THE FOUR SEASONS

Biljana Tomic

The lecture given by Achille Bonito Oliva within the "April meetings 2002" was really an interesting experience, in particular some of his observations, gentle and warm, unusual for his ciritc. Commenting on the symptoms of transitoriness in the modern world, quoting Prigozhin, he links the ability of nature and arts to give us the gift of sensations of experience and the creative renewal of artistic forms. With this link, the pure "gift" of nature, the author metaphorically relieves art from serving the purposes usually assigned to it.

Art is an effort to problematize the flows of time, to catch the transitoriness , imagine the future, perceive it as the product of human conduct. Rilke or Brancusi, Eliot or Pogacnik, Giorgione or Beoys, Knifer or Clemente, every man in a historical or modern sense, uses this gift of nature precisely to link nature and human life, man's spiritual and creative powers in terms of time and reality. This is why Bonito Oliva's story gains importance at this particular moment, unless we fail to understand it as a positive message and support to those who seek to investigate and establish relations with their selves, their own identity and life, with new ideas and "utopias".

From the very beginning when I was invited to work on the Balkan Project, I thought about women artists, a large number of women, the great "SKC women". the young whose work in a personal, sensitive and deep way marked the changes of the 90's, especially the second half of the decade. From a series of good artist, I thought it is essential to select a number of those whose work accumulated personal and general characteristics of the previous period and the beginning of the first decade of the 2000, which may be considered as milestones, marking the specific historical, current and political Balkan milieu.

......

Tanja Ristovski Theuretzbacher in the second half of the 90's continues postgraduate studies with Michelangelo Pistoletto at the Vienna Kunstakademie. Engaged in photography, video performance, text and artistic communication, her work focus on the issue of identity and active approach to her living environment and actual political developments. By posing the question of identity/self, she analyses the position of the young on the East and the permeability of the East-West borders.

Of her work she says: " Idiosyncrasy - is a project that deals with the destabilization of subject. Since I believe that identity represents specific operational field of an individual in the society, it's destabilization affects the functional level of an individual's life. Henceforth with the dramatic events in my native country and my stepping out of that geo-political area (meaning confrontation with different dimensions and realities), my sense of identity was shaken. I started to realize how different ideological or racial, national or religious, media and marketing identities and truths institute a multiple layer that affects social life and relations in it. And how these impersonal ideals and powers influence the context of personal life and identity.

The Idiosyncrasy project explores the structures of such an experience, specifically past and present, obsessions and fantasy on the above-mentioned, and refers to the ideal of home -lost/found/not found. media images that constantly shape mind and emotions, the phenomenon of organized power which has its role in structuring the societies, and subjective space confronted when we experience the turbulence about the ideas and feelings of who we are and about the sites we come from or go to.

My aim is to create a situation presenting a net of "realities" that simultaneously exist and overlap in one's every day life and refer to actual and possible contexts of an individual in the times of global economic and geo-political shifts and crisis. "
The project Idiosyncrasy is presented at the Venetian Biennale in 1999.

"Outlaw Nation", Print
"Bound/less Borders", Belgrade,  outdoor traveling exhibition (YU and Balkan), 2003