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Postavljanje radnje

Za one koje nemaju strpljenja čitati scenarij prvog čina prvo pokušaja pisanja “Proklete Brane” ovdje objavljujem ključne informacije preuzete iz scenarija koje postavljaju radnju u specifičan prostor i vrijeme.
Nakon prve scene telefonskog dijaloga između Tarika i Merime uoči katastrofe, u scenariju je predviđeno da radnju prekine narator koji daje opis teških vremena u kojima naši likovi žive.

NARRATOR:

The year is 2020. Lukavac is abandoned, forgotten. Bosnia and Herzegovina is fragmented. Sarajevo has declared independence as a city – state. The government is preserved on a life support system under the finances and administration of the neighboring EU which is de-facto running the country from Sarajevo in accordance with their interests.

Banja Luka has been devoured by an earthquake whose center was in Lukavac.

The country is transversed by fast interstates, rail lines and power lines that carry the goods, the energy and the tourists over the country to the sea, protecting them from the wilderness below that has claimed back any traces of urbanity that were left in the landscape.

All the industry is dead, all the businesses have failed, all the infrastructure is ruined all that hasn’t to do with electric energy production is obsolete.

BH is producing 30% of the regions electric energy.

The administrative rulers of Sarajevo are not interested in re-structuring. The have turned away from the pleads of the forgotten population whose livelihoods have been taken. They have simply denied them access. The roads have been dug up and the bridges destroyed, there is a special tax for entering the city for non/residents, a tax that only a few can afford.

Freedom of movement is limited, the communications are weak and apathy is has set in.

Poets and Poetesses

box video still

For Travel in the Box 2, I collaborated with good friends and talented poets. They wrote for me.

It seems important to post as much as possible about this project on this blog because, if you remember how we started in 2007 / it was because of this project. Older posts map the development of the idea of Travel in the Box piece.

Soon the “Read More” journal will come out with texts by November Paynter and Timothy A. Weeks. This journal is an online publication published by Horsecross. It is funny that the texts in it will relate to my work that was shown in 2007 in Threshold, Perth. By now my piece has significantly developed – still I am not sure that this is the end of the line.

I cannot consider this project finalized. I think that this project should somehow be taken out of the field of visual. I should develop it into a proper collection of contemporary Bosnian and Herzegovinian and  have it exhisiting only in the form of a book and a reading – where the reading can be as thetrical it wants to be.

Starting the new faze  of the project are the specially written poems by some of the most talented young poets from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The poems have already been compiled in a limited edition of artists books, and have been performed in Ljubljana. As promised in a previous post, I am publishing the poems here in their original and in our own English translation.

Mantra – Marko Tomaš

Traveling through cities we’ve reached the last – Mehmed Begić

traveling to a Fine Land – Andreja Dugandžić

The Box – Ivona Jukić

Travel in Box – Lala Raščić (Continued)

4.3 hectares of flag

Flag Diagram Detail

Even though I have been informed that Google research is no research at all, I stand behind my opinion that it is. A solid base for furthering the field of knowledge – at the least. I know that many publications haven’t gone digital and that much of the information is kept for members and subscribers only – I feel that if a sensationalist information from the late 90’s is not to be found on the net, then it didn’t happen or that the information has been removed from public access (as sabotage). That is the case of a giant flag of Tibet presented in Calais, France. I call it my “ghost flag”.

God knows I am not the scholarly type and all I ever have researched is how to get high by domestic cleaning products – still my (by some) half -ass Google reseach has yielded fantastic results. In the two weeks in which I had with total dedication been surfing the net trying to find leads on my subject: GIANT FLAGS.

On Saturday, 12.12.09 I have presented the results of my research in the form of a lecture/performance in The Good Childeren Gallery.

The results are compiled in a document that served as a script for my artistic performance. I am posting it below. If anyone has searched the Internet for flag superlative information, they will agree that what follows is the most informed document on the subject available.

Based on this information I have produced a graph as well. A detail of the graph is posted above.

(Continued)

Namecheck

I think I finally found out how to surf the Internet and do research online as I am still on my fact finding mission about record braking flag sizes.

A funny thing happened at the New Orleans Public Library. The lady at the information counter was really nice to me, helped me find old copies of the Guinness Book of Records, she chatted with me. I told her that I was looking for stats on the largest flags. With the best intentions, I am sure, she got on the Internet and of course the first thing that popped up was Ski Demski’s SUPERFLAG. Little did she know that record was broken ages ago – and I told her so – having dedicated a working week to researching the flags. She was really nice and polite but she didn’t seem to accept the fact that Ski Demski’s “Old Glory” a.k.a the Superflag is just not the biggest flag in the world anymore – especially she didn’t seem to accept that United Arab Emirates are just about the break he record today, if I am not mistaken!

Anyway, I am definitely far away from Europe (funny the only largest flag record from Europe I found was from Switzerland). In Europe lots of nice arty things have happened, such as the Gender Check exhibition in Vienna. I somehow wasn’t included in the show, I was a bit offended and I will never talk to the curator EVER! Guess I suck! Well I did not make into “Gender Check” but was AT LEAST “Name Checked” in an interview with Dunja Blazevic on the shows website.

flag fads

Now in New Orleans I’ve been graciously invited to participate in a show that is loosely grouped around the topic of flags due to open mid December in Good Children Gallery. I’ve been thinking of statistics, of numbers and abstract facts. Mentioning  a flag is always so loaded. Especially in the US. Especially everywhere.

I appreciate flags as fashion, on t-shirts, hats, shoes, bags. Tattoos? I love it when the potency of the meanings loose and we can just play with the patterns. Would one wear stars and stripes just for the graphical quality?

Ginger Spice rocked the Union Jack in the mid 90’s, yet I haven’t seen the equivalent ease of “wear” for the stars and stripes. That got me to wondering: is it all post 9/11 or maybe this big U.S. flag cult had existed before. What I was struck with most is the huge, enormous flags flown by car dealerships and malls. After just scratching the surface of the issue I discovered that there is a big flag fad here form way back. Heck, I had stood in school in Middle Village, Queens saluting the flag as a kid.

That reminds me: The other day Tim n I went to a school and we got there just in time for the salute to the flag. I haven’t recited those words for more two decades yet I stood there and recited the pledge word for word.

Anyway, I really got into this big flag research and it soon took me away from the US and to the Guinness Book of Word Records. The US has fallen off the record breaking flag in 2007 when a Philippine woman commissioned a 5.2 ton flag of Israel that was twice the size of the American “Superflag”. God spoke to Grace in thunder and lightning ordering her to make a flag of his people.

This all opened a very interesting subject where my main concern is not in the meaning of the flag but of the micro story behind it and it’s area and dimensions and how it was made. I am interested in the factual materiality of the flag, not it’s significance, symbolism or political history.

One of the most striking images of the monumental flags I have found with a light browse on the net is the one I posted above. It was at the time, a second largest flag in the world.

Somehow the nature in this photo both emphasizes the grandness of the flag and undermines it at the same time. The flag her is like a  lobster bib for the mountain. In terms of fashion, its neutral colors work well with the red. I love the giant scale of the flag. Notice those dots – they are climbers who set the flag up!

Remember how we started?

This blog was started two years ago during my stay in Edinurgh to map and log the process of my work “Travel in the Box” commissioned for Horsecross’s Threshold Artspace. We can discuss the success of that work and pose questions like was that the time for the work to come to light and we can drag many other variables into the discussion too. The fact remains that all thru the last two years I’ve been trying to develop that work thru a couple of versions. Anytime I’ve had a chance to exhibit it I went for a different version.

Scaling the work down from Threshold’s original 22 screen display to 10 and sometimes just 1 screen the work has been undergoing constant change. For one I have definitely omitted the blackface, I have added the scrolling text video and made the work more cohesive, more solid. Still, I’ve always felt that it’s really not there yet – until recently.

The new and improved Travel in the box will take form mostly as a performance/poetry reading. I’ve asked 5 poets and poetesses: Mehmed Begic, Andreja Duganzic, Ivona Jukic,  and Marko Tomas to contribute to the project with a poem. The topic is, of course, the separate travels of Henry Brown and Charles McKinley in the box. I plan to construct a box and red their poetry curled up in the crate while live camera projects my image form the box on 5 screens for the public to see.

It has been an absolute pleasure to receive their contributions one by one and read them. I will be bringing their works to this blog as soon as I gather all the translations we are preparing for the production of a limited edition booklet. Soon, it will be soon, as the re-vamped “Travel in the Box” piece/performance is about to premiere in Ljubljana on 13.10.2009 in Gallery P74 as part od City of Women festival with the theme “Global South”.

Leaving New Orleans

After four months in New orleans all I have to show for is is this one minute video made for the City One Minutes project.

The video is shot in New Orleans Lower Garden District, on the corner of Camp and Thalia streets, on what is left of an old movie theater that burned down some years ago. The lot has been for sale for some time. The debris of the building has long been cleaned up and the only indicator of that it was once a theater are the masonry steps of the former entrance that now resemble a mini stage with an auditorium on the street corner. The empty lot being a common sight of the New Orleans urban landscape. The storyline also relates to New Orleans – as it tells of a place that is under constant threat of a flood while  the video gives a portrait of a quiet street corner in the utilized as a stage for a performative act – reminding of the site’s former function. Even though it was hard to jam the hole narrative into the short one minute format, I hope that one senses the storyline that tells of urgency in the face of a pending catastrophe.

Camera and Editing: Lala Rascic
Performers: Generic Art Solutions (Matt Vis, Tony Campbell)
Thank you: Daryn De Luco

New Website

www.lalarascic.com

better believe it my website is up!

“Private” Madness

the private

Let us suppose that everyone has his private madness. Knowledge without truth would be the labour or the attention of an intense singualrity analogous to this “private” madness – for everything private is madness to the extent at least that we seek, though it, to communicate.

Maurice Blanchot – The Writing of the Disaster

Beside myself

mirror

It goes like this, instead of concentrating on the performance I have been living thru a nightmare of dealing with scale and priority. All focus has been lost and I have been dedicated to finishing some vector drawings that are totally beside the point.

I am looking for a way to be beside myself, just like my vector drawings are beside the point.

I have overcome my fight with subjectivity and are looking now for a narrative – where is it? In my last post I was talking about form. I was looking for it. For articulation. Everything is articulated by now. Over articulated. I got a plan,  the screen , the watercolors, the friggin’ vector drawings, the book is in the making – look above, it is a drawing, an illustration!

A note on performance  -I have a fear of articulating my thoughts for the purpose of verbalizing them in front of an audience.

Second note on performance – it is that fear that keeps pushing me more and more into theatre.

I am beside myself with worry about what it will amount to.