Questions on Banja Luka

The exhibition shows Narrations in form of drawings and a short Film that studio ASYNCHROME developed during their residence in November 2016 in Banja Luka. The reading of a Text about the referendum of the National Day of Republica Srpska attached the interest of Leitner and Schitnig on getting deeper into the knowledge about the present situation in Bosnia.

In a globalized world, where new buildings are detached from the surrounding and start to look the same everywhere and communication methods trough digitization the are changing noticeable. What are the opportunities of the fast growing cities in a time where more people then ever are moving around the world, or have to change their lives without their own will for example trough climate or political changes?

What is it then, what we call Identity? What seems to be Identity here? What is the difference? What is maybe the same? Is it possible to connect this question to recent changes that everywhere in the world are noticeable? What is the Identity of Utopia?

The drawing as an ongoing daily process, as a method for understanding and getting closer to the daily life of the people around, allows Schitnig and Leitner to test out transgressions of limits and offer at the same time a way to involve people and start an common discussion about present developments.
How can we communicate and work together?

What happens when we decide for ourselves, instead of thinking to find the one and only solution for everybody, to search again the questions of our common future, and also ask them? What are the possibilities to express artistically and communicate visually in an picture overloaded world?

You have to tell your story and you have to forget your story. You forget and forgive. It liberates you

, … The World is a Theater and we each have a Role …” Louise Bourgeois once claimed.

So, what stories we have to tell, and which one we should forget to be liberate? What happens to the stories, and what happens to the people when systems are changing?

In the book “Utopia” from 1516 of Thomas Moore, he wrote 500 years ago, the ambipolar aspects of changing a system are conceptual mentioned. This accompanies Leitner and Schitnig to step forward on their utopian path to search for traces.

In remembrance of this anniversary, they found many more of this historical anniversary’s to celebrate. Inventions, Birth, Death, War, Peace, always connected to dates and persons.

Also the overlay to the celebration of dates in reference to contracts leads them to the question of Identity. Are this celebrations necessary for Identity? Which dates we want to celebrate in utopia – do we need contracts?

For studio ASYNCHROME the initial position is the assertion, that the utopia has to be understood neither as a failed plan nor as a building task. It rather serves as tool and method to work critically and artistically not doomed to failure, but as a way to change the world.

In their manifesto they demand:

We dream of an architecture which is not only a monument of the money, but firmly has its own will. We dream of the feeling of the entasis, and not from the dictum of the functionality. We dream of an art which does not raise the claim to eternity, thereby however, becomes timeless. We dream of the reference, but however, also of the referendum. We dream because we can change the reality in the dream a little bit.

studio ASYNCHROME was invited for the forth “Apartman Art Project” from Sasa Tatic, Mila Panic, Selma Selman, Nikola Kekerović and Ninoslav Kovacevic that was this time is part of the project „Cultural and friendship: Austria – Bosnia and Herzegovina“. It has been financially supported the „BKA Bundeskanzleramt Österreich Arts and Culture“ in cooperation with „Rotor“ Center for Contemporary Art in Graz