NIKA AUTOR

Newsreel Front : The News is ours. Strategies of montage – what image can we imagine?

She finally came up to me,
put a blue cap on my head
and tied a red scarf around my neck.
What image would I have shot
if I had had a camera in 1989?

The real image of the past
whooshes by.

Shattered images

that not even memory or celluloid tape
can wrest from oblivion.

(excerpt from the Newsreel 55, Newsreel Front, 31′, 2013 )

Newsreel 55 is a compilation of quotations, archival footage and footage of current events relating to the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, with a special focus on Maribor, the former country’s third-largest industrial center. It explores questions that relate to the social and political shifts of the 20th century that have shaped the city’s economic, political and social dynamics; a city of occupation, a city of industrialisation and deindustrialisation, and a city marked by the disintegration of the state. These periods are presented through the eyes of the generation that grew up during the transition between two systems. How can images be used today, and what political impact and power do they have? What issues do they raise with regard to the class struggle of today?


Nika Autor works in the field of contemporary art. She finished her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. She understands artistic practice as a reflection on social reality that contributes to the resistance of the gaze and the sharpening of thought. She is part if the collective Newsreel Front ( Obzorniška Fronta ). Her work has been presented in different galleries and festivals; Film d’actualites- l’actu est a nous /Jeu de Paume, Paris, France; Between Worlds II, Gallery Miroslav Kraljevič, Zagreb, Croatia; U3, 7th Triennial of Contemporary Art in Slovenia, Ljubljana; Shifts in Time: Performing the Chronic, MUMOK, Vienna, Austria; Alternative film/video, Festival novog filma i videa, Beograd, Serbia. http://obzorniska-fronta.si/