Izložbu Dana Okija čine tri video-rada, odnosno tri filma, ukoliko pod filmom razumijemo različite eksperimente sa “slikama u pokretu”. Svaki se od radova može doživjeti i interpretirati na više načina. Moguće je da nas video-rad pod nazivom “Ples” potakne na razmišlanje o ontološkom odnosu čovjeka i životinje. Gdje je granica koju čovjek povlači između sebe i prirode? Jesu li sve životinje inteligentna i samosvjesna bića ili te ljudske odlike posjeduju samo određene vrste? Koje su to vrste, te tko bi trebao provesti selekciju? Neki će možda pred “Plesom” razmišljati o važnosti holizma, o harmoničnoj vezi koja se mora uspostaviti između čovjeka i prirode i tome slično. Četverokanalna projekcija “Firule” može potaknuti drugačija razmišljanja, drugačije osjećaje. Dok će jedne dirnuti mijena melankoličnog pejzaža dalmatinske obale, druge može zaintrigirati picigin ili običaj ispiranja nogu prije nazuvanja natikača ili japanki. “Post festum” posjetitelja izložbe može, pak, suočiti s depresivnim mislima. Napuštene tvornice, zagađeni okoliš, djeca prepuštena sama sebi i slično guraju interpretaciju ovog rada prema političkoj i ekonomskoj krizi kroz koju upravo prolazimo. Ukratko, ideje, asocijacije i osjećaji koje ovi radovi mogu izražavati nisu malobrojni i svatko je pozvan da ih tumači kako može i želi.
Meni se, međutim, čini da radovi okupljeni na ovoj izložbi govore o tri vrste filmskog vremena, osobito o odnosu fizikalnog, filmskog i našeg osobnog vremena.
Prvu vrstu - predstavljenu video-radom “Ples - možemo za potrebe ovoga teksta nazvati poetikom zatvorenog vremenskog kruga (eng. loop). Njezino osnovno obilježje je manipulacija vremenom, odnosno ukidanje vremenskog toka. U “Plesu” realni se događaj - zajedničko kružno plivanje čovjeka i kita - produžuje u beskonačnost. U trenutku kada nam se učini da će se čovjek i kit razdvojiti, da će događaj krenuti za čvrstom logikom fizikalnog vremena, autor ih jednostavnom tehnološkom operacijom vrati u još jedan krug. Nakon njega u još jedan, pa u još jedan, i tako unedogled. Stoga, u “Plesu” vrijeme kao da stoji. Ili još preciznije, u njemu se uz pomoć tehnologije negira naše osjećanje vremenskog toka. Možda se i zbog toga, a ne samo zbog nelagode koju osjećamo zbog životinje koja se ponaša “neprirodno”, čini da film ispituje naše strpljenje.
Video-rad “Firule” oslanja se, pak, na poetiku nadzorne kamere. Umjesto manipulacije fizikalnim vremenom, ovdje je riječ o njegovoj registraciji. Kamera pričvršćena za stup snima splitsku plažu tijekom četiri godišnja doba. U “Firulama”, filmsko se vrijeme poklapa sa fizikalnim vremenom. Ako “Ples” negira vrijeme prikazujući sadašnjost koja se neprestano ponavlja, onda “Firule” prikazuju tok vremena i to toliko detaljno da postajemo svjesni njegove ogromnosti. Vrijeme se u ovom četverokanlnom filmu rasteže kao u Zenonovom paradoksu: očito je da svjedočimo nekom događanju - kretanju valova, šetnji psa, kupanju, igri itd. - ali ako pokušamo zamisliti početak ili kraj tog događanja, odnosno početak ili kraj filma, morat ćemo zbog uzaludnosti napora ubrzo odustati. Čak i slučaju da “fabulu” filma ograničimo na kadar, na ono što vidimo, da se ne bavimo enigmom trenutka i prostora u kojem, primjerice, pas izlazi u šetnju, potraga za krajevima “priče” bit će teška, ako ne i nemoguća, jer u kojem trenutku počinje kretanje valova, u kojoj luci je isplovio brod? Vrijeme “Firula” vrijeme je koje je toliko prostrano da ga je gotovo nemoguće obuhvatiti, razumjeti ili osjetiti. Oki ovdje kao da slijedi spisateljsku poetiku Javiera Maríasa, Španjolca prevođenog i na hrvatski jezik, koji u jednom intervju kaže kako u svojim romanima pokušava “dopustiti postojanje onom vremenu koje nema vremena postojati”. “Kada se stvari događaju”, kaže Marías, “ mi ne znamo zapravo što se događa. Možete provesti cijelu noć radeći nešto, primjerice, prepirati se s voljenom osobom, a da na kraju jedino što vam ostane u memoriji jeste neki kratki trenutak, ili jedna minuta, ili neka rečenica, ili neka slika (...) U romanu možete te stvari imati u stvarnom trajanju.”
U “Post festumu” se, pak, Oki služi poetikom igranog filma. Filmska (vremenska) montaža, kamera iz ruke, izmjena kadrova, filmski likovi, dijalog - gotovo cijeli repertoar igrano-filmskih sredstava upotrijebljen je u oblikovanju ovog kratkog filma. Njegovo vrijeme je vrijeme (enigmatične) priče, linearne sukcesije međusobno povezanih događaja. Kao i “Ples”, i “Post festum” manipulira s vremenom, no dok prvi negira naš doživljaj vremena, potonji ga pojačava: zamišljamo društveni prostor iz kojeg dolaze likovi u filmu, tražimo logiku koja vodi do njihove konfrontacije, ukratko, pronalazimo smisao u odnosu između onoga što nije prikazano, što je negdje bliže ili dalje u vremenu (fabula) i onoga što gledamo (siže). S druge strane, u odnosu na “Firule”, očito je da “Post festum” ne prikazuje neki isječak stvarnog, fizikalnog vremena čiji se krajevi udaljavaju od nas razmjerno naporima koje ulažemo u njihovo sagledavanje, nego kreira jednu artificijelnu vremensku cjelinu koja je bliska našem iskustvu. (U ovoj bliskosti možda leži jedan od razloga zbog kojeg je publika sklonija realističkim umjetničkim prosedeima). Ovdje, također, dolazimo do jednog zanimljivog paradoksa. Naime, filmsko, dakle fikcionalno vrijeme “Post-festuma” bliže je našem stvarnom, svakodnevnom doživljaju vremena, iskustvu onih ne-izmišljenih Maríasovih ljubavnika koji se dan nakon prepirke sjećaju malog broja nekih, možda ključnih, a možda banalnih momenata - šarena odjeća djece koja se igraju, nestvarna bjelina industrijskog otpada, tjeskobno lice novinarke (aktivistkinje?) - nego vremenu “protagonista” s plaže na Firulama - mol, drvo, tuš, val, kupači - koji žive vrijeme u njegovom “stvarnom trajanju”, vrijeme u kojem se, zahvaljujući poetici nadzorne kamere, fizikalno i filmsko vrijeme gotovo poklapaju. Tako nekako ispada kao da je “Firule” napisao Marías, a ne snimila skrivena kamera, a da je “Post festum” video-dnevnik nekoga tko u osnovi ne zna što se događa, pa si postavlja pitanja na koja ne zna odgovor: zašto je tlo bijelo?, što djeca rade na ovakvom mjestu?, otkuda su došli ljudi sa kamerom?, zašto žena galami? itd.
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People usually walk on hiking trails, in parks or nature. However, hiking along a highway can be just as interesting. Recently, I hiked about fifteen kilometres along one such highway. During those two and a half hours I also had the chance to think about the time I need, as a hiker, to cross a certain distance and the time somebody in the car needs to cross the same distance. Tiredness, leg pain, breathing rhythm, the sound of racing cars, etc., all of that told me that my time had nothing to do with the time of people in the cars, although we were crossing the same distance. A huge difference in the time we needed to cross the same distance, a huge difference in the speed our bodies moved, also separated out experiences of reality. Thanks to this hiking experience it seemed like the social, economic or cultural differences among people, the ones we witness on a daily basis, metaphysically deepened. That day I realized the old truth that there is a physical time we measure by clock and a calendar and that there is the time we perceive as a personal time, time that elapses in walking from point A to point B, from birth to death.
Dan Oki's exhibition consists of three video works, i.e. three films, if by film we understand different experiments with “moving images“. Each of the works can be experienced and interpreted in several ways. Video-work titled «Dance» could make us think about the ontological relation between man and animal. Where is the line the man draws between himself and the nature? Are all animals intelligent and self-aware, or do only some species possess those human qualities? What species are those, and who should carry out the selection process? In front of this video-work some might think about the importance of holism, about the harmonious relationship that needs to be established between man and nature, and the like. The four-channel video projection “Firule” can provoke different thinking, different feelings. While some will be touched by the change of a melancholic landscape of the Dalmatian coast, the others might be intrigued by picigin1 or the custom of washing the feet before putting on slippers or flip flops. On the other hand, “Post Festum“ might face the visitor with depressive thoughts. Abandoned factories, polluted environment, children left to themselves, etc., push the interpretation of this work towards political and economic crisis we are going through. In short, there are more than a few ideas, associations and feelings these works might express, and everyone is invited to interpret them as they can and wish.
To me, however, it seems that the works at this exhibition talk about three types of screen time, especially about the relation between physical, screen and our personal time.
For the purposes of this text, we can call the first type – represented by the video-work “Dance” – the poetics of the loop. Its primary feature is time manipulation, i.e. the elimination of time. In ”Dance“, a real event – joint circular swimming of a man and a whale – extends into infinity. In the moment when it seems that the man and the whale are going to part, that the event will follow a firm logic of the physical time, the author pushes them back to another round, with a simple technological operation. After that another one, then another one, and so on to infinity. Thus, in “Dance“, it seems like time is standing still. Or, even more precisely, with the help of technology it negates our sense of time. Maybe also because of that, and not only because we feel uneasy about the animal that behaves “unnatural“, the video tests our patience.
Video-work “Firule“ relies, however, on the poetics of surveillance cameras. Instead of manipulating the physical time, it records it. Camera attached to a pole captures this beach in Split during the four seasons of the year. In “Firule“, screen time coincides with the physical time. If “Dance” negates the time by showing a reality that constantly repeats itself, then ”Firule“ presents the time in such a detail that we become aware of its vastness. The time in this four-channel video projection stretches like in Zen’s paradox: it is obvious that we are witnessing some event – the movement of the waves, walking the dog, swimming, playing, etc. – but if we try to imagine the beginning or the end of the event, i.e. the beginning and the end of the video, soon we will have to give up due to the futility of our efforts. Even if we restrict the “story“ of the video to a frame, to what we can see, without dealing with the enigma of the moment and the space in which, for example, a dog goes for a walk, the quest for the ends of the “story“ will be difficult, if not impossible; when do the waves start, which harbour did the ship sail from? The time of “Firule“ is the time so vast that we can barely comprehend, understand or experience it. It is like Oki follows the writer’s poetics of Javier Marías, Spaniard who has also been translated into Croatian, who, in one of his interviews, said that in his novels he tries to “allow the existence of the time that has no time to exist“. “When things are happening“, says Marías, “we do not really know what is happening. You can spend the whole night doing something, for example arguing with a loved one, and in end the only thing that stays in your memory is a short moment, or a minute, a sentence, an image (...) In a novel you can experience all these things in their real duration.“
In “Post Festum“ Oki uses the poetics of a feature film. Film (time) editing, hand-held camera, the exchange of frames, film characters, dialogue – almost the entire repertoire of feature-film techniques is used in designing this short film. Its time is a time of a (an enigmatic) story, linear succession of interrelated events. Like “Dance“, “Post Festum“ also manipulates time, but while the former negates our sense of time, the latter enhances it: we imagine a social space the characters in the video come from, we look for logic that leads to their confrontation, in short, we find the sense in the relation between what hasn't been shown, what is somewhere closer or further away (the plot) and what we see (the story). On the other hand, in relation to “Firule“, it is obvious that “Post Festum“ does not show a fragment of the real, physical time the ends of which move further away from us in proportion to the efforts we invest into their examination, but it creates an artificial time unit close to our experience. (This closeness might be the reason audience is more prone to realistic art approach.) Here, we also come to an interesting paradox. Namely, screen, i.e. fictional time of “Post Festum“ is closer to our real, everyday experience of time, the experience of those non-fictional Marías's lovers who, a day after the argument, remember some, maybe key, and maybe banal moments – colourful clothes of children playing, unrealistic whiteness of industrial waste, anxious face of a news reporter (a female activist?) – than to the time of the “protagonists“ on the Firule Beach – wooden bridge to the sea, wood, shower, wave, bathers – who live in its “real duration“, time in which, thanks to the poetics of surveillance cameras, physical and screen time almost coincide. Somehow, it seems like Marías wrote “Firule“, and not like they were recorded by a surveillance camera, and “Post Festum“ seems like a video-diary of someone who basically does not know what is happening, so they ask themselves the questions they cannot answer: why is the ground white? what are children doing in such a place? where did people with the camera come from? why is the woman yelling? etc.
1 Traditional ball game from Split, Croatia played on the beach. It is an amateur sport played in shallow water, consisting of players keeping a small ball from touching the water.