. dvdMarina Grzinic, Aina Smid
A Selection of Video Works from 1990-2003
<book> Index
Index DVD 005
The video art, cleverly supported by national tv networks, has represented a precious expressive resource during the 'tv' war in the former Yugoslavia. Its impacts, already analyzed in the book Situated Contemporary Art Practices can be experienced in this video collection. In the included works the media and cultural techniques are bouncing off the socialism emotional heritage, and even if only ten years old, the same works seem to come from another era. The use of the video medium here is destabilizing the audience, getting symbols, gestures and actions and habits and systematizing them in provoking backgrounds. The emerging symbolism pesters the audience with different references and remix their awareness. The Neue Slowenische Kunst retro avant-garde is intertwined with the ex East post-socialism, juxtaposes the western media obsession with the peculiar social relations of the former Eastern Europe. If "technology is never innocent" (as Marina Grzinic points out), then the screen and the figurative sequences that flow in our retinae can still send meaningful signals to our rational minds.