PROPOSALS – SKUPINA ("Group")
Action, Celje, 2003
The night before the Slovenian national cultural holiday of 8th of February, Skupina (“Group”) made its second action. Around the town of Celje, public street signs and other text in the public space (e.g. names of shops and institutions on building facades) translations appeared next to the signs. What was originally in Slovenian now appeared in English, and vice-versa. But the translations were not literal – they created humourous word games.
There was a very strong national reaction. The project was associated with the actions of the fascists when they occupied Celje in 1941 and quickly changed the public street signs and names into the German language.
The following year, in 2004, Slovenia was to become part of the EU. The action attempted to bring attention to the possibility of a new language totalitarianism.
