Video in Progress 5: Reflections of the Past
05 June 2014 - 07 June 2014
CUK Kino Šiška and Atrij ZRC SAZU
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Participating artists in main festival selection: Ana Bilankov (HR/DE), Lana Čmajčanin & Adela Jušić (BA), Aleksandra Domanović (RS/DE), Marina Gržinić & Aina Šmid (SI), Vladislav Knežević (HR), Iva Kontić (RS)
Video in Progress is an international video festival, directed by artists and curators Vesna Bukovec and Metka Zupanič and organised by Zavod Kolektiva in collaboration with Photon – Centre for Contemporary Photography, Ljubljana. In 2014, the festival joined with Photonic Moments – Month of Photography festival. Past editions of Video in Progress explored various topics such as pain, performativity and the city.
In 2014 the Video in Progress festival has joined with the Photonic Moments – Month of Photography festival. Video in Progress 5: Reflections of the Past brings forth a variety of contemporary international video art addressing the issues of past times and memories. In this edition we took up the research of time and transitoriness. As selectors we were interested in how the common historical narratives intertwines with personal memories and how they both affect our identity and our sense of being in the world. At a time of multimedia culture, saturated with numerous events and information quickly sliding into oblivion, memories become fragile and evasive. Because of that there is a need to constantly interpret or reinterpret past events in order to make sense out of our present society and our actions as individuals. In the previous edition of the festival we explored the topic of pain from a personal perspective and we thought it was important to expand our research on the presence of pain in everyday life to include a wider socio-political context marked by turbulent historical events of the past century leading up to the present moment. The selected videos each address pain from a particular historical moment in a specific way. The main festival selection Appropriating History deals with traumatic events from the territory of ex-Yugoslavia. The selected works take a different approach to the interpretation of past wars and their impact upon our identities. Through the legacy of a country that no longer exists they reveal how the ideological and economical shift from communism to capitalism shaped the perception of reality of life today.