Dialogi
Eurozine
Dialogi
2013-02-15
Summary of Dialogi 10/2012
As in the previous issue the introductory editorial could not help but refer to the turbulent situation in Slovenian society. Literary editor Robert Titan Felix, in reflecting on the new novel by Slovenian writer Tom Podstensek Verdict on Behalf of the People, which overlaps in an interesting way with current societal developments, touches on quite a few essential questions: is there something wrong just with the elites that run the world, or is there also something wrong with the world as such; have the people really gained any benefit from Slovenia's independence and international integration, or have these benefits accrued only to domestic elites and international capital, which have placed us in a position of colonial dependence; and do the protests AGAINST things make any sense at all so long as they fail to evolve into a program FOR changes?
Theatre editor Primoz Jesenko's contributes an interview with Zarko Petan from among his conversations with artists of the Slovenian postwar avant-garde, conducted as part of a study of the period. Petan played an important role in bringing novelties from the world's theatre stages to their performance on the stages of Slovenian off and off-off groups. For example, as early as at the end of the 1950s he staged the first plays of Eugène Ionesco in this way. As a director Petan also worked in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, and throughout the former Yugoslavia.
Film editor Matic Majcen publishes an article introducing the concept of post-independence cinema into Slovenian film studies. After 1991 there were many ideological, textual, production, distribution, and reception changes in Slovenian cinema that could be described using this concept, which in the transnational focus of film studies transcends the rigidity of the traditional concept of national cinematography.
In the literary section works by Slovenian authors only are published: the short story Nikola Tesla's Farbenblind by Milan Vincetic, excerpts from the novel Cinema by Natasa Sukic, a prologue entitled Dog Street to his new novel about Maribor by Tone Partljic, and a cycle of poems called Coming Closer by Petra Kolmancic.
In Cultural diagnosis Andrej Smid writes about the exhibition Unfinished Modernization: Between Utopia and Pragmatism, which is currently on display at the Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana. The exhibition is touring the cities of the former Yugoslavia and is part of a broad research project by an international group of architectural theorists studying the urban planning and architectural history of Yugoslav cities in the period 1945-1990. Through this exhibition, architectural modernism in Yugoslavia finally finds its place in history. Tanja Tolar writes about Beninese artist Gérard Quenum and his exhibition last year in the October Gallery in London. Quenum is regarded as one of Africa's most original sculptors, and uses recycled materials from urban neighborhoods in his works. Next is a report on an exhibition in London last year: as theatre editor Primoz Jesenko writes, the exhibition on Shakespeare in the British Museum already in its title Shakespeare: Staging the World goes beyond the usual exhibition of Shakespeare, but it has placed Shakespeare's world in the context of the society, time, and space which he lived in and shaped. Finally, we publish a review by Robert Simonisek of the romantic novel Ina written by Cvetka Bevc.