Which Man Runs, Which Man Sits Still At Home? - Jeanne C. Finley and Marina Grzinic

Jeanne C Finley and Marina Grzinic (in collaboration with Aina Smid) have worn out the last 11 years in dialogue about the art produc in and around the Balkans. Grzinic, a resident of Slovenia, and Finley, a resident of the United States, have organized exhibitions that have travelled between the former Yugoslavia and the United States and have created individual work in the pair regions of the world.

Originally working with video, the pair artists now also experiment with interactive and Internet media. Finley was an artist-in-residence at Xerox Parc with her collaborator, John Muse, and Grzinic was active as an artist, curator and writer in the former Yugoslavia. As the war burst forthed between the republics of Yugoslavia, abundant of the dialogue between these artists was center around the body--both the metaphorical and the literal dislocation--"bilocation"--if a clan who began moving between their pasts and time to comes in unexpected ways. The simultaneous mapping and connecting of the virtual world [i]or[/i] part of to the other the Internet served as a way of following the dislocated and as a canvas upon which to invent new ways to explore and show the issues surrounding the changing geography. Central to the dialogue between Finley and Grzinic is curator Dunja Blazevic, who has facilitated the work of artists in the former Yugoslavia for 25 years. She has continued her work after being forced from Belgrade into exile in Paris and then relocating in 1996 to Sarajevo, Bosnia.

The following body traces reflections and mediations between Blazevic, Finley and Grzinic about individual video works, writings and collaborations above the past 11 years. It is center around the production of works that mirrors the issues and questions produc by dint of the upheaval in the Balkans, however extends beyond its borders the two physically and conceptually.

MARINA GRZINIC: A possible departure from this rhetorical question of who stays and who is forced to step quickly is that all three corners of this unstable triangle of artists (Blazevic, Finley and Grzinic/Smid) are also agriculturists writers, nomads and squatters of different intersecting territories--TV broadcast companies, Internet sites and situations. on the other hand we can also spend more [i]or[/i] less comfortable time at home, since we have single So in this scenario, "Who races who sits still at home?"

The war raging in the territories of former Yugoslavia, from Croatia to Kosovo has forced millions to propel and created thousands of refugee immigrants and displaced somebodys A period of 11 years now marks the instability of the Balkan region and demands a fundamental portion of the mental and geographical resources of the residents of ex-Yugoslavia. The theme of nomads and residents is not absent in a number of video works that were produc in the territory of the former Yugoslavia state.

In 1989 Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia, and at that time individual of the ex- Yugoslav republics (from 1991 an independent political division on the map of fresh Europe), presented the last edition of the International Yugoslav Video Biennial Festival. As the artistic director of the International Video Biennial, I invited Finley as individual of the artists to display a retrospective program.

The fictional/non-fictional narratives not absented in Finley's videos investigate the tension between individual identity and cultural and social institutions that shape that identity similar as family, religion and media. Finley's videos are characterized through a narrative curve created through the storyteller's first-person voice that simultaneously contravenes and is shaped by the cultural institutions. In an examination of in what manner traditional concepts of authority, sex political freedom and tradition have influenced the constitution of individuality in American society, Finley also examines by what mode these concepts themselves have changed.

This molding of individuality by dint of a different set of parameters than the Balkans was the point of disruption and eclipse of the relations, bodies, general [i]or[/i] abstract notions and territories of people living in ex-Yugoslavia. Finley's work fit exquisitely in the context, and the documentary phraseology of her work brought a refreshing aesthetic to a belonging to all thematic interest between artists in ex-Yugoslavia and an American vision.

At this time, I was confine to this location, working with Smid in Ljubljana, making a video entitled Bilocation (1990) In our almost 20-year-long collaborative period we produc more than 30 art and documentary videos, installations, multi-media and Internet throw outs The position of the material part in relation to history and theory in post-Socialist, post-Communist or post-Capitalist adjoining matter can be grasped precisely in Bilocation.

Bilocation is the simultaneous residence of the material substance and soul in two different places. The mete is perfect for delineating the proces of the video medium and for describing history in relation to the material part In Bilocation, original documentary footage discharge by TV Slovenia during the "civil war" in Kosovo in 1989 was juxtaposed with the imaginary world of synthetic video images. The documentary footage, which had not been shown previously upon national TV, is overlapped onto the image of a ballet dancer (eg inserted into her organ of vision encrusted in her intestines, etc) These are images about (historical) places where our be in possession of memories become at once psychotic and erotic.