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THE PERMEATION OF THE INTIMATE AND THE POLITICAL IN VIDEO “DIRECTING”

T-HT Award@msu.hr, MCA Zagreb, February 24th – March 25th, 2012

By: Bojan Krištofić

On March 25^th, the fifth exhibition competition “T-HT Award” ended with the ceremonial awards at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.  In recent years, this award has become one of the representative festivals of modern art in Croatia, due to both the continuous quality of the artwork exhibited, as well as the generous financial awards given to the “best” exhibitors, secured by the Croatian Telecom sponsorship who is the co-organizer of the exhibit.  Among the 40 works of art exhibited (there were 249 applicants), the professional committee awarded the first prize to Damir Bartol Indos for his sound installation and performance in On the Origins of Shaftophone Man, while the second prize was awarded to Renata Poljak for her video The Directing of an Actor / The Directing of Belief.  The third prize was awarded to Luiza Margan for her spatial installation in Outside of the Role.  The People’s Choice Award was given to Stjepan Sandrk, who was voted for by an anonymous vote, and he captured the audience with his oil on canvas titled Martina Grlic watches the “Signing of the declaration of western Herzegovina and Popovo Field Merging With the Republic of Croatia” by Lovro Artukovic.  In general, the exhibit set-up was not based on a specific theme, nor was it based on a medium form or age group, and it thus exhibited a heterogeneous collection of artwork by different generations, whose thematic and aesthetic interests varied from modern art practices as achieved in “new” media, to playing around with traditional art media such as paintings and sculptures, whose limits the artists tended to push.  On the one hand, video artwork and spatial and sound installations prevailed, while on the other hand oils on canvas in which a noticeable return to figuration as a clear expression of social critique or the artist’s most intimate preoccupations could be seen.  Certain works of art however, fall into neither of these two broad categories, but it is interesting that awards weren’t given to such exceptions, and it can be said that the artwork that was rewarded was a representation of the exhibition as a whole.

Thus, the work of Renata Poljak falls into the category of video exhibits that were thematically determined by critiques of social and political structures of power, whose overall influence is analyzed and taken apart by artists.  The second-prize artist put together cadres from the Yugoslavian film Bosko Buha (“Bosko the Flea”) (1978), which tells stories of propaganda about the youngest hero of the NOB (People Liberation Movement) who died in 1943, directed by Branko Bauer, along with interview recordings with Ivan Kujundzic, the actor who played Bosko Buha in Bauer’s film, whom she interviewed herself.  While watching this relatively short video (roughly 15 minutes), the viewer quickly realizes that the interview with Kujundzic is set up, planned, and directed, which is stressed with the opposition of recording recourses in cadres where the interviewee utters completely contradictory political views.  Scenes from the old Partisan film are brought in opposition with modern statically directed recordings in which, in one instance, Kujundzic expresses his attachment and loyalty to the former republic and the political project KPJ (Yugoslav Communist Party), while a moment later, he speaks of the latter with repulsion, stating that he is proud to later have partaken in the Croatian-Serbian civil war.  Since the viewer cannot objectively establish Kujundzic’s sincerity, the video becomes a strong and convincing comment regarding the role of film and television, as well as that of video art itself in its “directing of beliefs,” that is, in mass articulation and in the distribution of dubious modern ideologies, a post-modern combination of political influence from the past that has been prevailing in the regional transitional society since the break-up of Yugoslavia until today.

In contrast to Renata Poljak’s video is a completely different video by Damir Ocka titled We Saw Nothing But the Uniform Blue of the Sky, which is a good example of the other group of video art in this exhibition.  The latter does not directly reference a political context, but instead deals with a kind of lyrical research regarding the artist’s subconscious, and intuitively reacts to social and spatial changes.  At first, the artist was inspired by an ethnic minority in Burma who witnessed the survival of the tsunami caused by the earthquake in 2004.  This witness stressed that his people remained unharmed by the catastrophe (unlike the Burmese boatmen), due to the fact that the boatmen “did not know how to look.”  At first, Ocko reacted literally, and wrote a poem about this event, while his next step was to have a person with speech problems (significant stutter) read it, and in this way to obtain a portion of the sound material for his future video.  In the video itself, black and white images of human and animal activity on a spacious sandy beach are intertwined, along with recordings of the artist’s luminous installations in yellow.  While watching the black and white cadres, we hear the almost incomprehensible poem recital, and while watching the colour cadres, we hear fragments of noise that are coordinated with changes in light in the video recording, which is also rhythmically organized in accordance with the speed of recitation.  By doing this, the artist builds a complex meaningful whole, which is dedicated to the obstacles that our senses, speech organs, and finally our intellect place in the way of a more full and unique perception of the world, especially in this modern age when fragmentation is stronger and quicker, and we are constantly being bombarded with relevant information.  Similar to Werner Herzog’s early feature-length films (Fata Morgana, 1971), Ocko aims at clearing the viewer’s perspective of reality through the installation of concrete and abstract scenes, through recordings of landscapes and pure luminous effects, thus presenting the world as a “blank slate,” a meaningfully neutral spatial and temporal frame, which man has yet to (though he doesn’t have to) divide into a coherent thought system.  The artist’s approach towards lyrics is stressed in a modern way – both the written as well as the recited accounts of the poem attempt to warn about the objective limits of language in the utterance of both human intimacy, as well as its role in the overall turmoil in nature.  Unlike Renata Poljak’s video, Ocko’s video does not stimulate our rational mechanism, but instead influences the subconscious in a subliminal manner, and stimulates our intuitive reactions and meditative reveries in the darkness of the projection room, which can last as long as several consecutive viewings.

Thus, we have discussed two representative works of art in regards to the dominant media of expression at the exhibit – the video, among which one had been rewarded, which, in a way, confirms the power and vitality of the overall video production that was exhibited.  It is remarkable, however, that the people’s choice award was given to the artist who exhibited his oil on canvas, because this piece of art, whose title was rather pretentious, did not manage to hide the fact that it referred to a pun that had already been exhausted, which does not justify the enormous effort put into the production of this painting.  The painting draws its aesthetic and reflexive strength solely from Artukovic’s exceptional work, to the tiniest details depicted in Sandrkov’s intervention, which however, seems to be flawed.  The fact that the audience chose precisely this artwork as their favourite, shows that it is still not sensible enough to accept braver and more radical modern art practices.  In the case of this exhibit, the public clearly assessed that a painting that was based on the vocational model and that was a symbol of the traditional fine art skill, was worth more than modern media research and the virtuoso usage of digital media, which is, one must admit, in contrast to the concept of the entire exhibition.

This year’s exhibition competition is without a doubt one of the most significant festivals of modern art in Croatia.  Thanks to the high production budget, among other things, it is very much followed by the media, and is presented as a prestigious social event to the broad public.  The exhibition is also very useful for the Museum itself, because the newest artwork by domestic artists can be bought, which shows that the Museum of Modern Art somewhat follows current artistic trends.  Finally, it is also an opportunity for artists to obtain a relatively large financial award and to better promote their artwork.  The exhibition organizers, however, did not earn enough and didn’t stress the educational role of the exhibition, for which there is great potential; in situations when steps such as these are clearly necessary for the quality education of the broad public and of various generations, which, in the long-run, must become true participants of the museum’s program.  In the future, this is definitely going to be an important task for such large and ambitious exhibition shows.