1997
photo displays in public space
Loneliness
is very interesting, as well as sadness, or unexplainable discontent…
The two photographs that were put on billboards come from a hyperproductive
private collection of the snapshots of girls in situations relevant only
to the author and those featuring on the photos. Teleportation of the
private into the public.
Tajana #1&
#2, Schratenberg bei Sheifling, Austria,
at the back side of the servant house
"...As
a result of such an attitude toward a gallery space, the orientation toward
gallery exterior spaces does not come as a surprise; thus, for example,
the group performed a project in Austria named „Untitled"
(Tajana #1 #2) symbolic matrix of exhibiting space, the work in
Austria is a reversion of the process of analytical annihilation of the
status of art: the intrusion of the intimate, ephemeral into a public
space. Two billboards were located at different places, ranging from a
pastoral Alps countryside to a "neutral" place by the road.
The photographs that were put on billboards come from a hyperproductive
private collection of the snapshots of people in situations relevant only
to the author and those featuring on the photos, which are taken by a
small automatic camera. "Teleportation" of the intimate into
the public, where such large visuals are , by the rule, an expression
of economic power, does not lie solely in the usage of a billboard as
„windows of supermodernity" with the purpose of exhibiting a
non-manipulative scene, but is rathser an expression of ideological auto-reference
of the artistic scene. In other words, the treatment of the imperceptibility
of art is done with the utmost care; photographs do not have an artistic
look, they are 'ordinary', of an average quality for which no 'professional'
equipment is needed ; the things represented on them are auto-referential
to the extent which equals the photographs which are meant to be art;
at this point the difference between these two almost ceases to exist.
The possibility that "your snapshots" can find its place on
one of the advertising boards refers to the very nature of the "non-place"
where such signs are put: the scene is perceived but exclusively in an
incoherent and partial way ; every kind of theme is likely to be encountered,
even of the most intimate nature; the reason for this is that the public
place has become a place where the subjects do less and less integrate,
which leaves them the augmenting space to be alone in it, and to have
their representations and representations of themselves left unnoticed."...
quoted from "Trajective Projects" (1998) by Branislav Dimirtijevic