Darja Mamula
Darja Mamula was born August 2, 2000 in Belgrade. Currently a student of sculpture at the Faculty of Contemporary Arts. Her work is located at the intersections and crossings between poetry and the visual arts, while her primary areas of focus are the interrogation of the conditions of artistic production and the possibilities of it’s disalienation as well as the problematic of linear time and the potential ways in which art can contribute towards it’s messianic interruption. Her primary artistic influences are, not exhaustively: Hito Steyerl, Geo Wyeth, Ljubomir Micić (Zenit magazine), Otto Dix, Claire Fontaine, Gherasim Luca, and Sylvia Plath.
Per consensum universorum, 4’49’’
Miloš Pilić help with the execution of the video
To question the possibility of a language in common is simultaneously to question the necessary silences. In her work, Darja Mamula wants to problematize this apparatus which produces separation in closeness. The family, being the main site of closeness, doubles as the site of isolation and confinement. As it has become evident in the pandemic, the family is anything but an exterior to the present order – this bizarre social form is the space of biopolitical intervention which re/produces the futurity of capital and the bourgeois subject. Her work aims to tear down the barriers between the machines outside the house and those in it, the machines within the subject and those external to it. Through the interplay of dissonance between the auditive and the visual (as well as within them) applied to found and filmed footage Darja aims to cast the barbarity of everyday life as alien and monstrous. Through mobilizing the silences, noises, and interruptions immanent to any language she wishes to constitute the possibility of a living in/commonality against the ruling death in common.
Interview
What is the language in common for the young people today?
I do not think that a common language as such exists, nor that it is a stable category of "youth". The only possibility of the so-called. I see a common language in the constant conflicts and misunderstandings that exist in the system in which we live. Maybe silence is that common language. What is not explicable.
What does the process of making one of your pieces look like?
It all depends on the work. Sometimes it is a vain realization of an idea that has been running through my head for a long time, and only then do I understand it as such - so I finish everything in 2 to 3 hours. Sometimes it takes months of thinking and creating work in my mind until the work as such is realized — and completely different from what I imagined. When a work transcends its own concept and becomes something completely different, then I think it succeeds.
Which challenges have you faced while making art as you know it?
The challenge of art as such, nowadays as well as since it was constituted as one category, is to always go beyond its own framework and in the end be a part of life and not dead beauty or thought. Instead of life trying to be art, art should be a part of life and thus going towards its abolition. The notion of aesthetics prevents art in this process and I am completely against it. All this also applies to my art. I don't know how successful I will be or will be.
Do you consider yourself an artist, and what does that word mean to you?
First of all, I am a poet-warrior, and then everything else. I see songs as a kind of struggle, and all my work, whether it is textual or non-poetry. "Let's sing songs in honor of our enemies."
What is your escape from reality? Do you even have a need to escape from something?
Escape is a retreat, and the reality is much crazier than some imagination. Despite that, I run and I'm not proud of it. These beys are alienating.
What does the word innovative mean to you?
Be the director of TESLA Motors or Steve Jobs. Certainly, nothing in valuable art triggers that phrase.
Do you have a plan for the future? Where can your artistic practice take you?
There are plans not to fulfill them. And I hope that my path leads me further from myself and into the jaw of ruthless change.
What made the biggest influence on you to become what you are today and do what you do now?
Love and God. Everything I do, I do in the name of those two things, which are not so separate. Cliché or not - that's right.
How would you describe Serbian (Balkan or European-depends on where you live and work) contemporary cultural scene?
I don't know her well enough to describe her, but as far as I know, she misses the fight against that same culture.
In which way does your creative process shape you or changes you as a person, if it does at all?
I hope it changes me. I believe that within myself there are 1000 entities, like all of us. Art gives me the wind in my back to be still infinitely in shape - we will see how far it will take me. I don't think the path of the creator is linear or finite. "Let the struggle be unceasing — let it be what it cannot be."