Premio Combat Prize

Artwork Description

Probe: recorded live streaming video of the airport screening is unedited video footage featuring baggage security inspection procedure, as it happened in the real time at the undisclosed international airport. This video was streamed live to the Atelier Dado gallery (National Museum of Montenegro, Montenegro) for the exhibition opening on September 6, 2010. Visitors of the museum gallery and O3ONE space gallery in Belgrade (Serbia) as well as many online viewers were able to peek into the privacy of random passengers, without knowing anything about their true identity, travel plans or origin. Rather, they had the opportunity to imagine persons and personalities, based solely on the content of their luggage.
During the set up procedure in the airport terminal there was an emergency as weapons were reported seen inside the departing plane. Flight was diverted back to the airport and this footage represents details of the thorough re-screening procedure, as it was performed live in front of the most unexpected public—art audience.
Disclaimer: For the duration of this happening, source location and identities of the passengers were kept secret. This act is illegal and against the law in most countries. Artist has obtained special permission to record and broadcast this video while keeping passengers’ identities private.
Art Statement
My artistic endeavor is driven by my fascination with the conflict, in its every aspect and form. My means of exploration itself involves conflict, as I confront contradicting visual elements, incompatible materials, ideas and behavior, art and technology.
Social phenomena compel me. Assuming that every socially engaged activity bears a political label, I acknowledge the political in my work. Preferring the politics of revolution to the politics of evolution, I punctuate my statements about identity and freedom through alchemy of materials and techniques.
This transformation of materials in my work acts as a metaphor for the transformation of society. By giving the materials new names and meanings, emphasizing their identities through contrast to each other, I create a coded language. This language then becomes my vehicle for decoding the unexplainable and bridging the insurmountable. More than mere narrative, this layered process of transmutation and translation for me proves highly satisfying and effective.
Accepting the confrontation as not necessarily a negative, albeit violent process, I hope for the successful merge of the tradition and the new, adapting our ever-changing interaction to develop along with the society.
In my most recent project titled Probe I investigate implications of X-ray security screening that generate images filled with transparent and beautiful color “drawings” of objects and people. Idea of seeing through versus conceal is offering rich environment for my contradictory approach stile. In this project I explore time-based media and incorporate installation into the concept that investigates conflicts arising from security screening and privacy issues.
Significance of this project lays in the demystification of the invasive and inaccessible nature of security inspection process. Image produced during these visual strips is revealing some beautiful
human forms but due to various, and questionable reasons, we are never allowed to view them and claim them. Heroic and terrifyingly honest images of this project are our own body and concealed belongings, now revealed. Strangely enough, people are more accepting of their own image if it is “gentrified” through the art process, elevated from its natural existence and immortalized as a work of art. This body of work is offering the redemption of the ordinary human existence, celebrating its honesty and uniqueness. Project is risky and bold but most of all relevant as it generates images that mean everything to the people experiencing it. By showing the forbidden image of our body this X-ray scan is reveling interesting new moments about our own body that are making us informed, ashamed, proud, surprised. Lastly in this endeavor we are all witnesses of the art event therefore as Walter Benjamin explains, we are automatically not just participants and experts in this filed but work of art itself.
Biography
Blazo Kovacevic (b. Podgorica, Montenegro) received a B.F.A. in studio art from the University of Montenegro in 1997, and an M.F.A. in painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of The Fine Arts in 2000. Kovacevic had his work presented in the United States and Europe in numerous solo and group exhibits. He curated several exhibitions and organized the first International Festival of Digital Arts in Montenegro. Kovacevic has received numerous awards for his work, has been interviewed and reviewed in relevant art publications and various other media outlets such as Internet, TV and radio. His work is part of numerous private and museum collections. Kovacevic’s work is driven by his fascination with conflict and is represented through the exploration and confrontation of contradicting visual elements, incompatible materials, ideas and behavior, art and technology. Social phenomena is a reoccurring theme in his work. Kovacevic is currently assistant professor of art and design at Binghamton University SUNY.