Our research has been, for many years now, connected to the long-term project called We are living in a beautiful wOURld, which deals with issues of migration, brain drain and human capital, introducing also new, redefined theories of “home”. We started with a massive brain drain in post-Yugoslav regions during the war and after from a personal perspective, questioning the impact on identity and future of these people, as well as creation of space and new psychogeographical currents of the destination cities. The project started in 2013 and it involved works in different media, photography, prints, drawings, installations and in situ installations with video based interviews as main medium. The most recent project involved Latino- American migration in Spain and their contribution to the social landscape of Barcelona and Madrid.
The brain-drain does not have economic consequences only, but it relates to the design and renovation force of society as a whole. Absence of the intellectuals, the artists, the entrepreneurs, the youth cultures, leads to lacks of the resistance, the productive friction that create something new and make the essential identity of society. On the other side, how much do these currents affect the empowerment of civil and intellectual corpus of the destination country? To what extent do they qualitatively raise the capacity of society and consequently lead to the progress and prosperity of the whole nation.
We are especially interested in how to map changes and upheavals in society, but also in individual biographies, and how quickly certain situations change the way we think. The basic question the project raises is: How personal and public image change with individual migration story and how does the Past, European policy, but also financial and other crises act on the individual life?
During a ten days residency in Maribor, within a Risk Change project, we conducted a research of the issues related to migration and brain drain in this region and consequently focused our work on so called daily migrations between Maribor and Graz. A poor economic situation in Maribor, lack of industry and therefore, prospective jobs, a lot of workforce has been directed towards the neighboring, much developed and economically stable Austria, specifically Graz and other bordering cities. The proximity to this city allows them to travel daily, which means they work in Graz and live in Maribor. This daily routine creates flow, an undertow which transforms a landscape and contribute to the place and space dialectic.
Milica Milićević and Milan Bosnić are Masters of Arts from the Department of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade and although in diverse individual artistic ventures in group and solo exhibitions, we have been working on joint projects for the past 12 years under name diSTRUKTURA. In our efforts we have been trying to build on an extended view of Nature – as sublime, pseudo, or synthetic nature in urban constellations – aiming to define the various relationships, both real and virtual, that create the realities of modern-day life.
diSTRUKTURA have participated at over 15 solo and more than 40 group exhibitions. They have had solo exhibitions in Serbia, Austria, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Finland.
They took part in artists-in-residence programs and workshops in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Italy, Finland, Egypt, and Serbia. They have won several awards and scholarships among which is Pollock-Krasner grant for 2015. Their works can be found in over 15 public and private collections. www.distruktura.com