Entanglement Games
three-channel video installation
3’
edition: 2/5
2010–2016
The three-channel video installation Entanglement Games is about the ability to analyse an event interrupted by ringing of the phone. The ringing is perceived as one particle of the event, which opens space for a number of other particles of the event to which it connects. While minimal differences in the reactions of the protagonist, Neša Paripović, a representative of Yugoslav conceptual art, open up space for different interpretations, in fact, the slipping of meaning related to a precise, reduced and analytically placed map of an event is indicated with minimal means.
The work was exhibited at the 56th October Salon, The Pleasure of Love.
That story can be a love story – for a romantic or gossip-prone participant. That story can be a friendship story – for someone who may be a romantic, but certainly not a gossip-master. It can also be a crime story, SF story – let’s just imagine a situation that a UFO appears at the window through which NP is looking. That can be an interesting story; or a boring one, sentimental, amusing, funny, (…) story. That can be the beginning of a story or the end of it, or the beginning of another story and another event.
The narrative part of an event is what we recognize, relate to our own or others’ previous experience, knowledge, or prediction. An event is something that usually eludes us, especially if it lasts longer or if it is slower. Then it escapes our real-world experience and is most often almost invisible to us. A narrative is the most common form through which we are introduced to an event. (…)
In his theoretical and artistic work, Jovan Čekić deals with the theory of events: mapping and analysis of particles that make an event, using diagrams, moving and still images.
From the text by Maja Stanković, Catalogue of the 56th October Salon
The relationship between the protagonist of the video work, Neša Paripović, and the author, Jovan Čekić, dates back to the 1970s. Namely, Neša Paripović’s film N.P. 1977, showing his walk in Belgrade during which the artist takes shortcuts, jumps over walls, roofs, was recorded by Jovan Čekić. He brings the day-to-day action to the extreme and the film lets the walk continue at a pace that is unreasonable, and the action itself is fundamentally ironic. Decades later, the work Entanglement Game, could be interpreted also as an antipode of the N.P. 1977 action/event.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-439/13.11.2018.
Inventory No. 1622
Photo: still from the video work
Selected Bibliography:
56th October Salon, The Pleasure of Love. Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2016
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jovan Čekić (1953, Belgrade, Serbia) graduated in philosophy from the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade and received his PhD from the Faculty of Media and Communication of the Singidunum University in Belgrade. He is a full professor at the Faculty of Media and Communication at the Singidunum University and Head of the Digital Arts Department. He received the Nadežda Petrović Memorial Award and the 41st October Salon Award. He was the editor for theory at the Moment Magazine, and currently is director and editor-in-chief of New Moment, a magazine for visual culture (appointed in 1997) and the editor of the Art editions in the Geopoetika Publishing House. Jovan Čekić has published the following books: Presecanje haosa [Cutting through Chaos] (Geopoetika, 1998), Art Sessions (Geopoetika, 2001) and Izmeštanje horizonta [Relocating the Horizon] (FMK, 2015). In 2003 and 2004 he was the art director and selector of the BELEF Festival and art director of Time Codes, the Biennial of Young Artists in Vršac, 2002, and a guest lecturer at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade and the Academy of Fine Arts in Cetinje, University of Montenegro. His works have been exhibited in the country and abroad since 1975. Jovan Čekić is the author of the visual identity of the 49th October Salon.