Šum #3 |Pia Brezavšček, Jernej Kaluža| Friendship between heterotopy and network

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ABSTRACT: The article takes as its starting point the recent exhibition Politization of Friendship that took place in MSUM Ljubljana. The binding thread of the exhibition, that is formed through the presentation of different collectives and collaborations, is the elusive concept of friendship. Through or even beyond very different art projects, it is this relation, the practice that is the object of the exhibition. That being the case, we can detect that the exhibition gives insufficient consideration to different kinds of friendship. What do all these different forms have in common and is it even possible to speak of friendship in singular? What are the differences (and the similarities) between the group of friends called OHO from 1969 (intensity of relations, incessant inclusion in a communal way of life and common thinking and creation of a small group) and the contemporary network of strategic knowing who’s who in the art world, which is schematically presented in Minna Henriksson’s Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade Notes? In the article, we tackle this very difference: friendship as an isolated heterotopy, separated from the (hostile) exterior, and on the other hand friendship as a network without the exterior, but in which the close friend becomes indistinguishable from an enemy. How does such a structure affect the artistic production?

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