The Take, Action
Exhibition: Trend 2001 – 2005 (Trend Award for special achievements in the visual arts)
Location: Mestna Galerija, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Year: 2005
Courtesy: The artist
Photo: Božidar Dolenc, Apolonija Šušteršič
Technical Data: Screenings of the film The Take, film posters distributed around the city and in unemployment offices and available at the exhibition for people to take, flyers, ads in the local newspapers, questionnaire from www.thetake.org to be filled out by the film audience.
The film The Take is made by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein (Produced by: Barna-Alper Inc. and Klein Lewis Productions, in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada and in association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)
The project was made referring to www.thetake.org
Graphic Design: Adriana Seserin
Concept: My proposal for action:
I would like to use this opportunity to screen a film I have recently seen in the ICA in London: The Take, by Avi Lewis, director and Naomi Klein, one of Canada’s most outspoken journalists, and writer. It seems to me very relevant to show this film in Ljubljana, Slovenia as well as in other places in Europe at the moment.
“The Take is a political thriller that turns the globalization debate on its head”. It follows Argentina’s radical new movement of occupied business: groups of workers who are claiming the country’s bankrupt workplaces and running them without bosses.
Apparently there have been similar cases in Western Europe as well but information isn’t really up front. One wonders why. However I still remember the times of socialist Yugoslavia. Workers were running the factories as a collective as well. But somehow it didn’t work out. Could we say that was a historical conspiracy? Or was that some kind of system mistake? At the moment Slovenia is an independent country adapting itself to parliamentary democracy and running a “hard core” capitalism. Many former Slovenian factories are destroyed or abandoned and a big wave of very tricky privatization is eating up work places. Lots of people are getting fired every day without any alternative option to work.
Since I believe that the art context is able to produce or give space for ideas and suggestions which are applicable to real situations on very many different levels I would like to propose to screen the film The Take in a local cinema in Ljubljana. The information about the film should be distributed via the exhibition organization to target not only art public but also unemployed people in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Therefore I would like to design special posters and flyers which will be related to the local situation and directed to the local audience.
At the moment I am trying to trace the film distributor and purchase the film. I joined The Take mailing list and hope that I get a positive answer. (www.thetake.org)