Marko Gutić Mižimakov
Dragon Hunt
Curated by
Domen Ograjenšek
Exhibition
15 January–14 February 2025
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana
Opening
WED, 15 January at 7 PM
Acid-burned visions of landscapes like falling in and out of sleep in an airconditionless ride in August midday heat. A journey can take many forms. Some happen to reorient a person’s mind, offer inspiration in moments when inspiration is hard to come by; others reveal themselves as allies with the mundane and obsequious, draining those already burdened by the ins and outs of life’s small tedious obligations. Few take the route of challenging the foundations we tend to rely on.
Inspired by the tradition of Dragon Hunting described in Samuel Delany’s novel Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, Dragon Hunt by Marko Gutić Mižimakov, combines machine learning, dance, and travel as tools of unencumbered ideation. The experimental short film takes on the genre of a road trip movie, inscribing it with abstract and fantastic elements that weirden and complicate the depicted landscapes of the Dalmatian Hinterland – developing them as scenes of queer exploration of mimicry, media translation and friendship. Amid these algorithmic visions, a language of shapeshifting, areal and land becoming, and dedication to the subtlest rhythms of one’s (self-)asserted jouissance.
THE AUTHOR
Marko Gutić Mižimakov (1992) is a visual, performance and text based artist living between Brussels and Zagreb. They are interested in shaping sensory materials through intimate, collaborative and social processes. In their work bodies, as well as digital and palpable objects, are animated, choreographed and sung into non-orientable forms via different media and processes of translation. Often borrowing from queer science fiction they see their work as a speculative technology of mutual transformation. They have an MA in Animated Film and New Media from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. In 2022/2023 they were an artistic researcher at a.pass. Currently they are an adjunct faculty member at Paris College of Art in the department of Transdisciplinary New Media.
THE CURATOR
Domen Ograjenšek is a writer, critic and curator of contemporary visual art. She is a former member of the ŠUM Journal editorial board and its research collective, and she has given lectures and seminars at art institutions such as the International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC Ljubljana), the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (MSUM), Škuc Gallery, PhaseBook Prague, Nova Pošta and the International Festival of Computer Art (IFCA). Her reviews and essays have been published in magazines and online platforms such as PASSE-AVANT, Artalk, Blok Magazine, Fotograf Magazine, all-over Magazine, ETC. Magazine, Maska Magazine, ŠUM Journal, Borec Journal, Tribuna and Radio Študent. She has curated exhibitions at the Museum of Madness Trate, SCCA-Ljubljana, Aksioma Project Space, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (as a member of the Neteorit collective), Center for Contemporary Arts Celje (Likovni salon) and Škuc Gallery. She is based in Vienna.
CREDITS
Author: Marko Gutić Mižimakov
Curator and author of the text: Domen Ograjenšek
Production of the exhibition: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2025
Financial support: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana