Damir Avdagic: Koga ujede zmija, taj se i guštera boji (The one who is bitten by the snake also fears the lizard)

For iLyd, Damir Avdagic will present a short sound piece comprised of material from two different video projects, namely Reenactment/Process from 2016 and Untitled which is currently in progress. The works make up a body of work in which members of two generations talk about a shared history, reflecting on dilemmas of trans-generational transmission, reconciliation and the historical symptoms carried by subjects in the present.

Untitled was shot during Avdagic ́s artist residency in 2016-2017 at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in Brooklyn, New York which was awarded by The Office of Contemporary Art in Oslo, Norway.

The name of the sound piece is “Koga ujede zmija, taj se i guštera boji (The one who is bitten by the snake also fears the lizard).” It is found on www.ilyd.nu

About Damir Avdagic
Damir Avdagic was born on June 22nd, 1987 in Banja Luka, Bosnia & Hecegovina. He is educated at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark (2008-2014) and at The University of California, UCLA, Los Angeles (2013-2016). Avdagic’s work uses video, performance and text to address issues of historical memory and identity. His working method is influenced by psychoanalytic theory and focuses on the analysis of speech; recorded words, sentences or whole spoken narratives, which are circumscribed by the same historical event. This material becomes the starting point for projected image installations, based on performances in which the recordings are translated, re-enacted, rehearsed and filmed. The conflict in Ex-Yugoslavia from which his family fled in 1993 to Norway, constitutes the historical background for his work. Rather than a historical exposé, Avdagic’s project is an attempt to trace the effects of a historical time period on different generations. The work is an excavation of historical material as it is stored inside human subjects, in the form of symptomatic gestures and voices. Through this process he questions how past events continue to effect ideas of nationality, cultural identity and self.

Kilde: ilyd