Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić
– (1989, Zrenjanin) lives and works in Novi Sad, Serbia. She completed her undergraduate and master’s studies at the Academy of Arts, University of Novi Sad, and is currently pursuing her doctoral studies at the New Art Media. She is employed as a senior associate at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad at the Department of New Art Media.
This text is a performative writing of myself. My micro-hack1 that disrupts the default frame-prism of inscribing the complex, fluid and variable SELF. Why? Because the ways we communicate, those language games2 we play and invent, in order to establish communication and cooperation, are the epicentre of my anti-disciplinary practice through which I connect new experiential and visual tactics and strategies for critical reflection and activism.
Only now does the statement Personal is Political resonate with me as something that belongs to me. The meaning of the words that it consists of, change every day because I change. Irrespectively, I, as an artist and as a woman, am still asked to place myself in specific categories34, to assume the self-conscious, internalised frameworks and to explain myself through the limitations of language5. We become bounded by other people’s (mis)readings67.
The language we use to write and express ourselves frees us and at the same time imprisons us. An aggravating circumstance is the language 010108 that categorises the acquired knowledge and the exploited9 data through which we are being analysed and interpreted.
In this environment10, my art projects question the limits and flexibility of art education, exhibition spaces, time to create, to care, issues of immaterial and invisible artistic work in financially unstable environments11. In considering the strategies and tactics that oppose them, they are directed towards researching the background workings of technology, which forms the understanding of ourselves and our societies, dictates the ways of thinking within the dominant spheres of knowledge. Trying to perceive and understand this vast correlation of our identities through the languages of technology, nature and society, I initiate experiential action-thought choreography. What emerges are new ways of communication, socialisation, meaning inscription12 and identity building, through which my practice becomes collaborative1314, transitory and processual.
In the Anthropocene age15 of capitalization of our beings, in a culturally, educationally and economically degrading society, doing art is a privilege16. Spending precious time creating art that does not tend to become part of the white cube, art market and institutional milieu, occupies me. Where do I (aspire to) belong? Daily work enables survival means or time to create, so I balance17 work and pleasure, trying to hack this capitalist construct of effective time designed to foster hyper-productivity. Walking this road, I enter the space of joint acoustic, asynchronous conversation, remediation, active listening and decompression in the digital realm. Suddenly, I find myself in a thought experiment: Can we create a space of care, listening and decompression18 within everyday technologies that so often bring us stress?
It all started with walks19 as a form of communication language. They led me to cultural management20, which opens the door to door to the lands of academic thinking and doing. The socio-political circumstances of the time when I actively started organising and producing spaces and platforms for the emerging artists shaped21 my approach to art. This directed my practice into the spaces of fluidity, procedurality, ephemerality and exchange; self-critical it questions itself becoming a trace22.
Therefore, walking on the fringes23 became a territory of curiosities that allowed my practice to shift, break, transfer, move, combining elements of curatorial, artistic and pedagogical practice. I explore their intertwined connections through the spaces of collaboration, communication, identity, language and knowledge production in the context of our relationship with technology and nature. Thus, communication, understanding, listening, exchange, cooperation24, care, absence, obstruction, drive the exploration of infrastructures of activism. I devise my own collaboration protocols, learn and create in systems that I often don’t see as belonging to my politics. I’m trying to (un)learn the familiar, and walk into new terrains25. I weave a web of worlding26, speculation and and engagement, situated experiences and micro-disruptions27 of the system so that I can imagine the new possible and navigate through this cognitive dissonance that I experience.
I walk sideways28. Discovering what it means to collaborate and communicate between ourselves and our environment. I listen to the languages and what they tell me, I read and interpret them. In that process of (un)learning I remain open to other forms of interpretation, allowing for the new languages to emerge and defy familiar definitions.
In this sense, like my practice, this performative text is a trace, recorded on October 2, 2022. I invite you to smear off the image you have constructed of me and invite me for a conversation instead29. Let’s enter a space of communication and exchange and may another ME emerge through this dialogue.
The text was written in collaboration with Dejan Vasić (2022).
1My practice is based on disrupting systems and frameworks. Guided by Legacy Russell's ideas on glitch, error, academic referencing, and footnote space. Aware that avoiding frames and concepts is a futile task, I still try, because new landscapes of knowledge are revealed in the spaces of going out and moving across borders. Link: NEW (dr)INC: Cyberfeminism as Glitch & Archive: A Conversation with Legacy Russell & Mindy Seu [video]. Accessed September 27, 2022. See: youtube.com/watch?v=MBIZI4s5NiE.2Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2009.
3Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić, In the Mirror of Otherness, project, 2022, See: U ogledalu drugosti.
4Image: Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić, magazine Computers: gender roles in the embrace of technology, project "In the Mirror of Otherness" photo documentation of the master class with Daria Medić, 2022, courtesy of the artists.
5The Translation Flowers artistic collective consists of: Inkeri Jantti (FI), Nancy Dewhurst (UK) and Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić (RS), who together explore the problems of (non)communication, language, participatory and site-specific work with communities and nature through experimental interventions.
6Image: Translation Flowers, Kalen Mutaja, project, Finland, 2019. Photo: Inkeri Jantti, courtesy of the collective.
7Image: Translation Flowers, Warjakansari Book, Kalen Mutaja project, Finland, 2019. Photo: Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić, courtesy of the collective. See: Kalen Mutaja projekat.
8Photo: AIVI team, AI/VI, detail from the video document, Belgrade - Linz, 2020. It is part of the art+science 2020 project of the Centre for the Promotion of Science in cooperation with the Kepler’s Gardens - Ars Electronica Festival, courtesy of the collective.
9Image: Translation Flowers, Trashscape, Excavating the Future Workshop 2022. Photo: Inkeri Jantti, courtesy of the collective.
10See: Trashscape, project by the Translation Flowers collective, Finland, 2020-22.
11Image: Mural, created by artist Fredone Fone, 2019 as a part of the author's Artist's Menu project, courtesy of the artist. Link: Artist’s Menu project.
12Image: Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić, In 500 Words, video installation, 2022, video style, courtesy of the artist.
13See: EkOtisak, collaborative, artistic and scientific project by several institutions, 2021-22.
14See: AI/VI, collaborative, artistic and scientific project, 2020.
15Image: Ecotopias, ambient installation, 2021/22. It is a segment of the EkOtisak project presented as a part of the art+science 2022 and the Danube Sea - Novi Sad Capital of Culture programme arc, courtesy of the artist.
16Visual hack: About current spaces.
17Visual Hack: Decompression Lowcast exploration of embodiment in the digital age.
18Visual hack: Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić and Darija Medić, Decompression Lowcast - Low Fi Explorations of Embodied Decompression in the Digital Age, digital work, 2021/22, courtesy of the artist.
19Image: Enclave_ing, Spain 2018/2022. It combines my previous research methods within the framework of semantic psychogeography. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić, courtesy of the artist. See: Enclave_ing.
20See: Napon i Interkultivator (Voltage and Intercultivator), production and organisation of projects within the non-profit art organisations, 2012-2017.
21Image: Autonomies international exhibition within the "Technoecologies" - a project of Creative Europe 2012-2014. Photo: Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić, courtesy of the organisation.
22With trace, Derrida explains his concept of deconstruction based on "différance". Derrida's philosophy of language, of identity wrapped in deconstruction as something that in itself eludes definition, influences my working methodology, but the return to the body, suggested by Julia Kristeva follows it. See in: Jacques Derrida "Of Grammatology", Johns Hopkins University Press 1997; Judith Butler "The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva", Vol. 3, No. 3, French Feminist Philosophy (Winter, 1989), p. 104-118 (15 pages), Wiley.
23Visual hack: About the project Artist’s Menu.
24See: audio hak o putevima saradnje (audio hack about ways to collaborate).
25Image: Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić, New Terrains, performative dinner, Brazil, 2022. Photo: Pameli Goes, courtesy of the artist.
26See: audio hak o teorijama i jezicima (audio hack about theories and languages).
27See: audio hak o strategijama (audio hack about strategies).
28Bruno Latour "Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime" 752, Polity Press, 2018.
29Visual hack: Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić, Artotekum, performative walks and installation in space, announcement poster, Belgrade, 2022, courtesy of the artist.
– (1989. Zrenjanin), živi i radi u Novom Sadu u Srbiji. Osnovne i master studije završila je na Akademiji umetnosti Univerziteta u Novom Sadu, gde je trenutno i na doktorskim studijama na Novim likovnim medijima. Anagažovana je kao viša stručna saradnica na Akademiji umetnosti u Novom Sadu na Katedri za nove likovne medije.
Ovaj tekst je performativno ispisivanje mene same. Moj mikro hak1 kojim se narušava zadati okvir-prizma učitavanja kompleksnog, fluidnog i promenjujućeg JA. Zašto, jer načini kojima se sporazumevamo, te jezičke igre2 koje koristimo i izmišljamo, da bismo uspostavili komunikaciju i saradnju, su epicentar moje antidisciplinarne prakse kroz koju vezem nove iskustvene i vizuelne taktike i strategije za kritičko promišljanje i angažovano delovanje.
Izjava Lično je političko tek sada odzvanja u meni kao nešto što mi pripada. Značenje reči koje je čine svakodnevno se menjaju jer se ja menjam. Bezobzirno i dalje se od mene kao umetnice i žene, svakodnevno potražuje da se smestim u specifične kategorije34, prisvojim osvešćene internalizovane okvire i objasnim sebe kroz ograničenost jezika5. Omeđeni smo pogrešnim67 učitavanjem drugih ljudi. Otežavajuća okolnost je i jezik 010108 koji kategoriše usvojeno znanje i ekspoloatisane9 podatke kroz koje se učitavamo i ispisujemo.
U tom okruženju10, moji umetnički projekti dovode u pitanje granice i fleksibilnost umetničkog obrazovanja, izlagačke prostore, vreme za stvaranje i brigu, pitanja nematerijalnog i nevidljivog umetničkog rada u finansijski nestabilnim okruženjima11. Razmatrajući strategije i taktike koje im se suprostavljaju, usmereni su ka istraživanju pozadinskih funkcionisanja tehnologije, koja oblikuje razumevanje nas samih i naših društava, diktira načine razmišljanja u okviru dominirajućih sfera znanja. Pokušavajući da sagledam taj suodnos naših identiteta kroz jezike tehnologije, prirode i društva, iniciram iskustveno akciono-misaone koreografije. Isplivavaju novi načini komunikacije, socijalizacije, upisivanja značenja12 i građenja identiteta kroz koje moja praksa postaje saradnička1314, prolazna i procesualna.
U antropocenom dobu15 kapitalizacije naših bića, kulturološki, obrazovno i ekonomski degradirajućem društvu, baviti se umetnošću je privilegija16. Trošenje dragocenog vremena na kreiranje umetnosti koja ne teži da postane deo bele kocke, umetničkog tržišta i institucionalnog miljea me okupira. Gde (težim da) pripadam? Svakodnevni posao donosi mogućnost preživljavanja, ali ne i stvaranja, stoga balansiram17 između posla i zadovoljstva, pokušavajući da hakujem ovu kapitalističku konstrukciju efektivnog vremena napravljenu da podstakne hiperproduktivnost. Koračajući tim putem zalazim u prostor zajedničkog akustičnog, asinhronog razgovora, remedijacije, aktivnog slušanja i dekompresije18 u digitalnom carstvu. Odjednom, nalazim se u misaonom eksperimentu: Možemo li stvoriti prostor za brigu, slušanje i dekompresiju unutar svakodnevnih tehnologija koje izazivaju stres?
Počelo je sa šetnjama19 kao vidom komunikacijskog jezika. Dovele su me do kulturnog menadžmenta20 koji mi otvara vrata ka pejzažima akademskog razmišljanja i rada. Društveno-političke okolnosti vremena kada sam aktivno počela da organizujem i produciram prostore i platforme za umetnice i umetnike u nastajanju oblikovale21 su moj pristup umetnosti. Ovo je usmerilo moju praksu u prostore fluidnosti, proceduralnosti, efemernosti i razmene, preispitujući se postaje trag22.
Zbog toga je hodanje po granicama23 postalo teritorija kurioziteta koja je omogućila da se moja praksa pomera, lomi, prenosi, izmešta, kombinujući elemente kustoske, umetničke i pedagoške prakse. Istražujem njihove isprepletene veze kroz prostore saradnje, komunikacije, identiteta, jezika i proizvodnje znanja u kontekstu našeg odnosa sa tehnologijom i prirodom. Tako komunikacija, razumevanje, slušanje, razmena, saradnja24, briga, odsustvo, ometanje, pokreću istraživanje infrastruktura angažovanja. Smišljam sopstvene protokole saradnje, učim i stvaram u sistemima koje često ne vidim da pripadaju mojim politikama. Pokušavam da se (od)učim od poznatog, ušetam u nove terene25. Pletem mrežu savetovanja26, spekulacija i angažovanja, situiranih iskustva i mikro disrupcija27 sistema tako da mogu da zamislim novo moguće i da se krećem kroz ovu kognitivnu disonancu koju doživljavam.
Koračam postrance28. Otkrivajući šta znači sarađivati i komunicirati između sebe i našeg okruženja. Slušam jezike i šta mi govore, čitam i tumačim ih. U tom procesu, odučavanja ostajem otvorena za druge oblike tumačenja omogućavajući da se pojave novi jezici koji prkose poznatoj definiciji. U tom smislu, kao i moja praksa, ovaj performativni tekst je trag zabeležen 02.10.2022. Pozivam vas da srušite sliku koju ste izgradili o meni i umesto toga me pozovete na razgovor29. Uđimo u prostor komunikacije i razmene i neka se još jedna JA pojavi u tom dijalogu.
Tekst je napisan u saradnji sa Dejanom Vasićem (2022).
1Moja praksa je zasnovana na narušavanju sistema i okvira. Vodeći se idejama Legasi Rusel (Legacy Russell) o gliču, grešci, akademskoj referentnosti i prostorom fusnota. Svesna da je izbegavanje okvira i koncepata uzaludan posao i dalje pokušavam jer se u prostorima izlaska i kretanja po granicama otkrivaju novi pejzaži znanja. Link: NEW (dr)INC: Cyberfeminism as Glitch & Archive: A Conversation with Legacy Russell & Mindy Seu [video]. Pristupljeno 27. septembar 2022. Link: youtube.com/watch?v=MBIZI4s5NiE.2Ludvig Vitgenštajn (Ludwig Wittgenstein) Philosophical Investigations, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2009.
3Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić, U ogledalu drugosti, projekat, 2022, link: U ogledalu drugosti.
4Slika: Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić, Časopis Računari: rodne uloge u zagrljaju sa tehnologijom, projekat „U ogledalu drugosti“ foto dokumentacija master klasa sa Darijom Medić, 2022. ljubaznošću umetnica.
6Slika: Translation flowers, Kalen Mutaja, projekat, Finska, 2019. Foto: Inkeri Janti (Inkeri Jantti), ljubaznošću kolektiva.
11Slika: Mural, izveo umetnik Fred Fone (Fredone Fone), 2019. u okviru autorkinog projekta Artist’s Menu project, ljubaznošću umetnice. Link: Artist’s Menu project.
14Link: AI/VI, saradnički umetničko-naučni projekat, 2020.
15Slika: Ecotopie, ambijentalna instalacija, 2021/22. Deo je projekta EkOtisak predstavljenog u okviru programa art+science 2022 i programskog luka Dunavsko more - Novi Sad prestonica kulture, ljubaznošću umetnice.
17Vizuelni hak: Decompression lowcast istraživanja otelotvorenja u digitalnom dobu.
18Vizuelni hak: Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić i Darija Medić, Decompression lowcast - low fi explorations of embodied decompression in the digital age, digitalni rad, 2021/22, ljubaznošću umetnica.
21Slika: Autonomies internacionalna izložba u okviru „Technoecologies“-projekat Kreativne Evrope 2012-2014. Foto: Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić, ljubaznošću organizacije.
23Vizualni hak: O projektu Artist’s Menu.
24Link: audio hak o putevima saradnje.
25Slika: Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić, New terrains, performativna večera, Brazil, 2022. Foto: Pameli Goes, ljubaznošću umetnice.
27Link: audio hak o strategijama.
28Bruno Latur „Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime”752, Politi Press, 2018.
29Vizuelni hak: Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić, Artotekum, performativne šetnje i instalacija u prostoru, najavni poster, Beograd, 2022, ljubaznošću umetnice.
