exhibition in NI©


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

OPEN SECRET
23 - 30 September
SALON 77
in fortress

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 Nis Resource Centre and led by Dragan Peric and Nebojsa Milikic.

 

EXHIBITION

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


WORKS

 

"AMNESIA - ANESTHESIA" (2003, photograph, 50x70cm)
author: Biljana Jankovic
This work makes us feel wedged in a situation/polygravitational space imposing the suppression of instincts. Visual formulation of the message - the very distortion of the space confronts us with the question: "Where can we see that kind of notice and who could have written it? These questions bounce off a cold tiled wall, wet and covered in dirt produced by unsavoury but inevitable fumes that are successfully eating away the prohibition itself.


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"DREAM" (2003, animated digital video, 2')
author: Milos Macanovic
In a dream-like animation, two adults negotiate on the ways of accepting a bribe. The person being bribed comes up with an ingenious idea. The author does not reveal the origin of this (reconstructed?) situation, but the title lends an autobiographical note that every viewer can identify with.


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"SECRET" and "THE CONTENTS OF LADIES' BAGS" (2003, photographs)
author: Dragan Peric
His works imply that men envy some female privileges: women decorate their bodies and carry handbags. Machos and homophobes tend to regard both as odd if these habits are acquired by men. This kind of cultural pressure is reduced through a massive presence of androgynous characters in popular culture, especially in the fashion industry. The author lets us into the well-hidden secret desire of every human to be self-sufficient and attain the impossible perfection of a creature uniting the characteristics of both sexes.


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"THE SECT" (2003, video, 40')
author: The TEA...EXCELLENT art group
The only intervention in the video, filmed quite a while ago, is the change of its title. The hysteria caused by such a label reveals banal mechanisms underlying slander: whatever people do in order to satisfy the cult(ural) needs of their community, excommunication from some higher form of society (or "a zero institution" as Rastko Mocnik defines nation) is at hand. Namely, a harmless and unsuccessful performance by a group of young artists can easily awaken the curiosity (yes, precisely curiosity) of alert exorcists driving the devil out of the bodies of individuals or an entire nation of the faithful.


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"UNPROTECTED" (2003, video triptych, 3'+5'+4')
author: The TEA...EXCELLENT art group
A formal and utterly non-fatal recognition of nepotistic dictates frustrates us by its commonness and incredibility. The man who confesses to us makes us his accomplices unable to understand the acceptance of the hereditary right to a job in Civil Service. That is why we find that it is easier to have fun watching the modified versions of this baffling account. In the version in which the confessant's face is hidden from public view as if he were a protected witness, the key words of his confession are accompanied by the upsetting cries of (his) uneasy conscience. In the second version, during the speaker's statement, background music of a video game can be heard and video games are the most powerful tool for testing one's unattainable traumas.


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UNTITLED (2003, object 6x2x9cm)
author: Stanisa Radojlovic
This work takes us for a walk along the long crossroads of childhood that came to an abrupt end and an adolescence that lasts too long. The compression and distortion of these ages are certainly the consequence of the existence of mighty transmitters of the messages of the society based on spectacle. Every five-year-old child endlessly exposed to TV programmes will astonishingly quickly grow into an incurable consumer of images and goods offered by Uncle Global Capital. Such a child will later be astonishingly slow to give up its position of a consumer spending other people's money and become a consumer earning and spending his/her own money instead. "Untitled" combines these two tendencies - various needs of an adult and the frame of mind i.e. "mental capacities" of a child.


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"NOTICE BOARD" (2003, installation, 101x10x50cm)
author: Tatjana Jovanic
This installation worries us and promises things exactly in the same way as the notices that can be read at Employment Bureau. We all know that the advertisements placed there cannot lead to finding a job and that the tradition of inheriting privileges is being successfully transferred from the old to the current social system: from the family to the community of the people coming from the same town/region; from a technocratic interest group of socialist self-management "development coordinators" to the interest group consisting of people managing a non-political system. The better part of this country's multiparty establishment is of that, non-political, kind.


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"NA PRODAYU" ("YU ARE FOR SALE") (2003, banner in a public space, 400x70cm)
author: Nebojsa Krstic
A handmade sticker that the author stuck on the wall of the once popular Nis club "Tramvaj" ("Tram") read "NA PRODAYU" ("YU ARE FOR SALE"). Afterwards, he was taken to the police station for questioning. Somehow he managed to explain what his sticker meant. ("YU" was an official abbreviation of Yugoslavia). Nowadays, hardly anyone is likely to be upset by this slogan. In one way or another, we are all taking part in the transformation of state-owned property into private one. Former leaders and their able cousins - lo and behold - they are the ones who are buying up the ruined YUgoslav heritage. Only this time, the police are on their side.

[The author and project organizers wish to thank KP Medijana for their collaboration in carrying out this part of the Open Secret project]


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"HOT LINE" (2003, audio-telecommunication performance, 5')
author: Dusan Vukic
After being introduced to each other and exchanging the usual personal data, the participants in this dialogue are faced with an unexpected question. The shattering power of a nearly broken taboo erases and at the same time fortifies the postulates of this sort of communication. People start comforting and encouraging one another - a new friendship is born…


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