THE CITY GIRLS
The three of us, Masha, Veca and me lived together during our studies in Belgrade, in Karadjordjeva Street, for about four years. Then Masha moved out, and Ana Maria moved in. After about a year and a half we moved out of the flat. I found a new flat in New Belgrade with new flatmates - Ivana and Andrijana. Before that, starting from 1998, I had lived with Aleksandra, Ivana, Marija, Ana, Snežana, Nataša and one more girl whose name I cannot remember; in Starca Vujadina Street, then in Majke Jevrosime Street, then in Volgina Streeet, then in 14th of December Street, then in Karadjordjeva Street. Veca was the only one from our little “Karadjordjeva” gang to stay in Belgrade. Migration goes on for the rest of us – not urban enough to stay in Belgrade, not rural enough to go back home. My work deals with the effect the strong centralization in this country has on the women’s emancipation – how it prevents it, to be more precise.
The installation consists of seven flying basins – with video projections of amateur recording in three of them (showing Masha washing her staffed toys, or us at the bus station picking up a bag with food which our parents used to send us or Veca talking about old SF movies…). The following two contain audio recordings (Đorđe Marjanović - A Song to Belgrade and Aleksandra Jovanović with her short stories) and finally, the last two contain smell sensations – washing powder and one (not so clean) T-shirt.
The basin with “A City Girl” has the central position. “A City Girl” – a song by Miroslav Ilić (Serbian folk singer) and a well-known music video with Sonja Savić ( famous Serbian actress) – to me represents an ideal paradigm of our urban-rural identity, a constant conflict between a capital city and the rest of the country, a schizophrenic division caused by an unequal distribution of political and economic power. Sonja Savić is a paradigm of a misunderstood artist, a woman who was swallowed up by a big city of such a small country.
Sonja Savić was born right here in Čačak.
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The installation was performed as a site specific within the 25th Nadežda Petrović Memorial in Čačak.
(18th September – 2nd November 2010).
