Their spatial dramaturgy guides one through a blur of real and dream-like sites. One passes through rural and urban environments, open and enclosed spaces, a cave, archival storage facilities, dinner parties, war zones, and ghostly gatherings. A single turned-on ceiling light seems to echo a clearing in a forest. All other light is carried by the works themselves, giving each scenery its ambiance.
Giddy Flames refers to the architecture and history of both the exhibition space and Privredni Grad or Trade City, the underground shopping mall that hosts it. Well past its prime, most of its stores seem to be abandoned or closed, echoing the twilight grey of the show’s dimly lit scenery. The exhibition follows an idea of a magical place, hidden in the dark and forgotten corners of this relict of 20th-century architecture—a place where things follow a different logic. The shopping mall is located in the center of Skenderija, a cultural, sports, and trade center since 1969 in Sarajevo.
T: What’s up, boys? So what do you guys wanna do today?
J: Dude, you wanna crash the mall?
T: Nice! Okay!
(gentle guitar music)
J: You come over unannounced.
T: Dressed up like you’re something else. Some ghost. When you become…
J: Uh-huh.
T: ‚Cause life’s like this, uh-huh…
(heavy pop-rock music)
T: Chill out, whatcha yellin‘ for?
J: A blur of real and dream-like sites
T: That’s the way it is, ‚cause life’s like this.
(drum break)
J: You know you’re not fooling anyone
T: Lay back, it’s all been done before
J: I see the way you’re turning this into a magical place, hidden in the dark and forgotten corners of this relic of 20th century consumer architecture.
T: A place where things follow a different logic?
J: No, no, no
(late 2000 deathcore music)
T: And you fall, and you crawl, and you break…And you take what you get – infrastructure, storage spaces and hijacked light systems…a whole shopping mall – and you turn it into…objects.
J: Honesty and promise me, I’m never gonna find you fake it as characters, architectures, spatial cues or interfaces.
T: Where you are, and where it’s at, you see
A cocktail of euphoria and regrets working through your system as you wait 18 minutes for the last bus. Or you ran and just made it inside as the door was closing. Dizzy head. A single light is flickering in the back of the bus. There’s only you, the driver, a girl with leather headphones, whose flaky skin is covered with stuffed animal stickers, X’s where their eyes used to be, and the skater boy who used to bully you in high school (except you are 23 and he is somehow 40 and balding). The driver squints under a tiny reading lamp, identifying coins for change. The girl’s face glows in the light of her phone. Shadowy figures rush past the windows as the bus takes off.
Exhibition: Giddy Flames curated by: Teuta Jonuzi & Julian Siffert
Artists: adO-Aptive (Janina Weißengruber & Daniel Hüttler), Teuta Jonuzi, Sebastian Koeck, Lucille Leger, Ana Likar, Fritjof Krabbe Nørretranders, Julian Siffert, Lisa Sifkovits, Kai Philip Trausenegger, Helen Weber, Lulzim Zeqiri
Exhibition duration: August 30 – September 22, 2024
Venue: Collegium Artisticum, Terezija bb, Centar Skenderija, Sarajevo
