the lovest, revisited is a short documentary film (25 min), about JAŠA’s project entitled the lovest, a durational situational installation, a work in progress punctuated with events, which took place in the basement of Museum of Modern Art of Ljubljana between 2011 and 2014. The film was directed by Maša Nonković and JAŠA, based on material that Maša Nonkovič on her own initiative followed the happenings and captured it on film. The author initially feared that the events would lose authenticity due to the presence of the camera, but it soon became clear that this would be the only document capable of distilling the atmosphere of that time later on. Initiated by Piera Ravnikar (R Gallery), We.Are Institute and Kino Šiška, the documentary was realized in 2018.
The project is dedicated to the late Maks Soršak, Assistant Director of the Museum of Modern Art.
About the lovest project:
Strategically and in terms of content, the lovest project was a continuation of the project I’m Culture, with which the visual artist JAŠA left a significant mark on the Triennial of Contemporary Art in Slovenia in 2010, curated by Charles Esche. The artist developed a strategy of the relationship towards the entire exhibition and space, focusing on the unused areas. He carried out a series of events that took place in all areas and functional groups. They were set in the between-space, the coat check and the non-functional café, among the toilets, next to the lecture hall and elsewhere, opening up a chaotic world, opposed to the orderly exhibition aesthetic that dictated the walls of the gallery one floor up. The entire happening attracted a new, younger audience to the Museum of Modern Art, excitedly paying close attention to the happening, full of fun, humor, subjugation, destruction, and shock. With the intervention nearly merging with the space, it seemed a shame for the project to come to a sudden end.
A mere two weeks after the conclusion of the triennial, the project evolved into a new one called the lovest. Together with his collective, the artist established an alternative entrance through the window, allowing visitors to enter and exit freely, and covered the windows of the gallery basement in bright colors. He soon moved his studio into the gallery, building form and structure on a daily basis and leaving the doors open during the official gallery opening times. The installation attaining a satisfactory form was followed by organized events that soon competed with all the other Friday night gatherings in Ljubljana. The period coincided with a broader creative “renaissance” of the club scene in Ljubljana and elsewhere.
Over time, the lovest became an excellent instrument of active experimentation in combining individual media into a whole of events that – regardless of the debauchery, happening, concert, dancing, performance or other raging – always ended with the same words by the legendary gallery doorman: “The museum is closing.” The author aimed to utilize the form of a club or party as an artistic form, a participatory Gesamtkunstwerk. As he adds today: “Speaking about the lovest is speaking about life as we saw and lived it.”
