Artist in Residence
FILMS BY MILJANA NIKOVIĆ
Miljana Niković (Belgrade / Berlin) mainly expresses herself in audiovisual forms of writing in various languages. After basic studies in architecture in France, master in Germany on the subject of the city and film, as well as several years of professional experience, she is currently working on a PhD in art research on perceptions of urban space through moving images. Her experimental essays in in the form of video-poetry were shown at international festivals and exhibitions.
Program:
l’amour bleu (4m13s) / 2012
two simple letters (2m34s) / 2020
la rive virale (4m00s) / 2020
seven seven (14m14s) / 2020
nach pasargada (1m34s) / 2021
a line is not a line (5m30s) / 2021
comment (1m20s) / 2022
cut 1 / (wip, part; 8m30s) / 2021-22
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L’AMOUR BLEU (BLUE LOVE)
Music video / 2012 / 00:04:13
Video-project based on found-footage, inspired by mysterious thoughts that each woman keeps somewhere deep inside her mind. The main idea of this visual journey was to explore the feminine psychological labyrinth of souvenirs, concerns, emotions, mental escapes, pleasures, ideas: a diving introspection that hides like a fish in the sea.
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TWO SIMPLE LETTERS
Video-poem / EN / 2020 / 00:02:34
Internet multiplies screens that become our new fragmented windows to the outside world. Connected with anyone, anywhere, anytime. However, isolated: alone, lonely in a cell, in a self. This vocal and visual poem is a deconstruction of short sentences that one uses to arrange a meeting with a stranger. Hesitant and polite, two simple letters imply permanent insecurity, modesty, timidity — avoiding to offend or frighten the interlocutor(s). To put a lighter tone on this self-ironic situation, there is a conscious use of playful pop-elements, both with sound and color palette.
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LA RIVE VIRALE (THE VIRAL SHORE)
Video-poem / FR / 2020 / 00:04:00
Offering a wide choice of words evoking natural phenomena or activities that we tend to exercise in physical reality, the maritime semantics is essentially integrated into the language of the computer network. In a total immersion of varied data that consumes our concentration and attention rate, it becomes increasingly difficult to sort and prioritize the accumulated online content. Some is visible, other blends into a bottomless ocean. Faced with an unlimited number of options, the “Fear Of Missing Content” is a real danger towards ephemeral opportunities. At the same time, it becomes difficult to protect and secure your personal data.
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SEVEN SEVEN
Experimental short / EN / 2020 / 00:14:14
Philosophical metaphor for Twenty Twenty — a year of global panic that began with a pandemic, generating a multitude of issues deeply rooted in a system that has long gone wrong, making them more visible: social inequalities, political injustices, economic myths, excessive fears, free violence, ecological disasters. But rather than showing recognizable images of everything that started collapsing, it is left to the viewers to establish their own connections with these patterns. Using mostly excerpts from Airport ’77, a film shot to promote the US Navy, the video collage offers a trivialization of the most recent large-scale events.
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NACH PASARGADA / KA PASARGADU
Video-poem / EN / 2021 / 00:01:34
Associations melting between archived images and objects of personal belongings or collective memories. Other people’s lives are closer than ever, but Pasárgada may be even closer.
The poem, written by Odile Kennel as an echo to Manuel Bandeira’s Vou-me embora pra Pasárgada (1930) and chosen as the Festival Poem for the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2021, inviting filmmakers to give it an audiovisual form.
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A LINE IS NOT A LINE
Video-poem / EN / 2021 / 00:05:30
Looking at the current sociopolitical context on the global scale, we might wonder where exactly do we stand with extreme ideologies, values, rights, opinions, and other similar big words.
Starting from a cheesy love letter addressed to an individual, this visual essay plays with the word “line” mainly by using fragments of the first Non-Aligned Movement conference in Belgrade in 1961. Melting these images with complementary aesthetics found in short clips from that period, many cognitive disturbances occur, despite joyful tones. Is it even possible, not to be aligned?
A LINE IS NOT A LINE is not a line, but a false-romantic video-poem that is probably — just like any other line — not aligned with your expectations.
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COMMENT (HOW)
Video-poem / FR / 2022 / 00:01:20
What is real and what is not?
Inspired by various topics related to Nature & Technology, this 1-min video-poem brings another approach to the simulation theory:
What if we are all parts of a cosmic video-game? Is there any way to prove the contrary? Is there even a rational method to differentiate real from fake, and who can claim if fake is, indeed, fake?
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CUT 1: BEFORE THE TRUTH / BEFORE THE WAR
Experimental research / ongoing / various lengths
In the context of the doctoral-archival thesis, this first piece is imagined as the starting point of a multi-channel video work. It forms a dialogue between two particularly contrasting films: Before the War (d. Vuk Babić, 1966) and Before the Truth (d. Kokan Rakonjac, 1968). While the first film is a comedy set in the interbellic period, the other is a Black Wave drama picturing contemporary issues. Nonetheless, protagonists narrated by Rakonjac are haunted by their respective traumas from World War II. By taking a closer look at the represented places (space) and dynamics (society), we notice multiple visual correspondences as well as thematic or even verbal superpositions.