Thursday, February 28, 2013
Nina Kurtela is visual artist born in 1981 in Zagreb, Croatia (former Yugoslavia). She studied “Contemporary Dance, Context, Choreography” at the HZT in cooperation with UdK Berlin. At the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb she got her MFA degree in Art Education and New Media Arts. She is currently working and living on relation between Berlin and Zagreb. In her work she is busy with the cross media field of research and creation between disciplines such as visual and performing arts.
 
In past several years she has been actively exhibiting her work across Europe trough various fields such as solo exhibitions, group exhibitions, film festivals, screenings, theater /performance festivals and venues such as Tanz Im August Berlin / Tanz Nacht Berlin / Transmediale Berlin / Sophiensaelle Berlin / MSU, Zagreb / HKW, Berlin / HDLU, Zagreb / MUMOK, Vienna / MUU, Helsinki / 104 Paris / MMOMA, Moscow / Essl Museum, Vienna / Glyptotheque HAZU, Zagreb / National Museum of Kosovo, Prishtina, Kosovo / Museum of Contemporary Art, Sofia / Gallery Nova, Zagreb / Gallery VN, Zagreb / Gallery of Contemporary Art, Pančevo, Serbia.
 
Her recent artistic scholarships and awards include: CEC Arts Link Fellowship Award 2012, New York / Radoslav Putar Award 2011 nomination, Institute for Contemporary Art - SCCA, Zagreb / Artist in Residence program 2011 KulturKontakt Austria, Vienna / Youth Artists Prize CEE 2010 - Henkel Art Award, MUMOK, Vienna / HAVC - Croatian audiovisual center, film production grant 2010 / DanceWeb scholarship at the Impulstanz festival 2007, Vienna / ESSL Art Award CEE 2007, ESSL museum Vienna.
 
SHORT STATEMENT:
"My practice does not exclude any medium and with its conceptual and multidisciplinary approach gives a chance for any means of production to be realized. The work is often multidisciplinary, site-specific, engages particular communities, questions monetary values and explores notions of exchange through which different social relations are established. While examining identity and intimacy I question how can different actions of the body in particular social, cultural and urbanistic sphere determinate the human behavior, influence experience and affect us. In my work I often use situations from every day life and place them into another contexts in order to render them visible and expand their meaning. I am interested in dedication, duration and time. I explore idea of immaterial labor in relation to everyday life, both engaging particular communities or using my own body thru which I questions exclusiveness of art in attempt to erase the distinction between the makers and observers.  I wish to create a place where I am both performer and witness, where the work is created by the conditions of given situation and that I as a maker cannot always influence. I can just set the conditions for something to happen."
 
Rickard Borgström (FI/SE) is a curator (born 1974 in Stockholm, Sweden). Currently he is interested in how to produce intimacy within the performance situation. It is a concrete physical choreographical research, with Robert Steijn, Pieter Ampe and Wojciech Kosma, on the backdrop of the immaterial economies impact on our bodies. Furthermore he explores the melancholic condition and its symptoms in the artistic institution. In Tbilisi he explored modes of creation trough the spectrum of new materialism.

Borgström lives and works in Berlin, Sibbo and Stamsund. He is an educated curator at Bergen Art Academy. He has also studied dramaturgy at the Swedish University College for Film and Theatre and Art History at Stockholm University. In recent years he has mainly worked in Norway, where he has been engaged as a curator at Teaterhuset Avant Garden, Bastard-International Performance Art Festival, Lofoten International Art Festival. For the Art Council Norway he curated the congress “WE TRY TO PLAN IT SO PERFECTLY”. The Art Space SINNE, Helsinki he curated the acclaimed exhibition “2.11 10.11 24.11 26.11 – An exhibition in four acts” with new works from Franco Bifo Berardi, Kosma, Smebye and Steijn. Between 2011 and 2012 he had the artistic responsibility for the performing art section at INKONST, Malmö. Over the years he has been working regularly with the following scholars: Knut- Ove Artnzen, Franco Bifo Berardi, Don Kulick, Marita Mukkonen, Hans Thies Lehmann, Sandra Noeth, Mårten Spångberg, and artists: Kjersti Andvig, Tarek Atoui, Hans Rosenström, Daniel AlmgrenRecén, Lara Almarcegui, Rodrigo Sorbazo. Presently he works for Stamsund Theatre Festival.

Events implemented by Nina Kurtela in Tbilisi:

14.03.2013, 16:00 / Building 8, Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi - Showing Nina Kurtela's film 'Transformance' and discussing it with MA students in anthropology, within the visual anthropology class.

Artist Talk / 20.03.2013, 16:00 / The National Science Library, Tbilisi - Presenting and discussing her works in relation with urban transformation, screening film 'Transformance'.

This event was part of artist in residency program organized in the frame of the EU project SPACES. The SPACES project is financed by the European Union through the Eastern Partnership Culture Programme.
 
While their stay in GeoAIR residensy Artist Talk was realized within the framework of Researchers' meeting: "Ensuring the Public Space for Citizens: Innovation and Inclusion", financially supported by East East Beyond Borders Program of Open Society Institute.
Meeting was part of the SPACES social study program.