HOLY PEOPLE
HOLY PEOPLE Work collected under the name Holy people came into existence in 2014, embodying a series of photographies and research, meetings, talks, activism and analytical texts that preceded, all with one goal in mind: to achieve socially relevant, engaged and substantial art concepts. In so far, we can talk about photography that rises from traditional form and enters multi-medial artistic and research ways of functioning – socially, spatially and time conditioned and bounded. Exhibition consists of three parts: portraits of 12 asylum seekers, photo-video montage of author’s intervention with posters to public space, photographies of those posters in the process of decaying. Sveti ljudi or homines sacri in Roman law represent pagans and outcasts, the ones that lost all civil rights – from where the author got the idea to use the term that underlines demarcation and otherness. In the context of modern society and the usage of control and bio politics, holy people are merely differently named, but they wear same tags and are monitored by similar mechanism. Asylum seekers, the ones of Konjikusic’s interest, are only another set of monitored and controlled in the circle of intransparent and omnipresent Panopticon: a sophisticated discipline measure with invisible but clear centralized power hierarchy. After Croatia’s accession to the EU, the Ministry of inner affairs delivered to photographers a „scheme for verifications of biometrical photography“ – symptomatically suggestive control pattern into which Konjikusic molds the faces of immigrants, deliberately „branding“ them with anthropometrical lines which in their ideal function delete even a hint of face distinction and expressiveness; author does not fully commit to it in his work, he lets the person in front of the objective a minimal expression of individuality which aims to underline the subject and bypass the object. Intervention that may seem as another molding and silencing but now with scheme, Konjikusic achieves the opposite: photographed people are
now visible and can speak, first on symbolic level and then in concrete intervention in public space. In fact, photographies of 12 asylum seekers Konjikusic prints in 120x100cm posters (later on, as a part of 13th UrbanFestival, they were printed in jumbo size billboards) and puts on a dozen of different public locations in Zagreb and Belgrade, which stimulates visibility and public dialogue about basic democratic issues and problems of marginalization and invisibility. The context that poster enters (like the one with the remains of prior poster which says: “For Croatia that thinks”), is highly suggestive and offers means to recognize the layers of struggle for space, visibility and rights to have and promote advertising materials, activist messages etc. In this semantic chaos, Konjikusic’s portrait pieces are visible only by their synchronicity with now – the fact that they are the last in the line, and that their communicational strategy is clean and doesn’t offer more references and textual explanations, escaping the usual aggressive „pornography“ of advertising materials. After several days and weeks, the author recognizes the new dimension of the work and starts to record changing and decaying of the matter; not only by weather conditions and ones of urban micro-locations but also by doings of anonymous human hand which (un)consciously inserts new meaning – by devastation, drawings, symbols or signing, by commentary etc. Research process ended with that decay and also encircled the complex of thorough work of examination, questioning, creating, developing, intervening and recording; it also scratched the surface of highly complicated issue to which this kind of artistic work is merely an act of sensibilisation to very few of Others (rare ones), which in this social and political communicational noise still have enough will to listen and detect what matters. Marija Borovickic art historian Institute of Art History, Zagreb
ARTIST STATE M E NT The starting point of my work is the official “Biometric Photo Requirements” sent to photographers by the Ministry of Interior after Croatia had joined the EU. Following the requirements I take photos of asylum seekers, intentionally making an error - I allow for minimal facial expressions which show their personality thus rejecting to take their individuality away from them and reduce them to archival data. By shifting the power relation I question the role of the medium of photography as a political instrument used for control and surveillance.
By exhibiting the photos of asylum seekers in the form of posters in public spaces which I find the most obvious places of social antagonisms, ie power relations, I want to make the immigrants visible at least on symbolic level. I pose the question of their status, position and EU immigration policies in general. I follow and document the decay of photos exhibited in public spaces where the portraits are exposed to various interventions mainly showing the relation of us towards “Others”.
PUBLIC INTERVENTIONS
PUBLIC I N T E R V E N T I O N S @ URBANFESTIVAL 13
CONFRONTING PHOTOGRAPHY
the sphere of representation, from which photography can never escape, he is moving step forward in using art as activism, he is moving to collective work, practices that offer emancipation and not representation of subjects, to work with them not for them. In practice, that means numerous meetings with asylum seekers and joint thinking of how can art and ways of communicating helpin order to put the criticism of migrant politics in public sphere, acceptance of losing control and collaborative work with other activist, artists and curators in hybrid representation of work which is by now immersed in the field of activist practice. It should be noted that even in that case the work stays between representation and emancipation, considering the position of migrants–they are the ones that cannot speak because every public action on their side can only cause more complication in solving their status, even if it is a mere photography taken at recognizable time and space.
During the celebration of Croatia joining European Union, the facade of Ban center at the south side of the new Square of Europe, where we can also find an exclusive residency of House of Europe – headquarters of European commission in Croatia, was decorated with portraits of happy and smiling EU citizens as a part of highly produced promo – campaign, and those citizens, judging by emphasized multicultural touch, were there to represent the celebration of ‘european values’, tolerance and integration of foreigners on the Old Continent. The exposure of numerous flaws of the represented narrative/myth is the motif of Davor Konjikusic’s art work, and the art discourse used to talk about restrictive migrant politics of ‘European fortress’, having in mind the disintegration of social care in our neoliberal reality to which mobility and migration are just economic factors and the work logic of art field, can seem as somewhat limited task. Potential of photography to be (miss) used as an instrument of control returns to us like boomerKonjikusic is interested in historical role of photog- ang, leading us toward two important facts: first, raphy in criminalization of poor and the postulate political questions must be thematized through of Bertillions anthropometrical system of control art (as self (criticism) of art); second, art is not and surveillance (dating back in 19th century) enough. which is used even today as fundamental principal in protecting the Schengen borders. Physical Ivana Hanaček, Ana Kutleša – [blok] features of human faces perceived through colonial anthropological eye–such as typology and width of nose, forehead height, the gap between the eyes,the shape of head and type of ears – are key indicators in creating police portraits of ‘criminals’ in 19th century–and in modern (and less observed) technologies they are incorporated in biometrical passport, the key that opens the door to ‘Europe, the Promised land’. The ones that don’t own the passport, and which are not buried at nameless graves of Lampedusa but scattered across different countries in Europe, first among equals, are still waiting for their citizenship. Their portraits exhibited at Gallery SC are bordered with yellow and red (biometrical) lines which artist transform to aureole, but also apply so perfectly that they fit to different faces, and by doing that the artist symbolically annuls their meaning as instruments of control and exclusion. This gesture is some sort of Konjikusic’s confrontation with his primal medium – photography. However, he does not do that only to confront the medium, he does it from the necessity of stepping out from
ZAGREB CITY REFUSED TO ISSUE THE PERMISSION FOR PHOTO INSTALLATION Statement during performance Square of Europe: Blindspot in Zagreb /20.06.2014./: “The newly created square of Zagreb, the socalled Square of Europe, was supposed to become, on the 20 June, World Refugee Day, the site of Konjikusic’s photo-installation, consisting of series of portraits of migrants framed with red and yellow lines taken from the official template for biometric passports, which those photographed will probably never own. But the idea to face the headquarters of European institutions in Croatia with the portraits of migrants was prevented by the Zagreb City administration which refused to issue the permission, stating that the space is reserved for city events, or, as we were told, that it is still a construction site... ...Therefore Konjikusic’s work opens up questions of common interest, and we consider, as an organization which deals with public space for 14 years, that the questions of migrants’ politics should be dealt with even at this site, precisely at this site. Although we have displaced the portraits of migrants from the Square and dispersed them on 7 locations throughout the city, we consider that the migrants’ issues belong here. Asylum seekers and those who manage to attain it are confronted with a series of problems. Talking with asylum seekers here in Zagreb we found out that their biggest problem is the long duration of the process of attaining asylum: the longest duration is two years and two months, i.e. 26 months, i.e. 691 day. But that’s not the only case – average time of waiting is 10 months – 305 days.” www.blok.hr www.urbanfestival.blok.hr
P R O C E S S... PUBLIC INTERVENTIONS
GALLERY EXHIBITION
TECHNICAL S PE C I F I CATI O N S
Exhibition consists of three parts: 1) portraits of 12 asylum seekers, photography on plexiglas 120 x 100 cm, print both sides visible; every photo is illuminated by PCI spot reflector or similar with temperature light of 3600 K; photos are hanging from the cable in the gallery space; 2) video of author’s intervention with posters to public space, alternatively photo documentation, 20 photos 40 x 60 cm in black frames; 3) photographies of those posters in the process of decaying; 12 photos 40 x 60 cm in black frames;
SHORT BIOGRAPHY Davor Konjikusic was born in Zenica (Bosnia and Herzegovina) in 1979. He holds mag. art. degree in photography at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb, where he has also completed his BA studies in cinematography. His work uses photography as a primary medium in articulating his artistic concept, in which he explores the relationships between public and private, intimate and socio-political. In his artistic practice, Konjikusic has been combining photography with text, archive, found objects, and video. He has been interested in the role of the photographic medium in establishing the relations of power and control. solo exhibitions Holy People, SC gallery, Zagreb, Croatia, 2014 Square of Europe: Blind Spot, posters and public action, UrbanFestival, Zagreb, 2014 Genogram, Galerija Praktika, Split, Croatia, 2013 Genogram, Museum of Arts And Crafts, Zagreb, Croatia, 2013 Recording Memories, Museum of modern and contemporary art, Rijeka, Croatia, 2013 Private and Public, Cultural Center Drugstore, Belgrade, Serbia, 2012 Gender Matters, Erste Stiftung, Vienna, Austria, 2010 Corridor X, KC Grad, Belgrade, Serbia, 2009 group exhibitions (selection) Search and Enquiry, KAZAMAT, HDLU Osijek, Croatia, 2014 Family Photography, ARTGET gallery, Belgrade, Serbia, 2013 A Personal Gaze In Mutual Space, SI Fest, Monte della PietĂ , Savignano sul Rubicone, Italy, 2012 Exam, SC gallery, Zagreb, Croatia, 2012 The Photography Of Industry, Zagreb City Museum, Croatia, 2012 New Names, ULUPUH, Zagreb, Croatia 2013, 2012, 2011, 2012 False Idols, Dom Omladine, Belgrade, Serbia 2011 Photodays Finalists, Museum of Modern And Contemporary Art, Rijeka, Croatia 2011 Rovinj Photodays, Multimedia Center, Rovinj, Croatia, 2011 Zagreb Neighbourhoods, Zagreb City Museum, Croatia, 2011 Photodays Finalists, Museum of Arts And Crafts, Zagreb, Croatia, 2011 Rovinj Photodays, Multimedia Center, Rovinj, Croatia, 2010 awards & recognitions Urbanfestival 13, Croatia, 2014. Open call for artist intervention at Square of Europe in Zagreb. Rovinj Photodays, Croatia, 2013. Winner in category for artistic concept. Rovinj Photodays, Croatia, 2011. Finalist in the category of portrait. Young Creative Chevrolet, Paris, France 2010. Third video award. Rovinj Photodays, Croatia, 2010. Finalist in the category of professional concept. residencies, workshops, projcets & other education UrbanPhotography workshop with David Kendall (Goldsmith, UK), Rovinj, Croatia, 2014 Radnik, radnica, umjetnik, umjetnica, 2014 Curatorial Platform, Zagreb, Croatia 2013 - 2014 Industrial Heritage workshop & exhibition, Zagreb City Museum, Croatia 2012
www.davorko.net 2014.