Can you tell us something about your aesthetics and inspiration for artistic work?
There is no aesthetics, really. The appearance of the work follows the pattern of its communication, but also the choices, the curation of the cultural heritage involved. It comes in time of the dissolution of photography as the time and memory based medium, its current state of it becoming a purely applied art, infinitely adaptable to all purposes and therefore, invisible. This creates a problem with its inherent, century old qualities when relating to the politics of memory – its diminishing ability to return the gaze to the viewer. There are still points of intersection with literature and its human performative foundation, the sound, the reading. With those, I have sought out where and how the origins of the current local concepts of Jewish identity and heritage were created, and are still visible, as well as audible. Incidentally Danilo Kiš wrote that there is no such thing as cultural heritage. For him, It was something lived and created every day.
To what extent and in what way does the topic of the Parallel Traces project match with your previous work?
The “Parallel Traces” project is a rare opportunity to try and build a personally re-defined version of the local history of cultural heritage. Not only that, but to present it as part of the network of different “readings” of the concepts of Jewish culture and heritage from very different facets of Jewish tradition, and in the context of differing cultural policies in the countries involved. The translation – based textual and audio part of the work is the direct extension of the methods I have been using regularly in researching the causes for editorial, curatorial choices in forming the cultural policies in different historical periods and locales.
“The “Parallel Traces” project is a rare opportunity to try and build a personally re-defined version of the local history of cultural heritage“
What is your source of inspiration for work that you will produce within the Parallel Traces project?
The primary choices will always be personal, of course. My growing-up in Belgrade Jewish community has fortunately given me a primary “memory vault” to draw upon. The persons whose facets of life and work I am weaving into the work are frequently the ones that were part of my childhood. Both the voices and music in audio, as well as the angles and shadows of photography are drawing on the tension between the present and that far-from idyllic past of the 70s and 80s.
Can you describe the process of creation of the artwork within the Parallel Traces project?
The methods are outwardly simple. I walk, look, read, remember, learn and listen. Taking photographs of what results opens the work to the unexpected. The intersections of meanings, their relevance and inter – referential structures are growing in complexity, pressuring the ability of the work to communicate to people outside the field of references. The framework for the works in this case is a given, but mercifully comfortable enough. The process of creation is hard to limit, as the work and its referential field always have a tendency to grow. Choosing how to highlight the small parts of that growth while keeping the rest visible, or at least hinted at, is the crucial part of the work for me, while avoiding to be overly technical or explanatory. The origins of the work, and the personal memories at its root are what gives me hope it may become relatable and relevant to others, as memories are triggered by images and sounds, and have the potential to connect people in ways I can hardly predict, but only hope for.