Tadej Pogačar & P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art
The Big Archive
6 – 19 May 2013

Opening: Monday 6 May, 6 pm

PM Gallery | Ring Gallery

Trg žrtava fašizma bb, 10000 Zagreb Croatia

Retrospective exhibition

Hours: Tuesday – Friday 11 am – 7 pm;
Saturday–Sunday 10 am – 2 pm  Monday closed.

“Systems work because they do not work.”

Michel Serres

The Big Archive is a retrospective exhibition covering two decades of the creation and operation of Tadej Pogačar and P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Arts. It represents the largest and most comprehensive presentation of his work ever seen in Croatia. The exhibition includes video works, objects, photography, works on paper, artist books and installations.

Pogačar’s parasitism is a subtle deconstruction of the horizont of the everyday and a ruthless challenging of the social systems used to establish the center, dominance, and power in everyday life, art, and society. In his transdisciplinary research based projects, among other things, he references the theory of French intellectual and philosopher Michel Serres who developed the concept of the parasite, of the so-called third person as a personification of the third space. This concept carries a revised consideration about the basic categories in social sciences. According to Serres, humans are universal parasites who feed off of nature and other people.

Tadej Pogačar engages in interventionist logic, institutional critique, and critical research on social and political issues as well as participatory and collaborative projects. In his projects he deals with parallel economies, self-organisation, urban minorities, do-it-yourself architecture, the transformation of public space, control, etc. Many of his projects are long-term (for example, School’s Out, Kings of the Street, Street Economy Archive, P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Public Sculpture) and include teamwork and active participation. One of the most complex projects is CODE-RED (1999–present), which employs various forms of public action and activism as well as subversions in urban, media, and virtual environments.

Tadej Pogačar has exhibited widely, most recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (MSUM), Ljubljana; the Gallery for Contemporary Art, Leipzig (2012); the ZKM – Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2011–2012); the Vojvodina Museum of Contemporary Art, Novi Sad (2011); as well as at Manifesta 1 in Rotterdam and at biennials in São Paulo, Venice, Istanbul, Prague, and Tirana. He has also had exhibitions at the MUMOK, Vienna (2009); the San Francisco Art Institute (2007); the NGBK, Berlin (2007); the Stedelijk Museum (2004); the Central House of Artists, Moscow; and the Museo de Arte Carillo Gil, Mexico City.

Pogačar is also the founding and managing director of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute, a non-profit cultural institution that operates the P74 Centre and Gallery and the KAPSULA bookshop and project space in Ljubljana.

He is the recipient of many awards, grants, and residencies, including György Kepes Fellowship Grant for Advanced Studies and Transdisciplinary Research in Art, Culture and Technology (MIT, Boston, 2012–2013), the TREND Award for visual art (Ljubljana, 2007), the Jakopič Prize, Slovenia’s main national award for visual art (2009), the Shrinking Cities grant (Leipzig, 2004), the Franklin Furnace Grant for Performance Art (New York, 2001), the AIR_port residential program Forum Stadtpark in Graz (2003), and an Austrian Cultural Forum residency in London (2003).

The exhibition has been prepared in cooperation with P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute and is kindly supported by funding from the Croatian Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana, Department for Culture.