Being an immigrant and a person of multiple identities I have long experienced the similarities of human concern in many different cultural contexts. Traveling back and forth between the US and the former Yugoslavia, I have had the privileged vantage point of interacting with many different people. For survival, I’ve focused on situations that both provided and disrupted empathetic responses. Communicating with understanding, sometimes with the aid of a shared language and sometimes not, is critical to thriving in any given circumstance especially if you are a very social and sensitive artist. During these travels, I always felt a feeling of being a part of the human community. We all want the same things: clean water, food, shelter, education, and respect for human dignity.
Living in the US and coming from Serbia, I have felt vilified in the media around the world as both an American and a Serbian. This is a difficult condition to resolve. I feel culpable in both countries. As a pacifist, this feeling is particularly painful when paying taxes to a government bombing countries all around the world including my birthplace. All these wars have been against my will. It's a sad state of democracy when we, here in the US, have just as much power to change the will of government as most people around the world from Serbia to Iran, to Albania and Afghanistan.
Warmongering is done best by forcing the concept of total ethnic group hatred. This way the empowered people put their energy into hating and blaming a whole ethnic group instead of protesting the warmongering governments. How much the do protests really work? One just needs to look at the millions of people who protested against the war in Iraq that fell upon deaf ears of both the President and the Houses.
Today, what is the most effective way to protest and activate others particularly for an artist that wants to evoke a feeling of community across all human circumstance? What is the easiest way to manipulate masses of people to change their minds or think a different point of view? The answer to both of these questions is the movies. Even better, film and video is evolving to future video creating even more opportunities for greater impact. My awareness of issues and the people they represent can be communicated through these newest electronic technologies. The language and visual formation of gaming systems points to incredible possibilities. In this project, ED, these new formal techniques will inform the participant of the wholeness of human race. Gaming, architecture and virtual narration are the formal aspects of this project. Gaming technologies such as elements of interactivity, and cyber and/or virtual space will be used in conjunction with newest architectures of space both virtual and physical to immerse the participant for greatest impact.
New media is a useful development in my practice. I look to Luc Courchesne’s work for inspiration. He has been using technologies for several decades to create installations that have conversation-based human computer interaction. In 1990, he created an interactive installation, Portrait One, that involves a woman who engages the viewer into a dialogue. From there, he created a huge panoramic interactive installation entitled, Landscape One, that engages the participant social experiment whereby you try to become a part of a community. Also, an Australian artist, Tina Gonzalves is creating video installations that interact with the participant through their physical responses. In Feel Insula the participants are biometrically studied and documented that causes the art to respond. The participant either wears jewelry or is tracked by sensing devices within the space.
ED incorporates these new methods realized in Courchesne and Gonzelves as well as those in gaming particularly those that are non-violent and non-competitive as a new way of storytelling as well as research and realize how to bring about transformative dialogues allow for opportunities for changes in behavior. My work fills the areas that have been missed by other artist by providing a space filled with opportunities for cross-cultural community building. My focus is on stimulating empathy in individuals.
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