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.