Marina Gržinić

Marina Gržinić is a philosopher, theoretician and artist from Ljubljana. She is a prominent contemporary theoretical and critical figure in Slovenia. 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 has received the Golden SASA sign in 2007. Since 2003, she has also served as Full Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria. She publishes extensively, lectures worldwide, and is involved in video art since 1982.

She received her Bachelor of Arts in analytical sociology in 1985, completed her Master of Arts in 1991 at the Faculty of Arts in Slovenia, and received her doctoral title in 1995 from the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. The title of her dissertation was Virtual Reality: Achronic Time, Paraspace and Simulation. Gržinić was one of the first, if not the first in Slovenia and maybe ex-Yugoslavia, with a doctorate in philosophy and virtual reality, cyberspace, cyberfeminism (Haraway), postcolonial theory (Trinh T. Minh-ha), French structuralism and media theory (Baudrillard, 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 (she received the Japan government grant, JSPS) and spent a year with Professor Machiko Kusahara.

Marina Gržinić was born in 1958 in Rijeka (Yugoslavia), in present-day Croatia. 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). 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 perception of the Slovenian society and reality.

Marina Gržinić's theoretical work focuses on contemporary philosophy and aesthetics after modernism. 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's 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 in action. This means that the 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, finally she engages significantly in the 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.

Marina Gržinić is active in video art and media art since 1982. She works in collaboration with Aina Šmid, art historian and artist from Ljubljana.

-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. ENGLISH