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Uncomparables. Forming a Suspicious State

Uncomparables. Forming a Suspicious State
2010

Installation with drawings, purpose built structure and a video projection
Nova Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia
A collaboration with Siniša Ilić and Ben Cain
(The exhibition was designed in collaboration with Ben Cain, drawings are by Siniša Ilić and myself, and a video by myself)
Photo: Ivan Kuharić

These drawings engage with a corporate space of institutionalized observation and monitoring. The imagery addresses the notion of the immaterial workforce, a form of contemporary work which takes place everywhere and nowhere. Hands are slowly feeling and sensing a keyboard, a mouse, a screen, a chair, hair…
Although the figures might seem to be engaged with light or ineffectual work, at the same time they seem vulnerable and unable to fully articulate their actions. Digital spaces are interrupted with abrupt movements and actions, violently disturbing the virtual and pushing it towards immanent disaster. Disaster here is not solely understood as exclusive to the outside but as an inner and pervasive state. Here there is political disaster, emotional disaster and disaster yet to happen.
(T.G. & S.I.)

The dystopian space of erased borders in which the only remaining structure is the structure of surveillance, or corporate control is -in the work of Tina Gverović and Siniša Ilić- inhabited by motionless characters who appear to be focused on the light of the computer screen, a window into the world of promised freedom or a medium for the production of non-places which are developed through the interconnection of footage from security camera systems all over the world. In such a dystopian environment, to which everyone is invited, or more precisely, to which we are obliged to participate, positions of the observer and the observed are linked into relations that create the world. From co/action and co/relation the threat of a saturated space grows. In spaces that are seemingly empty, states of agoraphobia and claustrophobia leave their victims without any possibility to escape. Immanent disaster emerges from condensed cracks in the Real. These cracks then penetrate a world deprived of physical effort in which no one can feel the sweat on their brow. The cracks bulge out from damaged metal bar structures and organic simulations of nature amongst invasions of a repetitive string of manual and ‘dirty’ weapons or tools. Fragile narrative and descriptive elements unsuccessfully attempt to form a whole, but each attempt makes them even more fragile. But, as a glimmer of useless hope, we’re left with the light of the computer screen, at least as long as the electricity flow is provided.
(Extract from the text by Jasna Jakšić, ‘Light at the End of the Screen’.)

Uncomparables. Forming a Suspicious State
Video, loop (Installation view)

Uncomparables. Forming a Suspicious State
From the series of 40 ink drawings, 30 x 35cm
Photo: Marko Ercegović

Uncomparables. Forming a Suspicious State
Video, loop