Ostaci zivota, neupadljivi prikazi

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Ostaci ivotaneupadljivi prikazi

Ivan ukovi


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Ostaci ivotaneupadljivi prikazi

Ivan ukovi

Sarajevo, 2011

01 - 10 decembar


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Mimikrija, psihostenija1 i kratki-rezovi-po-ivotu

Foto i video instalacija Ivana ukovia Ostaci ivota - neupadljivi prikazi prepoznaje kao svoj primalni glas, kao svojeho u blizini, slavnu dramu Luiija Pirandela: est osoba trai autora. est ljudi ili jednu porodicu umjetnik fotograe ras-

poreujui ih, aranirajui najprije unutar ambijenta ispoenog pejzaa od vode i kamena pa ih potom useljava u zatvor-eniprostor prirodnjakog muzeja, meu preparirane ivotinje, prividno ih animirajui ordinarnim radnjama, blagoslovom porodinesvakodnevice. Video rad zumira donji dio tijela ene, majke i njen runi rad, pletenje, kao upornu, kontinuiranu radnju.

Ovim se radom uspostavlja jedno naroito trenje teksta i slike koje vie ne obavezuje na vjernost ni jednu ni drugu stranu;vri se osvjetljavanje (ili sjenenje) nekog intersticija izmeu narativnog i reprezentacijskog, tijela i prostora, individualnog i gru-pnog, privatnog i javnog, memorije i sadanosti, nekog meuprostora kao presijecanja ili usijecanja aura tijela, aura ambijena-ta, aura dogaaja, aura vremena. Time se oslobaa neki njihov udni, perverzni egzistencijalni dodatak ili jedan manjak smislakojim jedinka polako sagorijeva i izdie svoju personalnost i brie sebe kao aktivno, ivo mjesto na mapi svijeta i dogaaja.

Od svih distinkcija, kae Roe Kajoa, ne postoji otrija i jasnija od one izmeu organizma i njegove okoline, ili bar nigdjedrugo iskustvo razdvajanja nije tako direktno. Na osjeaju razdvojenosti i razlike od okoline temelji se i osjeaj personalnostijedinke. Prema Kajoi, mimikrija je fenomen umanjivanja ili brisanja razlika izmeu organizma i njegovog okruenja sa ciljemkonane asimilacije sa okruenjem. U sluaju ukovievog rada mimikrija, umanjivanje ili brisanje razlika izmeu tijela/ljudi,jedne porodice i njihove neive okoline, tijela prepariranih ivotinja u staklenim kavezima prirodnjakog muzeja, ne dejstvujekao napadaka niti odbrambena strategija, dakle, kao praksa egzistencijalnog pozicioniranja sopstva niti kao panteistiko,arkadijsko prelivanje svih formi postojanja jednih u druge prema Pitagorinoj premisi da je priroda svuda jednaka. Takoe,ona ovdje nije u funkciji mone sinteze: kondenzovanja vremena, uzglobljavanja u jedan sklop i injenja vidljivim, tjelesnim,onoga to prethodi smrti i onoga to dolazi sa/za njom, niti se ovdje nude kakve suptilne eshatoloke propozicije. Prema Kaj-

oi, mimikrija ne ostaje uvijek na povrini, nije pitanje samo adaptacija forme na formu (homomorja) ve je kod nekih vrsta isluajeva mogue ujednaavanje bioloke strukture. U ovim prizorima, ovim kratkim-rezovima-po-ivotu asimilacija sa znaimimikrijsko poravnanje druge vrste ilisa one strane ili neto vie. Mimikrijske strategije kao da ovdje stavljaju u pogon i ivabia i njihova (neiva) okolina upravo u meusobnom suoenju i upravozbogtog bliskog kontakta. Ovdje brisanje razlika nije

1 Mimikrija i legendarna psihostenija naziv je uvenog eseja Roea Kajoa iz 1935. godine (Roger Caillos, Mimicry and LegendaryPsychasthenia, October The First Decade, 1976-1986, The MIT Press, 1987) http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpcaillois.htm


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cilj nego sudbina: ono ne znai pribjei, opstati, sauvati, nego zatei i zarobiti, otii nigdje, ostati na niemu, imati nita. Ovdjemimikrija mutira i manifestuje se kao ambijentalizacija i postvarenje ivih ljudi u kontekstu mrtve prirode, odnosno, kao fan-tomsko, jezivo oivljavanje mrtve prirode, neive okoline useljavanjem u nju privida normalnosti, obinosti i funkcionalnostiivih porodinih rituala. Tek u prisustvu ljudi ija je egzistencija u stanju bolnog usporenja, nepokretne gure prepariranihivotinja postaju udno oivljene. Ovdje, dakle, ne postoji ista smrt kao sklonjeno, odsutno tijelo, niti isti ivot kao tijelo/tijela koja vezuju i koja su vezana smislom postojanja, osloboena posjedovanjem volje i elje i mogunostima izbora kao mo-

ima promjene. Ovdje nema uspostave jasne, radikalne razlike, ultimativne opozicije (ivo i neivo, ivot i smrt) ve samo tekapulsiranja niskih intenziteta (kao-ivljenja i kao-smrti) koji se, kao takvi, uzajamno timuju i uzajamno inciraju i inkubirajustanje meusobne identikacije i egzistencijalnog poravnanja. U pitanju je, rekao bi Kajoa, ozbiljni poremeaj odnosa jedinkei prostora koji on markira terminom psihostenija, a koji ovdje sutinski jeste pitanje opustoenja prostora same personalnostii samog postojanja. Mogu je kod ovih mimikrijskih strategija i jedan gotovo patoloki momenat koji pominje Kajoa: osim ilinasuprot instinkta samoodranja koji jedinku usmjerava prema ivotu, kod mimikrije moe postojati i instinkt renuncijacije kojiorjentie jedinku prema nekoj vrsti redukovane egzistencije koja, na koncu, nee poznavati ni svjesnost ni emotivnost: samostanje inertnosti lan vital.

U ovim prizorima grotesknog odigravanja porodinih rituala i rola, teatra pod maskama koji prikriva (i razotkriva) porodinonasilje koje zaudara na normalnost, takoe dejstvuje (prvostepeno i dvostrano) ta perdna dimenzija mimikrijskih praksi, tajefekat obostranog virusiranja imobilnou i deprivacijom jedinke i okoline. Efektom zaraze, ona zahvata porodino okruenje iivo, pleneristiko, pejzano okruenje i kamerno, mrtvoprirodno okruenje javnog mjesta, muzeja, da bi se iz te spoljanjostionda vratila, reektovala na same individue, ljude, upisujui se kao njihova tragika imanencija. Kao da je mrtva priroda nesamo njihovo prirodno stanite, spoljanje okruenje, ve posvojeni, unutarnji pejza, interiorizovani ambijent, njihov ne me-mento morinego modus vivendi!

Tako i staklo koje titi eksponate u muzeju zadobija funkciju ogledala da se zapitamo ko se zaista nalazi iza stakla, ko u kogagleda kao u sopstveni odraz kao u sliku svoga postojanja. Naime, prozirno staklo ovoga enterijera muzeja-doma (zato ne i staklo

izloga, modernih zgrada-stanita, okulara i ekrana) postalo je instrument u lancu anamorfoza, medijator uzajamnih identikacija,ono to reektuje/verikuje preklapanje gura sa obije strane u jedno, istovrsno postojanje. Intersubjektivnost se premetnula uinterobjektivnost kao naelo postojanja gdje se sve ispostavlja kaoiva postvarenost koja moe samo da posmatra jedna drugu,onemoguena za djelovanje, osuena da u tom pasivnom gledanju vidi nepokretnost sebe. I u tom preklapanju, tom egzistenci-jalnom poravnanju locirana je neupadljivost koju umjetnik pominje u naslovu izlobe.

Jedini autorkoji je ovdje naen, koji djeluje jeste vizuelni umjetnik ali ne da bi se uspostavio kao graditelj zajednice, obnovi-telj pokidanih veza ve da bude onaj koji u tom teatru ogledala, odbijanja i hvatanja reeksa i sijenki, u turobnoj igri identikacija


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i depersonalizacija koju e inscenirati sa protagonistima ove alobne partije, samo kratko prikupi krhotine jedne razbijene poro-dine slike. Umjetnik postaje forenziar koji dijagnostikuje komemorativnu dimenziju postojanja ljudi kojima je, kako kae samPirandelo, oduzeto pravo na ivot. Njihov univerzum nije lien tvorca ve stvaranja;samoostvarenje je ustuknulo pred porivom

samopostvarenjau kome postojanje nije ni odsustvo ni prisustvo, ni praznina ni punoa, ni armacija ivota ni glorija smrti, samonijemi horor meustanja i meupostojanja.

Autor-umjetnik ne slika naeno, zateeno, sluajno nego sam konstruie, aranira, reira prizore ali na takav nain da nam

se ini da se i nisu mogli drugaije posloiti, da nose peat neizbjenog, peat bezizlaznog. Taj osjeaj fatalnog u prizorimaispisuju ili upisuju i sami mediji (fotograja i video) ije sile umjetnik tako angauje da sami poinju dejstvovati kao hibernatoriovih privid-dogaaja i privid-ljudi. Tako se u punoj snazi aktiviraju bartijanska svojstva fotograje kao povratka umrlog(ovdje i ufunkciji ispraanja ivog) time se tautoloki preklapajui sa samim fotograsanim prizorima dovodei njihovu alobnu igru dostanja hipertroje: Fotograja predstavlja onaj vrlo osetljivi trenutak kada nisam ni subjekat ni objekat nego pre subjekat kojiosea da postaje objekat: tada doivljavam mikro-iskustvo smrti: zaista postajem utvara2. Ono to Paskal Bonicer imenuje be-zlinim fotografskim sadizmom ovdje forsira to hladno, egzekutorsko ogoljavanje bezlinosti, bezosjeajnosti subjekta, njegovoskliznue u ravnodunost(Bataj). Ono to ukovi jo trai i dobija od fotograje, tragom tih tautolokih preklapanja prizora i

medija, jeste ekscentrino kadriranje3

, odnosno dekadriranje. To je, po Boniceru4

, sadistika vjetina, frustrirajua za posmatra-a, osakaujua za modele, olienje okrutne vetine, agresivnog i hladnog nagona za smru. Porodini portret u pejzau, ukamenoj dolini, postao je serija gura odrezanih u visini nogu, dakle lienih personalnosti. Tu je sama prirodnost i cjelovitost ili cje-lovitost prirodnosti doivjela dekapitaciju. I izlazak u otvoreni prostor neposredovane prirode nije mirni, familijarni uitak boravkau pejzau pokraj velike vode, ve laviranje na rubu velike, mrtve praznine koja kao da se neosjetno izliva i guta same ljude naokonedotaknute, stabilne u svojim pozama odglumljene bliskosti, postvarene u stanju sopstvene nepokretnosti. Neke scene (majkakoja plete, otac koji sjedi na obali vode) ponavljaju se na nekoliko fotograja kao viene iz razliitih uglova; one, meutim, nisuznak da su dogaaji i ljudi vezani jedinstvenim mjestom, vremenom, emocijom ve da su svi oni neke pokretne take, plutajuiznaci koji bljesnu u nekom trenutku na nekom mjestu gotovo sluajno, osueni da nigdje ne nau smirenje. Ove fotograje vie ine razlikuju centar od margine, ive ljude od mrtve prirode, organizme od okoline, puno od praznog, cjelovitost od fragmentarnostikoja nestaje u nagonu implozije.

2 Rolan Bart, Svetla komora, Beograd: Rad, 1993, 19

3 Kadriranje je termin uzet iz borbe sa bikovima: on znai zaustavit i bika prije nego to mu se zada smrtni udarac, Paskal Bonicer,Slikarstvo i lm, Beograd: Institut za lm, 1998, 68

4 Ibid, 89


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I u videu je dekadrirana gura, odnosno kadriran komad tijela ene, majke, koji je u funkciji radnje koju ona sprovodi,pletenja i ta radnja jeste ono to vezuje na pogled i to proiva sve ove prizore. Pletenje je jedina iva, tekua radnja ijaneprekidnost (produkt moi samoga medija, videa) nije znak (moralne, ivotne) postojanosti ene, one koja plete porodineveze, niti tradicionalnog situiranja i ksiranja ene u privatni prostor porodinog doma. Ta i takva ena je ovdje giljotira-na, liena lica ne kao rtva iste mizoginijske egzekucije ve kao corpus delictigubitka personalnosti koju je apsorbovalaudovinost naoko ordinarne, idiline kuanike aktivnosti. Neprekidnost te radnje nije graenje, spajanje, preplitanje,

obnavljanje ve postaje nemilosrdnost, nekorisnost, uzaludnost trajanja, jedno neumitno, neuzaustavljivo curenje, osipanjei nestajanje koje ranjava sve ove prozore.

Tamo gdje se ini da je zaudnost ovih prizora aranirana prema obrascima koje izdano eksploatie modna ili reklamnafotograja garantujui joj privlanost, u pitanju je istovremeno, meusobno uslovljeno i unakrsno povezano uobiavanje,pripitomljavanje, normalizacija, odomaenje smrti tamo gdje se regularno situira armacija ivota: u porodici, i ouavanje,articijelizacija i paklena prolongacija ivota u tijelu/tijelom preparirane ivotinje, mrtve (s)tvari. U ovim prizorima se prestupajutemeljne ontoloke demarkacije: anestezirani a ivi (ivi a anestezirani) ljudi animiraju preparirane ivotinje ne obeavajuiivot, ne ivei ivot; preparirane ivotinje animiraju anestezirane, a ive ljude samo simulirajui besmrtnost.

Neka hladna i teka tiina impregnira ove prizore. Ona ne znai nijemo, nemuto optenje ve steenu nemogunost govora,dakle, odsustvo kontakta i razmjene. Iz ovih scena nije prognan govor nego se ne-govor, ne-optenje uvuklo u ljude i inciralonjihove odnose. Pokreti i poze koji sugeriu govor, obraanje, komunikaciju, emociju jesu samo prazna gesta; oni ostaju jednakonijemi, osujeeni, zakinuti i ukinuti kao i ivotinje preparirane, aranirane, podeene u poze koje tuno prizivaju sjeanje na ivot,na nepovratno.

Kao to svako tijelo-eksponat u prirodnjakom muzeju kodira individualno, samo njegovo vrijeme-mjesto inei muzejheterotopijskom strukturom, tako i ljudi ovdje ne tvore porodicu kao zajednicu vezanu osjeajem bliskosti i pripadanja ve seprepoznaju kao rasuti fragmenti subjektivnosti, zaglavljeni u krhotinama istroene bliskosti. Ovo i nije parikularizovana i-storijakraha jedne, odreene porodice ve parabola o stradanju odnosa i osjeaja koji bi nas uspostavljali, imenovali subjektom.

Igra aha gurama od stakla, gotovo identinim, na jednoj fotograji, nije vie mentalno situiranje i precizno projektovanjesvoje pozicije u odnosu na konstelaciju sila u okruenju, ve samo besciljno kretanje u vakumu sadanjosti u kome promilja-nje poteza postaje samo prazna poza, gledanje kroz gure, fantomska igra prozirnih slika i odraza koji ne nude mogunostuspostavljanja razlike, miljenja drugosti, ivljenja promjene kao ivljenja sebe.

Svetlana Racanovi


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Life remainsdiscreet scenes

Ivan ukovi


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frejm iz video rada7 minuta


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Mimicry, psychasthenia1 and short-cuts-of-life

Ivan ukovis photo and video installation Life remains discreet scenes takes as its primal voice, and shares closeresonance with, Luigi Pirandellos celebrated play Six Characters in Search of an Author. The artist photographed six people,members of one family, posing in the midst of a starving landscape of water and rock. Then he moved them into the closedenvironment of a natural history museum, amongst taxidermied animals, which seemingly became animated by the ordinaryactivity of the peaceful family everyday. The video is a static medium shot of the bottom part of the womans body, the mother,and her handiwork, knitting: a diligent, constant activity.

This piece sets a particular friction between text and image where faithfulness is no longer demanded of either of them. It il-luminates (or outlines) an interstice between narrative and representation, body and space, individual and collective, private andpublic, memory and present, an in-between-space that is at the point of intersection or incision of aura of body, aura of landscape,aura of event, aura of time. This frees their peculiar, perverse existential excess or a lack of sense in which an individual slowlywithers away, gives up its personality and cancels itself as an active, living place on the map of the world and event.

Among distinctions, there is assuredly none more clear-cut than that between the organism and its surroundings; at leastthere is none in which the tangible experience of separation is more immediate, wrote Roger Caillois. It is on the sense of distinc-tion, or separation from the environment that individuals base their sense of being unique. According to Caillois, mimicry is thephenomenon of reducing or cancelling the distinction between the organism and its surroundings so that the organism assimilatesthe surroundings. In ukovis piece, mimicry, reducing or cancelling differencesbetween bodies/members of one family and theirsurroundings, and the bodies of taxidermied animals in the glass cages of the natural history museum, do not function as strate-gies of attack or defence, that is, as practice of existential positioning of the self, nor as pantheistic, Arcadian owing of all formsof existence from one to another, according to Pythagorass premise that nature is everywhere the same.. Also, here nature doesnot function as a powerful synthesis, condensing of time, assemblage and making visible, embodying, of that which comes before

death and that which comes with/after it, nor does it offer subtle eschatological propositions. According to Caillois, mimicry is notalways supercial, it is not always adaptation of form to form (homomorphy): in some cases, and with some species biological as-similation has been noted too. In these scenes, these shortcuts-of-life, assimilation with means mimicry, levelling of the secondkind, or on the other side. The strategies of mimicry here seem to be set in motion both by living organisms and their (inanimate)

1 Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia is the title of Roger Cailloss famous 1935 essayhttp://www.generation-online.org/p/fpcaillois.htm, accessed 18 November 2011


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surroundings through their facing each other and because of their close contact. Here the cancellation of difference is not the aimbut destiny: it does not mean to overcome, survive or persevere but to trap and enslave, go nowhere, remain at nothing, have noth-ing. Here mimicry mutates and is manifested as objectivation of living people in the context of still nature, or as phantom, eeriecoming to life of still nature, inanimate surroundings by their being inhabited by the appearance of normalcy, ordinariness andfunctionality of living family rituals. Only in the presence of humans whose existence is in painful slow motion do the immobilegures of taxidermied animals become strangely enlivened. Here therefore there isnt clear-cut death as removed, absent body

nor clear-cut life as body/bodies that connect, and that are connected by a sense of existence, liberated by the fact that theyhave will, desires and choice, and agency to change. Here we dont have clear, radical difference, ultimate opposition (animate andinanimate, life and death) but only heavy pulsation of low intensity (like-living, like-death) that mutually attune and mutually infectand incubate the state of mutual identication and existential levelling. This is, Caillois would say, a serious disturbance in the re-lationship between individual and space that he dened by the term psychastenia, which is essentially the instance of shrinking ofthe space of individuality, and very existence. These strategies of mimicry offer an almost pathological phenomenon that Cailloisquotes: alongside the instinct of self-preservation, which in some way orients the creature toward life, there is generally speakinga sort of instinct of renunciation that orients it toward a mode of reduced existence, which in the end would no longer know eitherconsciousness or feeling - the inertia of the lan vital .

In these scenes of grotesque play of family rituals and roles, theatre with masks that conceal (and reveal) family violencethat smacks of normalcy, what is also (primarily and mutually) at work is the perdious dimension of the practice of mimicry. Itsoutcome is mutual infection with immobility and deprivation between individual and surroundings. By the effect of contagion,it penetrates the family setting, as well as the living, plein air, natural environment and the chamber,still life environment ofthe public space of the museum, in order to return, reect on the individuals, people, inscribing itself in them as their tragicimmanence. It seems as if inanimate nature is not only their natural habitat, their external surroundings, but adopted, innerlandscape, internalised ambience, not their memento moribut their modus vivendi.

Just as the glass that protects the museum exhibits functions as a mirror which makes us wonder who is really behind the

glass, who is beholding whom as their own reection, as the image of their existence. Namely, the see-through glass of thismuseum-home (and equally the glass of shop windows, modern buildings-habitats, lenses and screens) became an instrumentin the chain of anamorphosis, mediator of mutual identication, that which reects/veries folding of both sides into one, equalexistence. Inter-subjectivity switched into inter-objectivity as a mode of existence where everything emerges as living objectiva-tion that can only observe one another, incapable to act, destined to recognise in that passive looking its own immobility. And thisfolding, this existential levelling is where the discreetness from the exhibitions title is located.

Th l h b f d h h l i h i b h i i b ild h l f b k i


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The only authorto be found here, the only agent is the artist but he isnt a community builder, healer of broken connectionsbut one that will pick up shards of the broken family picture in that theatre of mirrors, reections and shadows, the melancholy gameof identication and depersonalisation that he set up with the protagonists of this sombre play. The artist will become a forensicinvestigator that diagnoses the commemorative dimension of existence of people who have been, in Pirandellos words, deniedthe right to live. It is creation not creator that their universe is lacking; self-realizationhas recoiled beforeself-objectivation in whichexistence is neither presence nor absence, emptiness nor fullness, afrmation of life nor glorication of death, just a silent horror ofthe in-between-state and the in-between-existence

The creator-artist does not picture the found, given, random but constructs, arranges, directs scenes in a way that it seems thatthey could not have been set in any different way, that they are sealed by the inevitable, by the fatal. The notion of fatalism in thesescenes is also inscribed in the media used (photography and video), which are here employed to inhibit these illusion-events andillusion-people. This fully activates the Barthesian notion of photography as the return of the deceased(here also departure of the liv-ing), tautologically overlapping with the photographed scenes, bringing their sad game to the state of hypertrophy: the Photographrepresents that very subtle moment whenI am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object: I thenexperience a micro version of death...: I am truly becoming a spectre2. What Pascal Bonitzer calls faceless photographic sadismhere brings forward the cold, executioner-style stripping of personality, subjects lack of emotion, its lapse into apathy (Bataille).

What ukovi further demands and gains from photography, along the line of the tautological overlap of scenes and media, is ec-centric framing, or deframing. According to Bonitzer, deframing, a sadistic practice, frustrating for the spectator and disguring forthe models (Bressons term [for actors]), is the response of a cruel mastery, a cold and aggressive death-drive3. The family portraitin the landscape, in the rocky valley, became a series of gures cut below leg, thus deprived of part of their personality. The naturalwholesomeness or wholesomeness of nature have here been defeated. In the same way, their positioning in the open space of purenature is not the quiet experience of a family day out on the waters edge, but it appears as levitation at the edge of a great deademptiness, that seems to invisibly seep out and swallow people who seem untouched, stable in their poses of feigned closeness,shattered by their own state of immobility. Some of the scenes (mother knitting, father sitting at the edge of water) are repeated inseveral photographs, from different angles; they however do not act as a proof that events and people share one place, time, or emo-

tion; they rather seem like moving points, oating signs that ash in certain moments at certain places almost by accident, destinedto never rest. These photographs no longer know centre from the margin, living people from inanimate nature, organisms from thesurroundings, full from empty, wholeness from fragments that disappear in implosion.

2 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, transl. Richard Howard. London: Vintage Books, 2000, pp.14

3 Pascal Bonitzer, Deframings [orig. 1978], in Cahiers du Cinma, Vol. 4, 19731978: History, Ideology, Cultural Struggle, ed. DavidWilson. New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 19899

I th id t d f d g f d i f b d f th Sh i k itti g d h ti it i


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In the video too we see a de-framed gure, or framed piece of body of a woman, mother. She is knitting, and her activity iswhat locks our gaze and what stitches all the other scenes. Knitting is the only live continuous activity which is uninterrupted(by the nature of the medium of video): this however is not a sign of the womans (moral, experiential) constancy, of the one thatknits the family ties, nor traditional situating of the woman in the private space of family home. This and such woman is hereguillotined: her face has been taken away from her not through the act of pointed misogynist execution but as a corpus delictiof aloss of individuality that has been absorbed by the monstrosity of the seemingly ordinary idyllic homemaking activity. The continuityof this action is not about building, connecting, interlacing, regenerating but it becomes a duration that is merciless, useless, futile,

irrevocable; unstoppable seeping, scattering and disappearance wound all these scenes.It seems that the sense of wonder of these scenes is modelled after fashion or advertising photography, aimed a making the

photographs attractive. However, we also encounter a mutually conditioned and cross-connected effect ofmaking ordinary, taming,normalising, familiarisation of death at places where normally we would nd afrmation of life, in the family, and at the same timewe nd alienation, articialization and hellish prolongation of life in the body/through the body of taxidermied animal, inanimateobject. These scenes transgress fundamental ontological demarcations: the anesthetized yet living (living yet anesthetized) peopleanimate taxidermied animals, without promising life, without living a life; the taxidermied animals animate the anesthetized, yetliving human beings only simulating eternal life.

A cold and heavy silence impregnates these scenes. It is not about silent, numb communication, but an acquired incapacity

of speech, lack of contact and exchange. Speech is not evicted from these scenes: rather non-speech, non-communication hasseeped into people and infected their relationships. Movements and poses that suggest speech, address, communication andemotion are but empty gestures; they remain equally silent, stunned, stymied and thwarted like the taxidermied animals, ar-ranged, adjusted into poses that forlornly evoke memory of life, of irrevocable.

Just as every body-exhibit in the natural history museum codes the individual, only-its-own time and place making the museuma heterotopic structure, the human beings here do not make family as a community connected by a shared sense of closenessand belonging: they are scattered fragments of subjectivity trapped in the shards of emptied closeness. This is not a detailed his-tory of the ruin of one particular family but a parable of death of relationships and feelings that established us, named us subject.

A game of chess with - almost identical glass gures in one of the photos is not mental situating and precise projection of

one position in relation to the constellations of forces around but aimless motion in a vacuum of the present in which contem-plation of the next move is just a vain pose, looking through gures, phantom play of translucent images and reections thatdont offer the possibility of establishing difference, thinking the other, living the change as living oneself.

Svetlana Racanovi

Ivan ukovi (roen 1981) Ivan ukovi (born 1981)


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Ivan ukovi (roen 1981)

Diplomirao knjievnost na Filozofskom fakultetu Univerziteta CrneGore (Niki).

Magistrant na Fakultetu za medije i komunikacije, odsjek Digitalneumetnosti i novi mediji (Beograd).

Sedam godina radio u medijima kao novinar i urednik za umjetnosti kulturu, a posljednje etiri godine angaovan kao organizatorumjetnikih aktivnosti u podgorikoj galeriji Pizana.

Koordinator na programima u NVO Punkt.

Saradnik na asopisu za digitalnu umjetnost Propeler.

Izlobe:

Ostaci ivota - neupadljivi prikazi - Ozon, Beograd, 2011

Body of digital, Grad teatar, Budva, 2011

Ivan ukovi (born 1981)

Graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy, University ofMontenegro, department literature. (Niki).

MA from Faculty of Media and Communications, departmentDigital Arts (Belgrade)

Seven years of work experience in journalism ( journalist and editor

for art and culture).For the past four years has been engaged as organizer of artprograms in Gallery Pizana.

Has been working on projects for NGO Punkt.

Member of editorial board Propeler, Magazine of digital art.

Exibitions:

Life remains - discreet scenes - Ozon, Belgrade, 2011

Body of digital, City Theatre, Budva, 2011

Fotograja i video / Photo and Video: Ivan ukovi

Tekst / Text: Svetlana Racanovi

Prevod na engleski / English translation: Jelena Stanovnik

English copy-editing: Adam Mullinger

Grako oblikovanje / Graphic Design: Slobodan Toni


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Documents

Ostaci zivota, neupadljivi prikazi