16 sounds of Belgrade, Boccanera Gallery, Belgrade Museum of Contemporary Art, The History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, BASOC - The Banja Luka Social Centre and Volkskundemuseum Wien - The Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art from Vienna; part of "Testimony – Truth or Politics: The Concept of Testimony in the Commemoration of the Yugoslav Wars", a travelling exhibition (November 2017 - September 2018)
16 sounds of Belgrade / 2017
“16 sounds of Belgrade” is an installation that intends to create an imaginary archive of a future year, anticipating the results of struggles and tensions that we are confronted with right now within the European space, while also understanding and reflecting the past Yugoslavian war and its consequences. It focuses on the routes followed by 16 ex-Yugoslavians after the start of a second Yugoslavian War, in the fictional year 2028.
The work is developed alongside research related to a fictional age. It is the spring of the year 2028. Along with a fall of the European market, illegal immigration affected more and more the territories of Western countries. Germany recently launched project “Dome”, in which it developed protection-domes over all of the cities and towns of the country. Each city has developed a bar-code system, in which in every citizen is implanted a microchip and has a specially-designated bar-code which assures his/her safety and full-knowledge about his/her position within the country. You can approach cities only with microchip and bar-code approval. Once you have entered a new space, your particular code determines your position.
After the fall of the European Union (2024), Serbia saw a period of financial difficulty. Soon after, it sold its gold reserves to Finland and all its oil to Austria. From an economic point of view, the country fell into a coma. The situation developed into local protests, which later led to a military conflict. Nonetheless, a group of 16 ex-Yugoslavians are about to embark on a journey that might change their lives, reaching Munich where they found jobs on the black market. This is where our story begins.
The constructed fiction of the year 2028 puts the stories of 16 people during and in the aftermath of another Yugoslavian conflict under the magnifying glass: imaginary testimonies of young people who never saw war and conflict, blending the past and the present in order to reflect a potential dystopia.
The work is an archival installation, where audio elements are blended with materiality.
special thanks: CZKD (Center for Cultural Decontamination Belgrade), Belgrade Museum of Contemporary Art, Vahida Ramujkic, Noa Treister and Zoran Eric