psychogeography 

in the created psychogeographic map, most of the cityscape is obliterated except the river and the gree areas which have an orientation purpose and become the pivot of movement within the urban space. the river is felt as the main divider in the city and the most important landmark o the horizon, not only as a visual sign through which one’s geographical position might be understood but also becomes an object of longing. 

the bank of the river is the closest to what might be felt as the soothing melancholy of the sea. the upper part has the atmosphere of calmness and lonely mornings while the lower part is the locus of happenings and socialisation. 

the usual paths are marked very subtly, to depict the comfortable grid of the navigation in the everyday life. the grid is established as a perpendicular formation of vertical and horizontal trajectories and is changeable according to the river and the importance of the street and the angle ascent/descent. it becomes the attempt to mentally systematise an organic blueprint of the city in the manner that is semi-logical but rather intuitive.

(ex. vertical: vinohradska, sokolovska, milady horakove, wenceslav square; ex. horizontal: dukelskych hrdinu, italska; ex. controversial: hybernska)

the city

transformation of a public space - solutions of visual smog

for this task i would like to suggest a visual cleaning of the city centre with an emphasis of visual distraction created by the branding and advertisements on the architecture.

i have chosen to work more precisely with Wenceslas square in the centre of Prague as one of the larger public areas with a great number of inhabitants commuting through it on the daily basis and an important flux of tourists. i believe that this area could be turned into an entirely green space within the city and could come to resemble a park more than an exhausting crowded node.

the first step would be to completely restrict the area when it comes to motor vehicles since despite their fairly low number, even today they are a demonstration of the carelessness of drivers and actively endanger the pedestrians. once the whole square would be reserved only for pedestrians and cyclists, there would be an additional amount of space gained to be transformed, which now belongs to the roads. this would make the square a safe zone with a slight decrease in the air and sound pollution.

with this extra space, i would suggest the expansion of the green area in the square, with new trees planted and sections of flowers that would support pollination and existence of bees and other insects within the urban space. the greenery would create a space for visual and physical relaxation and would elevate the saturation of visual content in the city centre while enhancing the city’s capacity to reabsorb the co2 that it is producing.

in order to make the whole square more eye-friendly in the manner that would support the natural surrounding, the amount of visual pollution would have to be reduced, especially in the context of advertising. the billboards on the side of the sidewalks should be removed and replaced with plants instead. the advertisement that is fixed onto the building would have to be coordinated with the colour spectrum of the building itself in order to become visually neutralised. i believe that despite the brands losing their significant colours as visual associations, it would not have a financial impact — on the contrary, the aim towards some kind of neutrality, both environmental and visual, would become an attractive feature of these places. according to these regulations, if the building is, for example, light-blue, then the branding of the shop has to be appropriate to a similar colour scheme in order to minimise the visual distraction. the shopping windows should as well be designed as neutrally as possible, especially without the creaming ‘sale’ signs in red.

the city centre should here reflect the changes that we are aiming towards and would hopefully make the aesthetics that soothe possible even in one of the most dynamic places in the city.  

visual content analysis

Small Worlds // exhibition of doll houses

visual medium — objects

genres — houses, dolls, furniture, pets

people — women, men, children; white, people of colour, servants

objects — houses, beds, cats, dogs

8 houses: 5 traditional (72,5%, 3 modern (37,5%); 5 houses (72,5%), 3 buildings (37,5%)

81 people: 29 men (35,8%), 27 women (33,4%), 25 children (30.8%); 71 white (97,54%), 2 people of colour (2,46%); 11 servants (13,6%)

19 beds, 38 tables

5 pets: 4 cats (80%), 1 dog (20%)

choosing such an exhibition with so many objects was not the wisest idea, but when i decided to narrow the categorised that will be analysed down, i believe there were some interesting findings to be observed. the exhibition itself was a curious walk through the four past centuries of doll houses, with the subtle changes in style and mirrored social structure observed. in the end of the exposition, the corner where one can create their own house was established, with a small installation created by the students of UMPRUM in which they made unconventional tiny houses. 

the most surprising outcome of the analysis was the unusual representation of male and female figures — with men being slightly more present. i had believed that the inclination towards the dollhouses came from girls and thus they would be more willing to play with female characters. the men depicted ranged from aristocrats and dandies to servants and stable boys. women were usually depicted as sitting or taking care for the children, with a few maids around the houses. 

as expected, the great majority of the dolls were white, with two to three exceptions of darker skin. only a house that was dated in the 1960s featured white yet tanned people sitting around the pool and was the only one that had unconventional body proportions of the dolls will rather elongated limbs and heads. 

the architecture of the house mirrors the current trend both in spacial context and social structure, with houses getting smaller and more humble, families smaller with fewer dolls present per house and the slow disappearance of the servants. the later houses after the 19th century, begin to be located actually in the buildings as if in the city, which supports the notion of the acceleration of wealthier population as well within the urban space. 

experimental cinema - Mike Hoolboom

Imitations of Life by Mike Hoolboom was a very profound visual experience for me and i felt deeply touched by the content and messages he evokes, presented through an impressively skilful decontextualisation of existing visual material. the film itself has stuck with me since and it perpetuated constant thinking about the quality of the visual content that is omnipresent and consumed without the space of reflection or even the mere possibility to slow down the stream of information. 
it becomes clear from the first few frames of the introduction that this experimental film very much differs in language and topic form the conventional action cinema. it relies on the reinterpretation of existing content that is lost int he flux of the contemporary visual culture constantly churning out the new images. this intertextuality allows various depths of interpretation — i wondered, how affected my judgement would be if i knew where every image comes from or even whether if there was something that i missed or did not notice exactly because i was not aware of the original source of the fragment. however, with not being familiar with the initial context, i, as a viewer, could be shocked — startled by the repetitive stereotypes that brim with violence and dystopia yea are consumed as entertainment. here the fragmentation and rearrangement destroys any notion of an action or narrative that might have been entertaining in the first place, replacing it with the poetics of rearrangement that pull the viewer out of the comfortable numbness of being amused and captivated. the captivation and attraction is established differently — through sentiment in some sections and through revolt and disgust in the other. in some places, one cannot take away their eyes in order not to miss something very important and beautiful; in other, it is the subversiveness of the abject that glues the eyes of the viewer to the screen, hypnotising them with fear. we realise what we as a culture have produced and collectively consumed, blinded by the violence and decadence disguised by the spectacle. it becomes questionable whether our sight has remained healthy and undisturbed despite our eyes being healthy. in this beautiful and terrifying conglomeration of decontextualised images, Hoolboom manages to reference ideas of Freud and his notions of childhood and memory. he compares the fluidity of images to the fluidity of memory and comes to ask whether in the era where they support each other inseparably, they can even be distinguished from one another — especially in the perception of the self and one’s own identity. the concept of the spectacle culminates in persons becoming spectacles — the empty photographs, the mirrors that reflect only the distorted surface, the simulacra of truth decaying into a bundle of incomprehensible lies that together seem coherent and truthful enough to be accepted as an unchangeable status quo. 
Hoolboom involves a political concern through the language of poetry, evoking symbolic images that become loaded with meaning and collective importance when surrounded by the mass of appropriated content. this issues ranges from the intentions to document and the inevitable self involvement of the filmmaker — making the camera ever more subjective tool, replacing the eye of the beholder — to the consumeristic ideals of the definition of the self through the glittering surface. addressing the culture of entertainment, of predetermined content that is re=recycled, he touches upon the question of the free will within this system that labels the individuals even prior to their birth. in the world of the never-ending possibilities, the reality is limited the time. the divorce between the narration and the visual material creates the sense of separation that is reminiscent of the gap between the memory and remembering as a particular linguistic structure that manages to articulate a sensation and the visual imprint left on the retina — not always explicable but palpable in its meltable meta presence. the juxtaposition of soft and comfortable visuals of Jack, the heartwarming sepia nostalgia, the archetype of his unspoiled wise innocence and the harshness of tragedy that is commercially produced enhances the rupture between the homemade reality and the globally available illusion. by merging them and making them refer to each other through the spoken word, the inescapable entanglement of these two realms in the contemporary life is questioned — what is the destructive element in this relationship? do they establish a cumulative mental body of images, acquired both through the physical eye and the artificially framed electrode. is there a possibility of symbiosis or is the dystopia absolutely inevitable? the world of the child is invaded by the flux of images, altering its sense of self, playing with the perceived continuation of the mnemonic matter, of the stuff that fixates the sense of identity. the safe space is irreparably damaged by the decadence of entertainment that pollutes and numbs. the eye rolls back in ecstasy, in disgust; seeing or not does not make a difference. the violence creeps in through the image that depicts the future, the disaster; through the sadomasochistic pleasure of seeing pain, of reacting or remaining untouched. the banality of the photographic tools, the tools for the attempt of self-preservation and remembering uncovers its ruthless mechanical eye, transforming us into an irrelevant sterile image, blending and blurring the division between truth and fiction.

comic hero

** unfortunately, i have never read comic books and i do not have a particular opinion on that cultural domain. i believe that my opinion has been tainted recently with the expansion of the marvel franchise and for me personally, it is a pure entertainment that i prior to this class did not consider socially very useful. 

for the class, i decided to read the comic book Maus by Art Spiegelman in order to have the material to write about. it was a very powerful reading for me and i was surprised that such a form that has been considered rather simple and reserved solely for fun could have such a profound message, communicated with such nuance. the development of the characters and their relationships was fascinating and it was remarkable how such dynamics could be translated into a few vignettes and sentences. Spiegelman condenses the most essential elements of interaction into a single sentence — uncovering the turbulence of one’s personality and the result that it has on they interact with the world. despite following the standard format of the comic book, it is not only the topic that separates it from the others but the realism of the characters as well, painted with both their virtues and their flaws. 

the characterisation of Art’s father seemed to be the most complex, and it was almost startling how his aggression and quick temper emerge despite him being a victim in the narrative. Spiegelman questions the power dynamics within the social structure on the political scale while analysing the behaviours that are exercising power on the personal level with the same intensity. 

it is not the hero that enchants in this story but the power of the fluctuation within the anti-hero, the ability to have the character transformed from the position of the oppressed into the one who maltreats the others. the story clearly depicts the struggle of the second generation and the difficulty to understand the atrocity that happened to the previous generation in the past, and the strenuous attempts to reconnect and help oneself. 

** creation of a comic hero:

for this task, i would like to propose a character that arises from the current political trends of intersectional feminism in combination with the social media and the possibility that this is the era of the new cultural war. 

Aesma, aged 26 lives in New York and currently works in the radical bookstore, Bluestockings. She is currently enrolled int he masters programme in post-colonial and gender studies at NYU. here family is originally Turkish and they emigrated during the early 2000s when Aesma was still young. Her family is a traditional Muslim family with four children and she is the second oldest — she has one older brother and two younger sisters. Despite her parents being intellectually liberal, they care about the traditional upbringing very much and still maintain a great respect for religion and everyday conduct motivated by the compassion found in their faith. 

the comic book would depict a series of everyday events, culminating in the weekly meeting that Aesma participates in the bookstore — the radical feminism comic book club where illustrators gather and through drawing depict their struggles int he contemporary society and the aggressive political climate of the US. these events are based on the current instagram trend of female art pages with the focus on women illustrators who depict the issues related to being a woman in the patriarchal society. also, it distinguishes between the so-called white feminism on one side and intersectional on the other. 

apart from these gatherings where these young women share their stories in the form of images, Aesma is experiencing the everyday life of a Muslim woman in the environment that is getting increasingly antagonistic towards everything she represents. 

the element of the family introduces the concept of a strong religious background that creates a tension with Aesma’s socially progressive ideals. she is on a quest to find the balance between one and another. the comic itself would try to de-stigmatise religion as inherently oppressive. it would be an investigation whether feminism and Islam can meet and create a powerful and compassionate philosophy of being. 

formally, the comic would be separated into episodes, covering a day in life and talking about everyday situation such as xenophobic incidents on the public transport, not being able to conventionally socialise during Ramadan, sharing experiences about how to deal with the stigma of menstruation with her younger sisters, volunteering with the refugees and university exams. 

The Century of the Self ep 3.

“there is a policeman inside all your heads and he must be destroyed”

This documentary series, The Century of the Self, analyses how the 20th century became focused on the human psyche and how it evolved to be treated as a capitalist device that is manipulated and subjected to consumerism and various types of ideological and political propaganda. The episode number three is concerned mainly with the role of Freudian psychoanalysis in the establishment of the patterns of contemporary American society in the 1950s and how those who opposed these theories contributed to the empowering of the counterculture in the 1960s whose features soon became adopted by marketing in order to understand, expand and manipulate their audience.

The ideas of Sigmund Freud that not only allowed but encouraged the controlling of the masses were in the 1950s in the US promoted first by Freud’s daughter, Anna Freud, and then by his nephew, Edward Bernays, who pragmatically advanced them even further by employing them in the fields of public relations, mainly advertisement and marketing. It was claimed that every human being contains the hidden self which needs to remain utterly controlled for the sake of that individual and for the benefit of the society as a whole, and that every deviation from the social consensus was happening due to the lack of discipline of that inner self, which was essentially evil and selfish. The opposition of Freud believed that it was not the self that was necessarily evil but the repression and the control made humans behave in a manner which was not acceptable nor pleasant. These frustrations create the greedy self which is then easily manipulated by the media, which paradoxically ingrain an infinite number of new desires into that self to feed them later for the sake of their own profit.

The main figure on the other side of psychoanalysis was Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) who argued that neurosis is rooted in the socio-economic conditioning that represses and thus distorts the inner self. He coined the term orgastic potency which directly relates to one’s ability to experience an orgasm on a psychosomatic level, and to require and provide love. Based on the idea that it was the repression of one’s sexual desires and feelings that was the main cause for occurring violence, he began a new form of psychotherapy that encouraged expressions that were not deemed fit for public.

With the 1960s a new generation of activists rose, mainly motivated by the tragedies of the war in Vietnam which was waged for profit only. These protests included the condemnation of consumerism and the methods used for the control of the masses, including the manipulation of the taste through advertisement and the loss of oneself. Herbert Marcuse, German-American philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist, summarised the attempts of consumerism in the term ‘one-dimensional man’, meaning a person who responds to the trend presented by advertisement and thus has their potential individual expression reduced to mass-produced objects. The social control is established through the manipulation of desires and drives on both the conscious and subconscious level. In the 1960s, it was still believed that the inner policeman that makes the pursuit of true positive human values impossible can be destroyed if the system of the corporate state that implants it in the first place is abolished. However, the Democratic Convention in Chicago of 1968 demonstrated the violent capacities of the government and resulted not only in the complete repression of the left but in the change of the leftist mindset whatsoever. The personal became political with the true towards the inner new self, believing that if enough individuals change, a new, better society will naturally emerge.

The movement of the self began to use Reich’s techniques of the liberating oneself through public expression of feelings and came to framed as the human potential movement. Despite having a few controversial confrontations, such as the attempt to reconsolidate racism or sexual liberation of covenants, the teaching of the self soon became rather mainstream. It aimed to create a new kind of human being, one on the path of self-fulfilment and self-actualisation but it soon it grew into a set commercialised lessons which were advertised as an instruction of how to become oneself. However, the whole phenomenon culminated in the change of the market and the creation of the new kind of customer who was to be pleased not by mass-produced objects of the 1950s but by freshly designed items that enhance and express their individuality and the authenticity of their self. The philosophy relied on the absurd recognition of nothingness that lies inside the self which was to be treated as a place from which one can grow into anything they wanted to be —  even more easily with the help of the newly available goods that seem to truly embody who they are. The identity could not be purchased as a whole but it could be constructed with the things that one possesses.

When what mattered was reduced to the blind individualism of bubbles of happiness, the political agenda began to dissolve. The true self with the potential was not moved by the misfortunes and injustice of others — it was ‘socialism in one person’ and its first and only duty was to be oneself.

The series as a whole is rather dynamic and behave as a visual collage that combines found historical material and interviews as illustrations to the narration that tries to provide an expatiation of the tackled topic in a fairly clear and simple language. The abrupt changes of the shots, their perspectives and jumps from black and white to colour provide the viewer with no space for contemplation or reflection — the images that bombard become a demonstration of the technique of persuasion. The aim is further enhanced by the choice of music, which is the most radical in the sections where it is upbeat and combined with the footage which had been sped up. The images of war and protest appear to be a ridiculous dance of ants running on the screen in what sounds as quite a cheerful situation.

The image that repeats is a screaming woman on the couch which seems to be a caricature of a hysteric with all four of her limbs up in the air. Despite its supposedly progressive note, the documentary seems quite gender normative — it is women who are mainly shown crying, men are yelling and openly confronting and cry only when they realise that they are considerably troubled. Additionally, men speak of the politics in a concrete manner, while women talk more abstractly about feelings. Only those who are interviewed as professionals have precise opinions on the matter — however, they too are only links that lead towards political actions, whether that was understanding of sexuality or devising new techniques of analysis, since it is men who are actively politically engaged.

The documentary was a very persuasive visual material due to the combination of editing techniques, the male narrator and the footage that appeared as a proof of what was described. The information that was provided was always supported by a correlating visual and then verified by a person who has experienced the event or was an expert on the topic. As a very seductive piece of footage with captivating dynamics, it is a piece that is well aligned with the contemporary stream of images which not only explains the dangers of thought control and propaganda but embodies it, regardless of its positive and educational intentions.

**

The Century of Ourselves

The term performative video installation is an experimentation in itself — it opens a whole new space in the interdisciplinary it inhabits and allows a series of oscillations in the time and space it uses as its main medium. It seemed that most of the students understood at least a certain potential that this hybridisation presents — a loop of live repetitions that are bound to the certain visual material that had been created prior to the performance. It enhances the perception of contemporary art as primarily performative in a very practical experience of creating in front of an audience but without the literal stage. It is a curious case of collaboration and cooperation in which different people and different intentions coexist in symbiosis — they support and reinforce each other's ideas without disrupting each other where they overlap.

However, from the first glance, it becomes clear that most of the students have taken both their personal inspirations and the conceptual framing of the documentary rather literally. It caused a series of overly dramatic gestures that unfortunately borderline with farce. The lack of nuanced sensitivity to the issues that were discussed could be attributed to the lack of experience in the devising of an artwork that goes beyond aesthetic. It is only natural that a student work in the first year of their studies does not render itself sophisticated — with the flaws acknowledged, they are a learning experience and should be thus forgiven.

#1 Persuasion / The work by Jindriska Krejci was the first one to encounter — a large piece of black cloth under which the viewer looks as if taking a very old fashioned photograph. I found this situation of isolating the viewer intriguing, especially with the topic of mind control it was reminiscent of a magic trick. However playful though, the series of mirrored commercials and news that were played on the screen with flickering text were rather literal and obvious, yet it was not clear why this particular content was chosen. It did not deliver a message beyond the generic image of through control. The generic television images it presented did not present a concrete point (not even something as banal as Illuminati or similar conspiracy theories). I wish I provided something to remember (the theory that Mark Zuckerberg is a lizard person could be very captivating, as a suggestion). The most interesting element of the inside of the black dome was the vertically positioned glass that reflected the face of the person inside with lights coming from the screen — it was not expected yet it visualised the isolation of the self which is attached by these images quite well.

#1 Pressure is a social construct / This double video installation by Emily Junginger presented the issue of body image in a very social media-inspired manner that obviously flattens the whole issue and completely eliminates any possibility for the exploration of its complexity. It reduced the whole discourse to the advertisement as negative and so-called body positivity on the other side. The ‘positive’ images that were used as illustration have been circulating the social media for months and have become the epitome of the forced body positivity movement — the other side that mildly echoes the truly progressive voices that use platforms such as instagram to make themselves heard. There is a set of recirculating images — some of them presented in the video — that appear on accounts associated with white feminism and sugar-coated ‘live laugh love’ trends that not only spread a very shallow form of self-acceptance but reuse images without crediting the original creator. Just as this work did. It presented the contemporary version of the human potential movement in the digitalised format — obviously without the understanding of the dangers of that mindset.

#2 Is it black or is it white? / The installation by Nicola Florence Ziboni was an interesting game to play but despite its aim to ask questions about the grey zone, as written in the text, it undermined itself by literally not allowing its existence. It does not allow then nuances of the spectrum between the white and the black. It falls into the moralist self-sabotage by following the conventional dualist perception of what is good and what is bad. Additionally, it forces the conventional antonyms as its own work, and vice versa, meaning that it is expecting that the viewer will comply with the presented pairs.

#3 Fear of Speech / This work by Darya Barkova was technically interesting and i enjoyed the discovery that it was a live projection that was generated in the other room. Despite not being particularly captivating, i perceived it as an introspective exercise in which a person is actively trying to overcome their fear. It was not meant for me directly — i was merely a passing spectator who appeared there almost at random, simply witnessing a moment that might be transformative for another person.

#4 You Fly - Free Fall / The performance by Hand Yaon was the one that stood out the most and i believe presented the most introspection and thought. I found the combination of physical performance in the space accompanied by the visually impressive yet simply constructed — the imitating of oneself in the photograph, for me understood as the image of oneself that one can potentially be after a while becomes an exhausting mental and physical labour. It visualised the gap between oneself in the image as a still frame and oneself as a moving entity in the reality of time and space as a rapture well. Additionally, it made a step further from the human potential movement since the artist decide to frame the act of flying as both ascending and descending, accepting the dynamics of movement and progress as natural sequences of succeeding, failing, falling and getting up on one’s feet again. The hastiness of the performance and the palpable urge to keep up with the moving images acknowledged the existence of both externally and internally motivated factors that dictate the speed of one’s ambitions and the frame rate of one’s success.

#5 Women’s Life / The collaborative work of Laman Salahli and Mandan Issa was motivated by a rather noble idea but was, unfortunately, rendered very literally and crudely. A sensitive and complex topic such as women rights in the Middle East does not tolerate bad amateur acting. The faux drama of the visuals was very distracting as obstructed any deeper contemplation of the topic. It visually reminded me of buzzfeed diy videos that circulate around social media — which is a very misleading connection to make. It is a terrible misfortune that the visual resemblance between the person who is disturbed by their social position and a person staining their shirt in the video which shows how to clean it with baking soda is so stark. The metaphor of being blindfolded and tied by a social constraint was clear. However, the choice of the black satin as a material gave it an absolutely misplaced eroticism which seems to contradict the whole topic, especially when presented in the geographical context of Europe which has been fetishising ‘The Orient’ as exotic and submissive ever since the colonial period.

#6 Pointless / I wish I was spared of this par excellence example of white boy nihilism — thinking that they found the ultimate truth when they once saw Nietzsche’s ‘god is dead’ decontextualised in a form of either a graffiti or an internet meme.

#7 Family Puppetry / The work of Samantha Mei Yet explores the topic of what it means to have parents that create a sense of control that borderlines with surveillance but essentially stems from what they consider to be benevolent intentions. The fluctuation between a natural parental concern and crippling anxiety that gets transferred to the child as well is depicted through the use of visuals and language, additionally layered with live action in the projection. I believe that it is a very relevant topic, especially presented in the context of art studies where the approval of parents of it as a career choice comes to be a privilege. However, regardless of whether there is a voiced support or not, concerns about the sustainable future are clearly articulated from the parent’s side — not only from the final perspective but also as an assessment of created value and practical output. The work itself positions the nuclear family as the essential unit of the societal structure as a whole and argues that the family bonds and implied responsibilities are the initial forces that police.

#8 Persuasion. Get rid of your mask / I have perceived works by Ji Yoon Kelly Lee and Maria Sempekova as a one work and even according to the accompanying text they seem to be very close when it comes to discerning the main message. It is stated that the light that is coming from the projections they manipulate represents freedom; the displacement of the lit up frame caused by the manual manipulation with the projector seemed as a gesture with aesthetic intentions that lacked the precision of a conceptual why. I believe that if the aim is to motivate the viewer to feel liberated from through control and reassure them of their own agency and power to be ‘themselves’, the performative aspect of the work should be more inclusive and rely on the interaction with the viewer. The performer is in this case controlling the projector as the metaphorical generator of freedom, keeping it in the frame of the rectangle of the light — not a very democratic thing to do. A part of the wall is granted a ray of liberty based on the decision of the performer — if everyone is free (which is already debatable, free to do what?), everyone should be experiencing the light equally, which here is not the case. Additionally, it reduces the concept of identity to feeling free and living one’s own life comfortably and thus falls into the trap that was clearly articulated in the documentary — the radical individualism of the idealised ‘live love laugh’ trend.

#9 Visage / In the end, it was the culmination and the final discovery of the source of the screams that were heard since the beginning. Finally, we were blessed with the glimpse into the psyche of John Tyler Vesneski. He presented a rather angsty struggle of being a young white male in the contemporary society, condensing the edgy experiences of sex and drugs into a powerful scream. Living the drama at the speed of light, he forgot to insert a Bukowski quote.

a visual poem

i will burn /

my father’s /

gun

this visual poem has been intended to be a response to a concrete event in the fairly near past — when my father in his late fifties decided to obtain the permission to own a gun in order to be able to inherit his late father’s gun. it began as a permit that would keep the nazi gun that my grandfather brought from the wwii as a trophy in the memory of the defeat of nazism in the family but it continued in another purchase of an entirely new weapon which would be ‘for the cottage’. it is the sense of vulnerability that has been the main perpetuator yet it paradoxically relies on the legalisation of potential violence and makes the object that represents an imminent danger feel like protection and safety.

it is the fascination with guns that i wish to burn — the demonstrations of masculinity that they represent; the lead that poisons and tears apart; to melt their metal shells that hide and protect the fragile inner children that fear the forest and the dark; among the rustling leaves, it is not wolves that crawl but hurt men with fire in their hand. dare to startle them.

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a collage

A text-book of practical obstetrics, comprising pregnancy, labor, and the puerpal state, and obstetric surgery (1897) and Robert Mapplethorpe

by contrasting these two images as originals, the differentiation between the initial use of photography in science and the photography as a medium adapted to fine art is striking. the medical textbook dating to the end of the 19th century, follows the pattern of what is presented as the objective mechanical eye — it captures for the sake of documentation in order to become a material to study. the photographer is not present and remains anonymous — so does the subject that is being portrayed. in the case of Mapplethorpe, the mere fact that this piece had been conceived as an artwork and has been treated in such way, puts it in another context of artistic subjectivity and the capacity to express a more nuanced through that departs from the scientific observation. 

Mapplethorpe, in both his explicit nudes and botanical photographs, is looking for a certain beauty of form that is enhanced by the lens of the camera and is meant to provoke a sensual response in the viewer. The depiction of a flower or a human genitalia for him expresses a similar quality — beauty of sexuality and eroticism that spans across all species in nature and ultimately serve the same purpose — to ensure a reproduction through aesthetic seduction. The exposure of the female genitalia in the medical textbook strips the body of its own sexuality and entirely reduces it to its anatomical or biological purpose that does not retain any humanity what so ever. the body present in the photograph is merely another example — a number in statistics. the woman does not exist as a being, nor does the child that she delivers — she is a case on which the male physicians operate and practice in order to advance the course of modern medicine. 

the image of labour is visually fairly gruesome and the difference between perceiving it as absolutely abject on one hand or entirely medically neutral on the other is what determines that these images were not meant for the wider public. it raises questions about the taboo of childbirth and the niche in which it is not seen as revolting. 

both of the photographs could be subjected to the critique as representatives of the male gaze — both the anonymous photographer of the childbirth scene and Mapplethorpe are obviously men whose output deals with a certain aspect of the female body which is in this case combined to form a juxtaposition with an enhanced aesthetic perception. by combining the image from a childbirth manual and Mapplethorpe’s orchid questions about knowledge and nurturing arise, regardless the concern with the gender of the creators of the originals. it presents the ruthlessness of science when faces with a human subject and the sacrifices made in the name of scientific progress which have indeed been motivated by the lack of human empathy that has been traditionally associated with femininity. it would like to ask and dare to compare how does an average botanist treat a fragile plant with how does a surgeon treat a human body and what are the consequences of these relationships that nurture or hurt. 

Tjentiste War Memorial

Monument to the International Community by the grateful citizens of Sarajevo

ICAR Canned Beef Monument appeared in Sarajevo in April 2007, commemorating the fifteen years since the beginning of the Siege of Sarajevo, which is considered do be the longest siege in the history of contemporary warfare — lasting 1425 days (5 April 1992 - 29 February 1996).

Standing on a marble pedestal, the can does not tower over an average spectator. It stands there, next to the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina whose façade still carries bullet holes and grenade holes, mocking the public eye with its ironic thank you. Constructed by a Bosnian artist Nebojša Šerić Shoba — who, according to the constitutional classification, would be labelled as a Bosnian Serb — it materialises the local yet general ironic attitude towards both the support of international troops during the war and the Dayton peace agreement that has been shaping the political and social conditioning since.

From the formal aspect, it becomes evident that Shoba has been inspired by the characteristics of pop art, yet managed to give it a darker, more pervasive weight than an average tomato soup can might carry. The time period and the region on which he reflects had not experienced the influence of pop art very radically due to its socialist social structure, so depicting a can additionally raises a question about the cultural development of the post-socialist country and its reencounter with capitalism and its catching up with the artistic devices that have already become established. However, Shoba’s choice of a consumer item that summarises a large portion of the war condition of being is remarkable — it requires an observation informed by the historical facts and events while communicating nuanced characteristics of local mentality and humour.

When the United Nations or the European Union are mentioned a few topics arise — the EU weapon embargo on the territory of Yugoslavia which exacerbated the difference between the armed forces of the ARBiH and the military of Serbia which had seised the existing weapons that had belonged to the JNA — Yugoslav National Army; the signing of the NATO motivated Dayton agreement which split the country in two exactly when the ARBiH began regaining their territory; and the humanitarian aid that came through and reached the occupied citizens.

The ICAR beef can symbolically compresses the irony of living under the siege — the situation of being torn between the feeling of gratitude because the resources had already become rather scarce, and the rage induced by the overall dehumanisation. The beef cans have entered the domain of a collective myth — the way they fed and the way the humiliated. There had been three kinds of beef cans that arrived in Sarajevo, with three kinds of packagings, of which a considerate amount dated back to the Vietnam war and were sent as leftovers expired two decades before the Siege of Sarajevo. Sometimes it was a mixture of pork and beef which, sent to the city which consisted mainly of the Muslim population, posed yet another dilemma between hunger and faith.

It is often suggested that the inscription is highly ironic and presents a lack of attitude towards the United Nation forces and international aid. And perhaps it is. Perhaps does try to throw the benevolent intentions of UN back into their faces due to their inability to stop the armed conflict in the first place, to prevent the humanitarian disaster before the nationalist tendencies culminated in a genocide.

The ICAR Beef Can talk gives thanks not only for the past but for the consequences that stretch into the present. It is the struggle of post-war recovery, of social traumas and ruined lives. It is about landmines that still patiently wait in the forests. It is about restless bones scattered around mass graves.

*** intervention on Monument to the Battle of Sutjeska, 1965-71, Tjentište, Bosnia and Herzegovina by Miodrag Živković

this monument was erected to commemorate the battle of Sutjeska of the WWII which happened to be a strategic success form the military perspective yet caused a humanitarian disaster. it represents the tension of history that is pulled by limitary victory on one side and the human causalities on the other, asking what are the prices that both sides pay during the warfare, in both domains of those who actively fight and civilians.

in this battle, the Partisan army managed to cross the river Sutjeska through a manoeuvre of building a smaller inconspicuous bridge, escaping the Nazi troops. however, it has been speculated that the civilians that remained on the invaded bank of the river were slaughtered due to the forgetfulness and even after were left anonymous and overlooked due the lack of their strategic importance.

the intervention on the monument would construct subtle bridges between the who wings that for one side of the monument would appear completely untouchable, yet from the other these strings would allow support and could be potentially used in oder to pull oneself up. aiming to visualise the rupture in the historical perspective, debating on who is saved and who is left behind, if wishes to construct a thing bridge for those who were not invited to cross the infamous one.