Hana Zadnikar's work Glej me establishes a direct, almost intimate communication with the audience and invites them to follow her personal, private life. She does this through her phone, a device that has long since ceased to be an interface but has become a central, invisible, all-absorbing wall between us and the world around us.
The work's simple and open structure allows for many complex interpretations and derivations, which is its distinctive quality. The subject matter refers to the excellent previous works of, for example, Kyle McDonald, whom the artist herself mentions as one of her references, and we can add the legends of classical web art, Eva and Franc Mattes, with their canonical work Life Sharing (2000-2003, Walker Art Center), in which for three years they made the contents of their home computer (files, emails, bank statements, etc.) available in real-time to the public for reading, copying, and downloading in the public domain.
The artist has set herself a difficult, radical, and also dangerous task that requires uncompromising and holistic execution. It will be interesting to follow the implementation and development of the work, the reactions of the audience, and the artist's struggle with the continuous exposure of her privacy. It can be said that this is not a work of art primarily aimed at the audience, but herself, which places it in a specific post-artistic contemporary practice. She is facing great intimate, personal, as well as legal, and public challenges.
The jury was convinced by the directness of the submitted work, which stands in front of us without additional ballast, without embellishing moments, and thus truncates the communication between the artist and the audience to the bare minimum, to the most radical - in its ultimate consequence, to the artist herself.
Expert jury for the selection of the best MFRU 2022 student intermedia projects
– Ida Hiršenfelder, Robertina Šebjanič, Miha Horvat, Igor Štromajer