The Second Explosion: The 1990’s is a multidisciplinary and collaborative research project that critically evaluates artistic production in post-independence Slovenia, framing the decade as an energetic cultural breakthrough succeeding the neo-avant garde explosion of the 1960’s. The project was undertaken in response to an absence of serious analysis or scholarly attention to a largely misunderstood, and often dismissed, movement in Slovenian contemporary art.
The authors of this book contextualize Slovenian artistic production amidst the socio-political events and ideological shifts of the decade, tracing through lines from the dissolution of Yugoslavia and socialism to new transgressive artistic methodologies and post-conceptual politicizations. Within this narrative, the authors address the themes of center and periphery; a new political interventionism and changing institutional power relations; and the shift from state critique to a social politics.
This in-depth and fascinating study contains bilingual essays from Tadej Pogačar, Polona Poberžnik & Nina Popič, and Božo Repe, and case studies on artists Jože Barši, Vuk Ćosić, Maja Licul, Marko Peljhan, Alenka Pirman, Tadej Pogaćar, Marjettica Potrć, Marija Mojca Pungercar, Franc Purg, Anja Šmajdek, Nika Špan, Apolonija Šušteršić, and Janja Žvegelj.