Lala Raščić

EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED
National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina
18.08. – 01.09.2007.

ME, MYSELF AND I – IT IS THE PROCESS THAT COUNTS

Conceptualizing the text for my first solo show in Sarajevo, I am struck by the thought
that Everything is Connected is a metaphor for the way I live my life, as well as for my
general attitudes, hopes and concerns. Everything is Connected is also the title of my last
video installation. The starting point for this exhibition is to open up and make visible the
body of work that developed over the past three years. It is a selection of works inspired
by the aesthetics and medium of old-time radio.

First came The Invisibles (Istanbul, 2005), followed by the Sorry, Wrong Number
(Zagreb, 2006) and Everything is Connected (Graz, Sarajevo, Edinburgh, 2007). The
Invisibles marked the first time I wrote a script and acted it out in my studio, as a sort of
video performance. It was actually a rehearsal for an audio drama. Taking the subject-
matter at hand and making a breakthrough in my method of work clarified my motives. It
was as if personal issues and lifestyle finally found a way to channel into the medium and
comfortably become embedded in the very process and content of the work. I could
easily become 10 characters in one. These I now call “the instances of myself.” Since The
Invisibles, there has been a development both in understanding and in the mastery of the
medium (and myself). Each work touches upon so many issues, ranging from gender to
politics. They are all a reflection of my more engaged concerns, they all relate very
strongly to the world around me; they are all informed by so many details taken from
everyday life and loaded and charged with references that range from popular culture to
film and literature. The process is what connects them all. This is the format I have
devised for myself. This escape - the fantasy, the drama, the dis- and re– integration of
(my own) identity is what I feel is central to these works.

The same sentiment seeps into the subject-matter of my works. These are my
preoccupations: the sense of loss, invisibility, disappearance, vagueness, deracination.
The voice mutates, the audio is out of sync; I do not seek harmony in my work. I want
something to go missing in order to be able to play with the void, “looking for the
sensations of vertigo and disorder as sources of pleasure”1. When I said that Everything is
Connected is a metaphor for my life, what I meant was that the underlying principles of
all artworks exhibited here relate to the fact that it took me most of my mature life, spent
in a (metaphorically speaking) non-place, to discover and learn to appreciate and play on
the poetics of non-place2.

We do not need to belong, we can live in fiction, and we may get lost never to find
ourselves again. These are the connections I make with my art; this is why I make art in
the first place.
Paul Virilio, The Aesthetics of Disappearance, u prijevodu Philipa Beitchmana (New York: Semiotext(e),
1991.), p. 12.
2
Marc Augé, Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, u prijevodu Vlatke Valentić
(Karlovac: Naklada DAGGK, 2001.)
THE INVISIBLES
As in the H.G. Wells novel “The Invisible Man”, the idea of physical invisibility is used
in this project as a metaphor for an outsider, for a socially outcast individual. The
drawings relate to various aspects of invisibility: social and civil invisibility, the notion of
escape, criminal activities, freedom, identity and the 'what-if' reality of a physically
invisible person. Alongside the prints, the central part of the project is a video showing a
performance of an homonymous audio drama: “The Invisibles”. A story of an invisible
family planning to go on vacation is delivered through a conventional narrative structure.
This light satire touches upon the absurdities of contemporary society: the bureaucratic
mechanisms, collective paranoia and the surveillance systems. This work is neither an
audio drama nor a video in the full sense of the terms; it lingers as the “other”, in between
the two genres.

“SORRY, WRONG NUMBER” is an interpretation of a famous audio drama from the

1940's. The audio-track and the image are synchronized only at brief moments. What
seems as technical mistake evokes the impression of old-time TV. The moments when
image and sound are in sync seem uncanny as it becomes evident that distorted voices are
in fact belonging to the performer. The impossibility of synchronization of audio with the
video comments the impossibility of communication, it speaks of isolation. The same
theme is present in the very narrative of the radio play. The main storyline is about a
disabled woman who spends her days in her room. Her only link to the outside world is
her telephone. One night she dials a wrong number and overhears someone’s plan for
murder. While desperately trying to warn the police, she realizes that she has overheard
the plan for her own murder.

EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED is a five-channel video/audio installation. On five

monitors, five characters are having a conversation. They are the bosses of criminal
gangs. The story is set in a situation where they – nameless criminals - meet in a
nameless space to discuss the fate of an unnamed kidnapped child. The video is black &
white, overall atmosphere, in terms of imagery, evokes that of the 1930’s. Apart form the
costumes and the camera work, what links us to that period is the media-motif of the
audio drama; the characters are actually actors in an audio play. In the isolated ambiance
of the recording studio that produces no echo whatsoever, a plot without a denouement
takes place.

NOVEMBER PAYNTER
“Lala's inquisitive research into audio drama and the installations she has developed
from this interest are enthralling and refreshing. Although her works contain references
to the style of certain periods and found material, Lala plays with the genre's traditional
roles and themes to invent some new narrative threads and a contemporary angle from
which to present the medium. Lala's personal participation in the stories she forms and
adopts is paramount. The way she imparts such energy into her characters'
reincarnations and often gives her audience physical access to the installations through
various props, encourages those who encounter her work first-hand to feel implicated in
the narrative and as part of shared experience.”

November Paynter is an independent curator and has worked as a curator at Platform

Garanti, Istanbul and as Consultant Curator at Tate Modern.