Manca Bajec

Staff details

Manca Bajec

Position

Lecturer

Department

Visual Cultures

Email

m.bajec (@gold.ac.uk)

Manca is a researcher, and artist whose interdisciplinary work is situated in the realm of socio-politics. She currently

Manca is a researcher, and artist whose interdisciplinary work is situated in the realm of socio-politics. She currently teaches several BA modules: Contemporaneities, Curating and the Curatorial, Curatorial Events and Affects, Link, and the core module for the Graduate Diploma.

Academic qualifications

  • PhD Sculpture, Royal College of Art, London 2019
  • MA Sculpture, Academy of Art and Design, Ljubljana 2016
  • MA Curating, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London 2011
  • BA • BA Visual Arts and Disciplines of Performance, Academy of Fine Art, Venice 2007

Research interests

As an artist, writer and researcher my interdisciplinary work concerns and is formed through the creation of a particular language which is employed to observe constructions of national histories and memories, politics. My practice is inspired by my work as a scenographer and curator, engaging with particular shifts in society. The work often interacts with a variety of fields of study and interweaves many mediums usually engaging through an appropriated form of theatricality. My doctoral work [described in further detail below] examines methods of public commemoration and structures of historical revisionism in post conflict areas, in doing so also instigating how culture and art are appropriated by nation states in order to form national identities and develop soft power. The thesis positions the state of the monument today, and more specifically in societies existing in a state of unresolved conflict. In doing so, questioning the artwork as a counter-monumental form and as an approach to unravelling issues of a resistance which exist in sites where monument-building is contested.

Currently, I am exploring how the nature of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's (SFRY) position as a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the migration of its citizens, and the development of its diplomatic identities, has affected the current status of refugees and asylum seekers in the region.

Grants and awards

2022: European Commission Grant
Awarded by Creative Europe

2020: British Academy Special Research Grants
Royal Holloway University, Department of Global Politics

2019: British Council Artist Residency

2019: Andrew W Mellon Travel Grant

Publications and research outputs

Art Object

Bajec, Manca. 2023. A Week in August Revisited.

Bajec, Manca. 2017. GAME:MONUMENT.

Book Section

Bajec, Manca. 2021. Monumenting Our Pasts: Monuments, What Are They Now? In: Olivette Otele; Luisa Gandolfo and Yoav Galai, eds. Post-Conflict Memorialization: Missing Memorials, Absent Bodies. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 101-117. ISBN 9783030548865

Edited Book

Bajec, Manca; Holert, Tom and Smith, Marquard, eds. 2021. Pause. Fervour. Reflections on a Pandemic. Berlin: Harun Farocki Institut & Journal of Visual Culture. ISBN 9781527295445

Edited Journal

Bajec, Manca; Smith, Marquard; Emerling, Jae and Vagnes, Oyvind, eds. 2021. The JVC Palestine Portfolio, Journal of Visual Culture, 20(2). 1470-4129

Project

Bajec, Manca; Rogelja, Igor and Galai, Yoav. 20 - 24 May 2024 Visual Writing Workshop.

Bajec, Manca and Rogelja, Igor. 2024. Infrastructure Soundscapes.

Show/Exhibition

Bajec, Manca. 2021. Prologue: weaver of Past Potentials. In: "EKO 8, International Triennial of Art and Environment", Maribor, Slovenia, 21 May - 18 July 2021.

Professional projects

Arts Consultant/Researcher /Producer
Oct. 2012 – present

Past Clients include: Artquest, Jasmina Cibic, Smadar Dreyfus, Nayan Kulkarni, Royal Holloway University, Firoz Lalji Center for Africa and Institute of Inequality at London School of Economics, ART: I: CURATE, Biennial Foundation, Holiday Inn Museum Sarajevo, Škuc Gallery Ljubljana, Project Atol Institute, Museum of Contemporary Art Ljubljana, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, DHC/ART Montreal; Invisible Threads Films; Ministry of Culture, Slovenia

Conferences and talks

2023: Memory, monuments, and former Yugoslavia
Guest lecture at University of the Arts

2021: Memory and Artistic Practices in the western Balkans
Guest lecture at School of Advanced Studies, University of Tyumen

2021: 'Memorialisation in former Yugoslav region'
Guest lecture at European Language, Culture, and Society department, UCL

2021: Aesthetic mechanisms: Assessing IR through artistic practice
Paper on panel (Concepts and Methods for an International Political Design) at International Studies Conference (ISA)