May 8, 7 pm
Bioskop Balkan
Braće Jugovića 16, Belgrade
Dresden has had a long history as a capital and royal residence. At the end of WWII, in what history considers controversial bombing by the Allies, the city was devastated and the whole historic city center destroyed. After the war, it was reconstructed and restored to its original state.
My work is inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s book about the Dresden bombing, Slaughterhouse Five, and it’s themes about broken, non-linear time and fragility of memory. I see reflection of these themes in Dresden’s history of being rebuilt as an exact replica of what it used to be, thus from today’s perspective blurring the line of old and new, past and present, memory and the present. Using a digital pinhole camera to photograph the city, I create a parallel; problematising the medium itself and its authenticity, and directly revealing the paradoxicality of the new as old, thus purposefully emphasising the complex urban and architectural history of the city, completely destroyed, then reconstructed.
Instead of just showing the present, these photographs open a fissure to the past, the remains of a destroyed space, as living witnesses of the bombing. The photographs can be seen as memories and/or facts. I try to create photographs which capture the past in the present, as clues of parallel times and simultaneous events.
All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist…
It is just an illusion we have here on earth that one moment follows another
one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
The exhibition will run until 3rd June, 2021
IMPORTANT:
Please note that due to the Covid-19 situation nobody can enter the Gallery without wearing a mask as required by the Rep of Serbia regulations.
Visiting hours:
Tue – Fri / 14 – 19h
Sat – Sun / 12 – 15h
