Belgrade on Screens Before the War / Before the Truth (Cut 1)

Background

The topic of the project "Belgrade on Screens", its initial structure, purpose, and relevance having been introduced during the last CA2RE conference in Hamburg (March 2021), it is perhaps more beneficial to continue the discussion based on previous remarks, including implicit further elaboration on aspects listed above.

After some first reflections on the central notion of this research — dis/continuity — one of the challenges is to break such a wide and complex concept into several subcategories for an easier overview. By doing so, it is necessary to decide which types of dis/continuity will be taken into account. Moreover, valued subjective (individual) positioning and emotional commitment are acknowledged as crucial starting points. Thus, the main goal is to translate this relational-situational practice to an ideological-political (global) sphere, and move progressively away from the personal approach. Discussing deeper ethical sides of dis/continuity can, indeed, justify the project's relevance and its further application. Lastly, it seems essential to insist on the nature and the target of the outcome, because it will vary depending on whether the goal is to show or change dis/continuity. However, it is by no means a question of resolving it, but rather reinterpreting and recontextualizing. To avoid undesirable surprises, it is wise to start experimenting with selected material as soon as possible. "Cut 1" is the first fragment.

Cut 1

Originally imagined as a multi-channel video work, "Cut 1" forms a dialogue mainly between two particularly contrasting films: "Before the War" (d. Vuk Babić, 1966) (Fig. 1) and "Before the Truth" (d. Kokan Rakonjac, 1968) (Fig. 2). At first glance, the only factual elements that seem to bring these two films on a comparable level are the moment of their production and their somewhat evocative titles. For example, while the first film is a comedy set in the interbellic period, the other is a Black Wave 1 drama picturing contemporary issues. Nonetheless, protagonists narrated by Rakonjac are haunted by their respective traumas from World War II. In fact, if we take a closer look at the represented places (space) and dynamics (society), we will start noticing multiple visual correspondences as well as thematic or even verbal superpositions. Ironically, the same type of discontinuity happens by the end of "Before the War" as at the beginning of "Before the Truth". This link automatically appears as a continuous and logical course of events. Although nothing seems to unite them, both stories may melt into one and unique reinterpretation of the past, by a combination of parallel or intersected scenes that create subliminal echoes with today. The intention is to "rethink" (reformulate) the past as a form of response (or question) to current sociopolitical challenges.

Reformulations: awareness, rich language, playful lexicon

To determine any project, it is important to use precise words. But when it comes to design-driven research (DDr), the addressed topic REFORMULATION invites us to pay even more attention to the vocabulary. Each term should be considered carefully, before being introduced. For instance, there is one word that should be used with higher concern, as it is charged with heavy connotations and could be misread: urbicide. Although it means "the destruction of a city or its character", 2 it has to be considered on a larger scale. Noting how often this word appears in political discourse, it is disturbing to witness at the same time its normalization, trivialization, and even sensationalism.

The proposed project is, per se, a reformulation: of history and memory; of cinema and television; of a city and its performances. The full title — "Belgrade on Screens: Visions of Continuous Discontinuities" — and previously described processes suggest a combination of different VISIONS. In this particular context, employed and implied polysemy is worth mentioning.

Firstly, the subject's main entity being films, visions refer foremost to the "ability to see". Conversely, audiovisual material influences viewers' "idea or imagined mental image of something" while powerfully affecting their "experience in which [they] see things that do not exist physically". Simultaneously, although "beautiful and impressive sight" commonly applies to a person, we can associate it with the city as a cinematic aestheticized leading character. Finally, the "ability to imagine how something could develop in the future" involves filmmakers as much as architects or urban planners. 3

By adhering to all the above-mentioned definitions, the entire discussion can be reformulated into the following questions: how does vision influence collective visions or create alternative visions, and how does it describe visions of a city or reveal upcoming visions? But instead of dealing with homonyms, the number of meanings can be both reduced and extended by replacing visions with versions. In that sense, multiple "versions of continuous discontinuities" bring additional insights. Considering version as a particular element that "varies from other forms of the same thing" or "is slightly different from its previous or later forms", it becomes clear that the quantity of design-driven results is limitless, since qualitative and intuitive. In the same way, version as "translation" allows enough subjectivity. 4

Therefore, different versions — official or invented — of listed visions can also be presented in different versions. Hence, ideology and political orientations shape every individual's narrative, producing dissonant realities. Besides, consequent antagonisms tend to be more visible in systems where democratic principles are either superficial or nonexistent. This is also why a single frame can easily manipulate two (or more) divided audiences. Similar to how music implicitly regulates perceiver's moods, verbal information sends explicit messages. For example, in his essayistic documentary "Letter from Siberia" (1957), Chris Marker offers three versions of Yakutsk with the same shots, but contradictory statements. Eric Michaud also evokes these oppositions as "image témoin" [witness] and "image acteur d'histoire" [actor of history]. 5

Furthermore, since this project principally consists of collecting and exploiting footage for a better understanding of the past, it is interesting to highlight it as a double procedure: collection and recollection. The first activity indicates the "process of bringing information together from different places or over a period of time" 6 as well as a "group of objects or amount of material accumulated in one location, especially for some purpose or as a result of some process". 7 The second activity is the "ability to remember past events" or the "memory of something". 8 In this model of reformulation, we can wonder: how does the collection of the same kinds of items contribute to the recollection of what these items represent?

Inspirations, influences

Many examples illustrate similar concerns with comparable or totally different approaches, showing the growing enthusiasm for this topic. The most recent and imposing one is Canada’s national exhibition at the ongoing Venice Biennale for Architecture, "Imposter Cities / Edifices et artifice / Inganni Urbani": "conceived as an audiovisual installation, four, 3-meter-high folded screens immerse visitors in film-famous modernist icons, (…) [and] display a four-channel video supercut that combines clips culled from over 3,000 films and television shows shot in Canada." 9 A part of the exhibition contains interviews with Canadian architects, set designers, film directors. One of them, the filmmaker Luc Bourdon, calls Montreal a "vast patchwork of influences" with its numerous replicas. He further wonders: "How can we have a strong personality on screen when we do not look at ourselves? (…) How can we be surprised that we do not disguise our own identity to resemble that of another whose image is dominant?" 10

Even though these questions differ from those concerning Belgrade, Bourdon's film "Memories of Angels" (2008), which "pays tribute to the city of Montreal" — as stated by the National Film Board of Canada whose 120 films appear in the movie 11 — marks different kinds of dis/continuities on a shorter time-frame of two decades (1950s to 1960s):

• in used footage (intersections between genres, styles of filming, transitions, colors, narratives, spatial linearities, sound)
• in chronological, seasonal, and functional progressions (light/dark, daily activities/nightlife; summer-winter, sun-snow; exterior-interior, public-private, institutional)
• in urban planning (construction, reparation, modernization, infrastructural changes; social classes, multiculturalism, age groups)

Although Montreal can be perceived as a discontinuous city in terms of its search of own identity, the three stated types of dis/continuities appear to be a part of a continuous process, a "calm" and stable period, "golden days" of consumerism. There is no direct consequence on the population of a past war, nor a threat or signs for an upcoming one — even in the most tragic moment of fire, because this kind of tragedy happens in every city, it is here a further proof that precisely this type of unfortunate event is the most devastating one in a quite well-organized society. In this sense, the other big missing part that proves that, is the lack of political background — except the one obvious international gap in 1968. Therefore, can we classify these types of dis/continuities as "peaceful" or "common", or is this an impression only because — to rephrase the director's comment — this could be almost any other western city (or aspiring to adopt western values and lifestyles)?

The most exciting moments are exactly the ones where locations are overlapping, echoing to each other, "continuing" or prolonging a scene and jumping from one momentum to an other and back again; or when we find the same characters (such as the couple next to the tree and later at a concert); or recognize a European actor such as the young Charles Denner in "YUL 871" (d. Jacques Godbout, 1966).

If this type of work was a first idea — or "vision" — to be achieved for "Belgrade on Screens", it became quickly clear that the full potential of doctoral studies might be missed: an homage peace like this one, showing a status quo or "this is how it was" can be done outside the academic design-driven methods and is liberated of scientific criticism or urgent problématiques to address. The other reason is that this type of "exercise" has been done earlier. 12 Nevertheless, a generic approach can be continued after the series of upcoming experiments as equal entities of a larger picture or puzzle, detailed fragments, events, or divided chapters (similar to the work of the artist duo Doplgenger).

Contrary to the previous "neutral" example, "My Winnipeg" (d. Guy Maddin, 2007) is an experimental documentary on the intimate and conflicting love/hate relationship between a city and its inhabitant/director. However, the architect-filmmaker Gustav Deutsch remains a dominant figure whose films have been acclaimed worldwide for his found-footage techniques, as a re-contextualization of memory, driven by "the delight in playing games of association". 13

Experiment and observe

"A single shot in itself means nothing — or potentially can mean anything. According to Kuleshov, a film's meaning therefore comes not from the act of filming but from the act of splicing. (…) the use of footage implies a radical decontextualization and redefinition. Whatever the meaning or intention originally tied to this footage, that tie has been loosened. Kuleshov's method was to supply a new context, to supply a new meaning. (…) [he] demonstrated his control of meaning, while [Bruce] Conner (…) liberated the image into a wide range of associations — political, sexual and anarchic. Kuleshov displayed the semantic power of editing; found-footage films in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century rerouted this power, multiplying rather than defining it." 14

Thus, by paying attention to the current avant-garde filmmaking, it appears that there are more and more approaches to cinematic "recycling". In one of her lectures, Mila Turajlić underlines that instead of claiming historical truths, "younger" generations seek a "new political subjectivity". She comments on how the real challenge of working with audiovisual archives is in avoiding narrations of positivist historical evidence, and transiting the material as an instrument to visual historical discourse. 15 The importance of re-appropriation is maintained by Jacques Aumont's observation that historians treat images as a document, whereas anthropologists as "vectors of thought". Lastly, Jamie Baron examines how the "archive effect" creates new, alternative, or misread histories. 16

"Cut 1" will test these conditions through rules and predefined steps allowing various layers of juxtapositions. (Fig. 3) In this case, it is by doing that methodologies take shape. Regarding the staging of the videos, it would be suitable to see the results of the first experiment before continuing with the design of the scenographic options introduced in the last presentation.