BEYOND THE MIRROR
is the theme of the Second Annual Exhibition of the Soros Center for Contemporary Arts -
Sarajevo which makes up one part of the program of the Fourth Sarajevo Film Festival (art
videos in the MADE IN BOSNIA program). Other segments of the exhibition occur
simultaneously, although in terms of their program and concept, they are independent of
the Festival.
Art interventions in the space are set up in various locations connected to the Fourth
Sarajevo Film Festival, such as: Obala Meeting Point, Open Air Cinema (Metalac), Academy
of Fine Arts, Obala Art Center Gallery, part of the street Obala Kulina Bana (between the
Skenderija and Drvenija bridges), part of the street Obala Maka Dizdara (between the
Skenderija and Drvenija bridges), Cobanija Bridge, Internet Café (garden and interior
space), the Miljacka riverbed, IPC Gallery, the space in front of the National Theater,
the space in front of the Bosnian Cultural Center, the bookstore "Buybook" and
others.
Authors from Bosnia and Herzegovina currently living either in the country or abroad, will
participate in the exhibition along with video artists Marie José Burki
(Switzerland/Belgium) and Dalibor Martinis (Croatia), invited as foreign guests to present
their video installations at the Academy of Fine Arts Sarajevo. The International Jury
will make two equal awards: best video and best installation.
Following the Center's policy to act complementary to other art institutions, this year we
have extended our activities to the production of video works, making them the focus of
our annual exhibition entitled, BEYOND THE MIRROR.
The theme of the exhibition is expressed by the title, which is influenced by Lewis
Carroll. It offers a wide interpretative space, in which we primarily want to encourage
creative exploration of the nature of media and the nature of art. Going through the
mirror, through that surface reflecting our own image, we are entering the space of the
interior, subjective worlds and their respective images-the eternal theme of art. On the
other hand, new technologies, particularly electronic medias-which can be understood as a
new metaphor of the old "mirror" tale-raise a whole new set of questions about
the truthfulness of virtual images, simulacrum, shadow (spectre). What we have at work,
thus, is the creation of a parallel world of unreal reality. The boundary between the
subjective and objective view of the world, the awareness of here and now-our fundamental
psycho-social foundation-is lost, which is an enourmous challenge for the artists
creatively engaged in these media.
Dunja Blazevic
Mehmed Aksamija, "In Front of - Beyond the Mirror"
installation
Obala Meeting Point
Gordana Andelic-Galic, "Kunst Macht Frei" (Art Liberates)
installation
in front of the Academy of Fine Arts, National Theatre and Art Gallery of BH
"Kunst Macht Frei" is a story about the prisoners of art who, due to the inseparable link between art and society, become desperately dependent on the society, system, regime. Of those that passed through the gates of the Nazi camps, which bore the inscription, "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Liberates), only a fraction of a percent survived.
The imprisonment of art, and through it, society, and vice versa as well. "Kunst Macht Frei" opens a series of moral, ethical, aesthetic, social and political questions.
Ademir Arapovic, untitled
installation
Somewhere in the City
"..because we all are good as we try to be good." (r.a.)
"Always when I would go to Dubrovnik I would be fascinated with stone balls put on the walls here and there. And I wasn't alone in that. All those I would meet there found them intriguing. There were many in the Institute for the Protection of Monuments set like a pyramid. It is, in fact, the way they were kept, because they are the balls for the catapults. ...Nine or ten years ago, sometime in late August, I was in Dubrovnik again. I was collecting stones in the ruins of some house in the old town, which was being renovated at the time. I saw a stone ball, damaged a little bit... I brought it to Sarajevo somehow... I left Sarajevo, the war started... I started to believe that the ball was a kind of a "war axe" which I accidentally revealed, and that both Sarajevo and Dubrovnik found themselves in wars because of it. Even worse, I started thinking about myself. About myself as a thief.
My work beyond the mirror: We will find a stone cutter. He will engrave "I STEAL" on the ball-which is still in Sarajevo-with letters in the type-face "Trajan" (Tzar Trajan has goat's ears). We will leave the ball somewhere in the town (anywhere), hoping that somebody will steal it. If that happens, I am clean. My theft has got its meaning in the new work... If nobody steals it and I remain the only thief, I will put it in a bag and take it to Dubrovnik, where I would throw it in the water to bury the disgrace of my "goat's ears." (Ademir Arapovic)
Maja Bajevic, "Bergman, Bond, Bajevic"
installation
Entrance to the Open Air Cinema (Metalac)
The work is composed of three parts-two sound recordings (one female, one male voice) and a film recorded and projected in Super 8. The female voice, which speaks in Dutch, taken from a telephone answering machine, has the character of a kind of confession and self-examination (man-woman). Opposed to this is the male voice that repeats, "My name is Bond, Jeremy Bond." It seems that this has to do with some kind of lovers' quarrel or break-up. A black-and-white film is projected on wash hanging out to dry. Through one film, we enter into another. In that way the entrance to the cinema becomes a "film" in itself.
Maja Bajevic, "Speaker"
video projection
Display ADD
This work deals with the demystification of politics and politicians. Between commercial messages we see a video on which a non-existing politician speaks to us without saying anything.
Ajdin Basic, "*.*" (all files)
installations
Various locations (Playground in front of Bosnian Cultural Center, in front of the
National Theater...)
The trilogy, "*.*" (all files), or the mounting of a real-life Web page, is composed of two installations and one poster.
"index.html," installation
The fundamental logic of the Internet is the hyperlink. Translated into the language of reality, a hyperlink is represented by doors. The location of the installation (Internet terminology: server) is the playground on Branilaca Grada Street. In one place can be found the Bosnian Cultural Center, the National Theater, administrative and residential buildings as well as a flea-market. The playground functions as the contact point, display-it has the same function as a monitor. That is, literally speaking, the starting point at which one can find the most links and which offers the most choices for surfing/reasearching. Users/children at this point have the greatest possibility of choice. The title of the installation, "index.html" (in Web terminology) designates the name of the file which is placed on the server/location and which contains all described characteristics. With this work the author examines how the mentioned institutions, or the milieu, affects the final users-children.
"click here," poster
Applied to this "Web page," the contents are all that the server/city offers, but chosen locations make up the contents of Web pages and it is necessary to connect them with hyperlinks. The expression with which every surfer/visitor meets when links are in question is the phrase, "click here." "Hot spots" to each connection are represented by posters that are mounted on all other referred-to pages/locations of the Web site. With this are the true contents located, and the site gets its form.
"Under Construction," installation
In front of the National Theater, a construction scaffold which is not leaning against any object refers to the usual experience of an Internet user. The coming across an unfinished Web page signifies constant growth, "development," the most visible aspect of the information age. "Under Construction" is a constituent part of every good site, which signifies that the contents of the site have a positive direction of development.
Eldina Begic, untitled
performance
Locations connected to the exhibition BEYOND THE MIRROR, for the entire
time of its duration
The action takes place throughout the entire exhibition and in all of its locations. Not wishing to endanger the public space, the author decided to intervene upon herself, primarily to use just as much space as she herself takes up. By a complete reduction of elements, she puts communication into the relation of art/work - spectator. The work is created in the moment of communication between media and the spectator. Eldina Begic wears a black T-shirt with the white number "1," backwards as if seen in a mirror, that may be interpreted in many ways, from a cosmic idea to a number that signifies the goalkeeper of a soccer team.
Lejla Begic & Izeta Gradevic, untitled
installation
Obala Meeting Point, Internet Café, SCCA-Sarajevo, Cobanija ...
The work of Lejla Begic and Izeta Gradevic is a work about silence and the condition of conspiracy (friendly, ideological, amatory, childish?). The work is made of a number pairs of portraits of the authors (who made them of each other) mounted one across from the other in almost all the entrances connected to the spaces designated for the exhibition BEYOND THE MIRROR. The eyes are placed at the same height on the opposing sides of each entryway, closing an imaginary line, an invisible photo-cell, by which the authors become keepers of the determined space. Passersby "interrupt" the permanent line of their gaze.
Marijana Curic, "Dis/information of the Exterior"
video installation
Academy of Fine Arts
A video installation which consists of three monitors showing three animations at the same time. The starting point is human body which the author looks at from two perspectives:
- body as a space in itself-body as a container where physiological and psychical processes invisible for the human eye take place;
- body in space-a situation in which the body consists of some other space, which
influences it.
"Borderline"
This animation represents the meaning of the borderline-linking and separating. Two persons meet on the borderline-the encounter is represented with a close-up of the space / the borderline between two human noses. The space which divides them is at the same time the common space / boundary that joins and separates. The sound is based on different breathing rhythms; as the borderline becomes more clear the breathing becomes faster and harder, which should reflect the excitement of the human body (fear, sexuality, aggressiveness, etc.) in a situation where the private parameters are jeopardized by the presence of
another (examining) body.
"Thought and Word"
"Thought" is an inner parameter. "Word" is an outer parameter. A group of lips is opposed to one pair of lips. This animation represents the way an individual faces a group (the way in which private thoughts and ideas face a more or less uniform social and cultural view on the world). It links inner / mental world of an individual with the external norms and ideas of
social organization.
"Corner"
"Corner" relates to the physical dimension of space (inner and outer) and to the inner and outer dimension of the body. In this part of the animation human skin turns into facade of a house. Skin as an outer part of the human body becomes the main source of information on the other outer space which influences its behavior.
Danica Dakic, "Wall"
video installation
Obala Meeting Point
The idea of the work points to the relation: architecture - body - video, intimate - public and intelligible - unintelligible. By installing a "living wall" in a defined architectural context; the video is treated as a communicating (speaking) wall. The video is composed of recordings of the mouths of 64 persons of different ages, who speak in different languages from three to four minutes. The recordings, made in a studio with a static camera with flat lighting, are edited into a collage, like bricks in a wall, or like a patchwork of parallel individual "stories." The sound oscillates between the murmur of many voices and the singling out of the individual sentence.
Alma Fazlic, "Beyond the Mirror"
installation
Facade facing the entrance to Obala Meeting Point
I'll weave
a window on the wall
full of birds
with feathers of fire
which collect
the whisper of the sun
and I'll seal it
onto the nest
made in a whole
from a bullet
where the darkness hides.
"Earth for Us," Slobodanka Kljucanin
A series of real and virtual widows (photos of windows shot in different countries) on the facade of the building facing the entrance to Obala Meeting Point.
Jasmin Ferovic, "My Other Me"
sound performance
Cobanija bridge
26 August 1998, 19.00 - 21.00
The sound performance unfolds on the Cobanija Bridge, which is cut in half with a big piece of plastic. Strobe lights are mounted on both sides of the bridge, which creates an atmosphere of radiance and tempest, and from both sides of the cellophane-the "mirror"-people stand watching each other through the transparent wall. At the top of the metal construction of the bridge there is a platform that joins the two tall trusses of the bridge, on which is placed a mixing-board and turntables. The performance will take place on that improvised stage, from which will also be projected an x-ray negative. The performance consists of the author's electronic composition, "MY OTHER ME."
"Good and Evil are found in every human being and are in constant conflict. This project wishes to show the violence of Evil inside us... Try to recognize it in other people. Warn them. Look at and listen to your surroundings, and then look at yourself in the mirror. What do you see?" (Jasmin Ferovic)
Zlatan Filipovic, "Face to Face and Back to Back"
installation
In front of the Academy of Fine Arts
"Face to Face and Back to Back" speaks of one generation, about a group of friends whose lives and artistic work intervine. Four groups of portraits of eleven students are mounted in front of the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo. The portraits are turned one facing the other, or one away from the other, in a way that symbolizes interpersonal communication without words, the circulation of ideas...
Izeta Gradevic, untitled
installation
Internet Café (WC)
This work connects the different times, spaces and people gathered around Obala Art Center. It is located in the space of the Internet Café and consists of wallpaper which covers the men's and women's restrooms. The motifs of the wallpaper are created from photographs of hard core characters of the "WC Artists," that the author took in 1994 in the old restrooms of the Obala Café. The women's wallpaper is rose-colored with characters of angels and the grafitti, "Kurt Cobain." The male wallpaper, a light blue, has for its main characters a prostitute that says, "fuke, fuke, ten dollars," and a little "nazzy teddy bear." These are at the same time wallpapers to suit everyone's taste: both the one that is permanently "alternative" and another that prefers order and cleanliness.
Lejla Hodzic, untitled
installation
Internet Café (interior space)
Through the physical (real) space the visitor passes into his own personal imaginary space-a world beyond the mirror (as in the stories of Allice in Wonderland, about the Wizard of Oz or the Little Prince). The installation is just a frame for that world.
Adla Isanovic & Larisa Hasanbegovic, "Seesaw"
video installation
Academy of Fine Arts
The work "Seesaw" is an experiment of the crossing movement of two different rhythms. The video installation consists of two monitors, positioned one beside the other, on which are simultaneously shown two video tracks of equal length. The tracks were recorded simultaneously in one take by two cameras, each one attached to an ankle of one person. The cameras record walking, going into town, arriving at a seesaw in a children's park. The recording continues-as the cameras are removed from their legs and attached, facing away from each other, on the two sides of the seesaw-until the seesaw comes to rest.
Sejla Kameric, "Save as..."
installation
Panels besides Cobanija bridge
"Save as..." serves as a mirror, but also as a frame through which we look deeper into our own reality. We draw the conclusion ourselves. It is important to save it. The title of the work is an instruction to the viewer: "Save as..."
Five panels in the Hamdija Kresevljakovic Street (across the river from the National Theatre) are painted white. There are gaps-eyes-on the second and third panel, through which the viewer can see "further."
Dario Kavara, "Do you Want to Change the World?"
instalacija / installation
Marsala Tita Street
The work consists of a computer mouse jack and a computer mouse. The jack is pulled out of the computer and hooked to the ground. Thus, the contact between human and the Planet Earth is established with an electrical impulse. The Earth becomes in that case an imaginary mass possible to be manipulated with through individual wish for a change from one
state to another.
Kurt&Plasto, " Remember My Song, Part II"
installation
Miljacka River (from Cobanija Bridge to Skenderija Bridge)
With white tape placed in a broken line, the riverbed of the Miljacka, between the Cobanija and Skenderija bridges, is divided in half. The Miljacka River is visually transformed into a highway. This intervention on the water might be: a symbol of certainty of the established direction, the freeing of the subconscious, the adventure of two-way traffic in an unquestionably one-way river current, or the examination of different perception of time (river - street).
Jasminko Mulaomerovic, " Punctuation of Symbolic Speech"
installation
Obala Maka Dizdara Street (from the Academy of Fine Arts to the Skenderija Bridge)
Language-the basic means of communication between people-can become a significant disturbance, which is proved by the recent war. Symbolic speech is only completely understood by people if they see in it the language of the One. Today, only human movements and gestures remain of that language. Translated into a visual language, those are the punctuation marks. They are the symbols of the universal: full-stop-the sphere of completeness; colon-duality / inner-outer; comma-beginning of the Spiral / ying; hyphen-separating / up-down. The punctuation marks are set on panels, and from a distance, together with the people passing by, they are read as a part of the language.
Damir Niksic, "What am I Doing Here?"
installation
Academy of Fine Arts
The question "What am I doing here?" appears on the wall when activated by a photo-cell.
"Perception of the outside world has its reflection in the consciousness, and that is
meaning or sense.
Perception of the inner state has its reflection in the consciousness, and that is thought.
This installation represents the perception of the inner state, which is reflected in a closed space through a visual expression of thoughts, and that is a written word. Meaning is the moment when an accidental passerby realises that he/she has come to a dead-end and asks him/herself a question: "What am I doing here?"
Through a visual expression and its perception this question links two inner "moments"."
(Damir Niksic)
Edin Numankadic, "Frame for the Mirror"
installation
Bookstore "Buybook"
This work emerged in 1998 in combined technique of dimensions. It consists of an old baroque mirror-frame damaged by shrapnel during the war, and a painting called "Sarajevan Roofs" from 1968. Instead of the destroyed mirror there is the painting (oil on canvas-also damaged by shrapnel), which is one of the first student paintings by the author. The whole painting with the frame is taped together with cellophane tape, as a reminder for the future.
Salim Obralic, untitled
installation
IPC Gallery
In the IPC Gallery is mounted an oil painting by Salim Obralic that is connected with his intimate life story and need to cement it. The departure point for this work consists of photographs, exhibited beside the painting, which the author himself took in Maglaj during the war, at the place where his friends are often meet. Both men that appear at the entrance doors of the bakery died within a short interval. Both were the author's friends and were dear to him.
Ata Omerbasic, " Faces"
installation
Internet Café (garden)
The most dynamic part of the body-the face-is subject to constant changes, but it always retains the same physiognomic characteristics. Variations of the face using contrast (positive-negative, colors, mirror image) show different faces which hide behind the everyday mask-"beyond the mirror of the soul."
Seven panels are set in the garden of the Internet Cafe and they create a partially transparent wall, separating the space of the garden from the main city street. Each panel consists of a wooden frame and transparent foil with the variations of "portraits."
Nusret Pasic, "Maps - Labyrinths"
installation
Internet Café (garden)
Mobile objects by Nusret Pasic are set up as structures of a children playground in the Internet Cafe's garden. "Labyrinths also have their imaginary base, among other things, in the opinion of the murderousness of violent rending and atomizing of the geographic and mental space. The violent rending of territories inevitably creates dark gaps and holes in a physical sense, as well as black holes in the consciousness of a large number of people." (Nusret Pasic)
Lejla Porobic, "Unreal Real"
video projection
Obala Meeting Point
With a virtual work in a real world, "Unreal Real" creates an illusion that the imaginary is indeed real. This is a projection of a video recorded in one take in which a person (the author) enters with two cans of paint. With a roller soaked in red paint, she covers the white wall. She goes out of the scene, then again enters and covers the red paint with white. In that way the wall is returned to its previous condition. The illusion of reality is created because the projection of the author is "life size."
Mustafa Skopljak, "The Spirit of Light"
performance
Behind the Academy of Fine Arts
27 August 1998, 11.00
The play with light is the means of communication between the actors and the audience in this performance. The piece is performed by three persons dressed in costumes covered with pieces of mirror and shiny gold and silver foil. They hold masks made of painted glass in their hands. Light goes through the masks which, together with the reflection on the costumes, creates a game of inner and outer brilliance.
Alma Suljevic, "Electra"
video installation
Internet Café (interior space)
"ALL THOSE WHO KNOW THAT THE POSSIBLE AND THE IMPOSSIBLE ARE UNSEPARATABLE, REMAIN IN THE FIELD OF ART" - Hipocrates
Electra means something hidden. "The one who knows and doesn't know at the same time." Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, did not recognise her brother after the war... The problem of mine fields is something which Alma Suljevic has dealt with for some years. The estimate of 18,000 mine fields with a million mines is just half of what is known to be present in
Bosnia today.
The video installation consists of three videos shown on three monitors at the same time.
The first part-filmed in a mine field near the "exchange bridge" (Hotel "Bristol") where the author demined for several hours.
The second part-interviews with the UN Mine Action Centre officers, Sarajevo, B&H. "A dog which looks for mines stops when it is tired, and the man does not give up."
(from the interview)
The third part-While we are trying out our new shoes, we look at our feet. The camera follows feet walking on mine-field maps from a mirror perspective.
Ljiljana Sakovic, "Eye to eye"
installation
Internet Café (garden)
The work is a collage of photographs mounted on the wall of the Internet Café.
"We are mirrors of the eyes, and they mirror us. A secret doesn't exist and an encounter with "the others" (mirrors) can uncover all". (Ljiljana Sakovic)
Nebojsa Seric Soba, "Under All Those Flags..."
installation
Obala Kulina Bana Street (from the Skenderija bridge to the Cobanija Bridge)
All the flags in the world serve to identify peoples/nations by their visual symbol. What happens when we take away from them that fictional base? "Under All Those Flags..." is an imaginary, non-interested space of a certain spiritual refuge relieved from any political manipulation by collective symbols. Between the two bridges Skenderija and Cobanija, transparent flags are flown on the poles.
Dejan Vekic, "Under Earth"
video installation
Internet Café (interior space)
With the video installation, "Under Earth," the author tries to throw the view of the earth into another dimension. Two open barrels are connected, creating a wide tube which is set up below the average eye-level of the spectator. At one end of the barrel is found a monitor on which pictures can be seen only from a distance of a couple of meters-through an opening in the opposite end. The opening of the barrel in the first plane represents the real dimensional surface from which we start out, and at the same time a metaphor of a mirror through which we look into another dimension, the second plane-a video picture which represents the deformed vision of the same surface.
Marie José Burki, "A Dog in My Mind" & "Translations"
video installations
Small Gallery at the Academy of Fine Arts
"A bird in a cage hops back and forth, from one peg to another. Geese, owls, herons, eagles are filmed so that the emphasis is on their beaks or their eyes. A dog looks at the television monitor. A horse runs in a circle. What unites all of these seemingly disparate images is the space that Burki allows her subjects. They are never seen as projections or some human sentiment or moral: they retain their uniqueness, their strangeness, their status as "other." And, even with the tendency in much contemporary cultural practice to romanticize the latter category, Burki insists on our not knowing these animals, not making them the receptacles of our
collective fantasies.
Thus, the nature of the artist's look towards the animal subject determines our response, but is not deterministic. One of the keys to this fragile sense of balance between what we see and what we (do not) know is Burki's emphasis on the notion of identity." (Michael Tarantino)
Dalibor Martinis, untitled (Under Sarajevo)
video installation
Obala Art Center Gallery
"...We ask ourselves why bats did not develop wings like angels. Can the mutation of binary codes influence the development of beluga whales in the direction of angels? Their whiteness is certainly a desireable starting point even though it comes to them only with maturity. Does there exist a corresponding system of commands which could make use of genetic characteristics of the viewer and beluga whales and by crossing them lead (in two, three million years) to this type of result"? (Dalibor Martinis)
Soros Center for Contemporary Arts SarajevoObala Maka Dizdara 3, Sarajevo,
tel/fax: +387.71.665.304;209.715
scca@soros.org.ba