Screening Arbeiten von Tanja Ostojic

14. Jänner 2010, 12.30 Uhr Audimax, Kollegiumgasse 2, 1.OG

Program for video screening of Tanja Ostojic´s works on Linz University of Art.

I´ll Be Your Angel
I’ll Be Your Angel consists of my accompanying Mr. Szeemann during the Biennale opening days around Venice (including cocktails, dinners, press conferences). I will be naturally performing as his escort - his Angel. This piece, integrated in everyday life, poses potential ambiguous narratives concerning the scandalous artist (and the curator). It provokes an invitation/invasion, and questions the power structure in the art world. Speculations of morality, and art world strategy will spin out; while the press will possibly construct a media support for this, it is not necessary. The structure of the piece is the process of mystery, both personal and public, encased in the glossy gossip of art world whispers.

Why such a radical strategy? The Venice Biennale is a global phenomenon: A tourist attraction, a financial party of the art world, an intellectual soup; yet, it happens that many art works in Venice are either missed or misconstrued. So, I asked Harald Szeemann for his collaboration. His openness and trust of the potential nature of me „being his escort and his angel,” owes a critical debt to him. He is a respected and powerful personality with a „loaded name;” he becomes the material for my work and a „guarantee” for a platform for fragile questions.

Be My Guest, 2001, 16 min (English)
Two hours long performance Be My Guest was realized at the exhibition opening Gravita 0 in Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. With this work Ostojic continues research in the realm of art world power struggles and gender troubles. In the best tradition of La dolce vita, she’s having elegant dinner in public with the curator of the show Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and an erotic Jacuzzi bath within the same space with his friend art critic Ludovico Pratesi…

Sofa for Curator, 2002, 11 min (English)
Ostojic researches on gender troubles and power relations within the art system that are typical for Balkan aria. She is putting exhibition curator Stevan Vukovic in embarrassing position by washing his feet in public during the course of the opening of the Balkan Konsulat proudly presents Belgrade exhibition that Vukovic curated in Rotor, Graz…

CrossingOver, 2001-02, 7 min
In collaboration with Klemens G., with English subtitles

In August 2000, I started the project Looking for a Husband with E.U. Passport www.scca,org,mk/capital/projects/tanja. After publishing an “ad” with this title, I exchanged over 500 letters with numerous applicants from around the world. Following correspondence over six months with a German man, Klemens G., I arranged our first meeting as a public performance in the field in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade in 2001. Video CrossingOver covers this very meeting. One month later, we officially married in New Belgrade. With the international marriage certificate and other required documents, I applied for a visa. After two months, I got a single-entry family unification visa for Germany, limited to three months, so I moved to Düsseldorf, where, on the basis of my next visa, I lived officially for three and a half years. In spring of 2005, my three-year permit expired, and instead of granting me a permanent residence permit, the authorities granted me only a two-year visa, since I did not have a family tax declaration. Subsequently, K.G. and I got divorced, and on the occasion of the opening of my Integration Project Office installation at Project Room Gallery 35 in Berlin, on 1 July 2005, I organised Divorce Party.

Sans Papiers, 2003-04, 14 min
In collaboration with David Rych. original languages with German subtitles

The video documentary Sans Papiers portrays illegalised people in one of the major deportation jails in Germany, Berlin-Köpenick. Interviews with detainees give testimony to the differences among those termed Sans Papiers and shed light on conditions of life and treatment when caught in the bureaucratic circles of control structures.

Naked Life, 2004-08, 24 min
English with German subtitles

The Naked Life video-performance is based on Written Comments of the European Roma Rights Centre Concerning Germany For Consideration by the United Nations Human Rights Committee at its 80th Session, 2004. I read the fates of different Roma families taken from the report’s segment on deportations. Each testimony is more disturbing than the previous one. While reading, I strip my own clothing from my body, remaining naked in the end and symbolically vulnerable as bare life.