Martina Miholić

Dogmas

Dogma 95 stands for symbolic motion film and creative movement initiated in 1995.by Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, supported alongside by a couple of other film directors.

Effective till 2005. that collective manifest was launched as a reaction to a prevailing U.S.A motion picture “establishment” infrequently characterized by a multitude of artificial special effects and saturated imagery.

Dogma has proposed a liberation of redundant postproduction processing advocating the return to a sheer simplicity of film rendering. It was “conducted” through a set of ten instructions or oaths of simplicity as redundancy of props, artificial light/optical effects, real time soundtrack background, and hand shot motion camera.

Nevertheless (or because..) of occasional distance of manifest set rules either by it’s creators or followers, the film critique considers Dogma a true creative impulse and refreshment in contemporary motion picture artistry.

When a group of authors under the name of Project 6 approached me with an idea to artistically react to a subject of dogma , I have had a dogmatic moment of silence, agonizing myself with thinking that dogma necessarily had to be associated to some piles of hidden ecclesial manuscripts eventually embracing the thought that these ideas are no longer implemented…they belong to a part of the history.Solemn conductors of dogma are we, ourselves.. Until a discussion with authors proved diametrically opposite.

Isn’t dogma still present among us within a constant repression of powerful versus the weak?

Don’t we live within a feeble world where the global economy, mass media and politics represent general implements of power inducing our notion of impotence and fear?

Dogma exists, prevails in numerous pretences we like to tag in different labels; terrorism, racism…or global networks, exclusive clubs, blanked secret societies , fashion weeks, Olympics… Therefore, in a sequence of our group of authors, I suggest that a formal term of dogma proposes to be read through contemporary deflection, within (in spite of..) it’s relativity, fragility, and semantic exhaust, maintaining the analytical spirit and critical distance towards today’s social current.

Martina Miholic utilizes photography to point to an idea that image strategically hides and possesses it’s powers. Through the deconstruction of image through the various photo depicted situations of herself, Martina invites viewer to participate and define the images and the depicted person itself. Infrequently involving herself in her work, she subdues to a tactics of denuding, scaling herself through the temperature of a specific image strength and her seemingly only perspective.

Through the viewer involvement she invokes plurality of an image, in which not only that gazes “shoots”, but the one who is looked upon, with the subject measuring the pulse of that image manipulation.

Possible continuation after the commentaries might be Martina’s new “shot”..the one that embodies the answers of all participants that have been submerged into that unusual game.

Ivana Mestrov