International city projects / Peter Greenaway in Ljubljana / site specific / A Map to Paradise from Ljubljana
EXCERPTS
Gustav Gnamuš, a Slovenian painter and a professor at the Ljubljana Academy
of Fine Arts - in an interview in daily newspaper DELO on the occasion
when he was awarded the most eminent Slovenian Prešeren's award on February
8:
"Do you think that your
installation in the Celje Spital Chapell is the last one?"
"Do not take me for a conservative! My attitude towards installations
is absolutely positive, but as in the case of paintings one sees very
quickly which one is good and which one is not good, also because of a
long tradition of this medium. Not every installation is good - they extend
from the best to the worst. For me it is problematic if the installation
becomes a general praxis and is inhabited by those who act only through
the investment of their fancy idea. At the Ljubljana Castle we had the
opportunity to visit the installation by Peter Greenaway, in which all
experience of paiting towards all other media interventions was woven,
so that it absolutely convinces you. In the way that you almost apologize
when you depart from that space, because you say farewell.
Britain in Slovenia, winter 2000
"September guest appearance of Peter Greenaway
in Ljubljana was surely the most important British cultural event in Slovenia
in the year 2000. The visit of this world-renowned artist excited media
interest exceptionally.
The programme, which was organised by the Muzeum institute under the lead
of Barbara Novakovič, Nina Dešman and Helena Pivec, was composed of different
spheres of Greenaway's activity.
Večer, Uroš Smasek
" (...) the festival of Peter
Greenaway combined three thematic topics (...)
(...) in Greenaway's presence "Peter Grenaway's Book" was presented
in the Slovenian National and University Library in which Slovenian authors
Jure Mikuž, Stojan Pelko, Renata Salecl, Liljana Stepančič, Majda Širca
and their Hungarian colleague, film theorist and lecturer Andras Balint
Kovacs have presented interdisciplinary views of the famous creator (...)
One of the topics of Greenaway's "festival" was projected image
"Bologna Towers 2000 - Light Event for 8 Days" at the Ljubljana
castle.
That was about half an hour's long synchronized projection through more
projectors on the castle's walls accompanied by very suggestive musical
supplement. Greenaway created it for Bologna in his own well known style
presenting Bologna's history since its foundation (...)
The central point of the previous week was "A Map
to Paradise" presented in the Saturday evening in the presence of
Minister of Culture Rudi Šeligo, the British Ambassador David Andrew Lloyd
and the Lady Mayoress Viktorija Potočnik."
Mladina, Uršula Cetinski
"Peter Greenaway in Ljubljana,
the Muzeum's project, when Greenaway placed Ljubljana in the first place
in drawing map's path to paradise, when he again showed his films to Ljubljana
audience, when Ljubljana got Bologna Towers 2000 - a fascinating film
fresco of the town's history - and when his installation in the castle's
casemates showed how emotionally loaded and socially criticizing contemporary
work of art can be."
Mag, Irena Štaudohar
"It is a matter of an important art action,
which is changing Ljubljana into world metropolis, as an interweave of
domestic and foreign creative energies can blow all known fears of Slovenian
littleness and self-sufficiency away, especially if such a big star, a
personality as Greenaway is taking part."
Delo, Nataša Petrešin
"Ljubljana was honoured to start the newest project
of his called Ten Maps to Paradise. In the following
year and a half the next nine maps will be drawn, which all refer to the
topographic and mental image of a chosen location, therefore it is all
about environmental installations of "site-specific" type.
The physical descent into the installation, where one with his presence
becomes its constituent moment, concludes with the rise into everyday
reality, where one, just before leaving the scene, meets an abandoned
angel. Behind the angel there is the projection of a ladder's shadow,
the link between above and below and his double shadow, which speaks about
messenger's belonging to us and to them.
An art event worth memorizing."
Delo, Judita Krivec Dragan
"How consistently he understood his art mission in
Ljubljana - one of the ten European cities, which
he is including in his newest exhibition-map project - one could get persuaded
not only by monumental site installation, where he with uncommon sensibility
recapitulated unfriendly history of former carriage and gaol in the cellar
of Ljubljana castle, but as well by "performance" at the opening
itself (...)"
Nedelo, B.L.
"Greenaway's installation in the castle's cellars
is monumentally effective, although it is composed of "small wares"
(pencils, letters, leaden weights, golden hoops, feathers), which try
to illustrate the way to paradise, consisted of twelve stops. It is not
about conventional artistic installation, but about real little spectacle,
fitted out with light and smoke effects."
Ekran, Mateja Valentinčič, interview
"The maps are something special,
they combine more slopes at the same time, they tell you, where you have
been, where you are and where you may go. The basic idea is my wish to
recreate a place, where I want to go - and I hope you want to go there
as well - viz. in 3-D and multimedia way...
When we will finish and everything together will last for something like
eighteen months, we will take pictures of the ten maps, which will be
published by my Paris publisher as an atlas. The most important is the
maps will not survive in 3-D - I would not wish that all from this world
would fallow me to paradise! - that is why I will erase, remove, destroy
them after 40 days, so that no one will ever see them except on the photographs."
