JELENA (JELLY) LUISE (DE/RS, 1993) & SANJA GROZDANIĆ (AU/BA, 1990)
Residency period: September-November 2023
At La Becque, we shot the first stage of our new video work. We began with an interest in researching the mineral jadarite, discovered in the Jadar Valley, Serbia, by the mining multinational Rio Tinto in 2004. Jadarite is a source of lithium, and the mine promised to provide for 90% of Europe’s lithium ‘needs.’
The Jadar Project triggered widespread opposition among the local community, many of whom rely on the land as small farmers. Their articulations of agency led to uprisings across Serbia in the winter of 2021-22. The protests were successful—in that Rio Tinto’s bid for the land was canceled (in the face of an election)—though their investment continues as does the reign of the conservative government. No doubt the story is unfinished.
From all this, and in thinking through what often appears as a ruined history, we thought about the ways in which language is mined of meaning; how a book is slapped shut, and the ways in which coercive structures work to crush willpower.
The video we ended up shooting proposes a character who appears like a recuperated radical, or maybe an informant. We removed the referent in the main speech to disrupt the function of legalistic documents, which the texts are appropriated or scrapped from. A disintegration of words and meaning is staged through a series of language exercises. Who is the speaking subject? Abstracted digressions will break the scenes we shot at La Becque, as if a buried story struggles to the surface. — Jelena (Jelly) Luise & Sanja Grozdanić
Jelena (Jelly) Luise is an artist and photographer preoccupied by the condition of transit. Their practice explores the complex interplay of images in relation to time and memory, driven by an intrigue into the emotive repercussions of power and conflict. Often depicting radiant and troubled scenes, their work explores states of restlessness, chaos, the unconscious and slips of translation.
Sanja Grozdanić is a writer living in Berlin. Through fiction, essay and performance, her work explores issues of memory, dispossession and deviance, and the slippages between public and private grief, anxiety and imagination.
1-4: Jelena (Jelly) Luise & Sanja Grozdanić, La Becque, 2023, photo Matthieu Croizier
5-8: Jelena (Jelly) Luise & Sanja Grozdanić, La Becque, 2023, Jelena (Jelly) Luise & Sanja Grozdanić
9-11: Jelena (Jelly) Luise & Sanja Grozdanić, La Becque Open Studios, 2023, photo Aurélien Haslebacher