Marina Gržinić & Aina Šmid Underground Experiments

Working across video, performance and installation, Marina Gržinić and Aina Šmid developed an experimental practice in Ljubljana that engaged with identity, gender, history, geography, technology and the politics of representation. This programme brings together six works made between 1984 and 1997, spanning the late-socialist period, the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the emergence of post-socialist cultural conditions.

The programme opens with Cindy Sherman or Hysteria Production Presents a Reconstruction of Sherman’s Photographs (1984), a reinterpretation of images by American artist Cindy Sherman that examines representation, femininity and constructed identity. Bilocation (1990) explores questions of presence, absence and mediated space through the possibilities of video.

The works from the 1990s expand these concerns into questions of memory, geography and social transformation. Red Shoes (1994), Luna 10 (1994) and The Butterfly Story (1995) connect personal and collective experience with technological images and changing ideas of place. Their use of video and installation creates spaces where memory, media and geography overlap.

The programme concludes with Post-socialism + Retroavant garde + Irwin (1997), engaging directly with the cultural landscape of post-socialism and the artistic practices that emerged around this period.

Together, these works offer a focused introduction to Gržinić and Šmid’s pioneering video practice and to the cultural atmosphere of Ljubljana during a period of profound aesthetic and social change. Moving between the social and the technological, their images capture a city in transformation – and a generation negotiating new realities as Yugoslavia gave way to Slovenia.

TLC23 is the London based collaborative platform initiated by Artists Katie Shannon and Keira Fox. TLC23 presents focuses on research based embodied practices spanning academic writing, film, music and performance.

TLC23 have been in exchange with Marina Gržinić over these past years and this will be the first cinema screening in London to date of her collection of short films made between 1984-1997.

Programme

Cindy Sherman or Hysteria Production Presents a Reconstruction of Sherman’s Photographs (Cindy Sherman ali histerija produkcija predstavlja rekonstrukcijo fotografij Cindy Sherman), 1984 Video, VHS, colour Produced by SKUC-Forum, Ljubljana, 3 min.

Bilocation (Bilokacija), 1990 Video, Betacam SP PAL, colour, 12 min.

Red Shoes (Rdeči čeveljčki), 1994 Video, Betacam SP PAL, colour, 8 min.

Luna 10 (The Butterfly Effect of Geography), 1994 Video and video installation, colour, stereo 10 min.

The Butterfly Story (Zgodba o metulju), 1995 Video and video installation, The Butterfly Effect of Geography Betacam SP PAL, colour, 8 min.

Post-socialism + Retroavant garde + Irwin, 1997 Video, Betacam SP PAL, colour, 22 min.

Post-socialism + Retroavant garde + Irwin, 1997, by Gržinić and Šmid, copyright Gržinić/Šmid.

Marina Gržinić and Aina Šmid have been working collaboratively in video and media art since 1982. Over more than four decades, they have produced more than 40 video art projects, a 16mm short film, numerous video and media installations, documentaries, and television productions. Their work has been presented at more than 100 international video festivals and exhibitions, receiving several significant awards, and has been included in major retrospectives in Oberhausen, Brussels, Klagenfurt, and Koper. In 1997, they created an interactive CD-ROM for ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, further extending their practice into emerging digital and interactive media. Their influential body of work has been documented in publications including Moments of Decision: The Performative, the Political, and the Technological (2006), New-Media Technology, Science and Politics: The Video Art of Marina Gržinić and Aina Šmid (2008), and Index – Video Works (1990s–2003) (2004). Marina Gržinić (b. 1958) is a philosopher, media theorist, art critic, curator, and Aina Šmid (b. 1957) is an art historian. Their collaborative practice engages video, film, installation, digital media, and critical theory, addressing questions of politics, technology, memory, identity, and social transformation. In recent years, their work has continued to be presented internationally, including exhibitions and programs in Brussels, Graz, Ljubljana, Gdańsk, and Pforzheim. Gržinić has also continued an active curatorial and collaborative practice, including work with Tjaša Kancler and Jovita Pristovšek on the 2023 feature-length documentary Insurgent Flows. Trans, Decolonial and Black Marxist Futures and related exhibitions. Their website and archive can be found at grzinic-smid.si.