Igor Grubić

project realized RAVE 2017: Do Animals…? double channel video 22’47”, series of billboards

Do Animals…? is a carefully developed project by Igor Grubić, evolved from an analysis undertaken in the former slaughterhouse in Gorizia, now used by Biolab, that produces vegan foods. The project consists of sequences of videos made in the rooms before and during the reconversion, a series of posters (conceived in collaboration with Quartiere Intelligente) like unanswered questions derived from the images themselves, and a video interview in which a former worker in the slaughterhouse, and now an activist for animal rights, speaks with a psychotherapist. The former slaughterhouse becomes the place of absence par excellence. In these suspended spaces, where we perceive the passage of what there was before, there is a single presence: the female dog Bjork is the only non-human animal that entered the place and left it alive. The project reflects on the hidden perspectives and psychological aspects of what happens inside the black box of slaughterhouses, and makes clear, with a calm but decided tone, the dynamics of animal exploitation, since it alludes to a possible overcoming of the conflicts between human and non-human animals.

During Grubić’s residency, two round tables were held in June 2017:   Ethics before aesthetics? Interaction inside and outside the world of art, from the role of form to socio-political action and  La domenica del Villaggio, with the participation of  Iara Boubnova, director of the  National Art Gallery, Sofia, Daniele Capra, critic and curator,  Mirta D’Argenzio, art historian  and curator, Mylen Ferrand, risearcher and curator, Maurizio Bortolotti, critic and curator, Pietro Gaglianò, theoretical and curator, Adriana Rispoli, critic and curator, Isabella e Tiziana Pers, artists.