Born in Ljubljana in 1979. Lives and works in London.
The Gift investigates how political gifting is embedded within the landscape of Europe’s identity formation, exploring particularly intriguing examples of gifts of architecture, art, music and dance to national and ideological structures through the use of allegory and narrative. The film’s locations include paramount examples of architectural donations; including Oscar Niemeyer’s French Communist Party Headquarters in Paris and Palais of the Nations in Geneva, investigating culture’s role as a political style-bearer and a Trojan horse for covert diplomacy and political interest.
The script is drawn from archival traces of discussions on soft power and cultural diplomacy that led to some of the most iconic architectural and artistic manifestations of political style within European space. The Gift approaches the topic of representation of (trans)national identity in the arts in a time when the nation has at once lost its centrality as a political category and reasserted its persistence in a surge of right-wing populisms. A moment, which is echoed within the historical case-studies this project addresses and the architectures where it is filmed.
Co-commissioned and co-produced by FLAMIN - Film
London Artists’ Moving Image Network (with funding from
Arts Council England), steirischer herbst ’19 and macLYON
and co-produced with Waddington Studios London.
Supported by Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Cooper Gallery
DJCAD, University of Dundee; Northern Film School; UGM
Maribor Art Gallery; Museum of Yugoslavia; United Nations
Geneva; Espace Niemeyer and Palace of Youth, Warsaw.
