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RELOCATED IDENTITIES Part 1		

Overexposure
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Ode to Joy (2005, 2min 26sec)

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KATARINA ZDJELAR  b. Serbia 1979
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The Ode to Joy is an ode written in 1785 by the German poet and
historian Friedrich Schiller, and known especially for its musical
setting in the fourth and final movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony. The Ode to Joy was adopted as Europe's anthem by the
Council of Europe in 1972, with an official arrangement for
orchestra written by the Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan in
2003. The EU chose Beethoven's music for the poem as the EU anthem,
without German lyrics, because of the many different official
languages used within the European Union. Therefore, the EU anthem
is in effect the Beethoven theme (or melody) rather than Schiller's
poem, although its connection with the ideal of human brotherhood in
the text is understood. This ideal is stated in much more universal
terms in Beethoven's adaptation "all human beings become brothers"
than in Schiller's original, which states that "beggars become the
brothers of princes."

My special interest in this project starts with the European Union
as a binary model; not only because of non-EU coexistence and
inhabitation of the cultural, social and geopolitical borders of the
EU, but more with its a-priori established dualism through
intergovernmental organization of the EU and its constant
re-mapping. EU is a trans-national society, a meeting and melting
point of similar and dissimilar cultural characteristics and, more
importantly, it is a generator. By constitution of EU each member
state's profile is modified/compromised/supplemented; physiognomy,
language and sense of nationality are hybridized. But it is not
finished; the process won't stop. The European Union has yet to
grow.

In such a dualistic structure, where interior and exterior are
interwoven and create shared history, the most important point that
I work on within this project is the progressive potential of
hybridisation in terms of dramaturgy of that history (as the carrier
of an identity) and the place where the performance can happen.
Since history is a time-based chain of acts, I am seduced by the
speculation of simultaneity in the historical acts of establishing
and witnessing European identity and place.



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Having finished her studies at the University of Fine Arts and the
School of Art Theory in Belgrade, Katarina is currently residing in
the Netherlands as a participant of the Piet Zwart Institute in
Rotterdam. Her activities include: solo and group exhibitions,
theatre (writer/stage designer/actress), performances
(author/performer) in Serbia and Montenegro and in the Netherlands.
Her work is focused on the social circumstances in which she lives
and works and is, in that sense, site-sensitive. Her current field of
interest is based around the notion of mobility. Within the projects
her primary goal is not to illustrate the social reality of migrants
or natives, nor the representation of the foreignness within the host
country, but rather to examine consequences of the exchange, to point
out the psychological struggle resulting from the simultaneous
functioning of mutually shared desires of the guest as well as of the
host, to be/keep/stay safe within their authenticity.


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