Voiceless Bodies, Bodiless Voices: Politics of Dissociation in Post-Yugoslav Documentary and Experimental Film

• In Event: Rethinking Yugoslav Art II: Charting Liberation: Insights on Art from Yugoslav Socialism and Post-Socialism I

Abstract

In this paper, I intend to outline two paradigms of the relation between the onscreen presence, the voice, and the voicelessness in contemporary documentary and experimental cinema from the former Yugoslav region. In the first, the protagonists are deprived of their voice (films by Ivan Marković, Bruno Pavić, Ivan Ramljak), while in the second (works by Ognjen Glavonić, Tea Lukač, Kumjana Novakova, doplgenger), the voice-over is projected onto places, without the speakers ever being shown on the screen. I will also question their ethics and aesthetics of representation.

Author

• Nikola Radic, U of Zurich (Switzerland)