Marina Gržinić (born 1958) is a philosopher, theoretician, and artist from

Ljubljana {{Infobox settlement , name = Ljubljana , official_name = , settlement_type = Capital city , image_skyline = {{multiple image , border = infobox , perrow = 1/2/2/1 , total_widt ...

. She is a prominent contemporary theoretical and critical figure in

Slovenia Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a country in Central Europe. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and a short (46.6 km) coastline within the Adriati ...

. Since 1993, she is employed at the Institute of Philosophy at the Scientific and Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts (short ZRC-SAZU in Slovenian and SRC-SASA in English). Today, she serves as a professor and research adviser. For her scientific work, she received the Golden SASA sign in 2007. Since 2003, she has also served as a Full Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria. She publishes extensively, lectures worldwide, and is involved in video art since 1982.

Early life and education

Marina Gržinić was born in 1958 in

Rijeka Rijeka (; Fiume ( �fjuːme in Italian and in Fiuman dialect, Fiuman Venetian) is the principal seaport and the List of cities and towns in Croatia, third-largest city in Croatia. It is located in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County on Kvarner Ba ...

(

Yugoslavia , common_name = Yugoslavia , life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation , p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia , flag_p ...

), in present-day

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

. She was raised in an Italian minority family. She moved alone to Ljubljana at the age of seventeen (after completing her gymnasium studies in Rijeka). She received her Bachelor of Arts in analytical sociology in 1985, completed her Master of Arts in 1991 at the Faculty of Arts, and received her doctoral title in 1995 from the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts,

University of Ljubljana The University of Ljubljana (, , ), abbreviated UL, is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. It has approximately 38,000 enrolled students. The university has 23 faculties and three art academies with approximately 4,000 teaching and re ...

. The title of her dissertation was Virtual Reality: Achronic Time, Paraspace, and

Simulation A simulation is an imitative representation of a process or system that could exist in the real world. In this broad sense, simulation can often be used interchangeably with model. Sometimes a clear distinction between the two terms is made, in ...

. Gržinić was one of the first, if not the first in Slovenia and maybe ex-Yugoslavia, with a doctorate in philosophy and

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a Simulation, simulated experience that employs 3D near-eye displays and pose tracking to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video gam ...

cyberspace Cyberspace is an interconnected digital environment. It is a type of virtual world popularized with the rise of the Internet. The term entered popular culture from science fiction and the arts but is now used by technology strategists, security ...

cyberfeminism Cyberfeminism is a feminist approach which foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. It can be used to refer to a philosophy, art practices, methodologies or community. The term was coined in the early 1990s to ...

( Haraway),

postcolonial theory Postcolonialism (also post-colonial theory) is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic consequences of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and th ...

(

Trinh T. Minh-ha Trinh T. Minh-ha (born 1952 in Hanoi; Vietnamese: Trịnh Thị Minh Hà) is a Vietnamese filmmaker, writer, literary theorist, composer, and professor. She has been making films since the 1980s and is best known for her films Reassemblage (film ...

), French

structuralism Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns t ...

, and

media theory Media studies is a discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history, and effects of various media; in particular, the mass media. Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but it mos ...

(

Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard (, ; ; – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist and philosopher with an interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulat ...

, Couchot, Klonaris/Thomadaki, Virilio, etc.). In the period from 1997 to 1998, she completed her postdoctoral academic training in Japan, at the

University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...

(she received the Japan government grant, JSPS) and spent a year with Professor Machiko Kusahara.

Career

In Ljubljana, she engaged in the constitution of what is today known as the Ljubljana alternative or subcultural movement that, in the 1980s, developed new artistic practices,(like video and performance) politically engaged movements such as the homosexual gay and lesbian scene, and many other processes that were constitutive for the discussion of the position of art and culture in Slovenia in connection with demands and struggles for a political emancipated life that bypasses the middle-class

bourgeoisie The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted wi ...

perception of the Slovenian society and reality.

Theory

Gržinić's theoretical work focuses on contemporary philosophy and

aesthetics Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste (sociology), taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Ph ...

after

modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

. Her work is directed towards a theory of ideology, theory of technology, biopolitics/necropolitics, video technology, and transfeminism in connection with decoloniality. Gržinić's work cannot be easily circumscribed in this or that school or discipline, though in recent years, she has brought forward global critical philosophy, which is both daring and dangerously concrete in being alert, critical for the local, against racism, coloniality and globally questioning capitalism, and necropolitics. It is important to highlight her theoretical approach that is between the politically performative theory and activist criticism and

theory A theory is a systematic and rational form of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the conclusions derived from such thinking. It involves contemplative and logical reasoning, often supported by processes such as observation, experimentation, ...

action Action may refer to: * Action (philosophy), something which is done by a person * Action principles the heart of fundamental physics * Action (narrative), a literary mode * Action fiction, a type of genre fiction * Action game, a genre of video gam ...

. This means that Gržinić's position is not a disengaged area of interpretation that derives from theoretical and philosophical contemplation but that her work in philosophy, theory, and arts derives from concrete theoretical practice and interventions and related cultures. She regularly implements her research results in the processes of education and as well in other disciplines, especially art disciplines. She finally engages significantly in public life at home and abroad, being part of different struggles politically and socially motivated against capitalism and its processes of dispossession, racism, and brutal discrimination.

Art/video

Gržinić is active in video art and media art since 1982. She works in collaboration with Aina Šmid, an art historian and artist from Ljubljana. From 25.11.2022 to 28.2.2023 2022, the Loža Gallery Koper, Slovenia, hosts a major retrospective exhibition of works and visual installations by Marina Gržinić & Aina Šmid, from 1982 to 2022, entitled ODPADNIŠKE ZGODOVINE / STORIE DISSIDENTI / DISSIDENT HISTORIES, curated by Mara Ambrožič Verderber. A comprehensive study by Tjaša Kancler is published in the leaflet for the exhibition and in the reader.

Selected works

Books from 1995 on: *V vrsti za virtualni kruh : čas, prostor, subjekt in novi mediji v letu 2000, (Zbirka Sophia, 1996, 5). Ljubljana: Znanstveno in publicistično središče, 1996. SLOVENIAN *Rekonstruirana fikcija : novi mediji, (video) umetnost, postsocializem in retroavantgarda : teorija, politika, estetika : 1997–1985, (Knjižna zbirka Koda). Ljubljana: Študentska organizacija Univerze, Študentska založba, 1997. SLOVENIAN *U redu za virtualni kruh, (Biblioteka Intermedia, knj. 2). Zagreb: Meandar, 1998. CROATIAN *Fiction reconstructed : Eastern Europe, post-socialism & the retro-avant-garde. Vienna: Selene, 2000. ENGLISH *Estetika kibersveta in učinki derealizacije, (Zbirka Prizma). Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, ZRC SAZU, 2003. SLOVENIAN *Situated contemporary art practices : art, theory and activism from (the east of) Europe. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC: = ZRC Publishing; Frankfurt am Main: Revolver – Archiv für aktuelle Kunst, 2004. ENGLISH *Avangarda i politika : istočnoevropska paradigma i rat na Balkanu, (Bibliteka Slovenica). Belgrade: Belgradeski krug, 2005. SERBIAN *Estetika kibersvijeta i učinci derealizacije, (Basic). Zagreb: Multimedijalni institut; Sarajevo: Košnica – centar za komunikaciju i kulturu, 2005. CROATIAN *Une fiction reconstruite : Europe de l'Est, post-socialisme et rétro-avant-garde, (Ouverture philosophique). Paris; Budapest; Torino: Harmattan, 2005. FRENCH *Re-politicizing art, theory, representation and new media technology, (Schriften der Akademie der bildenden Künste Vienna, Vol. 6). Vienna: Schlebrügge.Editor, cop. 2008. ENGLISH *Necropolitics, Racialization, and Global Capitalism. Historicization of Biopolitics and Forensics of Politics, Art, and Life. Marina Gržinić and Šefik Tatlić, Lexington books, 2014. *Regimes of invisibility in contemporary art, theory and culture: image, racialization, history. Marina Gržinić, Aneta Stojnić and Miško Šuvaković, eds., Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. cop. 2017. *Shifting corporealities in contemporary performance: danger, im/mobility and politics, Marina Gržinić and Aneta Stojnić, eds., (Avant-gardes in performance). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. cop. 2018. *Border Thinking. Disassembling Histories of Racialized Violence. Marina Gržinić, ed., Vienna, Berlin: Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Vol 21., and Sternberg Press, 2018. *Arte-Política-Resistencia, Tjaša Kancler, Barcelona: Ediciones t.i.c.t.a.c., 2018. SPANISH *Opposing Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Turbo-Nationalism. Rethinking the Past for New Conviviality. Marina Gržinić, Jovita Pristovšek, Sophie Uitz, eds. PEEK/FWF Research Project Vienna, 578 pp., Cambridge Scholars, United Kingdom, 2020. *Dialogues for the Future: Countering the Genealogy of Amnesia, Marina Gržinić, Šefik Tatlić in collaboration with Valerija Zabret, Jovita Pristovšek, Tjaša Kancler, and Sophie Uitz, 312 pp., Center for Cultural Decontamination CKZD, Belgrade, Serbia, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; PEEK/FWF Research Project Vienna, 2020. *Re-Activating Critical Thinking in the Midst of Necropolitical Realities: For Radical Change, Marina Gržinić, Jovita Pristovšek, 458 pp., eds. Cambridge Scholars, United Kingdom, 2022. *Parallel Histories of Slovenia's Empowerment and Urbanity 1980-1990-2000. The collection of material compiled by Marina Gržinić.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Grzinic, Marina 20th-century Slovenian philosophers Living people Slovenian women philosophers Scholars of feminist philosophy Philosophers of technology Artists from Ljubljana Academic staff of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna 1958 births 21st-century Slovenian philosophers