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The man who speaks about himself is taking of his clothes.

This is a story about Jamesdin (born 1972.), who changed several times his origin of life while he was growing up and educated. He moved from Zagreb (Croatia) where he was born to Banjaluka (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and at the end in 1989. he came to Belgrade (Serbia). He was hanging around and stilling in supermarkets on these territories. After crash of SFRJ he grew up and succeeded to enter The Faculty of fine arts in Belgrade… E.T. is helping him.

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link to the video

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Having started with one of Manet’s painting, let us begin by examining the work of Isidora Ficovic, which represents a reinscenation of sorts of Manet’s Breakfast on the Grass. In this video recording, two clothed men and a naked woman realize a tableau vivant; the situation approaches the original as much as possible, only the actual items of food refer to the sort of breakfast characteristic of these parts: burek (a kind of cheese pie, translator’s note) and yogurt.

Still, the result does not boil down to striving for humorous effect through mere repetition with a difference, but by positioning, by way of mimicry, a high-culture topic in the real world of among real tensions: sexual, historical, habitual, etc. Hence the incomprehensible appearance of an object in the foreground (the “head” of the title – Breakfast with a Head), whose role here appears to be similar to that of the skull in Hans Hollbein’s Ambassadors, that is, the role of anamorphosis, which Lacan presents to us in a famous text of his as a specific dimension in the field of vision, a dimension not related to the view as such but somehow connected to the function of a lack, an appearance of a phallic ghost.

by Branislav Dimitrijević

Production BELEF ’03.

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The video can be classified as a thriller.This video thriller shows a conflict between the main characters (Pentium IV and the author) which emerged owing to the disobedience of mice and the failure to score a new record in the Bubble Frenzy game. An unsuccessful escape attempt on the part of the mice will end tragically.

Production BELEF ’04.

link to the video

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The video is part of the installation Colony 2001 that was showed in Remont Gallery, Belgrade 2005.

Colony 2001 was initiated during an acquaintance with Montenegro hotel-owner and investor  Nedeljko Burzanović Nedjo. Burzanović sponsored the workshop aimed at production of artworks  intended for decoration of luxurious hotels along Montenegro Coast – hotels in Budva, Sutomore, Susanj and Bar  owned by Talas  Turs Company. Beside Isidora Fićović, leading the project in collaboration with Mr.Burzanovic, colony was attended by young Belgrade artists Pedja Terzić, Bane Jakić and Jamesdin.

A fact worth mentioning is that the whole project was  entirely produced by Talas  Tours, a company that made certain demands regarding the themes of paintings such as authentic seaside landscapes, images of Monastery of Ostrog, particular saints, etc.

Faced with such a chellenge, these Belgrade artists made quite successful works, depicting the taste of mainstream Montenegrin art public (and wider).

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Juxtaposition of the two semantically opposite videos in the work Killing for a living by artist Isidora Ficovic should make us rethink about different concepts that utopias of 20 th and 21 st century are based on. Hendrix’s performance of his song “Isabela” at Woodstock in 1969 represents 1968 period as a climax of 20 th century utopias. In the second part of the work there is a billboard, dominated by a representative example of a female (it is a photograph of a half naked girl with perfect body and quite big breasts, supposing silicone ones), which is being stoned by the artist herself. Shouting “Down with the silicone” she expresses her attitude to the symbol of “21 st century utopia” in the most explicit way. She emphasizes the same idea by sticking the posters with peace and silicone motif over TV set.

Simple sequence (montage) of these two videos is intensified in formal and technical way. Full screen recording from Woodstock is contrasted with small black-framed screen recorded with digital camera. Conceptualizing this difference that originates from technical necessities, we come to contradiction within the idea of development, playing attention to technological development together with regression of spiritual, emotional and existential aspect. If the aim of technology is understood as the reign over nature, then silicone culture-part of contemporary technological development-devalues nature. At the same time she is making the body more beautiful and emptying it out of any content. Thus, lack of sexuality and desire is inevitable. But if technology is understood as the reign over man and nature relationship (Benjamin) then one changes the attitude towards their body and other people. Energy, desire and enthusiasm express the intention to change things within ourselves and community.

However, through modern media people become completely confined by the surrounding and hypnotized by the promoted values that are connected to perfect appearance only. Marketing and advertising strategies impose ideas of beauty and physical appearance. At the same time they intensify at quantitative level, and disable consumers to fulfill their real desires, not produced ones. The dream about change is questionable in this context. Thus the artist induces us to suspect its justification and to question plausibility of “reparation” caused by intervention in the body without affirmation and stimulation of improvement arising from inner-self and uniqueness of each individual.

Text about the work from the catalogue: Dislocation/Utopian space(s)

Curators: Maida Gruden and Mara Prohaska

link to the video

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The work happens in four plans on green surface. Two actors, man and woman, play badminton in first plan, in second plan is a promenade path, in third is a car road and in forth is a railway line. All plans are activated in moments, passengers, cars and train in the back corresponds with the main scene underlined by speed effect on the static surface.

Text by Nataša Skušek

Recreation day. Static in the frame as painting. Points are articulated from first to third plan back and forward. Articulated elements from left to right in passive composition. The happening is minimal and informative. The story is insignificance for the inference of the video.

Text By Mladen Stropnik

The First price of the video festival “Video tapestry”, Velenje, Slovenia 2005.

link to the video (extract)

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The video as research on the question What is Contemporary?

Motivation/statement: While I was on the residency program of Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center I felt very much ‘contemporary’. I wondered whether this could be understood as a kind of commune, or as mutual feelings between people? There was a street artist singing all day long making everybody nervous. If provocation is often part of ‘contemporary strategies’, is he ‘contemporary’ or are we? But we didn’t trouble him because ‘contemporary’ means democratic spirit. And, even if this video is not democratic, while one person spoke for only a few seconds another spoke for half the video, I discovered that 14 minutes is not enough to even start discussion.

The target group among the research What is Contemporary? happened were artists/curators from Turkey and abroad that were in September-October 2006. present around Platform Garanti in Istanbul. Video itself represents the caching of contemporary moment. Appearing: Ahmet Ogut, Anton Vidokle, Oyku Ozsoy, Josuander Pol, Liesbeth Bik, Ozge Acikkol, Runo Lagomarsino, Secil Yersel, Mark Aerial Waller, Nikusha, Huseyin Alptekin, Bernardo Giorgi, Fatos Ustek, Tunc Ali Cam, Isidora Ficovic, Banu Cennetoglu, Martha Rosler, Michael Isling, Christian Millesoe, Philipphine Hoegen, Erinc Seymen, Borga Kanturk, Kristina Ask, Selda Asal and Vasif Kortun. Every of interviewed person didn’t know what would be the question in advance and they didn’t have time to prepare the answer. Their answering is intuitive, spontaneous reaction and thinking, which is part of contemporary moment itself.

Production by Backyard Residency of Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul ’06.

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The very title Alien both to the position of a foreigner in such a monocultural environment as Serbia is today (after so many years of cultural and social isolation), and the position of contemporary artist in a surrounding that is hostile to non conventional types of artistic practice and which does not provide sufficient institutional support to new and different artistic and cultural projects. The workshop on the Alien topic, included also little local detours, organized in order to familiarize with the local cultural topics and places of cultural and social significance, as well as with the spaces of cultural tension, exclusion, and non excepted otherness (perhaps the most striking example of that is the Chinese immigrants community). The video work ‘Something is eating us’ was developed under the Alien topic, in the form of interview that was taken on the streets and public places with the local people including Chinese working in market halls and flee markets, video gives the knowledge about how the citizens, majority and minority, feel and what do they think living in the city such as Kraljevo. The Chinese community started to be present in Serbia from the late 90’ under the Milosevic government when Serbia was isolated country. That period of 90’ in Serbia made local people alienated and with the coming of Chinese people, settled in Serbia, that fact among others started to change that situation and it influenced on local people to be more open, though in the beginning was like ’Aliens’ look at each other. The video is researching those relations.

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Our experience tells us that there will always be conflicts between desire and loyalty – indeed, life probably has no other place than between these two poles. However, today this experience is conveyed more than ever before through media: Love in the telenovela age.In “next code: love”, three generations of artists explore different aspects of love with the aid of their specific tools, traversing three different cultural regions from which Europe has drawn its identity for centuries: Latinity, Orthodoxy and Islam – represented by participants from Vienna, Graz, Beograd and Istanbul.

Production Steirische Herbst festival, Graz, Austria 2007.