Magical Thinking: Afterlives of Modernism

Irena Knezevic

Art and Design Spring Lecture Series
Pao Hall 1111
February 21, 2008, 6:00pm

Kasimir Malevich’s Black Square came from the set of the Russian Futurist Opera “Victory Over the Sun” that premiered in 1913 at the Luna Park in St Petersburg. The physical history of Black Square re-positions the origins of modernism within the discourse of event theater. This talk will aim to trace the instances where this kind of discourse spills into social reality and creates a particular political imaginary. I offer an account of certain apparent others of modernism through contemporary practices and social instances which keep the possibility of extraordinary events open.

Irena Knezevic is a Chicago-based artist working in performance and mixed media installation art. Her works are critical and aesthetic investigations of sublime, archaic and often magical phenomena that Knezevic positions in the context of contemporary socio-political systems.

Knezevic’s work has been exhibited internationally. She has recently given lectures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and at Harvard University, Cambridge and is currently working on upcoming exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (April 2008) and White Columns gallery in New York (May 2008).

Irena Knezevic received degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago.

Picture on top of page: Irena Knezevic The Oath, 2006.

2013 Purdue University Electronic and Time-Based Arts