MUSU
Co-Author: Bojana Kunst
Location: Bus travel from Ljubljana – Celje – Maribor – Graz
Year: 2006
Production: Kunsthaus Graz
Curator: Christine Peters, Adam Budak
Photo: Apolonija Šušteršič, Dejan Habicht
Executive producer: Ira Cecić
Musu guide: Nataša Tanko
Graphic design: Adriana Seserin
Radio program: Radio Marš (Maribor Student Radio Station)
Translation: Katja Kosi
Partners: Moderna galerija Ljubljana, Center Sodobnih Umetnosti Celje, Umetnostna galerija Maribor
Sponsors: ÖBB-Postbus GmbH
Technical Data: MUSU Bus with guide, MUSU logo with applications (bus, sticker, badge, seat head), folder with texts,
MUSU guide performed the travel script on the bus traveling from Ljubljana to Graz with several stops.
MUSU radio in collaboration with radio MARŠ Maribor; live radio program in transit.
MUSU stations; designed station boards (metal boards on poles put in a black plastic bucket with earth in it) marking the bus stops in Ljubljana, Celje, Maribor and Graz.
MUSU CD program edited by Kees van Zelst; compilation of music and text; interviews by the artist with: Zdenka Badovinac, Maria Lind, Peter Packesch, Nicolas Bourriaud.
MUSU info folder – content:
Igor Zabel: ”Sodobna Umetnost” / “Contemporary Art“
Gerald Raunig: 2015 [Einleitung] / 2015 [Introduction]
Maria Lind: European Cultural Policies 2015; A Report with Scenarios on the Future of Public Funding for Contemporary Art in Europe.
Beti Žerovec: Kurator in levičarska politizacija sodobne likovne umetnosti / The Curator And The Leftist Politization Of Contemporary Art
Eda Čufer: Naša stvar / Our Thing
MUSU Bus with a guide; MUSU logo with applications (bus, sticker, badge, seat head); folder with texts. The MUSU guide performed the travel script on a bus which travelled from Ljubljana to Graz with several stops. MUSU Radio in collaboration with Radio MARŠ, a live radio program in transit. MUSU bus stops: designed signage boards (metal boards on poles put in a black plastic bucket with dirt in it) marking the bus stops in Ljubljana, Celje, Maribor, and Graz. MUSU CD program edited by Kees van Zelst: a compilation of music and text; interviews by the artist with: Zdenka Badovinac, Maria Lind, Peter Packesch, Nicolas Bourriaud.
MUSU, Muzej Sodobne Umetnosti was a project for a new institution produced within the frame of the exhibition Protections at Kunsthaus Graz. It was a mind game about a non-existing Museum of Contemporary Art, without artefacts, without a marketable product, without a static physical space —yet related to an existing geographical, historic, and social context relevant to regional cultural politics. Thus the MUSU bus —a mobile structure, a communication device— transported the participatory MUSU audience on a journey from Ljubljana to Graz. This geopolitical trip (on the MUSU road) was conducted by the MUSU guide. Along the way were MUSU stops in centres of contemporary art in Ljubljana, Celje, Maribor, and Graz as well as at IKEA in Graz; each of the places creating a specific meaning within its immediate content offered to or by the visitor.
MUSU referred to Slovenian cultural politics in relation to the EU, crossed by a critique of the general tendency within the contemporary art institution, that is, to develop into a commercially well-represented, business-oriented physical entity, which is deeply embedded within the neoliberal ideology. MUSU’s fictional frame was combined with a concrete geographic memory —the MUSU road is also the road to Graz (to Austria, to the EU), which for decades has been an important shopping destination, especially for the northern part of Slovenia. IKEA has become an institution of our everyday life contributing to the construction of the image of our contemporary culture.