For non Serbian speakers, here is a revised Google translate of an interview with me for Nedeljnik
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Your current exhibition at the Goethe Institute was created in New York. What was the idea in that first second, or minute, when you started thinking about it?
The project “The future belongs to them” began in Belgrade at the end of 2021, with a photographic work of the same title in collaboration with photographer Danilo Mataruga. When I started working on that intriguing portrait holding a test tube with an unknown biological weapon, I initially wanted to make a visual artefact of the manipulative and unpredictable times we live in, not knowing that we would sail from a pandemic to a war in Ukraine. In November of last year, I left for New York to strategically shoot several video works with slogans that I constructed. So I held the slogan “Your genocide is bigger than mine” in front of the UN headquarters, and “Next time we will be more than prepared” in Times Square and in front of the 9/11 memorial in New Jersey.
In some accompanying descriptions of the exhibition, unofficial, circles of friends characterize your exhibition as socially and politically engaged. Do you agree with that? And was that an idea too?
I often say that I was born in an area of great and constant political turmoil, where people in power can only be removed by assassination, natural death or bombing; that I am the last generation of ‘Tito’s pioneers’, accordingly, my body and my being is a political construct, so my works are also the result of all that. I believe that an artist should be socially and politically aware and that engagement is an inevitable consequence of detecting problems and natural revolt.
Is it desirable for art to be socially engaged because the analysis of society should not only be provided by sociologists, political analysts, but also by artists?
I think it is my duty to analyze and criticize the time in which I live through my art; to influence the consciousness of my contemporaries and through the works I create, to encourage people to see more clearly the socio-political circumstances that surround us, to recognize the hypocrisy of society and to react uncompromisingly to injustice, crime, corruption, and other pathologies, which over time, if not controlled, can become a desirable model of social behaviour and lead to fascism.
What was interesting when you were doing the installations in New Jersey, in front of the UN building? Were there any curious people or comments and why exactly in those places?
Installation ie. slogan in English “Your genocide is bigger than mine” in front of the UN headquarters in New York, I was filming in the “eye” of the hurricane that hit Florida the night before, and came weakened to Manhattan. The day was very warm for November, and the rain was pouring down from all possible directions. At the moment when I thought that my cameraman and I wouldn’t be able to film anything, and the night was already slowly starting to fall, as if the sky looked at us, the rain and wind stopped. We rushed to the UN Palace and were given six minutes to film a “guerrilla” performance. After that, it started raining again, driven by a strong wind. Two days later, while shooting a video installation in front of the little-known 9/11 memorial on the New Jersey shore, I couldn’t control passers-by jogging in front of my camera, mothers with small children in the distance walking in slow motion in wide frame, a shift of extreme clouds and the sun, which at times penetrated like a laser and “fried” my picture. Many things had to come together in short intervals in order to create these works. The slogan “Your genocide is greater than mine” could only happen in front of the headquarters of all nations, and for the slogan “Next time we will be more than ready” my intuition chose a place in front of two tall steel columns by the Hudson River, which belonged to the collapsed twin towers of the World Trade Center.
The future is a privilege…
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Branko Milisković
Interview by Branko Rosić
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brankomiliskovic.wordpress.com 