[-empyre-] citizens and conflict in flux

[Isak Berbic]

In 2008 I finished a video work: THE END OF HISTORY - 13 years after the cease of the Bosnian war. While the source material pertains to a very particular space and time, I felt that as the years were passing it was precisely that specific space and time that was becoming more and more illegible. I find that political issues are still highly polarized in the Balkans, with political analysts, journalists, artists putting forward very precise and problematic arguments that often become impenetrable on the international stage. There are multiple layers of discourse and mythologies on the conflict: from families and neighborhoods, local politics, local profiteers, innocent causalities, the local realities of war, local genocide; to regional politics and the break up of Yugoslavia, the dismantling of communism in Europe, The Cold War; to Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Noam Chomsky - the expanding fractals go on and on in every
 direction.

In the video THE END OF HISTORY a conversation develops in-between two personified subtitles. One appears in red and the other in white. Their role and voice are confused as they discuss literature, religion and philosophy. Subsequent to their dialogue the visual breaks into distorted images of war. As the closing title reads "A wire-tapped telephone conversation between fellow poet-politicians" is a philosophical chat interrupted by manipulated documentary footage of the city of Sarajevo under siege in the early nineties. The footage is loud and violent and it appears as a nostalgic collection of detritus suspended at the periphery of erasure. The disfigured picture, wound and rewound creates fetish out of the image and pushes the video into flatness.

The visual and audio material is sourced from news footage from various media stations that recorded the Bosnian war. A significant source for me was a film which features a collection of famous war videos titled "Do You Remember Sarajevo" by brothers Kresevljakovic. However the original footage was merely a starting point as it is severely manipulated through image processing, video encoding translation and other montage techniques. A significant duration of video and audio is entirely follied.

To view THE END OF HISTORY please follow the link:
http://gallery.me.com/isakberbic#100006/THE%20END%20OF%20HISTORY

The video quality is large so please allow for loading time.

Thank you 
Isak Berbic




From: Timothy Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>
To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Cc: 
Sent: Monday, February 7, 2011 7:04 PM
Subject: [-empyre-] citizens and conflict in flux

> Dear Larissa and Isak,

Given the limited news reporting coming out of the Middle East in the past couple of weeks, and that most of what we in the US can access via the television derives from CNN/ABC through the lens of a only a handful of reporters and camera views, I'm hoping the list will weigh in on your accounts of the power shifts of conflict and how they manifest themselves (or not!)  in the visual sound bites of the media.

One of the benefits of the overlapping platforms and networks of new media, as I understand them, has been the ability to make evident, through media overlaps, simultaneous texting and tweeting, not to mention video and cinematic grabs and recyclings, the "conflicting" images and accounts that disturb and undermine the homogenous news coverage flooding the televisual airwaves whenever, it seems, the Middle East is concerned (although why limit news homogeneity to the Middle East).

Of tremendous importance is how frequently the complex interfaces of new media art and installation make manifest the very deep sense of 'conflict' and 'citizenry in flux', of which Larissa speaks so forcefully and which Isak notes becomes washed out by the homogeneity of commodified news footage.

It would be fantastic to hear more about how particular pieces you've created or admired address these dynamics of conflict and flux and perhaps how you understand their temporal and political relation to current events in the Middle East.

Perhaps other members of -empyre- would be interested in weighing in here as well.

Looking forward to the dialogue.

Best,

Tim


-- Timothy Murray
Director, Society for the Humanities
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/
Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
A. D. White House
27 East Avenue
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853
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