Maja Bekan - Secret Powers for Identity Security and Self-Respect in Troubling Times - Het Oog

The fourth artist to participate in the six-month programme for The Eye, is Maja Bekan (1975, Trebinje, Former Yugoslavia) who lives and works in Rotterdam.
Her extensive project called Secret Powers for Identity, Security and Self-Respect in Troubling Times will be on display from January until July 2011. The programme’s activities consist of two different 'chapters'. One is the establishment of a fully furnished temporary office that can be potentially used by anyone who needs an urgent place to work. This luxurious office, located in the space of The Eye offers a multifunctional business centre right in the heart of the Van Abbemuseum for the ideal mix (depending on who participates) of commercial, industrial and cultural interests.

SOME OF OUR GUESTS:
- Joost van Baal is an Open Source Software Developer and Unix System Administrator who normally has his base in the city of Eindhoven. All his activities are taken temporarily place now at the museum's office.
- Jelena Ilic is based in Belgrade but occasionally comes to Eindhoven. She works in the office to prepare project on home gardens in Eindhoven and Belgrade. She is also involved in an NGO called SILENE.
- Kunsthuis SYB prepared a meeting at the office, SYB is an Artist Residency that encourages and provides research, experiment and new cooperation.

The second chapter consists of a series of performances coordinated by the artist Maja Bekan in which she invites a variety of artists to conceive a programme of events each month. These structures of events will draw its inspiration from the informal domestic structure of home-sale Tupperware-like parties, which Bekan’s mother frequently organises; she will also actively participate in some of these events. The model of the domestic networking parties can be seen as a modern instrument for the constant improvement of life. According to the artist these meetings have led her to an investigation of the performative role of the object, the mediator and membership of the constituent social group who attend.

The performances will occasionally take place in The Eye, but more often outside the walls of the museum at specific locations in the city.