Olja Triaška Stefanovič

• In 2009 I had the first show after graduating at university,00:00:19.380
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• where I have presented a photography series entitled 'Pink Shadows'.00:00:24.220
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• I was interested in the deception of viewers00:00:28.460
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• by simulating places,00:00:32.890
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• social phenomena,00:00:37.350
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• and everything that happens on a TV screen one watches at home and identifies with it.00:00:41.600
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• For some time I've been making photos of film studios at the moments00:00:47.050
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• when they are not used, when they are having their 'silent moment'.00:00:51.160
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• I was interested in the accumulation of all the things, social things,00:00:58.460
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• you can find in the individual studio segments.00:01:02.960
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• You can find there a bedroom, a gynecological chair.00:01:07.260
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• I have been making all the photographs with technical lighting.00:01:11.430
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• I was curious how the background00:01:15.880
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• of the simulation looked like.00:01:20.180
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• Back then, in 2009, I have started to pursue the question of what is, actually, the stage.00:01:24.450
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• The first output was this show,00:01:30.790
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• where I have studied various forms of stage in contemporary society.00:01:34.990
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• And I was interested in the relationship between the stage and the auditorium.00:01:40.650
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• Paradoxically, my focus didn't lie in the theatrical kind of stage -00:01:45.720
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• I was looking for other kinds.00:01:50.020
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• The initial fascination and interest00:01:54.400
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• came from the stages in cultural centers,00:01:58.770
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• that is a special kind of buildings00:02:02.990
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• that have been built00:02:08.110
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• since, essentially, 1950s, but the biggest boom happened in 1970s in Slovakia.00:02:12.490
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• I was interested mainly in the message the stages in the cultural centers carry.00:02:16.970
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• What kinds of sediment are there.00:02:21.600
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• Like, for example, what does the fact00:02:25.840
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• that there is a motivation of political ideology behind the construction of the stage,00:02:30.010
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• mean for a viewer sitting in auditorium.00:02:34.130
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• I have been making photos, again, of empty auditorium, without people,00:02:38.390
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• without the viewers, and, once again, I am interested in the viewer's position.00:02:42.470
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• It was made as large format photography, exhibited in such way00:02:46.740
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• that the auditorium faced the stage and the viewer has found himself in-between them.00:02:50.950
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• He had to confront the fact that he is being part of both stage and auditorium.00:02:55.440
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• Then I had elaborated on the idea00:03:01.160
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• by exploring the deceptive stage of television00:03:05.457
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• by making photographs in the news studio of Slovak Television00:03:14.257
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• as a source of deception00:03:18.539
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• that streams directly to our living rooms.00:03:22.663
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• And we have the power to change the deception00:03:27.038
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• because we have a remote control.00:03:31.199
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• Sometimes it makes me very angry00:03:37.077
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• to see all the things that take place on the TV screen00:03:41.174
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• and the way we are confronted, willingly or unwillingly,00:03:45.509
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• with all the reality shows imposed on the ordinary viewer.00:03:49.892
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• And I perceive it as a kind of aggression.00:03:56.090
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• The next part of the project, though separated...00:04:00.211
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• this is the way it looked like when exhibited.00:04:04.668
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• It's a black and white photography and it's a zoo.00:04:08.709
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• And the zoo is interesting because it is essentially a stage, too.00:04:12.909
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• This is lion and these are... It's the Prague zoo.00:04:17.230
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• I was looking for the best stage there; it had to be the right shape.00:04:21.622
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• These are lions and tigers - caged.00:04:26.078
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• It has a ground plan of a stage.00:04:30.238
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• But the interesting thing is that the zoo00:04:34.851
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• was built for the purpose of entertainment and education.00:04:38.999
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• Therefore, the simulation of the environment is better in the states that are economically better off.00:04:43.256
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• It means that the wealthier country invests more to its zoos as well, paradoxically.00:04:48.542
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• The zoo has then more options to simulate the environment better.00:04:53.842
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• And we watch the animals,00:05:02.473
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• caged for our sake, so that we can see the living beings, walking around in their cages,00:05:07.159
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• and get to know them.00:05:12.554
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• The last element of the exhibition was, actually, a small installation.00:05:17.591
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• It's a photo wallpaper I had bought in Hornbach00:05:23.802
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• and it's about the feeling of having one's own private stage.00:05:28.106
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• All of us want our lives to be better and more beautiful00:05:33.693
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• and we want it here and now.00:05:38.010
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• We want to find ourselves on some beach on Pacific Islands,00:05:42.268
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• so we go to Hornbach and we buy the photo wallpaper00:05:46.656
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• and we place it in our living room. We put there a chair and then we watch it.00:05:50.862
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• We simulate the dreamed-of idea of our lives.00:05:54.975
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• Last thing I made, it's a sketch; I have been making photographs of a political stage,00:06:00.182
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• the stage in parliament, with auditorium captured.00:06:04.591
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• I am going to go on with this.00:06:08.905
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• There is the idea of power, as of stage.00:06:12.939
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• It's a bunker of politicians.00:06:19.865
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• Every time I find myself in this place it feels like 2005;00:06:23.583
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• as if the time stopped here. It's kind of a cancellation of time and space.00:06:30.251
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• Because the city space behind me, this gap00:06:34.759
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• has been a subject of my photographic exploration since 2005.00:06:39.033
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• While having the first solo show00:06:44.447
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• I thought I won't be making photos of the city gaps anymore.00:06:48.573
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• But I can't give it up. I will probably keep on making photographs of the gap00:06:52.840
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• until they build something here. Because it still fascinates me;00:06:57.064
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• it's beautiful in autumn, like a flowery garden.00:07:03.133
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• It keeps on changing. Now it's overgrown.00:07:07.510
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• Another time, suddenly someone comes and mows the lawn,00:07:13.407
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• and there is magic in it, for I am never here to see anyone coming here00:07:17.321
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• and taking care of it, beautifying it.00:07:21.498
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• A lots of stuff here; this is garbage.00:07:26.355
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• And it is starting to rain now, to drizzle.00:07:32.691
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• But it's a beautiful light for photography.00:07:39.981
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• One would make here great photos now.00:07:44.302
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• We're here.00:07:48.267
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• The weird thing is, when I started to take interest in the place,00:07:59.133
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• I wondered what it actually is, what happens when you tear down a building00:08:04.416
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• and such empty space remains,00:08:09.458
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• what information do we have about 'before' and 'after',00:08:13.706
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• and what is our stake in knowing all this.00:08:19.618
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• I have been looking for such a space for a long time.00:08:23.467
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• And when I found it, in 2005, suddenly there have been other similar interesting gaps00:08:27.842
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• occurring around Bratislava.00:08:32.655
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• Then I went on making photos of them in Budapest or Novi Sad.00:08:36.517
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• And then I started to study people's reactions to me making photos of the gaps.00:08:40.846
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• The utter lack of understanding of me doing so when there is nothing to capture; it's empty.00:08:45.167
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• So I started to talk to them and some of the reactions were marvelous;00:08:49.520
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• I came to find out about the house that used to stand here.00:08:53.917
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• That there was a man living here who was a shoemaker,00:08:58.140
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• if I recall it correctly, and he provided the Jelenia Street with specific coloring.00:09:02.714
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• Even the hill over there appeared here under weird circumstances,00:09:12.082
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• I don't know where from.00:09:16.104
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• It's a kind of a visual sociological study of space,00:09:19.966
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• of a new space in city.00:09:24.339
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• In 2004, when I made the first photo of a cycle, a photo of Central Baths00:09:34.429
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• that were devastated and waiting for a demolition.00:09:38.921
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• It was some week prior to the demolition that I made the photograph.00:09:45.616
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• It my first entering the city,00:09:49.959
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• entering spaces that were telling stories00:09:54.274
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• about people taking a bath there, people who had experienced the meaning of the place.00:09:58.807
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• I started to explore the architecture of the city even more.00:10:04.601
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• And then I came to realize that it is also my personal search00:10:08.997
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• for a new space to live in, since I have changed the environment I live in.00:10:13.334
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• I came as young, 18-year old to a foreign country I didn't know anything about.00:10:17.620
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• So I was looking for my own place here. So, going through devastated, lost places,00:10:21.800
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• I was getting familiar with the story.00:10:26.255
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• And all the places I have photographed,00:10:37.462
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• like Hviezda, a garden cinema, or Grössling Baths,00:10:41.697
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• talk about something,00:10:45.832
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• the sediment does.00:10:50.062
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• And then I was also asking people what it is to them,00:10:54.097
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• like, for example the garden cinema Hviezda. There is a lot of emotion on the photographs,00:10:58.211
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• even though it's a static shot.00:11:03.311
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• Like an impersonal photography.00:11:15.637
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• Therefore I think it is exactly the kind of photography00:11:19.849
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• that is cleansed of people and deception, capturing the space the way it is,00:11:24.203
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• the kind that offers emotion, feelings and experience encoded in the place.00:11:35.438
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• And that's the way it is, in all of those years,00:11:44.138
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• I have become someone who captures all the dead spaces,00:11:48.370
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• and it feels like a funeral being held in those places.00:11:52.686
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• The last of them was Alexis, a book store I made photographs of.00:11:57.068
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• And while making the photos00:12:01.439
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• I felt all the original lively attributes of the space were eliminated;00:12:05.768
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• what remained were empty, clean shelves.00:12:10.070
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• And I felt there nostalgia, melancholy.00:12:14.429
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• And the melancholy may be found in all of my photographs.00:12:18.816
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• Like the Grössling Baths photographs00:12:23.036
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• - it seems to me as if it's almost a meditative photography.00:12:27.203
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• One can look at it and think about those years, 1920 or 1930,00:12:31.593
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• when it was operational,00:12:35.831
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• and how did it change throughout time, and how many people were there and saw it,00:12:39.988
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• and it's still standing there, in Old Town, and it's still out of use00:12:44.660
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• and nobody cares.00:12:49.019
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• It's in private hands and there is no interest in revitalizing it.00:12:54.747

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