Contemporary cemeteries / video / mini DV / color / 3:58 min / 2010 
The work Contemporary cemeteries can be read in a number of ways: it speaks about
the exploitation of the Bosnian war casualties by the media; about meta-narrative
frolicking with the term Contemporary (art); about a world of information technology
racing ahead, where media manipulation and presence represent a legitimate actuality,
based on which a new society of mass media and new collective memory may be built.
The frequent use of the term trauma in postmodern art and elsewhere stems from,
among other things, a growing disproportion between man, whose capacity is limited
in terms of his biological makeup, and mankind, whose technological and information
expansion is unlimited. According to Theodore Roszak, the author of the ‘Neo-
Luddite’ manifesto against infocracy, the proliferation of information hinders the
creative ability of the human mind. ‘The mind operates on ideas, not on information.’
1 In order to be selected, written works, works of fine art as well as all other products
of art work had to meet the strictest requirements The mind operates on ideas, not on
information, whereas today’s global net allows democratic riot and omnipresence. The
virtual space of the monitor has become cheap, while information broken loose is no
longer a resource of the information society and is turning into its enemy. 2
Jelena Veljković
—————————
1 Roszaak Theodore, The cult of information. A Neo-Luddite Treatise on Hig-Tech,
Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking, Berkely,University of California,
1994, p.88
2 John Naisbitt, Megatrends – Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives, Warner
Books, New York, 1982
Contemporary cemeteries have no single meaning stronghold. Anyhow, some
notions are dominating, making the two primary layers and describing the motivation
of their relation. Those two semantic layers are in a direct visual correlation, it’s issue
of “multicultural cemeteries” within Bosnia and Herzegovina and general “diversity of
TV noises”. This video shows contemporary cemetery in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
where some of tombs started to emit video noises. These video signals are nicely
framed in an architecture of tombs and seem to be a previously planed tombs’, long-
awaited video activity. Such tombs’ video activity overwhelmingly evokes the issues
of Boris Groys’ essay Religion in the age of digital reproduction, in which he exams
obvious “religious renaissance” within visual medias and its implications to revision
of distribution of religious discourse. Tombs are in media space of Bosnia and
Herzegovina one of the most beloved objects. Their type, size, numbers, time and
space, are “from some reasons” in constant media actualization. Religious objects, in
this case a tombs, by randomly giving sing of media life, evoke to a sort of “natural”
relationship between contemporary religious discourse and its needs to be mediated by
most direct ways, appropriating the media’s visual language in the most absurd
formats. Poetically said, this Bosnjak’s contemporary cemeteries landscape seems to
be an illustration of embry phase of religious-media organism, which is created by
accumulated religious-electricity, being ready soon for an own, cemeteries broadcast
or even podcast.
Mladen Bundalo
The work Contemporary cemeteries can be read in a number of ways: it speaks about
the exploitation of the Bosnian war casualties by the media; about meta-narrative
frolicking with the term Contemporary (art); about a world of information technology
racing ahead, where media manipulation and presence represent a legitimate actuality,
based on which a new society of mass media and new collective memory may be built.
The frequent use of the term trauma in postmodern art and elsewhere stems from,
among other things, a growing disproportion between man, whose capacity is limited
in terms of his biological makeup, and mankind, whose technological and information
expansion is unlimited. According to Theodore Roszak, the author of the ‘Neo-
Luddite’ manifesto against infocracy, the proliferation of information hinders the
creative ability of the human mind. ‘The mind operates on ideas, not on information.’
1 In order to be selected, written works, works of fine art as well as all other products
of art work had to meet the strictest requirements The mind operates on ideas, not on
information, whereas today’s global net allows democratic riot and omnipresence. The
virtual space of the monitor has become cheap, while information broken loose is no
longer a resource of the information society and is turning into its enemy. 2
Jelena Veljković
—————————
1 Roszaak Theodore, The cult of information. A Neo-Luddite Treatise on Hig-Tech,
Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking, Berkely,University of California,
1994, p.88
2 John Naisbitt, Megatrends – Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives, Warner
Books, New York, 1982
Contemporary cemeteries have no single meaning stronghold. Anyhow, some
notions are dominating, making the two primary layers and describing the motivation
of their relation. Those two semantic layers are in a direct visual correlation, it’s issue
of “multicultural cemeteries” within Bosnia and Herzegovina and general “diversity of
TV noises”. This video shows contemporary cemetery in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
where some of tombs started to emit video noises. These video signals are nicely
framed in an architecture of tombs and seem to be a previously planed tombs’, long-
awaited video activity. Such tombs’ video activity overwhelmingly evokes the issues
of Boris Groys’ essay Religion in the age of digital reproduction, in which he exams
obvious “religious renaissance” within visual medias and its implications to revision
of distribution of religious discourse. Tombs are in media space of Bosnia and
Herzegovina one of the most beloved objects. Their type, size, numbers, time and
space, are “from some reasons” in constant media actualization. Religious objects, in
this case a tombs, by randomly giving sing of media life, evoke to a sort of “natural”
relationship between contemporary religious discourse and its needs to be mediated by
most direct ways, appropriating the media’s visual language in the most absurd
formats. Poetically said, this Bosnjak’s contemporary cemeteries landscape seems to
be an illustration of embry phase of religious-media organism, which is created by
accumulated religious-electricity, being ready soon for an own, cemeteries broadcast
or even podcast.
Mladen Bundalo
