Elena Apostolovski


Curating
Meanwhile, in the Glossy Interface 
Click, post, play
What the Swans Are Twittering About in the Riverbed
On Point of Climax
A less obedient version of Alexa — Carmen de la Roca
all GAME no PLAY
In transmission
On Point of Oversight
Sound Occupations
At Once
68’

Teaching

Writing







Elena Apostolovski
Info
  1. Independent curator, writer and researcher.
  2. She seeks to question the relationship between social reality, artwork and the audience while affirming experiencing art as the physical experience of the body in space shared with other people.
  3. Her practice is focused on the exploration of interpersonal relationships in physical and digital realities shaped by dominant ideologies, aiming to find strategies that contribute to strengthening the connection within the community and disrupting conventions.

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Petra Mrša, Games We Follow, Games We Create

Foreword for the exhibition at  Drugo More, Rijeka



photo: Tanja Kanazir

The exhibition Games We Follow, Games We Create brings together a selection of artistic works created from 2011 to the present, in which the author Petra Mrša explores the human inclination towards play and imagination, relying on the potential of games to provide a new experience of reality.

By generating new experiences for participants, herself, or the audience, through asking questions, performativity, taking on roles, or occupying space, Petra Mrša encourages imagining a world in which we want to live and bringing that world to life through play. She also challenges dominant narratives shaping our everyday lives, questioning their intentions, causes, and patterns. By challenging prevailing knowledge, the author operates on the assumption that new experiences allow for a new relationship with the familiar.

The seven superhero costumes from Games and stitches – part 1 – LARP (2021) were conceived by the residents of the Zagreb – Dugave Community Service Center, questioning the costumes and characteristics of female superheroes and creating their own interpretations in collaboration with fashion designer Mia Ventin. The dual-channel video Are you sure you want to leave the game? (2019) emerges from a workshop inviting a group of boys to shift their activities from video games to the physical space, eliciting authentic reactions within a staged structure, with the intention of rearranging the experience from the two worlds. With the work The sensing shoes (2020), Petra Mrša reshapes her own experience of public space by walking through the city in shoes with clay pads that captured the contact between the body and the city. Through self-imposed rules of an uncomfortable game, public space is examined as a place of belonging or alienation.

Two documentary films provide a depiction of experiences and interpersonal relationships arising from various types of games or adventures that protagonists devise or follow. The desire (2018) follows an intimate expedition to the island of Jabuka by pedal boat, an adventure that transcends the boundaries of the body, while in Health 90 (2022), a group of gamers exchange their experiences of following an adrenaline-fueled digital narrative. The fact-based work titled Zagreb, 16. 02. 2019. documents the action of a group of girls stemming from a series of games, based on which the girls decided to create banners and display them in Ban Jelačić Square in Zagreb.

A photograph of a boy from the series New School (2011) points to the biological need for play and imagination. Shivering throats, breaking the walls (2021) allows the visitor/participant engagement and immersion in a new experience, inviting the activation of their own body through sounds, exploring the possibility of using technology in self-conceived, vulnerable, and intimate activities.


See more at: Drugo more, Games We Follow, Games We Create