NMP (art collective)
NMP (НМП in Macedonian; it is a proper name, not an abbreviation) is a multimedia art collective from Skopje, Republic of Macedonia. The collective was first conceived as a movement rooted in applied philosophy in February 2002, but it did not have a specific form until 8 April 2005 when Version 1.0 of its official website (www.nmp.com.mk) was launched. NMP focuses primarily on digital art (such as photomanipulation and vector) and street art (stencils, stickers, graffiti), but it also supports photography and non-visual arts, such as poetry and music. Due to the specific nature of the medium, and the growing number of writers, a separate section of the site dubbed NMP Reader (NMP Chitanka) was opened at the end of 2006, featuring some “celebrities” from the Macedonian blogger scene. There is no set membership in the collective; all artists and project developers participate on a revolving-door basis. Works of the collective are made public online, as well as through collective and individual exhibitions. As of June 2007, about 30 artists are associated with the NMP collective.
Exhibitions
So far, there have been three offline NMP-organized exhibitions:
- The Beginning of the Collective Hallucination, Youth Cultural Centre, 8 April 2006;
- Pandora’s Drawer, ap-art, 30 December 2006; and
- Skopska Street, press to exit/Open Graphic Studio, 10 April 2007 (co-organized with Line I+M; a video detailing this exhibit can be found online[1])
The collective also made a significant contribution to the Visual Noise group exhibition (November 2006, organized by Pogon), participating with nearly half of the exhibition’s artists, and with the design of the promotional material. NMP members have won awards: The Macedonian film “Does It Hurt? The First Balkan Dogma” by Aneta Lesnikovska was given an award for the best poster in the Rotterdam Film Festival, an award conferred by Screen magazine; the poster was designed by Slobodan Jakoski, NMP member and part of the team working on the graphics and advertising for the film.[2] Also, NMP collective member Jovan Petrushevski has been Artist of the Month on the Reavel Wordpress site.[3]
Collaborations
An important trait of the collective is its openness in collaborative works with other groups and organizations. In the summer of 2006, NMP designed the advertising materials for the independent musical e-zine Plagij.at (http://www.plagij.at) birthday concert called Plagij.at Turns1. In the same period, NMP participated in the creation and the promotion of the film “Does it Hurt? – The First Balkan Dogma”: the official movie poster won the film magazine Skrien’s award for the Best Poster of the Rotterdam Film Festival 2007. Other notable NMP partners include: Gluva Soba, Lokomotiva, Kanal 103, Line I+M, Pogon, Project Pechat, ComeClean, etc.
See also
- DeviantArt
- Lokomotiva
- Plagij.at
- Kontrapunkt
- Pogon (art)
References
- Video of exhibit: <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4305108292950578903&q=nmp&total=172&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3>
- Coverage in Macedonia Daily: <http://macedoniadaily.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html>
- <http://reavel.wordpress.com/2007/08/04/artist-of-the-month-jovan-petrushevski/>