Eda Cufer

Date: Tuesday, 17 October 2006
Time: 7 p.m.
Venue: A019, Atrium Building, IADT, Kill Avenue, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin.

Lecture title: What is Overidentification? A Mousetrap for Post-Moderns

Overidentification is a term coined by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek to describe the aesthetic effect of the phenomenon of early Laibach performances in the context of former Yugoslavian socialist society in the 1980s. Lately this term has begun showing up in the writings of contemporary critics and theoriticians in reference to various artistic phenomena from American, West European and East European culture. In this lecture Eda will reflect on the notion of overidentification through her own artistic involvement with Laibach NSK and also through her interpretation of certain works by the American artist Andrea Fraser, the American activist collective Yes Men, and the German artist Christoph Schlingenseif.

About Eda Cufer
Eda Cufer is a dramaturge, curator and writer, whose essays on theatre, dance, visual art, culture and politics have appeared in many books and journals. In 1983 she co-founded the theatre group Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater. A year later she became one of the founding members of NSK. During the 1990s she worked extensively with NSK’s visual art section, the IRWIN group, on a number of conceptual projects, and edited several books relating to those projects, including /NSK Moscow Embassy: How the East Sees the East/ 1992, /Transnacionala: Highway Collisions Between East and West at the Crossroads of Art/ 2000 and (together with Viktor Misiano) /Interpol: The Art Exhibition Which Divided East and West/ 2001. She also collaborated with the dance group EN-KNAP and the performance and visual artist Marko Peljhan and Project Atol. She has recently co-curated the exhibitions /In Search of Balkania/ 2002 and /Call me Istanbul/ 2004.