The House on Four Waters: Introduction, 2015
Audio and video duration: 5:06 min
Sound editing and video editing assistance: Nenad Grujić
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA / Novi Sad, Serbia
The House on Four Waters: Introduction is a two-channel audiovisual installation developed through a long distance collaboration with my sister and artist Nataša Prljević who during this
project lived in USA, while I was in Serbia.
The audiovisual installation consists of two videos projected on and through architectural elements that resembles a house in construction. The audio narrative is formed around the
house from our childhood that we recall separately, bringing in perspectives of the outsider and the insider. The narrative is spoken in both English and Serbian.
The house is used as a metaphor for a shared experience that occupies a particular time and condition from childhood. Instead of it being the embodiment of femininity and
domesticity, in this particular case it is used as a system of objects and perspectives constructed to address the elusiveness of memory. It opens multiple points of departure and
return for two sisters.
The failure of unification is communicated through similar and conflicting ideas about the same experience. Narrators are introduced as two individual voices that develop into
multiple voices of one person. The conversation uses two forms of speech. As the story develops it becomes clear that my sister and I are taking different spatial-temporal positions
as points to reconnect with each other and mutual memory. I am speaking from a child’s idealized point of view while my sister uses direct speech responding to the contemporary
condition of the place. The weaving of perspectives is used to emphasize a transformation of memory into fiction.
