Black Flags

three-channel video installation, 2016
HD 1080p, stereo sound 6’35”

camera:
Darko Škrobonja,
Neli Ružić
sound composition:
Ricardo Cortés
editing: Neli Ružić

Three-channel video installation Black Flags is a result of intervention in the public space of Bosanska Street in Split. It is a reinterpretation and a sort of re-enactment of the seminal expressionist painting Black Flags of Ljubo Babić from 1918. I interpreted the image through the urban scenery installing seven black flags along the Bosanska Street where I live and which often appears in my artistic works from the nineties. In addition, this street is one of the most frequented communication lines at the edge of the Diocletian’s Palace and well illustrate all the recent problems of the city downtown: commercialization of public space, apartmanization and gentrification. The video installation consists of three vertical projections that are based on material recorded during the intervention. An important part of the video installations are passersby, who are both audience and actors within the intervention that creates a space of estrangement. Through overlapping layers of moving images, passersby are in different times, layering, passing through each other, disappearing. Central video channel is a mechanical passage through the street that was shot from low angle.