If “Big Chessboard” is the code Zbigniew Brzezinski his one-time view of the geopolitical scene, then the playground, i.e. the exhibition "Reframing.me" is an excellent answer, metaphor, expression, analysis and warning that the noted Montenegrin visual artist places through her work Maja Šofranac...
The exhibition is open in Podgorica's "Art" gallery on Independence Square until the end of the month, and the large attendance, both at the opening and until now, testifies to the authenticity and attractiveness of this concept, which subtly but also directly introduces the viewer into its world and displaces it from local to global or vice versa. In addition, Maja Šofranac presents herself at the Montenegrin Art Salon "13. novembar" in the Montenegrin Art Gallery "Miodrag Dado Đurić" whose selector she is Milica Bezmarević, also the curator of the exhibition in the "Art" gallery.
In an interview with "Vijesti", the visual artist Šofranac talks more about "Refraiming.me", the research process and life circumstances that brought her to the playground, figuratively or not, and through it all she also comments on the current circumstances in which we live and which we ourselves create. /we choose.
With the interactive, complex, fun, but also engaging exhibition "Reframing.me", you are presenting yourself in Podgorica after almost five years. What are the impressions so far, what about the opening, what later, how is the exhibition alive?
It is interesting to note the curiosity of visitors to the exhibition after the opening, which is certainly a more desirable reaction than the indifference and alienation that we often witness in galleries. The intention of the work is to talk about serious topics and uncertainties of the present moment in a fun and relaxed way. In this sense, the exhibition manages to communicate with the audience especially through its interactivity. My biggest impression was, however, in the moments of the installation itself before the opening, considering that I also saw some of the works for the first time in the space. Several workshops and collaborators were involved in the creation of the works, which made the installation itself even more complex and challenging. The opening was attended, and I believe that the very position of the Art gallery contributes to greater attendance of the exhibition after the opening.
You are once again bringing something completely different to our art scene. How was the installation created and what and how much has changed from "Immune System" to this exhibition?
The circumstances are really new and different compared to the last presentation in Podgorica, both for me personally and for us as a company. In the meantime, I became a mother and that new experience brought a lot more artistic incubation in terms of the formation of some new ideas and new views on the world. The setting can therefore be read from the point of view of constructive adaptation to new circumstances, which is the central idea of the entire setting. The inspiration for the exhibition did come from my personal everyday life, because now I spend a lot of time with my daughter on the playground, but it is also related to the collective, in this case the context is a socio-political moment in Montenegro, but also in the world. Thus, the exhibition 'Reframing.me' is a project inspired by a children's playground, which is placed in the context of the current Montenegrin socio-cultural reality of multi-layered crises which, unfortunately, have become our normality. On the children's playground, a variety of repetitive movements engage the body in many exciting ways. In the socio-political context, constant movement in a circle, left-right, up-down and back-and-forth, produces stagnation, regression and in the long run has a destructive and destabilizing effect on the entire social and individual being.
As you said, the playground is an inspiration, but at the same time an object and a place of action, when it comes to your exhibition. What is the center but also the motive of the setting, I would say, is located exactly on that playground, which, however innocent, naive and sincere it may seem, is much more serious and complex. Through the symbolism of the playground, you presented your view of some global events, but also the contradictions of perceptions... What should the audience expect at your playground?
In the process of creating the works, innocent and recognizable elements of the playground were used, in which certain changes were made that point to non-functionality, reducing immediate pleasure to impossibility; for example instead of swings, transparent Plexiglas figures hang on the structure - symbolizing the citizens; the see-saw hits the floor on a pile of metal elements that says "war", thus producing a "clink" of metal. On the other hand, the setting is interactive and leaves visitors with the possibility of choice and decision, such as which way to walk through the floor graphics or to solve the labyrinth in which the word "peace" is written at the end. The intention of the work is to try to reflect the current socio-political reality of meaningless movement in a circle through artistic activity and to increase the awareness of one's own actions by leading the visitor to the presence and possibility of decision.
What welcomes the visitor at the very entrance to the space are the words on the wall that the child addresses to the mother, which later echo through the gallery and are spoken by your daughter. Seemingly simple questions that follow your perhaps everyday walk, turn out to be important and fateful if they are asked at a higher level. Do you intentionally include your little girl in all of this, and can a child's voice sometimes overpower the murmur of adults?
In reality, a child's voice will rarely overpower the murmur of adults, but in this exhibition, the child's voice is dominant in an intervention that aims to show reality from a different angle and awaken us adults from a confused state. It's my little girl's voice because it felt most natural to work with her through our games and through the personal experience of seeing the world again through her eyes. But in the setting of the exhibition, it is actually the questioning voice of the youngest generation, the voice of the future that has yet to come and which we need to be a call to constructive social action. At a time of great changes, uncertainty and collective confusion, some simple and seemingly banal words can become clear guidelines for overcoming destructive processes or recognizing polarized extremes in terms of the question of what we really want - war or peace?; Left or right?; Forward or backward? On the floor graphics of the installation, there are inscriptions like, "balance", "jump", "avoid", "follow", "copy", etc... which can entertain and engage the youngest visitors of the exhibition, but in a figurative sense they refer to desirable and undesirable skills that can help or hinder us to catch the rhythm of the chaotic spins of the modern world.
In addition to the name of the installation and the written words, which are perhaps the core of everything, there is also one installation that will be separate from the rest of the installation, but is clearly part of the whole.
The name of the exhibition is "Reframing", which is a term taken from psychotherapy that implies a change in the context of viewing certain circumstances and relationships from negative to positive. Changing the way of thinking is the conceptual basis of the work of "Memory Cells", which is based on the story of gender equality and the negative patterns of patriarchal social organization that we pass on from generation to generation. The work consists of two figures of a man and a woman in carved plexiglass of equal size and appearance, which turn around each other, while in the background the voice of a mother whispering a lullaby and a little girl repeating the words "Here in Montenegro I am worth as much as he is heard , We are free, We are equal''...
The message of the work is that a positive transformation of the mindset or view of the world is possible and necessary, and if we all apply it in our personal lives, it will lead to a positive change in society.
Has your view of society, art, and even politics changed since the moment you became a mother or found out you were going to be a mother? What is the most obvious change in that context?
As a mother, I am more sensitive to instabilities, crises and fears that come with big and fast changes. However, it is art that acts out of fear and transforms it into a call for constructive social action.
This exhibition is the product of a personal, sincere attempt to reflect and transform fear and uncertainty into a new constructive value.
With this setting, you offered the observer an unusual context and (in)directly let him know that he/she is wondering and that he/she can find and offer a solution. Has man realized that he has the power to influence things and life, primarily his own?
Man has the absolute power to influence his life path and his choices, but he is usually not aware of it. Man has been given a sublime consciousness, but he often reduces it to the unconsciousness of a machine. That is why, through my work, I question the deviations of the individual and social being, the harmful conformism through which a person drowns his awareness in the unconsciousness of the mass or system and thus loses the freedom of self-determination and the potential realization of his wholeness.
Interactive exhibitions in Montenegro are rare... What prompted you to come up with such a concept? Do you communicate with the audience in some way?
Contemporary art is often quite alienated from the observer, and my intention was that through the exhibition setting the observer would experience himself as part of the work and in that way better and more closely connect with the work of art, which at the same time invites presence and points to the possibility of decision .
That is why interactivity is an important part of the exhibition, as for example in the work "Reframing mindset - segmented body", which was specially programmed for the needs of the exhibition, and is based on the principle of artificial intelligence, by means of which the computer learns to recognize the human body and separates it from other objects in space. thus transferring the image of our body and movements to the wall in real time.
For me, this process is inspiring because only with the presence of a real active being - the observer - the work exists, but it must be viewed through a transparent Plexiglas figure that symbolizes a passive body, after which we see an electronic body that the projector transmits to the wall as our simulation.
Are you confronting a computer program and artificial intelligence with the warmth of the human body and human movements, or are you actually connecting and bringing them together? What is your position on the issue of all general digitization and the representation of artificial intelligence? How does this technology correspond with art?
We live in a period of accelerated high-tech revolution, in a period of technologically determined cyber culture where electronic interaction has replaced the traditional understanding of communication that requires physical contact. It is clear that alienation and automation are becoming a significant sociocultural problem, a kind of cyber epidemic that has penetrated the immune system of a social being. Cyberculture embraces new interpersonal relationships or new people who are unlike their industrial ancestors. Today's postmodern generations socialize in cyberspace, shop, live and work online. In this sense, we can read the general digitalization from both a positive and a negative side. While the benefits of digitization are clear and desirable, it is necessary to constantly work on the negative consequences, and the key is again human awareness and presence.
In the case of my art, contemporary technology is just another new medium through which it operates and which helps me more directly analyze and question our new cyber reality.
You are currently in your final year of doctoral studies at the University of Arts in Belgrade. I assume that you are working on the preparation of your doctoral thesis. Will they be related to this setting and how much?
In my doctoral studies, I am about to defend my doctoral thesis, which will be scheduled by the end of the year. The doctoral art project is actually based on the exhibition "Immune System" which was exhibited at the Contemporary Art Center in Podgorica in 2018 and was also presented in Belgrade in February of this year. The exhibition is accompanied by a theoretical explanation of the work I worked on in previous years.
The exhibition Reframing.me is a new cycle after doctoral studies.
Are you continuing to research this topic or has that period closed for now? What are the plans for the future?
Each new project is only a part of the artistic research process and an inspiration and starting point for further work. My intention is certainly to try to organize my time in a way that enables me to continue active engagement in art with a focus on modern man and his complex relationship to himself and the society in which he lives.
Turn the world we live in upside down
You have in some way added the Montenegrin context to the term "Reframing" with the domain "me"... In this sense, how do you look at the changes that are happening here, whether they are visible or perceptible, from those that are reflected in the way of thinking, expressing, dialing...? Are change and freedom proportional values in today's systems at any level (individual, local, global)?
The socio-political vortex that we are currently living in Montenegro really seems like an upside down world. In the current Montenegrin moment, the prevailing feeling is that the citizen's voice fails to be heard over the deafening noise in which collective immaturity emerges. In addition, the whole world is turning to the right, nationalisms, fascisms and dark spirits from the not-so-distant past are awakening.
Change in the current Montenegrin and global moment is becoming the only constant and it is crucial that we manage to balance in the same rhythm and stay awake because man has the power to choose his own path. As he says Sartre - choosing myself, I choose a man. I perceive changes in themselves as opportunities for new growth. Changing thinking and action from destructive to constructive is the central idea of the exhibition. However, a change for the worse in the long run becomes frightening and in that case we as a society have to react and stop the destructive processes.
If analyzed at a deeper level, the anxiety that arises due to change plays an important role in people's lives. Anxiety is the initiator of human self-reflection. Anxiety is a condition for further action, and the present moment is an opportunity for it.
What exactly is art?
Why is activism important to you and is it possible to create in isolation from reality and all the circumstances that happen, whether you choose them or not? How much is it up to artists and intellectuals to express their views with their own works and voices, indirectly/directly or not?
I think that art should act from the present moment and sometimes ahead of its time, even though there is neither a simple nor an unequivocal answer to the question - what is art?... In its very status, art offers a multi-layered, multi-voiced concept, subject to complex interpretations and analyses, but it is also in constant movement and rebellion against unequivocal and constantly overturning, destabilizing and violating all realistic ideas that the world has about itself. Therefore, I also think that artists should talk about the present moment through their artistic activity, to critically review, ask and analyze questions, phenomena and relationships that are of personal but also collective importance, especially in times of great crises and changes such as this one we are currently living.
Bonus video:
