Nina Dragičević

- Slovenia -

Nina Dragičević is a poet, writer, and a sound artist. She holds a PhD in Sociology.

 

Nina is the author of five books: Kdo ima druge skrbi (2014), Slavne neznane: Zvočne umetnice v konstrukciji družbe (2016, en. Famous Unknowns: Women sound artists in construction of society), Med njima je glasba: Glasba v konstrukciji lezbične scene (2017, en. The music between them: Music in construction of lesbian communities), Ljubav reče greva (2019), and To telo, pokončno (2021). Her texts were translated into English, German, Portuguese, Serbian, Czech, Croatian, and Spanish.

Nina is a member of the Slovenian Writers’ Association and PEN Slovenia.

 

She is the author of numerous electroacoustic compositions and sound installations. In 2016 her album Parallellax (Kamizdat Records) was released, and her second album Ma’am there is no such thing in reality came out in 2019 on the same label. Her sound works were presented at Spektrum (Berlin), Kapelica Gallery, ŠKUC Gallery, Sajeta Art & Music Festival, Cirkulacija2, Slovenian Writers’ Association, AKC Metelkova, Tovarna Rog, Radio Slovenia, Radio Študent etc.

 

Nina is the artistic director of the Topographies of Sound International symposium-festival, co-editor at the Idiot literary magazine, and the author of Famous Unknowns radio show at Radio Študent.


“Nina Dragičević’s poetry book Ljubav Says Go packs more of a punch than any other published in the past year.”

- Igor Divjak (Sodobnost)

 

Ljubav Says Go is an intricate and striking story of survival.”

- Domen Slovinič (Literatura)

 

“We’re dealing with powerful, compelling poetry that commands our attention with a convincing treatment of complex pressing issues in new ways that depart from the mainstream”

- Maja Murnik (Sodobnost)

 

“A masterfully executed, nimble, sonorous, rhythmical soundscape of many voices”

- Irena Novak Popov, Urška P. Černe, Marcello Potocco

 

Ljubav Says Go reads as a single majestic epic, a declaration of love of the highest order”

- Veronika Šoster (Večer, Pranger Festival)

 

 

Ljubav Says Go is a tour de force, a fluent parade of words, sounds, thoughts, voices, emotions, and merciless rhythms – an incisive, constantly moving, restless, multitudinous epic poem enshrouded by the intensity of modern life, the difficulties faced by the precariously employed, the urban beat, the shrouded reality caught up in the pure intensity of the wall of noise that surrounds us whether we hear it or not, takes on different meanings and arrangements in the form of interpersonal relations, of public and private experiences, in the creation and dissipation of subjectivities within various power games and clashes with them”

- Luka Zagoričnik (Centralala)

 

“Of course I get the irony inherent in “nina powerful subversive nina the pillar of our generation” and “that’s the kind we need”, but – that’s the kind we have. Finally.”

- Aljoša Harlamov

 

“Nina Dragičević exposes the xenophobia and homophobia, the unequal treatment of minorities and the poor … The dispossessed subject’s subsequent attentive listening to the world results in one of the most poignant portrayals of our society and its commonly accepted anomalies”

- Aljaž Koprivnikar (RTV Slovenija, program ARS)

 

“At one point during the reading, she screamed so loudly that we almost fell off our seats. Her words were in harmony with the tone of Ljubav Says Go, as well as with the way one is overwhelmed by love – instantly, without pause, without calculation. In a single swoop. And that’s how she was reading. Focused attentively on the book, the words she was speaking and the scene in the background transformed our experience of the space in which we had listened to a collected discussion of literature only a couple of minutes prior. The contrast between the first and second parts could hardly have been more stark.”

- Klemen Kordež (Literatura)

 

Ljubav Says Go is an attempt to establish an acoustic dialogue between the individual and the soundscape of the outside world, an enactment of breathing, living, screaming, of desire, of fear, of states of mind and emotions, and above all, of humanity. What we’re witnessing here is actually the enactment of the concept of love/ljubav. And when ljubav says to “go” into the production, I go there with her. To participate in the imagining of what love/ljubav really is.”

- Varja Hrvatin (Neodvisni.art)

 

“Nina Dragičević’s poetry book was nominated for this year’s Veronika Award, and the nomination was absolutely deserved.”

- Tonja Jelen (Poetikon)

 

“If Ljubav was mainly an attempt to accomplish a change in the present so that to make future possible at all, This Body, Uprightmakes it clear that change is only achievable when rooted in an upright, nimble body. The body – far from being a merely physical object – is conceptualized not as a unity but as a monad of multiplicity crossed by histories and possible futures: personal ones as well as those relating to one’s family, one’s minority, one’s class. At this point in time, this is a book we definitely need.”

- From the justification of the jury for the 2021 Jenko Award