Martina Miholić

Project 6 Concept:

Project exchange, experience, explore has assembled six authors into an experiment with final aim to explore connections between theme, medium and personality.

Every author refers towards the work of another simultaneously being an object of referal her/himself.

The result are six exhibited works supplemented with a questionaire, in the form of open conversation made between artists during the process.

Text published in official exhibition catalogue:

«Collector» was developed as the product of mutual collaboration, and at the same time as the reference to the work of Igor Juran. Within my work I tried to retain the general carachter of Igor`s idea, but throughout the process it obtained a dimension of personal experience.

Work is an interactive web project which doesn`t remark or concludes, but records the fragments of global reality at the specific moment . Project is open living creature which responds and collects records of intimate and real substances.At the visual level collected elements are minimised and at the audial summed up, a procedure which doesn`t ex¬clude their reality but finds it`s mutual core, and taking a contextual distance leaves a possibility of a return to an original state.

Questions:

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE CONCEPT OF YOUR WORK PRIOR TO THIS PROJECT?

TEA: Through contradiction of medium and subject (war) itself, I appeal to the concience of so¬ciety as well as the status of an individual within the global situation together with the difference within the range of emotions and conciousness evoked by the war. The viewer subconciously questiones thoughts and feelings through the simple depictions of war technologies (the tank).

MAJA: My works are originally based on the process of exploring and questioning my personal position towards general social conventions, focusing

mainly on the individual and inner cultural and social communication processes.

ZDRAVKO: In my previous works I was exploring pop culture and the phenomena of reality shows, it`s frivolous nature and disentigration of modern society communication.

KARLA: Focus of my works is general perception of women in the mass media throughout various already established conventions, and the “western” ideal to which we incline, primarly using the body as the medium and our relationship ( treatment ) towards it.

MARTINA: In my previous works I dealt with the problem of emotional integrity and identity of an individual, it`s ability or inability of self-expressing through global environment which results with hermetic, autistic and anxious behaviour.

I also explored a position of an individual exposed to numerous projections and informations, and their absorption throughout technological development and global digital media.

IGOR: My latest work was dealing with the insensitive perception of violence in the informing media.

WHAT HAS BEEN TO YOU THE MOST INTRIGUING POINT OF MY WORK?

TEA: Whilst going through Maja`s material I was intrigued by few segments. Ideas were flowing and more and more details were matching. Parallels were already present in the concept, but the final execution was somewhat different, compelling me to remain inside my original ideas. The most appealing segment of Maja`s works which I decided to pursue was interacting the viewer. As the starting point I took Maja`s “a_mobile”, an archive-like characteristic which could be eas¬ily applied onto the war thematic, victim tracing and concequences of not doing so, while sup¬pressed problem inside an individual becomes a problem of the community itself.

MAJA: As the starting point of this project, I used the Big Brother reality show as the subject of Zdravko`s long preoccupation, it`s elements of absurd, automatism of burgeois speech and de¬construction of communication inside it.

Questioning of social conventions and values is the most apparent parallel between our works, I feel close to most of these elements although not using them directly in mine.

ZDRAVKO: The most complex element of Karla` works is her approach to women as well as the treatment itself, turning them into a grotesque stereotype of today` society where the most exist¬ing ideals ( standards) apply onto the female which are in the same time most targeted and sug¬gestible consumer group, and so instantly accepting them subtly imposed by women themselves through various fashion shows and magazines.

That was the focal point of popular “Sex and the city ”show extracts which I additionally manipu¬lated through the computer programme, trying to stay as much close to Karla`s concept

KARLA: Although I was prepared that somewhere in the process will occure a problem of tracing parallels with a concept of Martina`s works, mostly because of lacking enough crucial informa¬tions about it, through further dialog with Martina, I found mutual interest mostly in a desire to depict intimacy through non verbal gestures, and as Martina describes, “somewhat autistic atmo¬sphere and certain voayeurism, or an uncomfortable sense of peeking through keyhole”.

As my primal desire was not to step away or discard any major segment of my own interests, I used all prior elements to build a video where a strong and suggestive gesture could depict an inbetween relationship of mother and daughter through the intimate relation to their bodies.

WHICH SEGMENT OF MY WORKS WOULD YOU CONSIDER BENEFICAL IN YOUR FUTURE WORK?

MAJA : The most intriguing segment I would like to explore further in my work are desintegration of communication and the idea of absurdity, elements of Ionescu drama...

ZDRAVKO :

TEA : : I find useful all contacts and ideas exchanged through the project itself.

KARLA : Generally, the experimental character of the project alone was an exciting process . For instance, appealed to Martina Miholić`s video I started considering that previously to me, unex¬plored media.

MARTINA : I was intrigued by a statement Igor made through the process that says : «Technol¬ogy is a collective organism of earth which we could travel upon..»

It represents a kind of evolution in the way of thinking as well as his reflecting of the global source in which «a fragment of reality» does not slip out, but involves itself into various relations depending of a momentary viewer position.

IGOR : I explored flexibility and most subject layers of Tea`s work.

WHAT IS YOUR GENERAL PERCEPTION OF THIS PROJECT AND HOW SUCCESFUL DO YOU THINK IT WAS?

MAJA : Personally, I consider the project successful in ways of re-descovering Zdravko`s work in the manner of interpolating my interest into the subject of other.

That helped me to question his work as well as mine.

ZDRAVKO : In what degree this project will bear an idea of success will be visible only after the completion of exhibition set.

TEA : Right at the very begginning of the Project I could sense a great deal of certainty in ev-ery one of us. We set the project within a concrete definitions, never leaving me in doubt that it could possibly fail. I consider it successful at the very moment of it`s creating.

KARLA : The primal reason I joined the Project , apart from the curiosity of the interaction itself with six artists of clear, defined concepts, was of my own experimental impulses to see how and in what degree is possible to undertake a concept of other artist`s work and involve or not in¬volve mine. In fact, is there a line where my concept becomes somewhat intrudor to other..?

How successful it was, the judgment is set upon the viewer, but the very fact that I reflected the thought and experienced a break through, deserves a definition of successs.

MARTINA : Entering the Project, I was interested in the problematics of an individual ego and it`s involvement within personal questions, as well as the way how could an individual bear with the problem of other and it`s will to take over a role of active listener. Somewhat my interest within a project was related more to the process than result, and possibilities of connecting and making space for listening of other individual.

In other sense, a relation, artist to artist and levels of readings and sensibility towards the work of other. Although formally a concept of the Project is closer to the circle of «artistic» audience, it has a tendency to become widely contextual.

IGOR : My opinion is that the Project is positive from the point of exploring to the point of send¬ing out a message.

Project 6