Taja Kramberger

44

Taja Kramberger : biography

11 September 1970 –

Another bigger international project Taja Kramberger conducted in 2006 was a Slovenian segment of the international project "Sealines / Morske linije / Linee di mare" which through one-month’s literary residences in 6 European bilingual ports (Cardiff, Galway, Helsinki, Koper, Riga, Valletta) connected writers from 6 European states . Project was supported by the program Culture 2000 of the European Union , and was led by the LAF – Literature Across Frontiers office in UK, Manchester . In Slovenia it was executed by the Association Tropos and its then president Taja Kramberger.

From 2007 to 2009, Kramberger was a president of the Collegium artium (abr. CA) – an association of teachers and students at the Faculty of Human Sciences Koper, University of Primorska, aimed at organizing different cultural and social events at the faculty (literary readings, music concerts, theater and film performances, round tables, conferences, commemorations, exhibitions of figurative arts, other specialized exhibitions etc.). In the frames of the institution CA more than 150 cultural events took place in less than two years.

Essays, studies and criticism

Her essays and introductory studies to the other poets (Roberto Juarroz, Michele Obit, Gašper Malej) mark quite different approach from other Slovenian literary critics. They are attentive analyses of poetic language and imaginary constellation behind it. With the essay titled Similis simili gaudet. Ali o kerkopski literarni kritiki v slovenskem literarnem polju (Similis simili gaudet. On the Kercopian Literary Criticism in the Slovenian Literary Field), written with a rare combination of fine irony and piercing analytical style, on drastically unrefexive criticism in Slovenian literature she has shown how important it is for a critic to be disposable and open to the artistic work and at the same time able to produce analytical distances in relation to the work read and evaluated, and in the next step to compound both experiences into a certain perspective, which can come out as his/her own distinctive approach and a singular way of seeing things and works of art. Without that (minimal) cognitive engagement, so Taja Kramberger, there can be no artistic criticism, but only an unconscious and ritualized activity – she calls it a Kercopian literary criticism – that is a (grinning) mimesis of common sense and stereotypes about literature and authors. In her interviews she talks about cognitive dimensions of literature and their transformational potential in a society. Transformational discourses and discursive practices, which are open to changes and interventions, as the opposite of the transfirmational discourses with closed semantic structure and clear signs of mental immobility are original analytical categories of her conceptualization and apparatus. In scholary texts (cf. her article Doxa et fama, 2003, her dissertation, or her interview for the journal Literatura in 2006) Taja Kramberger further identifies transfirmational discourses as the systemic feature of the longue durée provincial mental structure, unable to subdue itself to changes and open to the external/outer world. Taja Kramberger is without any doubt among those few Slovenian writers (Iztok Osojnik, Miklavž Komelj, in a way also Barbara Korun) which are studiously oriented, and do not recognize (pure) inspiration as a sufficient cause for creative artistic work. In their artistic work there’s a strong component of social sensitivity and a constant ethical reference to attain the equilibrium of social justice.