Underskog

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ARTIST-TALK: Wednesday Nov 21st, 6pm
— in Knut Knaus auditorium, KMD, Møllendalsveien 61

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SCREENING: Thursday — Sunday: 5pm, 6pm & 7pm
— at Entrée

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Entrée is pleased to present ‘Reenactment/Process’ and ‘Reprise/Response’ by Damir Avdagic. These films both deal with issues of historical memory and identity, and reflect on how the past echoes into the present.

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The backdrop is the conflict in Ex-Yugoslavia, which Avdagic’s family fled from in 1993 to Norway. Through various strategies, Avdagic himself together with several participants perform recorded dialogues, letters, documents and conversations, which are circumscribed by this same historical event. Through the various symptomatic reactions occurring in these performance procedures, he creates a space for contemplation on how history is passed between generations and what effect it bears on cultural identity, nationality and the self.

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In ‘Reenactment/Process’ (2015-2016) four young people read trial transcripts from the ‘International Criminal Tribunal’ from the Former Yugoslavia. The contributors are all originally from Ex-Yugoslavia, representing every ethnicity involved in the conflict in the early 90s. After each reading, the participants spontaneously engage in longer conversations about the effect of the conflict in their households and the various generational divides and frictions between their own generation and their parents’ relating to this history.

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‘Repriza/Uzvracanje’ (Reprise/Response) (2018) continues this investigation by engaging with four members of their parents’ generation. The participants perform a transcript of the conversation from Avdagic’s previous film ‘Reenactment/Process’, and respond to its content, commenting on issues of responsibility, guilt, shame and the legacy of Communism in the wake of the conflict in Ex-Yugoslavia.

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Damir Avdagic (b. 1987 in Banja Luka, Bosnia & Hercegovina) is an interdisciplinary artist living between Oslo, Norway and New York, US. He is educated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen (2013), and carries an MFA from the Interdisciplinary Studio program at UCLA, Los Angeles (2016). He is the recipient of a number of grants and prizes including The Fulbright Scholarship, NORAM Scholarship, Bildende Kunstneres Hjelpefond Photography Prize, The International Studio and Curatorial Program (New York) through Office for Contemporary Art Norway. His work has been presented at KALA Arts Institute, Berkeley, California, US; Novsky Projects, Los Angeles, US; Fotogalleriet, Oslo, Norway and Kristiansand Kunsthall, Norway amongst others.

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