About The Exhibition

Lala Raščić EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina 18.08. – 01.09.2007. ME, MYSELF AND I – IT IS THE PROCESS THAT COUNTS Conceptualizing the text for my first solo show in Sarajevo, I am struck by the thought that Everything is Connected is a metaphor for the way I live my life, as well as for my general attitudes, hopes and concerns. Everything is Connected is also the title of my last video installation. The starting point for this exhibition is to open up and make visible the body of work that developed over the past three years. It is a selection of works inspired by the aesthetics and medium of old-time radio. First came The Invisibles (Istanbul, 2005), followed by the Sorry, Wrong Number (Zagreb, 2006) and Everything is Connected (Graz, Sarajevo, Edinburgh, 2007). The Invisibles marked the first time I wrote a script and acted it out in my studio, as a sort of video performance. It was actually a rehearsal for an audio drama. Taking the subjectmatter at hand and making a breakthrough in my method of work clarified my motives. It was as if personal issues and lifestyle finally found a way to channel into the medium and comfortably become embedded in the very process and content of the work. I could easily become 10 characters in one. These I now call “the instances of myself.” Since The Invisibles, there has been a development both in understanding and in the mastery of the medium (and myself). Each work touches upon so many issues, ranging from gender to politics. They are all a reflection of my more engaged concerns, they all relate very strongly to the world around me; they are all informed by so many details taken from everyday life and loaded and charged with references that range from popular culture to film and literature. The process is what connects them all. This is the format I have devised for myself. This escape - the fantasy, the drama, the dis- and re– integration of (my own) identity is what I feel is central to these works. The same sentiment seeps into the subject-matter of my works. These are my preoccupations: the sense of loss, invisibility, disappearance, vagueness, deracination. The voice mutates, the audio is out of sync; I do not seek harmony in my work. I want something to go missing in order to be able to play with the void, “looking for the sensations of vertigo and disorder as sources of pleasure”1. When I said that Everything is Connected is a metaphor for my life, what I meant was that the underlying principles of all artworks exhibited here relate to the fact that it took me most of my mature life, spent in a (metaphorically speaking) non-place, to discover and learn to appreciate and play on the poetics of non-place2. We do not need to belong, we can live in fiction, and we may get lost never to find ourselves again. These are the connections I make with my art; this is why I make art in the first place. Paul Virilio, The Aesthetics of Disappearance, u prijevodu Philipa Beitchmana (New York: Semiotext(e), 1991.), p. 12. 2 Marc Augé, Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, u prijevodu Vlatke Valentić (Karlovac: Naklada DAGGK, 2001.)

THE INVISIBLES As in the H.G. Wells novel “The Invisible Man”, the idea of physical invisibility is used in this project as a metaphor for an outsider, for a socially outcast individual. The drawings relate to various aspects of invisibility: social and civil invisibility, the notion of escape, criminal activities, freedom, identity and the 'what-if' reality of a physically invisible person. Alongside the prints, the central part of the project is a video showing a performance of an homonymous audio drama: “The Invisibles”. A story of an invisible family planning to go on vacation is delivered through a conventional narrative structure. This light satire touches upon the absurdities of contemporary society: the bureaucratic mechanisms, collective paranoia and the surveillance systems. This work is neither an audio drama nor a video in the full sense of the terms; it lingers as the “other”, in between the two genres. “SORRY, WRONG NUMBER” is an interpretation of a famous audio drama from the 1940's. The audio-track and the image are synchronized only at brief moments. What seems as technical mistake evokes the impression of old-time TV. The moments when image and sound are in sync seem uncanny as it becomes evident that distorted voices are in fact belonging to the performer. The impossibility of synchronization of audio with the video comments the impossibility of communication, it speaks of isolation. The same theme is present in the very narrative of the radio play. The main storyline is about a disabled woman who spends her days in her room. Her only link to the outside world is her telephone. One night she dials a wrong number and overhears someone’s plan for murder. While desperately trying to warn the police, she realizes that she has overheard the plan for her own murder. EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED is a five-channel video/audio installation. On five monitors, five characters are having a conversation. They are the bosses of criminal gangs. The story is set in a situation where they – nameless criminals - meet in a nameless space to discuss the fate of an unnamed kidnapped child. The video is black & white, overall atmosphere, in terms of imagery, evokes that of the 1930’s. Apart form the costumes and the camera work, what links us to that period is the media-motif of the audio drama; the characters are actually actors in an audio play. In the isolated ambiance of the recording studio that produces no echo whatsoever, a plot without a denouement takes place. NOVEMBER PAYNTER

“Lala's inquisitive research into audio drama and the installations she has developed from this interest are enthralling and refreshing. Although her works contain references to the style of certain periods and found material, Lala plays with the genre's traditional roles and themes to invent some new narrative threads and a contemporary angle from which to present the medium. Lala's personal participation in the stories she forms and adopts is paramount. The way she imparts such energy into her characters' reincarnations and often gives her audience physical access to the installations through various props, encourages those who encounter her work first-hand to feel implicated in the narrative and as part of shared experience.” November Paynter is an independent curator and has worked as a curator at Platform Garanti, Istanbul and as Consultant Curator at Tate Modern.