May 10 & 11 5pm-9pm
Spring Show 2005
721 Broadway
at Waverly Place
4th Floor
South Elevators
New York, NY 10003
For additional
information email
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or call 212.998.1880
| The Balkans? | ||
|---|---|---|
| Author(s): | Maja Petric |  |
| Instructor: | Even, Tirtza | |
| Class: | Experimental Video Documentary | |
| Documents: |
Defining Balkans(JPEG)
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| Documents: | Balkans(JPEG) | |
| Keywords: | Balkans, keywords (southeastern Europe, 550,000 km˛, 53 million Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, mainland of Greece, The Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia, the European part of Turkey, somewhat elastic, Balkan mountains, fragmented, violent, wars, rebellions, invasions, clashes, splinter, violence, religious strife, ethnic clannishness, and hinterland), visualization, semantic. | |
| Experimental documentary video about meaning of the term Balkans and the ways of constructing meaning. | ||
| ‘Balkans?’ is experimental documentary video about the meaning of the term Balkans as definition and as perception. It also explores the way definitions are many times made out of perceptions, and other ways of constructing meaning. I looked up what does it stands for in various encyclopedias and maps, and most of them differently define the Balkans. The borders of the region are not clearly determined, and so the Balkans fails to exist as a geographical term. Other definitions are also vague, and so the Balkans doesn’t exist as a valid term. It does exist as a widespread perception, presumption, prejudice based on stories of doomed place and violence crazed people that were told by Western European travelers from the mid-sixteenth to late 20th centuries. My experimental documentary video is based on of the frequent definitions of the Balkans that I found at Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan. I quoted the definition and visualized each keyword from it - southeastern Europe, 550,000 km˛, 53 million Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, mainland of Greece, The Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia, the European part of Turkey, somewhat elastic, Balkan mountains, fragmented, violent, wars, rebellions, invasions, clashes, splinter, violence, religious strife, ethnic clannishness, and hinterland. Most of the words used to define the Balkans have strong negative context, and evoke bad sense of the place, and they don’t convey the way place is. | ||
| Personal Statement: | The region I come from is Southeastern Europe but widely known as the Balkans and perceived as “the very terror of Europe”. I was never aware of that perception while living at the place that is considered to be part of Balkans but started to when I moved to United States. Suddenly, I was considered to be Balkan. It made me think what that means. I started researching what does Balkan stands for, what is it, where is it, who says it is what they say it is, and why does it have a negative context.
Throughout my research I got to know the term Balkan, as many other terms, is based on stereotypes, but used as a fact. These stereotypes are so widespread that many, even some from Southeastern Europeans, believe it. I believe that perceptions, presumptions, and prejudices about others should be replaced by information, experience and knowledge. This should especially be done among population of countries that have political and economic power to influence less powerful countries, those that are most often subjected to the stereotypization. | |
| Background: | Trough my research I got to know that the term Balkan comes from Western European travelers and experts from the mid-sixteenth to late 20th centuries. Many of them have regarded the region as part of Asia, and sought accordingly to inform their contemporaries of its \"exotic\", \"outlandish\" and \"primitive\" ways. Their stories of doomed place and violence crazed people passed down through the ages and they are the same today in eyes of many Westerners, but also in many encyclopedias and history books.
I was interested why the place I come, know and love has such negative image across large population of the world. I examined in which ways is more negative them most other places and discovered that it is not. For that, I studied the semantics of the word Balkans by analyzing meaning of all components that the definition about the Balkans is made of. With such deductive approach I attempted to convey the ways people produce meaning and know of things in general. | |
| Audience: | Everybody who have interest in one or more of the following: the Balkans, experimental documentary, animation, semantics... | |
| User Scenario: | Video should be displayed on a flat screen in a loop. As such it can exist as linear, but also nonlinear narrative of visualizing keywords of the definition about the Balkans. The visualization can by viewed in its sequence, but it is also understood when visualizations of words is watched discontinuously. The visuals are quite appealing and can stand alone as suiting pat of ambient. | |
| Technical System Description: | The video is 8 minutes long. It is consisted of quotations and visualizations, both are done in the form of animation. Typography is dynamically animated, and so are visuals that are all in black, white and red. For this I used Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Photoshop. | |
| Project References, Research and Literature: | Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, Encarta Encyclopedia, Columbia Encyclopedia, Labor Law Encyclopedia, Absolute Astronomy Encyclopedia, http://www.encyclopedia.com, http://www.answers.com, http://www.ellok.org, http://geography.about.com, http://www.warphotoltd.com, Veljko Rogic: Regionalna geografija Jugoslavije, Francis W. Carter: An historical geography of the Balkans, Central Intelligence Age: The Balkans, Dina Iordanova: Cinema in Flame. Catherine Russell: Experimental Ethnography, Bozidar Jezernik: Wild Europe.
I also conducted a survey among 100 internationals and 50 Croatians about their perceptions of the term the Balkans. | |
| Conclusions: | The \'Balkans?\' is ready to be exposed. | |