Red Shoes of Desire

Click on the image above to watch video sample (2:19)

Getting used to life in a different country has something of a dream logic. To exist between two worlds, the new one and the one we left, is to travel between dream and waking, or perhaps between two dreams nested within each other. It is hard to know which is which – is the new home dreamt within the dream of the old, or vice versa.
Red Shoes from Oz are a link between two worlds: a part of our Belgrade childhood and yet originating from America, they magically transport from world to world. This video installation juxtaposes a series of photos taken in Belgrade during the 1999 bombing showing ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances with reminiscences and reflections, coming years later, of Vesna Djuricic, a Belgrade artist who stayed with Gordana during these 3 months in 1999. These reminiscences and reflections are in great part about the experience of dislocation, of being far away from what one considers “home.” They are told in English translation thus doubling the trans-location upon itself: words of someone in Belgrade addressed to a friend in Canada brought back to Belgrade but translated in the process. The photos seem quite ordinary snapshots until realization slowly dawns of their context.

 

Overall concept: Gordana Živković
Video-editing & narration: Gordana Živković
Text: Vesna Djuričić
Photos: Vesna Djuričić & Gordana Živković Camera: Chris Fletcher
Translation, statement and sound editing: Marko Živković