TEAMWORK 4
Nika Oblak & Primož Novak

THE BOX
Video installation, 6.20 min - loop, 2005
Computer programming by Rado Miklavcic

The Box is a video installation composed of a rubber box, an LCD monitor, and a pneumatic mechanism. The mechanism is placed inside the rubber box. It is manipulated by a computer program and synchronized with a prerecorded video. The video on the screen shows the two of us trapped inside the box, trying to escape to the outside.

The main focus of the installation is detachment, the possibility to exist outside prevailing systems. Our attempt to escape is a reference to an escape from an all encompassing media world as well as an escape from the white cube. On one hand the possibility to detach oneself from today's media and information network has become a pure privilege, which not everyone is able to afford. And as far as contemporary art network is concerned, detachment from its reference institutions, as its critique, means an ultimate isolation of the author.

WE DID THIS AND THAT
Series of C-prints, 75 x 101 cm, 2005-2006

We Did This and That is a series of photos, which show the two of us in reconstructing Guinness World Records. We chose absurd records, which are not based on physical strength or stamina , but rather on the uncommonness of ideas. It is a strategy of gaining attention with spectacular and entertaining stunts, a strategy which can serve as an analogue to obsession with success and fame in contemporary society influenced by the mass communication media, as well as an analogue to contemporary art, where shock and innovation at any price play an important role in recognition of the artist and his work. We Did This and That is a reflection on global capitalism and society which produces and possesses an excess of everything, as it can be seen in MTV series Jackass and Wildboyz.