Aphasia, film (2019) trailer
Jelena Jureša is a visual artist and filmmaker. Through her films and video installations, she explores themes of identity, collective violence, complicity, and historical denial. Her work pushes the boundaries of conventional cinematic language, critically engaging with hegemonic narratives. Recently, her research has focused on practices of oppression—how they operate and implicate us in systems of violence—resulting in multidisciplinary projects that are both political and deeply personal.
APHASIA (2019) is an unsettling inquiry into the representation of violence and the violence of representation. This documentary gesture explores how collective crimes keep being repeated and reflects on social and political constellations, unfolding constructions behind nation-states and national identities. Weaving an intricate web of connections across time and space from Belgian colonialism in the first act, Austrian race experiments, and Heimat films in the second, the third act brings to life the well-known photograph, taken at the beginning of the war in Bosnia.
Produced by Argos, centre for audiovisual arts, Brussels
Co-produced by Contour – kunstcentrum nona in the context of Contour Biennial 9, Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK), Zagreb Youth Theatre (ZKM).
With the support of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF).
The performance is developed at the intersection of music, film, storytelling, and dance, in collaboration with Nenad Sinkauz, Alen Sinkauz and Ivana Jozić. Immersed in the atmosphere of a (post-war-zone)nightclub, the audience physically participates in an intimate investigation of violence, the world of perpetrators, bystanders, and individual responsibility. One can imagine the audience’s attention gradually shifting from an archival film, to a DJ set, to a dance solo, to an integrated concert, intersected by the interventions of the female narrator who ponders about the “monsters and us”. Whispers, rumours on perpetration and standing by, complicity and violence; every revolution, every genocide, leaves a soundtrack.
APHASIA premiered at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in 2022 and continues to tour.
Aphasia, concert-performance (2022), trailer
Aphasia, concert-performance (2022), excerpt