We Are Living in a Beautiful wOURld (Nemanja)
print on alucobond
80 cm x 110 cm
2007
We Are Living in a Beautiful wOURld (Smiljana)
print on alucobond
80 cm x 110 cm
2007
The work thematizes individual experiences of artists – emigrants from the countries of the former Yugoslavia, who search for their identity and position in Graz in a new, sometimes hostile environment, where they are recognized as “others”, despite all attempts at adaptation.
It is part of the photographic installation exhibited at the 48th October Salon.
We Are Living in a Beautiful wOURld is a work in progress, initiated by deeply personal understanding of social and political conditions in our country. In search of a better life, people are leaving Serbia and we’ve become aware that we are losing more and more friends. We’ve decided to make photographs of these young people as part of a collection of memories of their uncertain destinations. Every time someone decides to go to a foreign country to look for a better life we are called to witness the moment of their final choice. They all have the same reasons and they are all related to the state, political and social situation.
The work was started in 2007 with a series of photographs (digital print on alucobond, 80 cm x 110 cm), and later developed and included other works such as: Oblivion Statistic (installation, 400 x 400 x 250 cm, 48th October Salon), Simple Statements (4 lightboxes, 40 cm x 50 cm each, 2008, Belef), Homeland (intervention in public space, Pöllauer Tal Nature Park, Austria 2010 , Gleisdorf 2013), On Certainty (video, 5’22 ”, 2010), and the site-specific work We Are Living in a Beautiful wOURld – Graz, within the Generation Lost Project.
diSTRUKTURA
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the October Salon Collection and the artist
Gift Contract: III-5-538/30.12.2014.
Inventory No. 069, 070
Photo: Courtesy the artist
Selected Bibliography:
diSTRUKTURA: their very landscape is alive, Oct. 22 – Nov. 14, 2015, Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2015
diSTRUKTURA / Joint Venture, 2005–2015, ProArtOrg, Belgrade, 2016
We Are Living in a Beautiful wOURld – Austria, ProArtOrg, Belgrade, 2016
HomeLand (Pöllauer Tal 1)
digital print, lined
40 cm x 84 cm
2010
HomeLand (Pöllauer Tal 2)
digitaln print, lined
40 cm x 60 cm
2010
The work was realized in the Pöllauer Tal National Park near Graz. It was an intervention in nature during which the artists dug a hole measuring 2 x 2 m and filled it with the soil they brought from Serbia. The character of the work was to point to the processes of assimilation and acceptance during emigration.
With the work HomeLand, diSTRUKTURA formulate the questions about how a landscape circulates as a means of exchange, a place of visual appropriation and a focus in forming identities. According to the artists, in addition to being a geographical concept, Central Europe is primarily a historical, cultural, political and ethnographic concept that refers to countries between Eastern and Western Europe. Particularly the term Mitteleuropa refers to the territory where Austrian culture was highly dominant before the First World War, and which mostly coincides with the contemporary definition of Central Europe.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the October Salon Collection and the artists
Gift Contract: III-5-538/30.12.2014.
Inventory No. 071, 072
Photo: Courtesy the artist
Selected Bibliography:
diSTRUKTURA / Joint Venture, 2005–2015, ProArtOrg, Belgrade, 2016
We Are Living in a Beautiful wOURld – Austria, ProArtOrg, Belgrade, 2016
Locus Suspectus
video
2’51”
2014
Locus Suspectus, a joint video work by diSTRUKTURA and conceptual writer Barbi Marković, shows the landscape of the city of Sarajevo, precisely, the place of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in the space in front of the Latin Bridge, at the crossroads of the streets Obala Kulina Bana and Zelenih beretki.
In the video work, the narrator/writer reads records from the city streets using the cut-up technique. Merging the unrelated sentences, concepts and observations collected randomly at the place where the assassination took place, the author of the text aims to show the aura of the city, people and time, which enabled a comparison between the present and the past – emphasizing the differences and common characteristics imprinted in the mentality of the nation. Jelena Pavićević, Likovni život, 2018
The video was filmed in Košutnjak in Belgrade, where, in a perfectly natural environment, Barbi narrates the city autobiography and constructs a story about its values, codes and problems. Throughout this 25-minute-long narration, in which the frame slowly widens revealing the forest environment, we become aware of how history, through signs and codes, is transmitted through time and space, and how space remembers events.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-159/25.5.2016.
Inventory No. 1477
Photo: still from the video work
Selected Bibliography:
diSTRUKTURA Story Lines, Mar.12 – Apr. 20, 2020, catalogue of the solo exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art of Republika Srpska, Banja Luka, 2020
diSTRUKTURA: their very landscape is alive, Oct. 22 – Nov. 14, 2015, Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2015
diSTRUKTURA / Joint Venture, 2005–2015, ProArtOrg, Belgrade, 2016
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Milica Milićević (1979, Belgrade, Serbia) and Milan Bosnić (1969, Belgrade, Serbia) graduated and obtained their master’s degrees from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Painting Department. Since 2005, they have been working on joint projects as the artist duo – diSTRUKTURA. The media in which they work are primarily photography, painting, drawing and video. Their works have been presented in the country and abroad at solo and group exhibitions and are part of private, public and corporate collections in the country and abroad. They have participated in various residency programmes, symposia and workshops in Spain, Germany, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Egypt, Serbia and Finland. More information at: www.distruktura.com