Special film screening in the framework of the exhibition
Cinemaniac > Think Film 2016: FORUM
11. 7. 2016., MMC Luka, Pula, 20 h
Zoran Popović
STRUGGLE IN NEW YORK
The 1976 film “Struggle in New York” by Zoran Popovic is an anthological work of Serbian and international conceptual art. It was recently shown in internationally renowned institutions like the Tate Britain in London and the Nottingham Contemporary in the UK. Popovic made the film during his stay in New York and the cooperation with the artistic scene in the 70es. The topic art and society is the core of the film. For the needs of the film, selected artists were invited to devise and stage their own performances on the subject. Thus structured, the film is made of 12 almost individual contributions of various artists. Besides the author, there are a number of known figures of the international art scene – the New York branch of the British conceptual art group Art & Language (Joseph Kosuth, Mel Ramsden, Ian Burn, Michael Corris, Andrew Menard, Preston Heller), Anthony McCall, the director Kathryn Bigelow, and the German artist Katharina Sieverding. The film also documents the street boycott of the Whitney Museum by the artists gathered around the AMCC- Artists Meeting for Cultural Change and the part of feminist criticism of the artists Terry Berkowitz, Ruth Rachlin and Corinne Bronfman, etc. In terms of category, Popovic’s film “Struggle in New York” can be explained with its performative form, which gave such a film the name of “artist film” and whose initiator on the Yugoslav scene at the time was Popovic. It was through film that Popovic approached the project of conceptualism.
Zoran Popović (1944, SRB), 1976, film; 16 mm, b & w, 56 : 30 m
Courtesy of the aurtist and the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade.
Introduced by Una Popovic, curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade
