O:TVORENO

context:

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“The "Black Box" platform was created in 2015 as an initiative for the support of young authors in the field of visual arts and the presentation of their creativity in the broadest public. With the current theme, each year more than 60 young authors selected at the competition by an expert jury are represented. The goal of the "Black Box" project is to point out problems that burden young creators in the contemporary social context, their empowerment to publicly express themselves and contribute to the solution of social problems and the improvement of community life through their visions. "Black Box" also emphasizes the importance of art installations in alternative urban spaces, their accessibility to a wide audience, and the connection of artistic practice with other spheres of life - science, technology, economics and society.

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“The Black Box project has become an important platform for young and alternative artists who are often affirmed or professionally determined in the fields of architecture, design and other natural and social areas. Black box is a trip to something important, unspoken and sharp! This year, the contest was attended by artists of completely different education, age and affinity, which confirms our belief about an open platform that defines itself. The theme "Fall into the Future" is a dark hint of opportunities in the future and artists understood the context of the moment in which they exist. They come up with solutions of high artistic and aesthetic character, very different in the expression, and yet with a strong common denominator to defend the dignity of humanity and existence in understanding the alienated processes in which we live".

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Under the symptomatic slogan "Fall into the Future", the Black Box 2017 exhibition shows the visions of the near future of a young generation of artists who stands on the ruins of institutional culture and is in a space without perspective, surrounded by walls of impossibility and restrictions for creative work. Although a synonym for consternation, the "Black Box" is at the same time a chance to accumulate energy necessary to demolish the walls behind which the future awaits us. What is this future, we will find out at the Mixer Festival, through the works of young creators whose powerful works comment on the social circumstances they seem to be unable to influence, but whose creative energy is still capable of triggering change”. *

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* festival.mikser.rs

 

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concept:

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Conceptually, the Black Box Odyssey is a reference to the representation of the monolith  in the film story by Arthur Clarke and Stanley Kubrick, and refers to the trans-universal key of existence of/(and the connection between) the thinking man (homo sapiens), act/work, art and transcendental. Thus, through the black box, the dichotomy of the "Fall into the Future" theme communicates as an allegorical link between regression and progress, possibilities and impossibilities, problems and potentials, presented and hidden, clear and unclear, whose solution is in code 1:6:12.

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The installation shows 1 black cube, stretched by chains on its 6 sides, as accumulated energy and overstressed matter, passive and unusable in space, showing the state of the overcome and burdensome conventions of the institutional culture and their effect on new generations of artists and the act of art itself in whose frameworks are often trapped and/or stretched.

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Nowdays and the near future are the era of Remix culture, where act (of art) and work (of art) represent a constant regenerative collective activity, where they (the act and work), as material (data), process and medium (product), are recycled and updated in a continuous creative play (on the principles of digital tools of copy / cut and paste). It is this kind of play that inspires and reveals the last part of the code and the very essence of the art installation. By "tearing" six sides of the box into 12 equal parts, the tension is released and by intervention the stretched cube is divided into 12 swings, as active, usable elements - the symbols of the play of/and art, which are universal, wherever they are further set or appear as a place in the public space.

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In this act (way), the artist and the child who swings equate themselves in the playing man (homo ludens), and the odyssey of one idea, through this play and interaction, communicates and becomes socially distributed (shared) as a meaning or code of culture.

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tchnical description:

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The 60x60x60 cm cube is composed of 12 swings or 4 wooden boards: 60x30x3 cm, 54x30x3 cm and 54x27x3 cm, which are painted in black and interconnected with screws. On each board there are two U-threads (total 24) Ø 10 mm, fastened with nuts and washers at ~ 5 cm from the edge of the shorter side, linked with the 24 rows of chains (cables, ropes, etc.), which are connected to adequate elements on the site (silo, crane, wood...) by use of appropriate anchors, carabiniers, etc. By developing the concept of play of/and remix, the product obtained is disassembled (decoded) by tools and becomes the second product - a swingville in the public space.

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process chronicle:

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The ancient man, today's Homo Sapiens, met a daybreak of his consciousness (awareness) and awakening of reason in contact with the mysterious "black monolith", opening the portal to Altamira, in the distant time before the burning of his first flame.

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Millenniums later, at the present moment, the same "black box" - the carrier of record  (code) od space odyssey stands on the coordinates of the interstellar space portal. On the one side stands the Man, the contemporary artist, on the other, the Little Prince, the child of the universe. At the same time, with their hands they both reach the "black monolith".

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The field of portal is O:TVORENO (O:PEN) by contact. Only with the heart that Man can see rightly the code 1:6:12.

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In the spring of 2017, on the planet Earth, on the Internet, Stefan finds a contest for the "BLACK BOX" project within the Mikser Festival, which takes place in and between the silos, in the area of Žitomlin in Dorćol, in Belgrade. Faced with the current theme of the project "Fall into the Future", trying to solve the riddle of the BLACK BOX, he o:pens the portal to the other side, into the interstellar space of ideas, from where the coded message of the Little Prince comes.

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In order for the Little Prince to continue his space odyssey by unlocking the black monolith, AΔA has to recreate the same black box on Earth, transforming the code into a concept, the concept into a spatial installation.

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While there is a threat for the Little Prince to be trapped forever in the gravitational field of the black monolith, events on Earth take place in a joint action in a short four-day period:

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- Stefan takes the material for a black box and goes to Zvezdara, into a carpenter's workshop of Milan Gordić, with whose help he assembles the cube, which he carries to silos the next day.

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- The next day the workshop team of the AΔA group: Luka Višnjić, Lazar Stanojčić and Đorđe Milosavljević Gera are setting up the installation inside the space of a silo cylinder, and during that time Boris Nestorović is filming material for a short film about this action.

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- By opening of the festival, the exhibition opens, by opening of the exhibition the visitors collectively unlock the code of spatial installation O:TVORENO 1:6:12: A BLACK BOX ODYSSEY.

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- While on the last day of the festival Stefan and Luka o:penly share and exchange ideas in the "Black Box" discussion with Marko Lađušić, professor at the Faculty of Applied Arts, Dejan Miljković, professor at the Faculty of Architecture and other exhibitors, the Supernova of BLACK BOX gives birth to twelve swings that as a gift to other planets the Little Prince carries, on his journey IN THE SPACE OF FREEDOM...

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Thus the "black monolith" made Man, today's artist, become the Spaceman, a Man of (Architectural) Space / Cosmos.

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