Images / Words
installation, digital print
variable dimensions
2014
The work Images/Words is one of four works the author exhibited at the 55th October Salon 2014 (Disappearing Things), at the invitation of Curators Vanessa Miller and Nicolaus Schafhausen. Responding to the given concept of the Salon, the artist examines the survival and treatment of visual material on the Internet, the changes in the meaning of images and their further use, after they have been uploaded to various internet platforms and ceased to be works of the artist-author.
…“In the work Images/Words, I search for my photographs I’ve published on different Internet platforms at different times, which became images/words as other authors on Tumblr use them.
The photographs on display were taken directly from this context, presented as printed screenshots of the blogs where I found them – below each photo, the corresponding re-blogs/comments/likes are printed – and they are a kind of the ‘snapshot’ of the place where the images, having ceased to be my works, become words in the evolving vocabulary of a new language.”
Luka Knežević – Strika, taken from the Catalogue of the 55th October Salon
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-156/25.5.2016.
Inventory No. 1417
Photo: installation view 55th October Salon
Selected Bibliography:
55th October Salon, Disappearing Things. Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2014
Swap
installation
variable dimensions (160 cm x 90 cm x 50 cm)
2014
Swap is one of four works the author exhibited at the 55th October Salon in 2014 (Disappearing Things), at the invitation of Curators Vanessa Miller and Nicolaus Schaffhausen. The work was realized as a project exploring the value people assign to printed photographs, and besides Belgrade, it was realized in Skopje, Herceg-Novi, Zlarin, Novi Sad, Regensburg, Malmö, Mostar, Casablanca…
“Most photographs are never looked at after they have been taken. Likewise, most of the photographs one views only exist while the screen is on. Printed photographs generally exist only as propaganda material.
…A selection of small (5 cm x 7 cm) photographs are arranged on a big table in a busy open public space (e.g., a square, promenade…). I put an instruction in English and the local language on the table, stating that anyone is welcome to take any photo they like, but they should leave another item to replace it. If possible, I withdraw, leaving the audience to handle the situation themselves. This produces a small barter– swap economy.”
Luka Knežević – Strika, taken from the Catalogue of the 55th October Salon
The table from the swap in Belgrade was the only one preserved in the final phase, when many photographs had become objects. The table itself, since the moment it was photographed after the exchange, have become a permanent document of the Belgrade’s performance, but also of the transformation and decay of the objects that, having replaced the photographs, took their place.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the October Salon Collection and the artist
Gift Contract: III-5-129/1.6.2020.
Inventory No. 206
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Selected Bibliography:
55th October Salon, Disappearing Things. Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2014
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Luka Knežević – Strika (1983, Belgrade, Serbia). He is a co-founder of the Belgrade Raw Photo Collective. He has exhibited in the country and abroad; co-curated an annual programme of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade’s Artget Gallery; one of the initiators of the “MultMadeira” artist-in-residence programme in Portugal. He explores the ways in which the use and position of photography – as the common language of everyday life, changes in the time of its universalization. As a documentary photographer, he examines the unintended consequences of manipulating the visual identities of the urban environment.