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Teufelsberg.Today

2016 (23.08.) Purge: A Performance by Biljana Bosnjakovic

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(Deutsch: reinigen, purgieren, Säuberung)

Performance by Biljana Bosnjakovic, curated by Richard Rabensaat and Dirk Thorwarth. Teufelsberg, Berlin. ca. 60 min.

Dokumentation: Siehe Unten.

In the artist’s words:[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

A post cold war sanctuary, as a fortress on the top of the hill, once abandoned became the wreckage, and then, today, it inevitably turns into the wild. The magnificent buildings, covered by plants, are losing the battle against the Nature, and a new life seemed to burgeon within them.What I perceived here, is how exactly all is going to be. Here is the future. This is an impactful monument of human self-destruction which could be healed only in respect of Nature. Performing here, for me it means empathizing with Teufelsberg. My long duration performance will start at the main entrance of Teufelsberg at 3PM, ending up around 4PM at a nearby kind of accidental concrete water pool hidden in the woods.

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PURGE is a performance by Biljana Bosnjakovic realized in Berlin’s site Teufelsberg on 23 August 2016 with the organization of Dirk Thorwarth and Richard Rabensaat who also curated the photo documentation together with Attilio Caffarena.

The concept that underlies it is the idea of Purgatory. Coherently therefore, the action develops and proceeds along a path in the space of a hill that involves progressive transformation / evolution from one state of being to another.

In the body / soul.

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Bosnjakovic works on her body and space / place in real time. The preparation is immediate and essential. Inspection and choice of found and available requirements occur directly and in a brief time, just a little prior to the execution of the work. The transition to the performative dimension is perhaps scored, not by gathering the audience, but with the starting of the shooting of what happens by three different photographic eyes.

The gaze of others eyes will be unforeseeable and occasional. Those who find themselves at certain points along the route of performative action, chance encounters, are occasionally watching.

Only photographic eyes have seen it all, but will render only some images / key moments, to compose a map of what appears to be a transformation, but it is, actually, a revealing.

In the beginning of the journey Bosnjakovic takes upon herself a wrapper, cocoon of plastic-metal industrial waste, which almost entirely encloses and hides the body. Just one hand can be uncovered, to hold up a glass given to her for the act of drinking.

Then she proceed uphill with no slight effort.

Sometimes she meets the monsters, made of heavy metal and fierce colors, which she faces to be able open the way, sometimes the lights and painted appearances which seem to point the way through the ground, cement and tangles of plants, at times good, at times bad, that skim over and injure. And indeed, as she proceeds, the casing that wraps her falls apart gradually and the body, part by part, unfolds and emerges, and is exposed to the action of the material of the hill, as in the case if you want to cross and climb it. But it is she herself who, step by step, destroys her wrapper which behind her and along the way is propagated and dragged as a sacred veil or shroud from which, little by little, she resurges and gets free. Until a liquid and vegetable enclave, contained and occulted by hard cement and and fierce iron, welcomes her shelled body that immerses in it. The liquid element is obscure.

Attilio Caffarena

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1539160214379{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column][vc_column_text]Dokumentation:[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”13px”][vc_column_text]Biljana Bosnjakovic:[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”13px”][/vc_column][/vc_row]