[aha] The Big Switch Off by Sašo Sedlaček at Aksioma Project Space

[Aksioma]

Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, kindly invite you 
to the presentation of the video project:

*Sašo Sedlaček*
/*The Big Switch Off*/
www.aksioma.org/switch_off <http://www.aksioma.org/switch_off>

*Aksioma | Project space*
Komenskega 18, Ljubljana, Slovenia
July 25 – August 5, 2011
*
Opening: Monday, July 25, 2011 at 8:00pm*

Image: _http://www.aksioma.org/press/switch_off.zip_

Sašo Sedlaček explores social phenomena that are part of our everyday 
life. His attention is focused particularly on those topics that we 
usually push aside, for they represent the “impure” side of the 
otherwise bright reality. Poverty and waste are certainly the key terms 
of his opus. These two topics, according to Sedlaček, are of key 
significance for our future. In a series of projects developed over the 
past ten years, he has shown various innovative and alternative modes of 
functioning (especially the practice of recycling) and he has emphasised 
the responsibility that should accompany our interfering with the 
environment and our making decisions regarding social issues.

*The video project */*The Big Switch Off*/*is part of this series; it 
will be publicly launched on Monday, 25 July 2011, at the Aksioma 
Project Space in Ljubljana, and in Autumn, as part of the retrospective 
exhibition of Sašo Sedlaček’s work, at the Gallery of Fine Arts Slovenj 
Gradec and at the Rotovž Exhibition Salon at the Maribor Art Gallery.*

The project deals with the question of what is waste and what is litter. 
What we consider safe waste, which we recycle, will become litter proper 
in the Third World, where it will probably end up. In the “Essay on 
Litter: Wiki-Garbage Management” in /Dnevnik’s Objektiv/, Luka Omladič 
says that litter consists of those things that annoy us, the things that 
should not be where they are. Like an alien, they stand out from their 
surroundings and they make it disgustingly clear that someone has tossed 
them away and that they will remain there for a long time. Yet, not all 
litter is waste, Omladič says, at least not in the sense that would 
deeply annoy us. And cast-off television sets simply do not annoy us. In 
fact, it is precisely the migration of waste that constitutes major 
hidden pollution, and this often happens far away from the developed 
countries that produce waste. It is there, far away from the developed 
countries, that waste becomes litter. There, their characteristics 
become unpleasant again and stand out from the surroundings.

*Sedlaček makes visible the relation between waste and litter.*
Using the old analogue technology, which has been increasingly displaced 
by the new digital technology, he produces litter here and now. Instead 
of “safely” recycling televisual technology, which is becoming obsolete 
due to the new technological paradigm, the introduction of digital 
signal and, consequently, the mass replacement of analogue television 
sets with LCDs and plasma TVs, let’s rather publicly break it into 
pieces. Let’s do what we are going to do anyway, one way or another, 
sooner or later – let’s do it together and publicly.

Due to the introduction of digital signal in 2011, which has replaced 
the analogue signal, the West has witnessed mass destruction of old 
technology. Cathode television sets, TVs without digital converters, VHS 
and DVD players are a thing of the past, for they do not support new 
technology. Sooner or later, we will all be forced to replace the old 
with the new. Already now, the sellers of contemporary electronics keep 
offering us replacements of this kind. *Yet, the story of old technology 
is not over when we replace old devices with new ones. And it does not 
end at the electronics dumping ground either. In fact, this is where 
their journey only begins. Old electronics is being exported into Third 
World countries, however, this is already an entirely different story…*

*
*

*Sašo Sedlaček *is, no doubt, one of the key authors of contemporary art 
in Slovenia. He has received several awards (/OHO/,/Vida 
11/,/Spaport/,/Zogo Toy/, etc.); he has been artist in residence three 
times (in Germany, Japan and the United States); he has had exhibitions 
in Slovenia, Japan, Taiwan, USA, Austria, France, Belgium, Italy, 
Serbia, Russia, Estonia, etc. – including established exhibition venues 
such as the Secession in Vienna and the Lentos Museum in Linz – and he 
has participated in large international biennials (Taipei, Taiwan 2008 
and Ogaki, Japan 2006) and festivals.

In Slovenia, he has recently problematised the sell-out of frequency 
space (/Manifest/, 2009, and /Infocalypse Now!/, 2007) and he is 
particularly recognisable for his interventions into consumer Meccas. 
Using bricks made of printed propaganda materials, he closed the 
entrances to department stores in Ljubljana (/Just Do It!/, 2003) and 
built a pavilion for eavesdropping and dwelling in BTC City (/Loop/, 
2004); in 2006, he took Beggar – a robot for the materially deprived, 
which he lent to the homeless people of Ljubljana the following year – 
for a walk around Citypark and the streets of Tokyo and Taipei; etc.

*Author*: Sašo Sedlaček
*Camera*: Mitja Ličen, Janez Janša, Sašo Sedlaček
*Editing*: Sašo Sedlaček
*Technical support*: LJUDMILA, Valter Udovičić
*Assistant*: Anže Grm

*Production: *Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2011
_www.aksioma.org <http://www.aksioma.org/>_
*Artistic director:* Janez Janša
*Executive producer:* Marcela Okretič*
**Public relations:* Mojca Zupanič

/*Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the 
Municipality of Ljubljana
*//Sponsor: Datacenter d.o.o./


*Contact:*
Marcela Okretič, 041 250 830, aksioma4 at siol.net
*Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana*
Neubergerjeva 25, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
tel.: + 386 – (0)590 - 54360
_www.aksioma.org <http://www.aksioma.org/>_
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