Marko Marković /HRV,AUT/
Southeast Sadness in Central Europe, 2021
Video, 8:41
By eating flowers in his performances, Marko Marković brings the body and mind into a state of intoxication with floral enzymes, exploring the changes in his perception. The body’s reactions are immediate: it trembles, convulses, its facial expressions change, it suffocates, it is exhausted from the effort to adapt to the situation. The video South-eastern Sadness in Central Europe shows the consequences of trying to exist in different places at the same time, in parallel worlds. The artistic metaphor combines the human body and the flower – a complex living symbiotic system with a purpose and a special place in nature that is cut, dislocated, and repurposed for the esthetical satisfaction, manifesting devotion and power. Here, two alien biosystems simultaneously merge with spaces of intimacy and corporeality and the far reaches of artificially dehumanised socio-geopolitical constructs. The collision of these worlds in one place, in one body, causes psychophysical transformations in the transit between thoughts, memories, bodies, reality, and imagination changing the perception and experience of what identity is or what it can become.
Camera: Zorica Gojkov
Thanks to: Performance Art Festival Osijek, Improper Walls, Stadtraum - Sammlung Friedrichof, Galerie Michaela Stock, Viennacontemporary.
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Marko Marković works in various media with a focus on performance art, critically reflecting on political and social structures in his work. His artistic interests are predominantly characterised by the relationship between the individual and society, dealing with questions of identity and the body as a tool of expression and experimentation. In his works he reflects on everyday life against the background of the relationship between subordination and superiority, as well as the exercise of power in different geopolitical systems. He is known as a radical performer exploring the limits of his own physical possibilities. He often involves the audience in his work and collaborates with people from different social and professional backgrounds. Marković studied, among others, at the Academy of Applied Arts Vienna, and has also curated and organised various cultural and artistic projects: in 2008 he founded DOPUST/ Days of Open Performance, an international festival platform for performing arts. He has also presented his work at numerous international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale and the Moscow Biennale.
https://sammlungfriedrichshof.at/marko-markovic/