Place of LivingTanja Perišić (HR)

9–20/4/2008

20—20 h

Karas Gallery (Zagreb)

sound-laser installation, 2006 - 2007

Place of Living is an audio-visual system which starts up with the interaction between 16 sources of laser light, a computer in communication with the system of optical sensors and X visitors whose movement activates the sound and establishes one – from the limitless range of possible and always new, temporary transformations/variations of the ‘place’. Thus created ambience is not a space or a place with determinable dimensions and coordinates: it is, before all, a transferable system or principle that functions like a virus, adjusting with equal efficiency to any space-carrier and transforming each of them simultaneously into a static metaphor of globalized, networked information society, but also into a playground at and inside which it can be ‘exercised’.

Although it changes its shape, the network always consists of light. Laser beams become carriers of absolute visibility: not only do they generate light, but (with the help of optical sensors) they can also ‘see’, reporting each presence and body movement to the core of the system. As in the Foucaultian panopticon, the system of “permanent registration” enables the establishment of supervision, and the computer becomes the embodiment of the “central tower” that can see everything and that responds using appropriate measures. In the ambiance of Tanja Perišić, registration of a body results with sound, i.e. sounds which function like warnings or reminders of its position in the strictly regulated network. Or, according to the artist: “I used only recognizable ‘figurative’ sound artifacts recorded at various places and no-places that are used by the system to keep subjects functioning regularly but also to maintain its own function.” Body movement results in continuous crashing with the system that exercises discipline using alarms, telephones, cash desks in shopping centers, windows operating system, planes, automobiles, police sirens and emergency vehicles. The subject can, therefore, be kept/ keep itself in the network in different ways. It can try to hide/ be hidden avoiding registration. And maybe it can simply loosen up/ get loosen up a bit and accept the game. Everything will be all right.

collaboration and technical support: Josip Pokrajčić, Tomislav Pokrajčić, Ivan Marušić Klif, Nives Sertić
production: KONTEJNER (DIY_ARTLAB)

Tanja Perišić (HR)

Tanja Perišić was born in 1982 in Split. In 2006 she graduated from the Academy of fine arts in Zagreb, sculpture department. She exhibited her works at several collective and individual exhibitions in Croatia, Austria, Italy, Germany, Turkey and the USA. In 2003 she was granted student scholarship in Belgium and the USA, in 2007 Kultur Kontakt's residency scholarship for Vienna and in 2008, Donumente, Regensburg. She was also awarded Rector's prize in 2005 and the prize of the Academy of fine arts, Zagreb in 2006. She lives and works as a freelance artist in Zagreb. Her light installations are based on contextual research of perception and experience deriving from correlation between body and space. She uses her works to explore ways in which combination of light, form, proportions and social impulses shapes our physical perception, mental understanding and emotional experience of space.