The Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts in Slovenia is pleased to announce details of selected works that will feature in the 33rd edition of the Biennial entitled Crack Up – Crack Down, curated by Slavs and Tatars, giving an expansive view of the genre of satire today as a form of graphic language.

Participating artist includes: Pablo Bronstein; Cevdet Erek; Nicole Wermers; Flaka Haliti and Alenka Pirman; as well as a number of young, emerging and yet undiscovered artists. The Biennial will also present interventions by activists, new media polemicists and performances by stand-up comedians.

Major new commissions include:

Artist, writer and author Hamja Ahsan (b. 1981) will present The Aspergistan Referendum, 2019, asking Biennial venues to join the “Aspergistan Federation,” The National Homeland of Shy, Introvert and Autistic Spectrum Peoples… in “a global Introfada struggle against extrovert-supremacy.”

Woody de Othello (b. 1991) will present Warm Welcome and Unhinged, a group of enlarged, hardware objects, such as door knobs, locks and hinges inviting the viewer to explore mechanisms of access.

The work of multi-media artist Martina Vacheva (b. 1988) reflects on folk mythology and social commentary by juxtaposing characters from popular culture and scenes from cult films with Bulgarian traditions and folklore. Alongside prints, paintings and ceramics, Vacheva will create a zine for the Biennial, which looks at Eastern European fetishisation of women.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan (b. 1985) will present Disputed Utterances, a series of works using palatography, a technique used to identify the parts of the mouth used when making different sounds. Abu Hamdan uses this to recall cases of “disputed utterance”, a trial where someone’s conviction hinges upon conflicted claims about a word or phrase.

Zhanna Kadyrova (b. 1981) will create a site-specific installation Market selling ceramic and concrete versions of the fruits, vegetables, meats and fish native to Ljubljana.

Xiyadie’s (b. 1963) work contrasts the traditional art form of paper cutting with scenes of queer eroticism and addresses issues such as sexuality and gender in the context of Chinese traditions and political regime.

Seminal Fluxus artist Endre Tot (b. 1937) will present an adaptation of his Ten Questions, a vast presentation of the Ten Commandments in which the text has been written-over with Zeros which he has translated to Slovene for this presentation.

Public programming:
Introduction by Branko Đurić Đuro to Top Lista Nadrealista presentation.

Stand-up:
Performances of stand-up comedy, with a focus on post-socialist Eastern Europe, will provide a platform to explore language and its limits in today’s public sphere. Appearances by Anja Wutej (Slovenian/English), Daniel-Ryan Spaulding (English), Dragoș Cristian (English), Marina Orsag (Croatian) and Boštjan Gorenc aka Pižama (Slovenian).

Concert:
Augustin Maurs will perform Out of Tune – Favorite songs of my neighbors, abusers and despots, a cabaret-style parodic concert of songs utilised by historical strongmen and dictators.

Symposium:
Arthur Fournier’s No More Fuchs Left to Give will provide a survey of online commercial systems in relation to the visions of Walter Benjamin, Eduard Fuchs, Honoré Daumier and John Heartfield, while Emily Apter discusses the micropolitics of memes. Vid Simoniti examines satire in Martin Krpan and Top Lista Nadrealista. Mohammad Salemy provides a brief history of political satire in Iran between the constitutional revolution of 1906 and the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and its recent return via meme culture.

The keynote address by Metahaven, Sleep Walks The Street visits the poetry of Alexander Vvedensky as a form of absurdist not-knowing and negative philology.