Catalogue > At random

Investigating the relationship of the nationalism towards nature, the work explores the nuances between the political and the escapist. In the film, a central part of the installation, nature is understood as a space beyond: beyond language, culture, media, and as the protagonist realizes, the nature seems to be the very product of that which it is supposed to be an escape from. Through the contemplation of the narrator and the imagery of national and nature parks, film There Aren`T Words for What We Do or How We Feel so We Have to Make Them Up explores both the film medium and the notion of the ?national essence?. Images of nature become the impulse for rethinking of the relationship between representation and reality or rather the relationship of the image and the myth of the nation ? quintessentially connected with the given territory. Through various topographies, from open plains to mountain peaks, the relationship of the narration and the image is free association. The camera intentionally avoids canonical, recognizable natural motives, so they can be placed everywhere and nowhere at the same time. This is also the reason the narrator is not a native English speaker.

Fokus Grupa is an artist collective based in Rijeka and Zagreb, Croatia. Their practice is collaborative and interdisciplinary, and they work across art, design and curating. Their artistic strategies take political shape, without becoming a representational form of ?political art?. Fokus Grupa concentrate on the relations between art and its public manifestations, in terms of working culture, aesthetics, and social and economic exchange values. Their work investigates the inherent power structures of the (art)system. To this effect, they explore it?s economic, spatial and legal implementations. They also explore ways in which politics employs artistic or esthetic means to (mis)appropriate and instrumentalize emotions, reclaiming certain methods back into their art practice. The collective tries to expand the boundaries of the art work, using printed matter, films and installations, works on paper, discussions, workshops and texts. Shows at museums & galleries; Gitte Bohr Gallery (Berlin), NOVA Gallery (Zagreb), GMK Gallery (Zagreb), NCCA (Moscow), HVCCA (New York), MOCA (Rijeka), MOCA (Zagreb), MOCA (Ljubljana), ACCA (Melbourne), SKUC Gallery (Ljubljana), Calvert 22 Gallery (London), Furini Arte Contemporanea (Roma), O3one Gallery, (Belgrade), Jakopic Gallery (Ljubljana), New Art Exchange (Nottingham), Fabbrica del Vapore (Milano)