Aleksandra Saša Jeremić
– (1988, Doboj, Bosnia and Herzegovina) graduated Faculty of Economy, at the University of Belgrade (2011), and painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade (2019), and from 2021 Free Art studies at the Braunschweig University of Art. Her work is based on video and sound installations through which she deals with identity issues, collective and personal memories and experiences of migration in a broader cultural and political context. She is part of the collective Commons- Imagining the institution of the future and a DAAD scholarship holder.
In my artistic research and in everyday life, I am questioning the processes inside us, our lives and the ways how they affect external processes, influences, political systems, individual and collective memory. In my works, I explore the vulnerability of human existence in its social and cultural context by examining power structures in both the private and public spheres. I collected rumors and information through word-of-mouth and storytelling and recorded conversations with more than thirty people later giving them a voice through my own1.
How the body and the spirit are controlled from the outside and inside, is to me the way history is embodied. I explore the immaterial form of my works and how to express it visually – through video, performance, drawing or photograph. In the tension between politics and poetics, I find knots that I need to understand and untangle2.
In some situations, I was haunted, and in others, I haunted the places that can be called home. By constantly moving, growing up in conflict times, feeling like a guest, and struggling with different ethnicities and religions I often had to occupy spaces. They had things and furnishings belonging to someone else, and I began to adapt to a preset of objects that were haunting the space towards which I had to reorient my habits.
Home is where I am3456 is about the relationship between something that is there, present, and another one that is absent. Performing through language, as simple gestures, something fundamentally changes. Do kitchen tables, chairs, doors and windows make a home? Separated from the public, like a private museum, the home becomes a sculpture7. Whether or not home becomes more important and at the same time, it simply disappears. In a timeless, spaceless, almost bodiless being in different moments and spaces, I reperform my home.
In the act of Walking with the mattress8 I was dragging the mattress through the city which was the first sleeping surface I gained as I moved to Germany. Dwelling and dream space, the potential of the bed. The physical movement of the mattress develops consciousness about the presence of other human beings and is a tool to communicate and to transform human relations.
Walls define and defend us. Outside walls turn to face dangerous aliens. Outside is political, the inside wall secretive and the wall must protect the secret place of the heart from being visited by evil spirits. The house can be protected with shutters but then one lives in fear910.
A body as the fundamental home is forced to distort itself and becomes other than what it is. Work Summerhouse11 documents a healing process of a bruise on a forearm. The bruise is the result of a test control for Covid-19 antibodies, which was carried out at the time of the border crossing between Bosnia and Montenegro. Despite the attempt to be controlled and monitored, the body manages to transmit memories. The body becomes the unexplored territory during the all-encompassing surveillance and conveys the impulse of feeling familiar – regardless of the physical space or geographical location where I am.
Since 2020 I am a part of a collective Commons – Imagining the institution of the future1213. The concept of shared responsibility and humility as ethical pillars of interpersonal relations have become the center of our attempts to act. Our social place and role, here and now, among ourselves, within our environment and with a view to the future. As a collective, we are questioning how an individual action and collective ritual might extend and perpetuate into a larger social configuration. Our performances become a sort of metaphysics of the dynamics of social exchange and human action that extends from inside to outside, from personal to political, from regional to international. The reason we gathered is not to affirm or preserve our individuality and special interest, but rather to transform individuality.
Text is written in collaboration with Dejan Vasić (2022).
1Image: Aleksandra Saša Jeremić, No title, Video, 2019, courtesy of the artist. See: youtube.com/watch?v=J6mqFTBoLNo&t=1s.2Image: Aleksandra Saša Jeremić, The flag, clothes installation, 2019, courtesy of the artist.
3Image: Aleksandra Saša Jeremić, Home is where I am, video and sound installation, 2021, courtesy of the artist. See: youtube.com/watch?v=f-WpLmzBOEI.
4Image: Aleksandra Saša Jeremić, Home is where I am, video and sound installation, 2021, courtesy of the artist. See: youtube.com/watch?v=f-WpLmzBOEI.
5Image: Aleksandra Saša Jeremić, Home is where I am, video and sound installation, 2021, courtesy of the artist. See: youtube.com/watch?v=f-WpLmzBOEI.
6Image: Aleksandra Saša Jeremić, Home is where I am, video and sound installation, 2021, courtesy of the artist. See: youtube.com/watch?v=f-WpLmzBOEI.
7Image: Aleksandra Saša Jeremić, Leaving room, clothes, video and sound installation, 2019, courtesy of the artist. See: youtube.com/watch?v=NwUUWqsLM8c.
8Image: Aleksandra Saša Jeremić, Walking mattress, Performance, 2021, courtesy of the artist.
9Image: Aleksandra Saša Jeremić, Walls around walls between, Photograph, 2020, courtesy of the artist.
10Image: Aleksandra Saša Jeremić, Walls around walls between, Photograph, 2020, courtesy of the artist.
11Image: Aleksandra Ristić, Summerhouse, Photograph, 2021, courtesy of the artist.
12Image: Commons, Commons - Imagining the institution of the future, 2021, courtesy of the artist.
13Image: Commons, Commons - Imagining the institution of the future, 2021, courtesy of the artist.
– (1988, Doboj, Bosna i Hercegovina) diplomirala je na Ekonomskom fakultetu, Univerziteta u Beogradu (2011) i na katedri za slikarstvo na Fakultetu primenjenih umetnosti u Beogradu (2019), i na studijama Slobodne umetnosti na Univerzitetu umetnosti u Braunšvajgu (2021). Njeni radovi su zasnovani na video i zvučnim instalacijama kroz koje se bavi pitanjima identiteta, kolektivnog i ličnog sećanja i iskustva migracije u širem kulturnom i političkom kontekstu. Članica je kolektiva Commons – Zamišljanje institucije budućnosti i DAAD stipendistkinja.
U svom umetničkom istraživanju i svakodnevnom životu, preispitujem procese unutar nas, naše živote i načine na koje oni utiču na spoljašnje procese, uticaje, političke sisteme, individualno i kolektivno sećanje. U mom radu ja istražujem ranjivost ljudskog postojanja, u društvenom i kulturnom kontekstu, proučavajuči strukture moći u privatnoj i javnoj sferi.
Usmenim putem sam sakupljala glasine i informacije pričajući sa različitim ljudima, i snimila sam razgovore sa više od trideset ljudi, kasnijem im dajući izraz svojim glasom1.
Način na koji se telo i duh kontrolišu spolja i iznutra je za mene način otelovljenja istorije. Istražujem nematerijalne forme svojih radova i kako to da izrazim vizuelno – putem videa, performansa, crtanjem ili fotografijom. U tenziji između politike i poetike, pronalazim čvorove koje treba da razumem i razmrsim2.
U nekim situacijama bila sam uhođena, u drugima sam ja uhodila mesta koja se mogu nazvati domom. Stalnim seljenjem, odrastanjem u konfliktim vremenima, osećala sam se kao gost i mučila sa različitim etnicitetima i religijama, i često sam morala da zauzimam prostore. A ti prostori su imali stvari i nameštaj koji je pripadao nekom drugom, i počela sam da se navikavam na unapred podešene predmete koji su uhodili prostore, prema kojima sam morala da preuređujem svoje navike.
Dom je tamo gde sam ja3456 se bavi odnosom između nečega što postoji, što je prisutno i nečega čega nema. Putem performansa kroz jezik, i prostu gestikulaciju, nešto se fundamentalno menja. Da li trpezarijski stolovi, stolice, vrata i prozori čine dom? Odvojen od javnosti, kao privatan muzej, dom postaje skulptura7. Bilo da li dom postaje bitniji u isto vreme, ili ne, on prosto nestane. U bezvremenom, besprostornom i skoro bestelesnom biću u različitim trenucima i prostorima. Ja iznova izvodim svoj dom.
U činu Hodanje sa dušekom8, vukla sam dušek kroz grad, što je bila prva površina za spavanje koju sam stekla kada sam se preselila u Nemačku. Prostor za boravak i spavanje, potencijal kreveta. Fizičko kretanje dušeka razvija svest o prisustvu drugih ljudskih bića i sredstvo je za komunikaciju i transformaciju međuljudskih odnosa.
Zidovi nas definišu i brane. Spoljašnji zidovi okrenuti su opasnim strancima. Spoljašnjost je politična, unutrašnjost zida je tajnovita, i zid mora da zaštiti tajni prostor srca od zlih duhova. Dom može da se zaštiti žaluzinama, ali onda živimo u strahu910.
Telo kao fundamentalni dom se na silu izobličava i postaje nešto što nije. Rad Letnjikovac11 dokumentuje proces isceljenja modrice na podlaktici. Modrica je rezultat kontrolnog testa na antitela Covid-19, sprovedenog tokom prelaska granice između Bosne i Crne Gore. Uprkos pokušaju da se kontrole i nadgledanja, telo uspeva da prenese uspomene. Telo postaje neistražena teritorija tokom sveobuhvatnog nadzora i prenosi impuls poznatog osećanja – bez obzira na fizički prostor ili geografsku lokaciju na kojoj se nalazim.
Od 2021 članica sam kolektiva Commons – Zamišljanje institucije budućnosti1213. Koncept deljene odgovornosti i skromnosti kao etički stubovi međuljudskih odnosa postali su još centar naših pokušaja za delovanjem. Naša društvena pozicija i uloga, ovde i sada, među nama, unutar našeg okruženja i sa pogledom na budućnost. Kao kolektiv, mi ispitujemo načine na koji pojedinačna akcija i kolektivni ritual mogu da se prošire i produže u širu društvenu konfiguraciju. Naši performansi postaju neka vrsta metafizike dinamike društvene razmene i ljudskog delovanja koja se proteže iznutra ka spolja, od ličnog do političkog, od regionalnog do međunarodnog. Razlog zašto smo se okupili nije da afirmišemo ili sačuvamo našu individualnost i poseban interes, već da transformišemo individualnost.
Tekst je napisan u saradnji sa Dejanom Vasićem (2022).
1Slika: Aleksandra Saša Jeremić, Bez naslova, Video, 2019, lična arhiva, ljubaznošću umetnice. Link: youtube.com/watch?v=J6mqFTBoLNo&t=1s.
