audio-visual space installation
duration: 60’
Sala Terrena - Heiligkreuzerhof, Vienna, 2007
Essl Museum - Contemporary Art, Klosterneuburg, 2008
video, voice-over, 4 loudspeakers,
4 loudspeaker-tripods, beamer, wood, fabric, cables
The word »morgen/morning« of the title is connected to the balkan saying »malo morgen« (a bit of tomorrow), that is used to detract from today to a future that isn’t further defined, a sometime. One could also say, it means as much as: »All but never.«
»Malo morgen« is a germanism, consisting of the word »malo« (engl.: small, a bit) and the german loan word »MORGEN«. In the german language »MORGEN« describes two different temporal conditions at the same time. Translated into english it means »morning« as well as »tomorrow«.
We have taken the documentary-video last summer (2006) in a small village called Strgačina in eastern Bosnia, where we have done research, where we lived, discussed and worked with eleven other artists.
The fog is an element that is typical for this region in eastern Bosnia. It has been brought up again and again for example in literature and films.
The work »kleiner morgen / small morning« plays with this fog, with the covering, the disappearance, the forgetting on one side, but also with the uncovering, the clearing, the appearance, the remembrance.
The landscape, the illusive, romantic image is highly political to us:
Just here the first ethnic cleansing and displacement took place in Second World War, the idyllic lake is a reservoir that was build in the 1980ies through Tito. The railway line Sarajevo-Belgrad meandering along the bottom of the valley was stopped, the houses flooded and rebuilt on the slopes of the waterside. Job migration to the west started.
In the course of the Balkan War in the 1990ies the inhabitants of this swathe of land again became victims of ethnic cleansing and displacement. Their houses were burnt down, the region was partly mined, lots of people turned refugees.
The few repatriates who fight for the reconstruction of their houses look down to the reservoir today – that was built for the production of power – without having electricity yet.
The voices coming out of the loudspeakers burst the romantic image. Quotations referring to the war, the facing, the sense of sight and questions dealing with reality from daily newspapers, theory books and periodicals are spoken by the travel passengers.
These interlocking messages reflect the diversity of associations and opinions. They grow to a mist of voices.
Thanks for the support of the speakers:
Džemil Bahtović, Laura Bott, Helmut Heiss, Elvedin Klačar,
Claudia Miotti, Maruša Sagadin, Cornelia Silli,
Tatia Skhirtladze, Anna Witt, Hannes Zebedin
detailed documentation of the project:
download book Kleiner Morgen (in german) as pdf (0,98 MB)
Thanks to:
EMANUEL und SOFIE FOHN-STIPENDIENSTIFTUNG
