Culture Now: Marjetica Potrc

Ljubljana and Berlin-based artist and architect Marjetica Potrč is joined in conversation by Stephanie Delcroix and Michael Pinsky, discussing her practice ahead of the opening of a new public artwork made in collaboration with Ooze Architects (Eva Pfannes and Sylvain Hartenberg). Commissioned by Stephanie Delcroix and Michael Pinsky for King’s Cross, Of Soil and Water: The King's Cross Pond Club is a natural swimming pond on the Kings Cross site. Its central pool is surrounded by both hard and soft landscaping, including pioneer plants, wild flowers grasses, and bushes so that the environment evolves as the seasons change.

Marjetica Potrč’s artworks have been exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the Americas, including at the Venice Biennial (1993, 2003, 2009) and the São Paulo Biennial (1996, 2006), and are shown regularly at the Galerie Nordenhake in Berlin. Her many community-based on-site projects include Dry Toilet (Caracas, 2003), The Cook, the Farmer, His Wife and Their Neighbour (Stedelijk Goes West, Amsterdam, 2009), The Commons Project (Yes Naturally, the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Netherlands, 2013) and The Wind Lift (Folkestone Triennial,2014).

Since 2011, Potrč has been a professor at the University of Fine Arts/HFBK in Hamburg. Students of her course Design for the Living World develop participatory design projects during long-term residencies such as the Soweto Project (Soweto, SA, 2014). She has also been a visiting professor at a number of other institutions, including the MIT (2005) and IUAV in Venice (2008, 2010). Potrč has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Hugo Boss Prize (2000) and the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics Fellowship at The New School in New York (2007).

Stéphanie Delcroix and Michael Pinsky work together curating art programmes which engage with cities undergoing a process of change. Their collaborative practice entails careful research into of a site, its history and its becoming to conceive a curatorial framework for artists and audiences to momentarily intervene in. Most recently they co-curated RELAY a programme of site-specific installations by international artists to mark the reconversion of King's Cross, London. They are currently co-directing the inaugural series of Artist-in-Residence schemes for the emerging district of Belval in Luxembourg.

Stéphanie Delcroix is an independent curator based in London. She has a particular interest in the artistic processes developed in urban and transient sites, and in the experience and dissemination of site-specific artworks. Delcroix graduated in Art History at Université de Rennes, France and received an MA in Arts Criticism from City University, London. She has written for a variety of art and architecture publications. 

Michael Pinsky is an artist and curator whose international projects explore issues that shape and influence the use of our public realm. Taking the combined roles of artist, urban planner, activist, researcher, and resident, he starts residencies and commissions without a specified agenda, working with local people and resources, allowing the physical, social and political environment to define his working methodology. Pinsky’s work has been shown at: Tate Britain; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chengdu; Saatchi Gallery; Victoria and Albert Museum; Institute for Contemporary Arts, London; BALTIC, Gateshead; Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow; Cornerhouse, Manchester; Liverpool Biennial; Centre de Création Contemporaine, Tours;  Armory Center of the Arts, Los Angeles; and the Rotterdam International Architectural Biennial.