Aphasia, film (2019) trailer
Jelena Jureša, a visual artist and filmmaker born in Yugoslavia, explores themes of cultural identity, collective violence, complicity, and the politics of memory and oblivion through expanded cinema, photography, and text. She operates beyond conventional film language, pushing the boundaries of the medium while continuously interrogating historical and political narratives. Her practice challenges our perceptions of truth by addressing the inherent complicity of the medium itself in discussions about violence. In recent years, her exploration of the practices of oppression and historical denial has catalyzed multidisciplinary projects that are profoundly 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