Looking Backward
Pedrag Pajdic
Predrag Pajdic, Reality Check No1, 2005, C-type print on aluminium.
Using sound, installation, video and photography, the exhibition Minority Reportby I set out to explore and reconstruct the reasons for my departure from the former Yugoslavia in the 80s. In addition, it investigates why I decided to immigrate and assemble my new home in the UK.
“Minority Report”is an exhibition about the proximity of art and life against the backdrop of contemporary politics exploring issues of memory, belief, ethnic minorities, exile and displaced national identity. After 15 years of exile I returned to my homeland just to find that the country I had left no longer existed. I found the place torn apart with a different name and different borders.
The work ranges from interviews with old childhood friends and family to archival material as well as images from public spaces that are no longer recognizable to me. Reality Check and Minority Report are two new works specially commissioned by Focal Point Gallery and reflect my aspiration to capture my own observations and experiences of my homeland. In Why I Left (2003, 2 single channel video) the I posed the question, “Why do you think I left Yugoslavia?” to various figures from my past and present, including my mother and family, revisited childhood friends, teachers as well as friends from the UK. This work examines the reasons why I left the country from the interviewees’ subjective perspectives. However, through these questions, the interviewees discover their own personal memories and impressions not only of the artist but also of the nation as a whole. In turn, these works operate as inverted self-portraits, paradoxically questioning their own beliefs, identities and memories.
The work Hero, 2003, is an installation of 5 lightboxes and sound. The photographs of blurred images, taken in Kalemegdan, the central public park in the heart of Belgrade, represent the plethora of bronze busts dotted around the park celebrating the lives of supposedly famous Serbian (formerly Yugoslav) historical figures. With the demise of the former Yugoslavia the non-Serb historical figures (Croats, Slovenians and others) vanished, leaving behind unfilled empty spaces. Those that did remain, in other words Serb nationals, represent a revisionist historical narrative of the former Yugoslavia and are therefore considered insignificant by the artist. Each lightbox is accompanied by past propaganda, Yugoslav anthems and Tito speeches. The anthems glorify those heroes which are no longer considered part of Serbian history. They refer back to this imaginary nation, a symbolic nation that only ever existed in the imaginary space, a fictional nation for a fictional people.
