by Dragan Živančević
selection committee member

In the universal, soilent-green art mush of the 21st century, video art has positioned itself as an irrefutable equal with other forms of contemporary art practice. Regardless of personal receptory abilities, sensitivity and affinity, even consumers of traditional fine art disciplines find, in the wide range of different video forms on offer, a sensation for their eyes only. Of course, television has greatly contributed to this fact, without which, quite certainly, video art and the development of this discipline would not be possible. Still, when we find ourselves face to face with works that represent video art, some issues inevitably arise. First, there is the objective problem of the physical perception of the work, and not just one work, but all which are presented, at, let’s say, a video exhibition… the audience makes its own selection within the offered one and is often governed by simple instinct or a reaction based on pure magnetic attraction. I eat what I like, I drink what I like, so why should consuming art be any different? An individual’s personal affinity is a column in a test not one artist will get right, if they should be dealing with it at all.
I dozed off many times, was bored during the screening, and several times I left the hall before the end of the film, but I fell asleep during a film in the cinema only one time. Later, when I was thinking about it, projecting to several levels my understanding of the event, I couldn’t understand one thing: how is it that I didn’t dream? The film I bought the ticket for was called Gojira: Fainaru uôzu (2004) or "The Godzilla" – Japan, and that’s all that I remember about it. The unique experience that you have when the usher points his flashlight in you face before the end of the film, give me the right to think that regardless of the wrong motives of me being in the cinema, people have to be motivated to approach the act of watching a film (video), even, or especially, if it’s Godzilla. This readiness to consume a work is of key importance for any further thought that we form on it. The readiness to use energy on perception, both physical and mental, will be adequate to a richness of sensory stimulations this work will provoke in us. In this process, besides the basic wish and openness of the viewer, the individual’s level of inner development of sense for the visual, will play a key role.

The visual has to be nurtured in the direction of the development of perception (which is, to a great extent, an evolutionary process), which is not the case with a great number of today’s film and video achievements. The visual in a film or video is becoming more and more only a marker of the action: the actors saying the text are codified in a specific way only for the purpose of not confusing them in further narration. Following this very narrativeness of the recorded theatre or screen literature, we lose that unique inner movement that the narrativeness of the clear picture bears. It is this very narativeness that has been archetypically impressed into our code and is equal to the hyper-narativeness of a dream. People don’t remember their dreams, just as they don’t remember bad films. Or they remember them for the wrong reasons, about which the famous French director Breson (Robert Bresson, 1901-1999) spoke about. When retelling a film, ordinary viewers mainly refer to the chronology of events in the film, to places, people and events. How is it possible then, and how wrong it is to dissect in this way the Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov) or how is it possible, yet senseless, to retell the scene of the dream from Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries? A superficial film or video analysis boils down to the sole retelling of facts/signs, which, devoid of all introspection, become a mere film inventory. Therefore, it’s a presumption that there is an unbreakable bond between the level of consciousness of the authors of the film work and their audience. By audience I don’t only mean those having the wish and readiness to use energy for the perception of the work, but primarily the group of viewers who are able to accept the visual in the film or video as their own ultimate heritage. As this process is constant and has lasted as long as there are human beings, it’s not easy to give a methodological answer, a manual or handbook for visual self-cognition. That is not the intention of this text, regardless of the title.

Jung (Carl Gustav Jung, 1875-1961) would advise that ’the visually talented should focus their expectations on the establishment of the inner image’’. As a rule, such an image is created in the more sensitive, more talented individuals, an image from pure imagination, that it should be monitored closely, and fixated, but with the previous exclusion of critical attention! This sensitivity is certainly connected with the evolution of the visual (Rudolf Arnheim, 1904 -2007), which brings, through hypertrophied perception, the broadening of perception in the field of external influences. What is more important, the development of this sensitivity leads to the noticing of a combinatory system, the mechanisms leading our glance towards the conclusion, towards the precise introspective dialogue which we each have with the work of art. This dialogue is the same one we have with images that haunt us after a striking dream. Everything is unclear, yet very present and alive. We are often, similarly to the perception of a film/video work, confused by the plot but fascinated or upset by the images. What Adler (Alfred Adler, 1870-1937) says about dreams, can be applied here to film (video): ’’A dream is like smoke indicating that a fire is burning somewhere. An experienced man might even deduce what type of wood is on fire based on the smoke.” Nothing changes by perceiving the film or oniric plot without linking them. To interpret this cruising message that came from the depths of our subconscious would mean getting closer to the discovery of the very secret of life. Artists trying to achieve this have every right to make a mistake, because in their efforts they are trying to touch the essence of their own existence.

A dream, just like a film (video), will show how people are occupied with a real-life problem and the way they approach it. For all those for whom the humanistic idea is the true motivator, these attempts will not be seen as crazy or stupid, even less as dangerous, unwanted subversiveness. (Antonello Faretta, Just Say NO to Family Values).
Viewers’ education, their personal level of the perception of the visual, will find its foundation both in the adequate video-film, as in the everyday-dream life. Not as a loss of boundaries between dreams and reality, fiction and faction, but as a sensory ability to detect common visual denominators. It’s not a coincidence that the selection of this year’s Videomedeja begins and ends with works of similar sensitivity. The sky in the videos Drawing wishes (Aki Nakazawa) and When I wish upon a star (Mai Yamashita, Naoto Kobayashi) is the same sky that covers our most refined thoughts and wishes. The mentioned works require our sensory experience, they expect our metaphysical dialogue with nature. If this moment in the viewer doesn’t occur, everything else will also be lost.
Even sleep during screening.