Past Entangled Tense / Cityscapes
one day of video art
on the occasion of:
the UNESCO Forum Balkan Visions: Creativity for the Future in South-East Europe
and Sofia International Film Festival
17th March 2012, Saturday
Central Army Club, Sofia
Tzar Osvoboditel Blvd 7, Sofia
the video programme runs throughout the day, from 9.30 to 18.30
Artists: Marko Kovačić, Adela Jušić, kuda.org, Hristina Ivanovska, Calin Dan,
Adrian Paci, David Maljković, Theo Prodromidis, Aleksandar Spasoski, Mariana Vassileva
Selected by Margarita Dorovska
Past Entangled Tense and Citiscapes are screening programmes, including video works from the Transitland archive. All works in the two screening programmes are by artists from South East Europe.
Transitland. Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe 1989 - 2009 is a collaborative research and archiving project initiated on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Its main outcome is a selection of 100 single-channel video works, produced in the period 1989-2009 and reflecting the transformations in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. Transitland is not only the widest-spanning presentation of video art from Central and Eastern Europe but also a unique attempt to address and reflect upon an extensive period of complex transformation and changes.
The project was realized by InterSpace Association Sofia, Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art Budapest and transmediale festival for digital culture Berlin.
Past Entangled Tense
tense [noun] - a set of forms taken by a verb to indicate the time (and sometimes also the continuance or completeness) of the action in relation to the time of the utterance
screening programme selected by Margarita Dorovska
No More Heroes Anymore, 1992, 18’15’’
A grotesque on the subject of war in Bosnia. A game of chess as a symbolic and performative practice is the core of this video that is intrinsically defined by small mise-en-scenes, transformed mechanical figurines, and the performance of the main protagonists.
Marko Kovacic was born in 1956 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, former Yugoslavia, and lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
The Sniper, 2007, 4’11’’
This piece originates from the artist's attempt to face her wartime childhood and the experience of losing her father by a sniper's deadly shot.
Adela Jusic was born in 1982 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, former Yugoslavia, and lives and works in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Safe distance, 1999, 21’
This videotape was recorded during NATO air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and shows the electronic cockpit of a U.S. Air Force plane with basic graphical interface and voice communication between pilots. This tape presents the last moments before the plane crashed shot after completing of its mission to bomb targets around the city of Novi Sad.
kuda.org was founded in 2000 in Novi Sad, Serbia.
Citiscapes
-scape [comb. form] - denoting a specified type of scene
screening programme selected by Margarita Dorovska
Naming of the Bridge: Rosa Plaveva and Nakie Bajram, 2006, 13'08''
This research-based project presents the artist's experience with the local authorities of the city of Skopje after submitting a proposal for naming the newly built bridge after the names of two women protesters and fellow citizens.
Hristina Ivanoska was born in 1974 in Skopje, Macedonia, former Yugoslavia. Lives and works in Skopje, Macedonia.
Sample City, 2003, 11'29''
With sampled image and sound sequences, referring to one another in a precisely calculated rhythmic alternation in four screen frames, Calin Dan draws a portrait of the city of Bucharest. Dilapidated tower blocks next to estates of terraced houses, Roma families camping with their horses and carts in the wastelands in the midst of the city, broken streets and new shopping paradises – the video presents the former communist Bucharest as a city in upheaval, full of social contradictions and oppositions.
Calin Dan was born in 1955 in Arad, Romania and lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Turn on, 2004, 3'30’’
It presents an exhausting feeling of anticipation that derives from unresolved expectation. In the video a score of unemployed men who, in typical Mediterranean fashion, assemble on the steps of a square in Shkoder every day in the hope that someone will employ them. The initial silence gives way to a noise that gradually becomes deafening. Touching in its symbolical beauty, the last frame depicts each man holding a large light bulb which, fed by the generators, irradiates light and energy around them.
Adrian Paci was born in 1969 in Shkoder, Albania. Lives and works in Milan, Italy.
Scene for New Heritage, 2004, 4'33’‘
This work is the first part of the Scene for New Heritage trilogy which presents a futuristic world set in the year 2045. A group of people set off on a search for their heritage after a collective amnesia. They arrived to, for them, an unknown place of powerful historical character marked by the death of the last Croatian king, World War II, the partisan hospital there, to which a monument was dedicated, and then again the war in the 90's . But all this was no longer visible to them, only the monumentality of the place puzzled them. It seemed that the question of heritage is going to remain unsolved and that their moment is their heritage.
David Maljkovic was born in 1973 in Rijeka, Croatia, former Yugoslavia, and lives in Zagreb, Croatia.
Je mehr es hervordringt*, 2008, 20’00”
The work has as its main subject the production of commercial architectural structures (Mall of Sofa, Sofia Business Park, Europe Park Sofia) in present day Sofia. Those three locations of the film produce an axis of movement inside the city that is interrupted by sites of expected critical production such as the artist’s studio and the theatre, spaces that are traditionally located inside the fabric of a city and a society. The “object” of the proposed building plan of Europe Park Sofia is being transformed into a stage set and later, to a musical score and is finally being performed to another structure. It undergoes a circle between materiality and immateriality, a shifting state that could describe the cultural object as such, but also the aspirations and investments in such a building/object.
Theo Prodromidis was born in 1979 in Thessaloniki and lives and works in Athens, Greece.
* Je mehr es hervordingt was produced in the framework of EMARE 2008, Sofia. It is not part of the Transitland archive.
Voyeur, 2008, 5'20''
As stated by Mimi Wehr: “The quintessence of the work is not a mere reporting, but the intuitive experience of a voyeur. [...] He makes use of existent film material and increases its effect by adding his own sequences and composing them anew. Out of his personal experience, he thereby shows scenes of someone wandering the streets at night, of alien cities and gazing into stranger’s windows, into stranger’s lives. ”
Aleksandar Spasoski was born in 1974 in Tetovo, Macedonia, former Yugoslavia. Lives and works in Munich and Berlin, Germany, and Skopje, Macedonia.
Journal, 2005, 12'
Mariana Vassileva feels her way past various locations led by different destinations. She is both adult and child at the same time. This is a method not just of feeling, but also of transforming the contour of the self. Our skin is border crossing.
Mariana Vassileva was born in 1964 in Antonovo, Bulgaria. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
