The works of Gržinić/Šmid are characterized by an eclectic, discursive, distanced approach to filmmaking free of fascination and empathy. Quotations overlap in a complex, many-layered, and multiply subdivided conceptual and visual framework. Stylistic effects collide, references to narrative cinema d’auteur join with references to poetic or theoretical texts (Chekhov, Duras,
Barthes, Žižek, Weibel, Gržinić) and with references to mass media—B-movies, TV, commercials, news. Out of all this material, mixed with disnarrative polysemy and an astonishing lack of inhibition, strange “fictions” are reconstructed—fragmentary fictions that are constantly interrupted. Phantasmatic and critical situations are devised around political figures (Mao Zedong and his wife), groups of artists (IRWIN, New Slovenian Art), and
cultural artifacts. The pictures—stereotypes, masquerades, reminiscences—
deploy fiction as a mask that is forever being removed, being put back in
place, and changing its form.

Marina Gržinić / Aina Šmid

Marina Gržinić
*1958, Rijeka, Croatia
lives and works in Ljubljana & Vienna

Aina Šmid
*1957, Ljubljana, Slovenia
lives and works in Ljubljana

Exhibitions (selection)

2005 Videofilm Marathon with Gržinić/Šmid (1982-2005), University of Belgrade, BIH

2004 Installation, Art Center, Seoul, ROK

2003 Kyoto Biennale, Japan, J

2003 Retrospective (1985-2003) Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, D

2001 Recent works, Mediathèque, San Francisco, USA

2001 Exhibition: multimedia, videos, and Internet works, Centro Arte Alameda, Mexico City, MEX

1999 Steirischer Herbst, Net_art Condition, (co-producer: ZKM, Karlsruhe), Graz, A

1997 Installation, ICC Biennial Manifestation, Tokyo, J

1994 Video Viewpoints, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York, USA

1994 Europe, Europe. Das Jahrhundert der Avantgarde in Mittel-und Osteuropa, Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, D

1991 Exhibition with screenings, Information Center of the Museum of Modern Art (Moderna galerija), Ljubljana, SLO

selected bibliography:

Giorgio Bertellini, »Making Spaces: At War. Notes on Video-Art and Space in Marina Grzinic & Aina Smid's Luna 10 (1994) and Bilocation (1990),« manuscript written in 1994, In: Marina Gržinić and Tanja Velagić (eds.) Moments of Decision. Performative, political and technological. Videoart, film and interactive works by Marina Gržinić and Aina Šmid, Zak, Ljubljana (forthcoming in 2006).

Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki, »Les fictions reconstruites de Marina Grzinic et Aina Smid,« In: BREF, Le magazine du court métrage, no. 59, Paris, 2003.

Joanne Nucho, “GRZINIC/SMID - A SELECTION OF VIDEO WORKS” A DVD AT INDEX, VIENNA” In: REVERSE SHOT at www. reverseshot.com, August 2005, London, 2005.

Miško Šuvaković, »Retrogarde, techno esthetics and questions of political apparatus: Marina Gržinić,« In: Miško Šuvaković, Conceptual art, SKC, Belgrade, 2006.

Yvonne Volkart, »Technologies of Identity,« In: OLD BOYS NETWORK READING ROOM, www.obn.org/reading_room/writings/down/technologies.rtf