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This
second text
about a new series of photographic portraits of the people of Metelkova
City
by photographer Damjan Kocjancic and entitled The Face, has been in my
head
for some time. Whose faces? The faces of those individuals who work in
Metelkova
City and live for Metelkova City, the first post-socialist squat that
turned
upside down the sleepy and sickly Ljubljana mentioned in that Pankrti
song
a quarter of a century ago.
When writing about the first part of The Face project, I described
the entire context that structured the environment of these
photographs.
I wrote a story of the saga called Metelkova: of ‘Metelkova City’
living
in the heart of the city of Ljubljana and waiting for its erasure. I
have
woven a whole sociological-political texture in the background of these
photographs.
The Face, however, is not merely a story about politics.
These photographs, which girdle so magnificently the walls of the most
threatened ‘fortress’ of the third millennium in Slovenia, are not
merely a story about repressive sociality (about the short-sightedness
of the
Ljubljana municipal politicians, about the repression of city
authorities,
etc.) but, also and first of all, a story about the present of
photography
itself. According to Walter Benjamin it is precisely and only ‘the
face’
that has retained cult value at the time of universal technical
reproducibility,
at a time when art has lost its specific aura. Benjamin claims that the
cult value of photography can be retained on the human face alone.
Photography finds its ultimate refuge on the face. It resorts to the
undefined expression of the portrayed person, to her/his psychological
undertone, her/his enigma.
The Face = Enigma.
Even more. The photography of a face, wrote Jacques Derrida, is a
hieroglyph of a certain biography, theory and politics. Walter Benjamin
placed the portrait in a privileged position between the cult and aura
of art on the one side, and the technical reproducibility of reality
performed by means of a photographic camera on the other. The portrait
is said to stand midway between psychology and politics, authenticity
and reproduction. Both the face and Metelkova City are cultic indexes;
the face is a cultic allegory of life while Metelkova City is the
cultic-traumatic real of Ljubljana.
In 1905 the painter Cézanne wrote the following sentence in
a letter to Emile Bernard: ‘I owe you the truth about painting and I’m
going to tell it to you.’ Cézanne did that with the help of the
inner structure of every individual painting. A century later Kocjančič
does something similar. Today, the portrait has a quite anachronous
function
– namely, it finds its most significant location in personal documents
(from
identity card to passport). When we have a valid passport with our most
analogous photograph, we can travel, move around, depart, arrive. It is
only
in these official documents that the portrait attains its full meaning;
this
is where its truth lies, so to speak. Kocjančič’s portraits are not
only
a ritualisation of life and the life ‘credo’ of the portrayed; they
reveal
a very significant political reading of portrait photography. The
portraits
of the Metelkova City people represent a form of their undeniable
visibility:
a significant inscription of themselves into the city map.
The portraits of the Metelkova City people are the establishment of the
subject in the visible.
Nowadays, portrait photography is not the romantic impression of a
state of mind but, rather, a thing to be archived, to serve as a trace
in registers, perhaps to ‘guarantee’ – when we become prey to various
bureaucratic procedures – that this is really us. This is the political
substance of portrait photography, since it delineates a specific trace
revealing that portraits inscribe and register us – both too much and
too
little – on the map of society. The portraits of the Metelkova City
people
also represent a certain camouflage, and this is the essence of
mimicry.
And mimicry is being used, writes Lacan, on the real battlefield as
well.
These are the faces of the most stubborn, most obstinate Metelkova
City people – those who will need to be carried out of the place when
the
time comes, for they will not leave just like that. It could be that
Kocjancic’s portraits of Miha, Tina, Andrej, Goran, Marko, Tomaz,
Matija, and Katerina are unknown to chance passers-by, but for those
who live in Metelkova City, and for all of us who regularly frequent
this spectral city, these portraits are a vivid index of time and
revolt. These are public personalities, writers, activists, organisers
of cultural programmes and musicians, exposed in their most intimate
and vulnerable image, for these faces are open to views just like maps.
The mapping of Metelkova City is made through one sole astronomical
photographic positive of a face. Metelkova City is a city of
labyrinthine corners and partly demolished premises, which have become
live with cultural activities; the faces in their astronomical
enlargement also function as a map. Here the texture of skin is just
like the design of the city labyrinth structure.
Last but not least, these portraits are shown in an impossible profile.
In most of the cases it is only one eye that speaks to us while the
other one is hidden. The eyes are like giant telescopes enabling us to
travel to the inner imagination of the gaze. The photographs display
faces as if cut in two. The photographs expose brilliantly the
difference between the seeming and the true essence. These photographs
are as a parade of doubles with which the Metelkova City people engage
in the fight for Metelkova City. It is a play of sight and blindness, a
fixation to (one) eye. Kocjancic works from the fact that there is
something in society that induces a breach, a division. Delusion plays
a decisive role here. Photography always contains something that can be
noticed as absent.
Here, on these photographic faces, is inscribed the psychology of
pressure and the wish for resistance.
Producer of the exhibition is Strip Core / Forum
Ljubljana.
Project was sponsored by KulturKontakt Austria, Ministry of Culture of
Republic Slovenia, City Ljubljana - Department of Culture, Alten doo
and
AlCu Kamnik
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