diSTRUKTURA 2015

Skills: Duplex 2012-2018

WORDS OF LANDSCAPE

“But on the inside, no borders…” Jean Tardieu

The main theme of the latest works of the artistic couple diSTRUKTURA is landscape, urban landscape as a constructed image, geographical term, social category. The works were created in the period 2013-2015 and are part of an ongoing project where Central European landscape is recognizable as the main theme. Although geographically determined, this term can be understood beyond it, as a paradigm of our movement in the process of identifying our past and anticipating our future: cultural, social, political… diSTRUKTURA uses obsessive examination of the possibilities of landscape as a defined space as a method to explain all the conditions and consequences of interpretation of the mentioned term – Central European landscape. The justification of their procedure is in the origin of the places (geographical term) and the pattern of the spaces they come from. In search of a perfect, precise, well defined landscape, the artists in their joint actions put an emphasis on the landscape as a constructed space.

When we talk about the landscape in the work of the artistic couple diSTRUKTURA, we do not mean showing landscape as a classical painter’s theme, but as constructed spaces that have a defined structure. We talk about a city not just as an urban substance, but as a space of a shaped social fabric, as well. Also, we mean cultural, political, economic landscapes, urban architectural wholes, ecological communities, geographical maps… all those (un)limited structures that – by their dimensions – indicate immeasurability (unlimited duration), indefiniteness (unlimited movement), reproducibility (unlimited choice).

The works are realized in various media: painting, photography, video – although photography is the medium most often used by diSTRUKTURA in their projects – as if they want, through media diversity, to emphasize the diversity of landscapes as given, yet uncertain and variable structures. Observing the works, we talk about landscape as though it were a picture, representation. We talk about indentedness, division into tiny, miniature fields that remind us of a digital image. This pixelization warns us that we are deep into the 21st century, in that very time when man is alienated from the space although he is physically in it, belongs to it, moves, marks it. How else when our perception today is conditioned by digital media.

These works are also examples of a continuous deliberation about the space that surrounds us and reflects us, both outer and inner space, about space as a (non)variable category. The intimate geography, which we master in moving through the selected area, directs us to identify, investigate, interpret its characteristics, givens, clear geometric statements. Despite its estrangement, this space – such as it is and in which we are – is yet not foreign or unknown to us to make us wonder, as Paul Virilio, “at which point our city reveals its face? »

Aleksandra Estela Bjelica Mladenovic
Translated by:  Vesna Strika

diSTRUKTURA – Locus Suspectus, video, 25’, video still, 2014
This video work was done in cooperation with the writer Barbi Marković and represents a landscape of the city of Sarajevo. Marković outlines city portraits copying inscriptions in the city based on which a specific narrative of that city emerges and the intersection of the current discourses. This video was shot in Košutnjak, where – in a perfectly natural environment – she narrates the city autobiography, building the story about its values, codes and problems. During her narration, in which the frame slowly widens revealing the forest environment, we become aware of how history, through signs and codes, is transmitted through time and space, and how space remembers events.

EastCoastLand, pencil on paper, 140 x 150 cm, 2008

EastCoastLand, pencil on paper, 140 x 150 cm, 2008

Biography

Milica Milićević (1979) and Milan Bosnić (1969) are both MA`s of Departments of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia and although in diverse individual artistic ventures in group and solo exhibitions, they have been working on joint projects for the past ten years under name diSTRUKTURA. Their ideas are expressed in different media but mostly photography, painting, drawing and video. They live and work in Belgrade. diSTRUKTURA took part in over 20 individual and more than 40 group exhibitions such as: Subdued Existence (Taichung,Taiwan), distURBANces (Vienna and Bratislava, 2012; Luxembourg,2013), TINA B festival (Prague, 2012), Police the Police/ Biennial of young artists (Bucharest, 2010), Belgrade Non-Places (Salon of Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, 2009),Hotel Mariakapel: a portrait by Katie Jane (Hoorn, Netherlands, 2008), Micro Narratives (Museum of Modern Art Saint Étienne, 2008), 48th Octobar Salon( Belgrade, 2007), Steirischer Herbst 2007- next code: love (Graz, 2007). They exhibited solo in Serbia, Austria, Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Czech, Slovenia and Finland.
Their activities were supported by Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2015), European Cultural Foundation, KulturKontakt, Kingdom of Norway, ProHelvetia, Serbian Ministry of Culture, Belgrade City Municipality, Okolje Consulting and others. Their works are now part of many private, public and corporate collections such as H2 Center for Contemporary Art Collection, Collection of Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Cultural Center Belgrade Collection, Wiener Stadtische collection, Belgrade City Museum, Telenor collection as well as Okolje Consulting Art Collection from Ljubljana.
For the past ten years they participated in artist in residence programs and workshops in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands, Slovenia, Italy, Finland, Egypt and Serbia.