XYZ
Re-Passage
video
7’56”
2012
Re-Passage is a video performance whose final result is achieved by computer editing. We pushed a bicycle backwards from point B to point A and filmed the action. It was a story about connecting Branko’s Bridge and the Geodetic Institute; encounters with pedestrians, interactions and micro-stories. There was also the absurd idea that, by repeating a procedure, one can go back in time…). Pushing a bike and walking backwards is a confusing, psycho-mechanically uncomfortable action, and maybe similar to the feeling of having to move in a wheelchair.
From the catalogue of the 53rd October Salon
The video works Quartz, Hats and Re-Passage were exhibited at the 53rd October Salon, as some of numerous site-specific works realized in Belgrade and/or the building of the former Geozavod in Savamala.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the October Salon Collection and the artists
Gift Contract:
Inventory No. 215
Photo: still from the video work
Selected Bibliography:
53rd October Salon, Good Life: Physical Narratives and Spatial Imaginations. Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2012
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
The XYZ Group consists of two visual artists – Milan Tittel (1966, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia), graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts and Design (Sculpture Department) in Bratislava, and Matej Gavula (1972, Litomyšl, Czechoslovakia), graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts and Design (Glass Department) in Bratislava. They live and work in Bratislava, Slovakia. The XYZ Group was formed in 1997, and its name takes on the meaning of the last three letters of the alphabet. They are focused on contextual research in the medium of sculpture. Their work is described as oscillating between stability and instability, between monuments and miniatures, in maintaining resonances between moments captured on digital records and the objective presence of plastic materials. Since 1998, as an art duo, they have presented their work at numerous festivals and solo and group exhibitions throughout Slovakia and Europe. They participated in the 53rd October Salon in 2012.
Anica Vučetić
Nothingness
single-channel video installation
HD projection on round surface
1’45” in a loop, without sound
edition 1/5
2013
The video installation Nothingness is a specific video environment, where – in a dark space – the viewer encounters a stirring, dark surface that, in a slow, circular motion, acts as if drawing them into its mass. The circular and hot surface of tar, which reflects the surrounding space like a mirror, filmed from up close and projected in slow motion, almost covers with its reflection the heavy, sticky, hot, dense substance beneath the surface.
The work Nothingness, and the whole art practice of Anica Vučetić, exposes various inner processes of the artist, displaced from the reality in which they were produced. The allegorical content of this work has roots in the artist’s involvement with Jungian psychology, although in fact it carries deeply personal meanings. For Anica Vučetić, the exhibition space is often the measure, delimitation and metaphor for mental procedures, as dreams, memories and desires. Nothingness looks like a swirl of some liquid, darker and thicker than water. It is projected in a loop onto a round surface that the visitor faces in a fully darkened space. It spins slowly, in a hypnotizing way, and, since its dimensions are larger than human, it produces the effect of drawing the viewer into an alternate reality. There is no illusionism – that alternate reality cannot be seized by the gaze, but only invoked in the memory of the viewer. The installation presents a visualization of the dark chaotic psychic state, which used to be called nigredo by alchemists, and has its parallel in mystical literature as the dark night of the soul, and in mythology, in the descent into the underworld.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-378/16.11.2016.
Inventory No. 1455
Photo: still from the video installation
Selected Bibliography:
Anica Vučetić: The Fall, Sept. 6 – Oct. 20, 2013, text by Stevan Vuković, catalogue of the solo exhibition, Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, 2013
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Anica Vučetić (1962, Belgrade, Serbia) graduated in painting (1986) and won her master’s degree (1989) from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. A freelance artist since 1989. She does video installations and video environments. Her works have been presented at more than thirty solo exhibitions in Belgrade, Sarajevo, Čačak, Vršac, Novi Sad, Požega, at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of Sao Paulo, Museum Ludwig Forum for International Art in Aachen, Cuban Institute of Arts and Film Industry in Havana, Museum of Republika Srpska in Banja Luka, Rotovž Salon in u Maribor, in Raška, Sopot, at Perjanički dom in Podgorica… as well as at numerous group exhibitions and international events in the country and abroad (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, USA, Russia, Italy, Portugal, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Greece, Japan, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, etc.). She has received major awards in the field of contemporary visual art: the 23rd Nadežda Petrović Memorial Award and the Audience Award at the 23rd Nadežda Petrović Memorial in Čačak (2005), the Grand Prix at the 9th Gornji Milanovac International Biennial of Arts and the Politika Prize from the Vladislav Ribnikar Fund in Belgrade (2008).
Miloš Tomić
A Cousinly Slap
film
15’
2012
The work was exhibited at and produced for the 53rd October Salon, Good Life.
The film is the artist’s personal story about an attempt to restore the long-lost or cooled connections with relatives he remembers from his childhood.
In the style of those trips down the family tree, I travel, get in touch with people I remember well from my childhood and ask them for advice on how to finally make that “real film”. Of course, as the title of the film says, we would sometimes get in a fight for this film. A friendly – cousinly fight. More of a slap fest, a wrestling match… Although many of them are past their prime, as opposed to back then, when I was a kid and my insolence was the cause of many, many slaps. Today, after all the thrashing, I usually sincerely hug them when we get together; I am hot, sweaty and strangely – happy. After all, those things are good and very healthy for me, since I am rather cowardly when it comes to fights and brawls. I remember a remark from a soldier, when I was in the army and after I had finally gotten into a fight with my eyes closed, probably not breathing: “Look at that, he got beaten up and it’s fine by him!”
Miloš Tomić, from the catalogue of the 53rd October Salon
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the October Salon Collection and the artist
Gift Contract: III-5-131/1.6.2020.
Inventory No. 210
Photo: still from the film
Selected Bibliography:
53rd October Salon, Good Life: Physical Narratives and Spatial Imaginations. Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2012
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Miloš Tomić (1976, Belgrade, Serbia) graduated in film directing from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in 2001, under Professor Miša Radivojević. He received his master’s degree from the FAMU Film Academy in Prague in 2006, Department of Multimedia Animation, in the class of Professor Petar Skala, and in 2013 received a doctorate from FAMU with the thesis “Preciousness of discarded objects – trash, as the material for film, animation, photography…” He is a co-founder of the legendary group Klipani u pudingu [Bumpkins in Pudding], a passionate collector and patient collagist, an active participant and propagandist of the LO-Fi Festival, who fought for free, cheap and independent films during the 1990s; for the past several years he has been a professor at the Faculty of Media and Communications in Belgrade, Department of Digital Art and New Media. As an author, he has participated in numerous exhibitions throughout the region and Europe. His art career gained new momentum in 2013, when, together with Vladimir Perić, he represented Serbia at the Venice Biennale. Lives and works in Belgrade.
Milica Tomić
One Day instead of One Night a Burst of Machine-Gun Fire Will Flash, if Light Cannot Come Otherwise (from the poem One Day by Oskar Davičo)
video of the action/intervention in public space, performed in Belgrade
10’
edition: 1/5 + 1 a.c.
2009
Every day, for two months, in the autumn of 2009, I walked to the places where successful anti-fascist actions were carried out by citizens and members of the People’s Liberation Movement in Belgrade during the German occupation in the Second World War. Photo and video footage of these repeated walks are a document of building a non-material monument, dedicated to events that are not part of public memory. With this action, first of all, I want to open the question of anti-fascism today and its erasure from public history and public memory, as well as its relevance in relation to new circumstances and new forms of fascism. Today, it is easy to recognize fascism in its excess forms, but the question is what about fascism that is all around us, that cannot be easily recognized at first sight, because it is built into laws and administration, and thus into our everyday life.
Milica Tomić
Dedicated to the Anarcho-trade unionists of Belgrade, Sept. 3, 2009
Audio recording: interviews with members of the People’s Liberation Movement in Belgrade Šime Kronja, Jelena Kadenić, Radošin Rajević, Dimitrije Bajalica
Camera and Sound: Staša Tomić
Editor: Miloš Stojanović
Sound Designer: Vladimir Janković Slonče
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon Collection and the artist
Gift Contract: III-5-295/29.9.2014.
Inventory No. 1369
Photo: still from the video work, courtesy the artist, Srđan Veljović
Purloined Letter (Edgar Alan Poe)
lambda print, photo: Armin Linke
180 cm x 120 cm
edition: 1/5
2014/2015
The photograph was taken when she was researching in the archive of the President’s Photo Service (1947–1980, Josip Broz Tito) and preparing a work for the exhibition Travelling Communiqué at the Museum of Yugoslav History in Belgrade. Entering the archive and accessing this valuable material raised the issue of the relationship between the time when the photograph was made and us, artists who now have the right to exhibit this material and, decomposing it into fragments, change the significance of the original intention of the authors. The work Purloined Letter examines the fragmentation of great political narratives, raises the question of delayed audience and introduces Jacques Lacan’s comment that a letter always arrives at its destination and reaches its addressee, regardless of the original intention of the sender.
Milica Tomić
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-477/1/19.12.2019.
Inventory No. 1669
Photo: Courtesy the artist
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Milica Tomić (1960, Belgrade, Yugoslavia). She is a conceptual artist who explores different fields, genres and methods of contemporary art practice. Her work focuses on researching and asking questions about political and economic violence, trauma and social amnesia, which she places in the sphere of public debate, with special attention to the ‘short circuit’ of the relationship between intimacy and politics. In response to the social changes and new forms of ‘collectivity’, which are at the core of Milica Tomić’s work, she made a marked shift from individual to collective artistic practice. She is a co-founder and members of the Monument Group, a New Yugoslav art theory group (2002), and a co-founder of the Working Group – Four Faces of Omarska (2010). Tomić has participated in many international exhibitions, including the 24th Sao Paulo Biennale (1998); 49th Venice Biennale (2001); 50th Venice Biennale (2003); 8th International Istanbul Biennial (2003); Populism, National Museum of Art, Oslo/Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam / Frankfurter Kunstverein (2005); 15th Sydney Biennale (2006); Manufacturing Today / Trondheim Biennale (2010); 10th Sharjah Biennial (2011); Odessa Biennial (2013); Monuments Should Not be Trusted, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, England (2016); Red Africa at Calvert 22, London / Galeria Avenida da Índia, Lisbon, Portugal (2016/17); Body Luggage, Kunsthaus Graz (2017); Sequences. Art of Yugoslavia and Serbia, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade (2017); Volksfronten/Exhibiting at the Trowel’s Edge/Steirischer Herbst, Graz, Austria (2018), etc.
She participated in the 45th, 49th, 52nd and 54th October Salons.
More information at https://milicatomic.wordpress.com