[ISEA2010] Artist Statement: Milica Tomic — One day, instead of one night, a burst of machine-gun fire will flash, if light cannot come otherwise

Artist Statement

The title is taken from the fragment of a poem by Oskar Davico, 1925: “Eines Tages, statt eines Nachts, wird ein Maschinengewehrfeuer aufflammen, wenn es kein anderes Licht gibt”.

Photo/video action,  2009

Over a period of two months, in the autumn of 2009, Milica Tomic visited particular sites of successful antifascist actions that members of the People’s Liberation Movement and ordinary people, citizens, carried out in Belgrade against German occupation during the Second World War. The photos and video footage taken during these repeated walks are documents of the marking and mapping of sites where these actions took place, actions that are not part of the
public memory of the city of Belgrade.

“Today, whether we are in a direct war situation or not, we find ourselves in a state of permanent mobilization. However, is it possible to use armed force without establishing a strict division into the terrorist versus the terrorized? Even if it were possible, such an action would have to be singular and entirely separate from all public opinion, political promises of identity groups, parties, movements or organizations, and would be distanced from the politics of terror and anti-terror. This description of a singular and universalistic position of the use of armed force is very much reminiscent of Partisan warfare, and of the politics that Yugoslav partisans conducted in the course of their antifascist revolutionary struggle, in a war against war – for peace. The action is an attempt to proceed from the position of a rebel, assuming an active position, without referring to the position of a victim, moving from the position of a victim onto the streets, with a machine gun in hand, carrying it simply and with determination, as if it were a supermarket carrier bag or an umbrella.”                                                              _Milica Tomic

  • Milica Tomic works and lives in Belgrade, Serbia. She is a visiting lecturer at international institutions of contemporary art, such as Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland, NIFCA (Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art), Piet Zwart Instituut, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna, Austria, and others. Currently she is a PhD candidate at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki. Tomic’s work centres on issues of political violence, nationality and identity, with particular attention to the tensions between personal experience and media constructed images.

Full text (PDF) p. 94-99