Group exhibition “It’s ok I know what I’m doing”

gallery Reflektor, Užice, Serbia

Exhibitors: Siniša Radulović, Chitka, Slavica Obradović, Dušan Rajić, Jelena Pantelić, Ma Qiusha, Isidora Krstić, Marko Tirnanić, Rora Blue.

Curator: Teodora Jeremić

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Group exhibition “It’s ok I know what I’m doing”

gallery Reflektor, Užice, Serbia

Exhibitors: Siniša Radulović, Chitka, Slavica Obradović, Dušan Rajić, Jelena Pantelić, Ma Qiusha, Isidora Krstić, Marko Tirnanić, Rora Blue.

Curator: Teodora Jeremić

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The question perpetually arising from the urban hiatuses of the contemporary world: “What happens to the frontier once its cartographic line collapses?”^[1], is mutating and becoming even louder as a metaphor. Daily and in all fields, we encounter innumerable, invisible boundaries that we become aware of usually only after we touch them, and only then, faced with endangerment, or the complete collapse, of the fictitious freedom, we are finally becoming aware of the environment that shapes and defines it. Living in contemporaneity promises maximum freedom, the possibility of realization, and a free system, all of which turns out to be a fantasy, and the simulacrum of freedom, being the main characteristic of the “control society” of which Deleuze speaks^[2], proves to be the reality we actually live. Paradoxically, a significant part of this “control society” is voluntarily based: we are accepting corporative surveillance and use of cameras because it promises us protection, we are cooperating with applications and extensions stealing our data under the promise of safety, we are allowing to be tracked by sharing our location with different sites, because its much easier and comfortable to move around that way. Control is nowadays being sold under many different pseudonyms and false names and we are finding ourselves in a position of perpetual confusion, being free but constantly monitored, where we can do whatever we want but as long as “we have agreed that way”, and just until we don’t reach glass wall which informs us we shouldn’t go further. Therefore, the exhibition “It’s ok I know what I’m doing” rethinks and reflects the nature of social, personal and emotional control in all of its complexity, marked with its own contradictions and fractures, by mapping the shapes and forms it might take.

Intersubjective, better to say “external”, nature of control is not less delicate, and complicated in any way. Relationship between controlling and controlled factors, overlapping of a zone of control with a zone of safety, an urge for freedom and convenience that being controlled brings, prove to be very strongly interbred, and in her work “The Exoticiser” Isidora Krstić is asking, how does protection become confinement or vise versa? When we are talking about limits of control, are we talking about our personal limits of self-control (Rora Blue) or the maximum of control that could be imposed on us, on a political, social, physical, or emotional plan? Noticing, challenging, probing, questioning those limits and boundaries, already means reacting upon them, and in a berardian^[3] spirit that suicide could be understood as an ultimately effective action against oppression, and auto-destruction as a supreme gesture of salvation and re-taking control, Siniša Radulović is decoding how to delete yourself. In her work “All My Sharpness Comes From Your Hardness” Ma Quisha is dealing with the idea of giving the utter control to someone, and the consequences that might have on an individual. Slavica Obradović is looking for the safe ground and stabile position between “I have to” and “I want to”, wheres Jelena Pantelić is rethinking control in terms of her own identity both real and artificial.

Thus, talking about control at first place means talking about borders and boundaries, which are litmus paper of its potency and strength. Boundaries that we set, ones that are imposed on us, ones we want to respect, the others we are eager to challenge and provoke. The unstable ones, non-existent, tangible, permanent, consequential, necessary, unwanted, porous. Personal, social and emotional. Which attract and repel us simultaneously. Intertwined and fluid ones, which we often do not see, but constantly feel. Invisible pressure of invisible boundaries.

If we know that the precondition that has to be fulfilled in order for boundary to exist, is the role given to it- to be the zone where two sides are coming together so close they are almost becoming one, simultaneously keeping their integrity and being mutually detrimental and threating to collapse into each other, then boundary is the topos of decision and cognition. In such reality, sentence “I know what I’m doing” becomes an equivalent to “everything is under control” and through the words of (self)affirmation and pseudo-certainty, we are in fact speaking up about uncertainties, concerns, doubts, and incapabilities, as well as the necessity of taking actions and responsibilities for them. And if boundaries are synonymous for a place of perpetual inscribing and rewriting then “It’s ok, I know what I’m doing” behaves like polygon, a zone of transintimacy, where boundaries are being noticed, challenged, and inverted, and control is alternately being taken and given. As such, it treats the question of re-inscription of individuality and methods of how do we actually “take control” and create subjectivity in an age where is difficult to define what and where are the limits of both?”

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^[1] Vivian Ziherl, On the Frontier Again, dostupno na:  https://www.e-flux.com/journal/73/52560/on-the-frontier-again/, (maj 2016)

^[2] Gilles Deleuse, Postscript on the Societies of Control, October, Vol. 59, (1992)

^[3] Franco “Bifo” Berardi, “Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide (Futures)” (2015)

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