exhibition in BOR


REX - Cultural Centre B92 and Ressource Centre Bor
present works of art and documentaries whose theme is

OPEN SECRET
02 - 12 October
The Gallery of The Museum of Mining and Metalurgy

The project focuses on the phenomenon of open secret. The Law on Free Access to Information, one version of which is on the point of being passed by the National Assembly, provided the motive for conceiving the project.

The works were created in the course of the workshops held over the summer at the Bor Resource Centre and led by Zoran Todorovic and Jelena Djordjevic.


EXHIBITION

Here you can see photographs from opening of the "OPEN SECRET" exhibition in Bor



WORKS

 

"Ballot box ", (2003, c-print, 70x70cm)
author: Nenad Maksimovic (Bor, 1977, writer)
The work shows an open secret existing in a building in which a hydrant plays the role of a cell where personal things are kept / dustbin. By putting the label "Ballot box" on the hydrant, the author expands its significance on the wider community and on the notion of parliamentary democracy in which the previous personal attitude of an unknown smoker towards the hydrant changes and becomes a personal attitude of a voter towards a candidate in the elections. In today's political system, that attitude is compulsively repeated through monotonous, sterile election results.


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"Psychoactive packaging (de nobis ipsis silemus)", (2003, objects made of packing material and paper)
author: Sasa Lovic (Bor, 1973, employed at the Bor mines)
The concept is simple: the author changes the logo on the existing packaging. By changing that logo, he does not simplify the meaning attached to it in the consumer culture. The trick involving logo change is meant to highlight the attitude of consumers towards the things offered on the global market and manipulative acts performed by multinational corporations that use advertising to influence the consciousness of consumers who thus become addicted to logos as the accompanying phenomena belonging to the contemporary mass culture.


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Untitled, (2003, 3 photographs, 30x45cm, lined with paper)
author: Miroljub Ljubomirovic (Beloinje, 1955, mechanical engineer)
By using these three photographs the author describes the mindset of the local community - the town of Bor in which a moribund industrial giant is situated. The viewer sees the story that is told by showing the park-museum (where disused mining machinery is displayed). All that can be seen in that open-air museum is reduced to two messages: "Good luck" and "Go to hell". On the commemorative plaque dedicated to past successes in copper production, an anonymous town guerrilla drew male genitals giving the title "DOS" (the abbreviation for Serbia's current ruling coalition) to that drawing, thus identifying an imaginary culprit causing his / her difficult social position.


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"I too love Bor", (2003, digital print 150x200cm)
author: Novica Stankovic (Luka, 1962, graphic artist)
In his work, the author defines Bor as the blackspot on the environmental map of Serbia. The very fact that the situation in Bor is regulated by a special law sufficiently illustrates the traumatic circumstances in which not even the exact number of deaths caused by the pollution is known.


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"We have dug the ore", (2003, digital print, 50x50cm, lined with paper)
author: Dragan Stojmenovic (Bor, 1974, ethnologist)
The slogan "We have dug the ore" is used to describe the inhabitants of Bor whose main occupation is mining. Open secret is doubly represented by tacit acts related to intimate and private aspects of life and caricaturing the once primary occupation of the workers in Bor. The open secret effect is doubled by suppressing and exposing something that is intimate (picking one's nose) and something that is part of the life in the town (mining) and concerns everybody.

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"God™", (2003, two digital photographs, 30x42cm)
author: Dragan Ilic (Bor, 1969, graphic designer)
The author reveals the growing commercialization of religious faith and the church community. The hypocrisy of the church community is easily made apparent through the picture showing a church in front of which there is a kiosk - the symbol of the consumer society in the nineties or the notice put up on the church portal showing its opening hours.


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"Emigrants", (2003, e-mail, flyers, 10x20cm)
author: Jelena Miletic (Zajecar, 1975, art historian)
The author is trying to alert the community indifferent to the problem of emigrants who left Bor in the last decade. She documents and juxtaposes the past and present. On one side, she shows the monument to Miklos Radnoti, Hungarian Jew interned to the Bor mines during the Second World War and executed by the fascist firing squad. On the other side, we see the place (on the bank of the Bor Lake) where the monument used to stand before it was stolen, probably because of bronze - the material it was made of. The same method is applied in the case of the photograph of a young professional at his home, before he immigrated to Canada. Now his empty room has been turned into a pantry, while he is abroad. In the third pair of photographs, one is missing. That is the photo of the patisserie "Pelivan" (owned by the members of the Turkish minority) smashed in 1999, on the first day of the NATO bombing campaign. The author is looking for that photograph with the help of the exhibition audience and on the Internet.


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