundation Manifesta, the initiator of Europe’s only nomadic cultural biennial and initiator of the Manifesta 14 Western Balkans Project, is collaborating with the City of Prishtina, Kosovo to develop Manifesta 14 Prishtina which will open its doors from the 22nd of July to the 30th of October 2022.
Organised for the occasion of the biennial, the International Foundation Manifesta has set up the Manifesta 14 Western Balkans Project which aims to enlarge the outreach and duration of the European Nomadic Biennial by developing a cross-regional collaborative platform including a vast array of cultural and civic activities across the region. An integral objective of the project is to open up the Western Balkan to create a project that breaks the confines of isolated cultural infrastructures and networks.
Liking architecture, urban planning, human rights, arts and culture, the Manifesta 14 Western Balkans Project proposes a plethora of diverse activities in 2021 and 2022 ranging from in-depth cultural research, expert talks and conferences to exhibitions and events across the region.
The partner network of the Manifesta Western Balkans Project promotes a politics of care between different communities in the Western Balkans and aims to stimulate broader cross-border network structures, where knowledge production and local expertise can thrive.
The activities in the development process will be the result of close collaborations between the International Foundation Manifesta, The Netherlands and nine partners from the Western Balkans: Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) Skopje; Post-Conflict Research Center Sarajevo (PCRC); RRITU (Termokiss) Prishtina; Quendra Harabel Tirana; APSS Institute Podgorica; NGO Aktiv Kosovo; Meydan D.O.O. (Hestia) Belgrade; Kosovo Architecture Foundation (KAF); Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Sofia; European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) Berlin.
The Manifesta 14 Western Balkans Project has been awarded a Creative Europe Western Balkans grant by the European Union.
Visit part of the Museum rooms through the exhibition See Me Moving Placeless, installed in Galleries 1, 2, 3, and the museum cinema theatre.
The exhibition See Me Moving Placeless presents the thematic selection by the curators, Mira Gakjina and Jovanka Popova, from the Art Collection of Deutsche Telekom with works by the most representative artists from Southeast Europe. The exhibition was realized from September 29 through November 21, 2021. More about See Me Moving Placeless
Brief report on the results of the work of the Competition Commission for the design of a conceptual architectural and urban solution for the arrangement of the hill Kale
Seventeen (17) works participated in the competition for the design of a conceptual architectural and urban solution for the arrangement of the hill Kale in Skopje until the deadline of 15 May 2019.
Working in two separate sessions for evaluation of the received works, the Competition Commission decided to award two (2) equal first prizes of 125.000 denars to the works under the code “SO 162” and “Modul”, and the third prize of 50.000 denars to the work under the code “LOG 01”.
The names of the award-winning architects and a report on the work of the Commission including the reviews of the works will be published by 15 June 2019 at the latest.
Members of the Jury:
Zoran Petrovski – President of the Jury, Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje
Prof. d-r Vlatko Korabar – Faculty of Architecture, Skopje
Associate Prof. d-r Jovan Ivanovski – Faculty of Architecture, Skopje
Assistant Prof. d-r Goran Mickovski – Faculty of Architecture, Skopje
Assistant Prof. d-r Ana Ivanovska Deskova – Faculty of Architecture, Skopje
Arch. m-r Snezana Gerasimova – The State Institute for the Cultural Protection
Assistant Prof. d-r Meri Batakoja – Faculty of Architecture, Skopje
Museum Of Contemporary Art Skopje
31. 05. 2019
AWARD-WINNING ARCHITECTS :
With the decision of the Jury, two equal first prizes of 125.000 denars are given to the following teams of architects:
The third prize of 50.000 denars was given to the following team of architects:
Nikola Radulovic is awarded by the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje at the 12 Biennial of Young Artists. This the fifth time that the MoCA Skopje gives the award, which consists of the right to have a solo exhibition in the following year. The jury members Ana Frangovska, art historian and curator from Skopje, Jovanka Popova, curator from Skopje and Gjorgje Jovanovic, artist from Skopje decided to award Nikola Radulovic for his work The Book of Sclavin for the visual excellence and inventive interdisciplinary approach in the development of his fictitious dystopia The Book of Sclavin which intgelegently relates to the actual political and social reality.
Nikola Radulovic (born 1987 in Kumanovo) graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje and the post-graduate studies at the National Art Academy in Sofia. He had two solo shows in Skopje and a number of group exhibitions. His main interest is in the digital media and the internet.
The point d’ironie originates from a talk between agnes b., Christian Boltanski and Hans Ulrich Obrist in 1997. Six to eight issues are published each year. Each of them is made by an artist who makes it his own and brings it up to a singular work of art. By means of its gratuitousness as well as of its size and circulation, the point d’ironie is an atypical periodical which is distributed in a scattered way (one hundred thousand copies are spread out over the world in museums, galleries, bookshops, schools, movie theatres, shops, etc.) Made up by the French writer Alcanter de Brahm at the end of the XIXth century, the point d’ironie is a punctuation mark used at the end of sentences (as an exclamation or a question mark) to point ironic passages in a text.
Raymond Pettibon & Marcel Dzama n°59
Raymond Pettibon was born in 1977 in Tuscon, Arizona. His work embraces a wide spectrum of American “high” and “low” culture, from the deviations of marginal youth to art history, literature, sports, religion, politics, and sexuality. Taking their points of departure in the Southern California punk-rock culture of the late 1970s and 1980s and the “do-it-yourself” aesthetic of album covers, comics, concert flyers, and fanzines that characterized the movement, his drawings have come to occupy their own genre of potent and dynamic artistic commentary.
Marcel Dzama was born in 1974 in Winnipeg, Canada. His work is characterized by an immediately recognizable visual language that draws from a diverse range of references and artistic influences, including Dada and Marcel Duchamp. While he has become know for his prolific drawings with their distinctive palette of muted colors, in recent years, the artist has expanded his practice to encompass sculpture, painting, film, and dioramas.
The collaboration began in Summer 2015 with the artists swapping the first of series of drawings to be completed by the other. In a variation of the “exquisite corpse“ method in which a partner is only given portions of an other with concealed drawing to work on, Dzama and Pettibon developed each other’s compositions trough illustrations, collage, and writing. Just as the surrealists invented the technique in the early twentieth century as a playful and ultimately enriching exercise, the present drawings combine the two artists’ distinct styles in a revealing and often seamless fashion. In several works, it is almost impossible to determine who made what, which indicates how both strove to assimilate the other’s vision or anticipate his response.
point d’ironie occasionally could be found in our MSU Bookstore!
