Dear supporters, dear followers,

It seamed I will never make it, but I’m finally back home!

It was tough hard and stressful. One just need to understand how the system works, persevere and never give up. That’s what I did and they finally let me go. I was the most happy man in the world when I could finally hug my family and my kids after such an odyssey. Now the nightmare is over. I’m back on tracks, ready to continue with renewed spirit and with more determination than before!

What happened?

Flights disrupted at Heathrow as computer failure caused chaos. My flight was delayed and missed the connection in Zurich. Had to spend the night there after cueing for hours to reschedule the flight and get a place to sleep. Exhausting…

No matter, the tour in UK was well worth it anyway. The screening of My Name is Janez Janša at the Royal College of Arts was well attended. Among the audience Richard Barbrook, Rod Dickinson and Bernadette Buckley, to spice up a bit the Q&A.

The main problem though is always the same: to make sure a local audience identifies at its best with the issue you are addressing. So this time we decided to help them a little:

After London we moved to Kent for two more gigs: one at the UCR Canterbury and the other at the Turner Contemporary in Margate where we involved the local audience in an experiment related to our next project titled Trust.

To know what the project Trust is all about I’m afraid you’ll still have to wait a bit. For now, just know that we challenged the audience to give us their valid Credit Cards that we then signed (all three of our signatures on the back of each card) in front of their eyes.

Thanks again to Emma Brasó and Ben Dalton for the impeccable organization and the quality audience they were able to involve!

Janez Janša

The jury of the Red House Art Doc Prize (Casa Rossa Art Doc), composed by Marco Antonio Bazzocchi (chairman), Ermanno Cavazzoni, Chiara Lagani, Cesare Malfatti and Valentina Vannicola, has assigned the award for best documentary dedicated to the art to My name is Janez Janša by Janez Janša, Janez Janša and Janez Janša, with the following motivation:

For the construction of the documentary, constantly surprising, for the originality of the theme, treated in narrative form with a very broad philosophical value, but regarding at the same time very specific cases. The jury has recognized and appreciated the ironic gaze on contemporary art and its paradoxes; on politics and its vulnerability and on the way a performance can leave the boundaries of the art territory and spread its tentacles into the social sphere.

Founded in 1983, the Bellaria Film Festival is one of the first Italian festival dedicated to independent cinema.
http://www.bellariafilmfestival.org/

Film »Jaz sem Janez Janša« je v zadnji fazi postrodukcije. Film lahko finančno podprete na spletni strani www.verkami.com/projects/1752. V zahvalo za podporo ponujamo zanimive nagrade – od navedbe vašega imena v špici filma do umetniških del.

Leta 1993 se je Princ naveličal svojega imena, kljub temu, da še ne leto pred tem podpisal pogodbo vredno 100 milijonov dolarjev z družbo Warner Bros. Pri omenjenem založniku so namreč zaželeli, da pevec ne bi objavil toliko CD-jev, saj lahko s tem zasiči trg. Umetnik je odzval z obtožbami, da Warner duši njegovo ustvarjalnost, vendar z njimi mi mogel prekiniti pogodbe. Zato se je odločil, da si bo spremenil ime ne izgovorljivo kombinacijo simbolov za moškega (♂) in žensko (♀). Da bi mediji začeli uporabljati njegov simbol, so morali razposlati tisoče disket s posebno vrsto pisave.

Uradno je pevec predstavil svoj novo imen v izjavi za javnost z besedami:

To je neizgovorljiv simbol, katerega pomen še ni pojasnjen.

in dodal (v ang.) »It’s all about thinking in new ways, tuning in 2 a new free-quency.”
Kako pa se predstavite?

»Ni problemov. Ne potrebujem imena,«

je povedal v intervjuju leta 1995.
Novinarji so ga poimenovali »umetnik formalno znan kot Prince,« vendar se je leta 2000 vrnil k imenu Princ, ko se je pogodba z Warner Bros iztekla. Med leti 1993 in 2000 se je sicer prodaja njegovih plošč precej zmanjšala, vendar je njegova zgodba kljub temu postala znana.
Znamka je znamka!

In 1993, Prince was fed up with his label, Warner Bros, with whom he had signed a $100 million deal less than a year before. They wanted him to release fewer CDs so he wouldn’t flood the market. The artist responded by accusing Warner of stifling his creativity but he couldn’t get out of his contract so he decided to change his name to an unpronounceable combination of the symbols for male (♂) and female (♀). In order for the media to use the symbol, his record label had to mail out thousands of floppy disks with a custom font.

Officially, the singer explained his new designation in a press statement by saying:

It is an unpronounceable symbol whose meaning has not been identified. It’s all about thinking in new ways, tuning in 2 a new free-quency.

What about introductions?
As he told an interviewer in 1995,

I get by. I don’t need a name as such, really.

Journalists started to call him “the artist formerly known as Prince,” but in 2000 he went back to Prince when his Warner contract expired. Between 1993–2000 sales of his new music slowed down significantly, but he still managed to get his point across.

A brand is a brand!

P.S.: Our movie about names is on its final stage of postproduction. Help this movie to see the world. Contribute to the crowdfunding action! http://bit.ly/It5Zmv

Projekt Množicanja je zaključen. Svoj cilj smo dosegli!

181 donatorjev je podprlo film “Jaz sem Janez Janša”

HVALA! THANK YOU! GRAZIE! DANKE! GRACIAS! MERCI! TAK!

Kampanja množicanja je presegla tudi naša pričakovanja: film je prejel donacije v višini 7185 evrov. Zato pri tem projektu ni več besed “mogoče,” “morda”….

FILM BOMO KONČALI. TO JE SEDAJ DEJSTVO

Janez

The crowdfunding is over. WE REACHED THE GOAL!

181 patrons supported MY NAME IS JANEZ JANSA

THANK YOU! HVALA! GRAZIE! DANKE! GRACIAS! MERCI! TAK!

The crowdfunding campaign went far beyond our expectations: the movie got an injection of 7185 Euro. Now there’s no more »maybe« and »perhaps«…

WE ARE GOING TO FINISH THIS DAM MOVIE. IT’S A FACT!

Janez

V preteklem tednu je bilo precej dogajanja okoli nastajajočega filma, največ s pripravo dogodka Množicanje v živo v BI-KO-FE. Na srečo sem imel veliko podpore s strani lastnikov lokala in s strani prijateljev ter drugih sodelujočih. Poleg tega moram poudariti, da sem bil deležen tudi podpore medijev. In zabava je bila odlična. Udeležilo se jo je precej ljudi, najpomembnejše pa je bilo dobro vzdušje. Za dobro vzdušje je namreč poskrbela glasba DJ Batka in projekcija insertov filma.

Med samo zabavo smo za film zbrali 600 evrov! Zdaj nam manjka še nekaj evrov, da dosežemo svoj cilj. Odštevanje se je začelo. To je zadnji teden.

Če še niste prispevali, je zdaj primeren čas, da to storite!

Ker smo se dobro zabavali, tudi veliko fotografij s petkovega dogodka nimamo. Imamo pa slike štirih majic, ki smo jih pripravili za dogodek. So vam všeč?

Klik, Janez

Last week there were a lot of important things to do around the movie the main one being the organization of the Live Crowdfunding Party at BI-KO-FE. Luckily I had great support both from the owners of the place and from my friends and collaborators. Also the press was quite helpful I have to say. At the end the party was just great. A lot of people but, most of all, lots of good vibes. The music of DJ Bakto was just the right stuff for the occasion and the projections of the movie excerpts on the walls did the rest.

We were able to collect almost 600 Euro for our movie while having fun! Now we just need very little to finally reach the goal. The final countdown has started. This is the last week!

Getting ready to leave for a series of presentations and events in the UK. The schedule is quite intensive but the entire mini-tour looks promising.

On MON 8 at 6.30pm we screen My Name is Janez Janša at the Royal College of Arts in London (Battersea) as part of the RCA Film Series 2014/15.
The venue is called, Gorvy Lecture Theatre and the event is open to all. No admission fee. After the screening we’ll be there spending some time answering questions from the audience. Thanks to our friend Ben Dalton for organizing this!

The day after we move to Canterbury where we’ll have a talk at the University for the Creative Arts as part of their Visiting Lecturer Series. The event, in the framework of the exhibition Despite Efficiency: Labour, will start at 12.45pm sharp at the Cragg Lecture Theatre. It’s mostly meant for all Fine Art BA and MA students, but I’m sure one can manage to sneak in easily, if she really wants…

And finally on December 10 we are at the Turner Contemporary in Margate where we present Name Readymade (lecture/performance starting at 6pm), the concept of Collateral Art we are developing in the last couple of years, and the outlines of Trust, the upcoming net-based project we are developing together with UCA Canterbury.
This event is part of the public programme designed in parallel to the exhibition English Magic by Jeremy Deller.

Special thanks to Emma Braso for the coordination of this challenging set of events. We are really looking forward!

Janez, Janez, Janez