MANCA BAJEC / Prologue: Weaver of Past Potentials, 2021
PRESENTNG EKO 8 ART PROJECTS
MANCA BAJEC / Prologue: Weaver of Past Potentials, 2021
HD video, 7 min 24 sec
courtesy of the artist
Artist, researcher, and writer Manca Bajec has created a narrative work in video and sound, a spoken performance, which unfolds like a screenplay. The work takes inspiration from the idea of invention and failure, and trial and error. Adapting on the notion of the weaving spider as a symbol of the many associations with MTT, including its role as a mascot at the factory, the brief narrative introduces the interplay of what the future potentials of memory might be and rethinking the notion of memory as a future industrial landscape.
At the centre of the strange tale is the allegory of a spider forced to weave for a master, and the amnesia-like properties of a plant such as Angel's Trumpet, a plant with the ability to cause long-term memory loss. Bajec uses the backdrop of the textile factory with its historical, yet distant memory as a thriving place of export in the former Yugoslavia, with its own heady days of success, as a place of production, with extensive social care, education, and cultural programmes. Indeed, one of the triggers for Bajec's research of the real history of theatrical plays and cultural productions created and staged by the workers here. The narrative work is as much a story of political and social amnesia and illusory readings as we hear a voice recount, whilst revealing only a curtained space, a stage that does not open. Tapping into absurdities of reality and fiction, mythological tales of Arachne, scientific literature of the developments surrounding spider silk, this visual script introduces the characters and sets the stage for the prologue of a play on the irregular nature of memory in part triggered by the architecture and purpose of the MTT textile factory.
Manca Bajec (b. 1982, UK/Slovenia) is an artist and researcher whose interdisciplinary work is situated in the realm of socio-politics. She has presented her work worldwide including Kaunas Biennial, ICA, Beside War Italy, WARM Sarajevo, 9/11 Memorial Museum, Columbia University, The New School, Goldsmiths, University of Cape Town. In 2019, she completed her practice-led PhD at the Royal College of Art. She currently works as the Managing Editor for the Journal of Visual Culture. She lives between Ljubljana and London.
