Art D-O Ark Underground, Bosnia Herzegovina

The Project Biennial of Contemporary Art D-O Ark Underground is a unique location and event. Hidden behind the facade of a village house you enter a 6500 square meter Bunker, that was made for President Tito and his Generals in case of a nuclear attack.

For the second time artists are corresponding with a relict of a close past. The Bunker is located in Konjiç, a beautiful town 45 km east of Sarajevo.

In the Video you see “Steps” (2013) by Alfredo Pirri. A huge mirror is placed on one of the endless corridors. On the Horizon there is an illumination, that seems to be a kind of nuclear detention. When you walk on the mirror, the surface loses its rigidity, but you are adding an awful sound now, walking carefully towards an open ending.

The Bunker itself is a bizarre installation. All these old technology. Red Telephones and typewriters, morse telegraphs seem so weird today. And thousands of items to replace technology, nothing humanizing around. Totally suicidal place, a perfect Studio for shooting another version of Solaris.

Edo Murtiç produced an impressive serial of paintings with the title “Cadavers” (2011). Medal decorated skeletons. I wonder which one is Tito? And who is the decorated dog? Laika, the first dog in space, maybe? This work was produced for the first Biennial in 2011. The visitor is confronted with two exhibitions actually. All the works of the fist and second Biennial are side by side. The master plan is to do ten Biennials. The works remain and will form a permanent collection later.

Ibro Hasanovic comes from Sarajevo and is living in Brussels today. When you enter the Bunker you hear a strong echoing sound. Marbles are moved in giant loudspeakers. Choir music is mixed with the movement of the rolling marbles and produces a cosmic kind of sound.

Ioana Nemes illuminated Titos bedrooom in a disturbing red, the color of Communism. “Red is not the color of intense erotic moments” is a statement incorporating the effect of an overconrolling state on the life of its individuals.

Nebojša Šeric Shoba’s installation is located in two spaces. On the corridor you have the sentence “Behold a cathedral of Fear in a mountain of Power and more then that”. Written in very Germanic letters. When you go up the stairs and turn around a corner you hear the noise of a rotation. Very pleasant. “Fear” is written on a wall in the form of white rotating little white plastic windmill vanes. Fragile, beautiful and complex. I added the Photograph work, that shows Shoba in Monte Carlo and in the mountains of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. It somehow explains very good the Spirit of this great Bosnian artist. The Photograph you’ll find in the collection of Ars Aevi in Sarajevo.

Allard van der Hoek’s Photographs from Bunkers in Berlin were lying a little on my nerves, because they were all around and were showing just the things, that are already present in the place. This terrible square yellowish room with the Erich Honecker-Photo on the wall was a big gain though. I loved that one.

Milija Pavicevic used a bedpan for paralyzed people, painted the inner part golden and put it on a socle in a red illuminated room. Very sacral and a brilliant comment to a region, that has just come over a war that killed and injured so many.

Natalia Vijusevic created typical war scenes in a dollhouse style. A mourning woman, a killed child, fragile and vulnerable. There are so many complex things, that you stumble out of the Bunker, blended bu the sudden light. It’s a one and a half hour ride from Konjic to Sarajevo. You drive through a landscape, beautiful Drina mountains and little farms, and think and think……