VIDEO TRAFFIC
A Project by Natasha Vujkov
After a three-month residence stay in Sofia earlier this year, the Serbian artist Natasha Vujkov presents a video installation dedicated to the city and its traffic police.
As many other visitors coming for the first time to Bulgaria, Natasha is surprised to find the hexagonal one-legged police kiosks perched on the big crossroads in the city. After some assumptions and unsuccessful guesses about their function, she finds out that these bizare structures, „neither on the ground, nor in the sky“ are there to control the traffic and change the lights at crossroads. And that immediately triggers her curiosity – what sort of workplace that is, what it feels like to stay in such a wierd panopticum for a whole day and observe the cars and the people on the street. Do the policemen working there get bored, have they invented some special pastimes to amuse themselves?
After a couple of lessons in Bulgarian and having prepared a list of questions the artist tries to speak to one of these policemen. And not surprisingly, finds out that she needs a permission from the press office of the Ministry of Interior.
Using videomapping and projecting on multiple surfaces, in her installation Natasha Vujkov creates a panoramic view, showing the viewer how the city looks from behind the dark windows of police kiosks. Unfortunately she never manages to make an interview with a traffic policeman, but at least shares with us her experience with the press office of the Ministry of Interior. As we had the chance to find out recently with music concerts and commissioned songs, the PRs of this ministry actually do have creative approach to building its public image.Yet, it seems they are not interested in collborations.
The residency of Natasha Vujkov was realized within the framework of an exchange programme between InterSpace Association, Sofia, kuda.org, Novi Sad and Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart and was supported by Allianz Kulturstiftung.
18 – 22 August 2010
The Fridge, Sofia,122 Ovche Pole str.