Saso Stanojkovik Portfolio 2021
Saso Stanojkovik Portfolio 2021
Portfolio 1999-2017
                                Selected Projects:
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    Brain Drain Memorial, 2002
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                                                                                    Brain Drain Memorial, 2002
                                                                         LED installation with pen and notebook.
An ongoing project devoted to hundreds of artists, students and intellectuals leaving Macedonia every year. The
 audience is asked to add to already existing list the names of their friends and relatives who left the country in
                                                                                             search for better life.
                                                         8
I am Tired of Commissioned Revolutions, 2003
             9
                                                                                 I am Tired of Commissioned Revolutions, 2003
A public art installation, camouflage blanket and text on a park bench (180x180 cm), meant to serve to an accidental homeless
                                                                                                                  revolutionary
                                                             10
     Film Marathon, 2003
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Film Marathon, 2003
video installation, Museum of Contemporary Art (cinema), Skopje, Macedonia
The work Film Marathon deals with the issue of the lack of audience in Skopje cinemas due to widely distributed pirate copies of the
latest foreign movies. During the summer 2003 all cinemas in Skopje were closed due to the unregulated market of pirated VHS tapes
and DVD’s. The decline of the audience continues even today and a similar situation with the absence of cinema goers results in crisis
of Macedonian cinema in general but it effected with some small groups of cinephiles who make home parties watching and
discussing films.
The video installation project Film Marathon consists of two video projections:
- a 30 min. DVD projection of a recorded painting Cine-Culture (oil on canvas, 140 x 200 cm) and
- a projection of the video Žarko and Marko, DVD,180 min.
The recorded painting depicts the film audience in a cinema painted according to a photograph found in the Film Archive in Skopje.
My research actually looked at the statistics of the decline of the film audience in Skopje’s cinemas during the transition that affected
the change of ownership of the film theatres due to which for a long time there were no investments and maintenance funds I brought
the completed painting in a real cinema theatre and put it between the seat rows and then I asked the cine-operator to project a film in
front of it. While recording the painting there was a reflection of the film images on the faces of the depicted viewers. Together with
the light of the cine-projector visible in the back of the final projection this reflection created a simulation of a situation in which a
painting “watches” a film. The recorded image of the painting also recalls a pirated copy of a film.
The second part titled “Žarko and Marko,” is a real time conversation between two cinephiles from Skopje who discuss their favorite
movies and the reason behind their preference for staying at home and watching pirated video’s instead going to theatres.
During the launch of the project there was also a poll - the audience was invited to vote for their favorite movie that was projected the
very next day at a closed session in the cinema of the Museum of Contemporary Arts.
                                                                    12
                         Žarko and Marko, 2003
                          video, DVD, 180 min.
     Museum of Contemporary Art (cinema), Skopje
13
                               Film Marathon, 2003
       installation view, projection and TV monitor
     Museum of Contemporary Art (cinema), Skopje
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                                                  Film Marathon, 2003
installation view with projected painting (140 x 200 cm), 30 min. loop.
                       Museum of Contemporary Art (cinema), Skopje
 15
To Whom It May Concern, 2005
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To Whom It May Concern, 2005
performance, ICA London, programme during the David Medalla’s exhibition Anywhere in the World, curated by Guy Brett,
part of the exhibition Six Easy Steps: Six Weeks, Six Curators, Six Perspectives, curated by Jens Hoffman.
During this 40 min. participatory performance I wrote one hundred names of Eastern European artists on a white board, with all
diacritics underlined in red (as in a computer file written in English). Thus, I recommended these artists to concrete London galleries,
otherwise reluctant to show Eastern European art.
I also created a fake gallery guide to London museums and galleries (September-October 2005) with these names included in the
programme but without diacritics so the participants of the performance could follow my instructions and learn the right way to
pronounce and write the names of their artists-colleagues from Eastern Europe.
                                                                   17
          To Whom It May Concern, 2005
     video still, participatory performance,
           video documentation, DVD, 6’.
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          To Whom It May Concern, 2005
     fake gallery guide to London galleries
         printed leaflet, A4, edition of 500
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     Justice in Focus I, 2004-7
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                                                                                       Justice in Focus, 2004-7, DVD, 17’ loop,
                                                                                                photography and video project,
                                                National Gallery Macedonia, Multimedia Cultural Centre “Mala Stanica”, Skopje
"Justice in the Focus" is a 17 min slide show made of series of 150 photographs taken in front of the building of the Supreme Court of
     Justice that is situated on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. The tourists taking photographs of the façade of this building and of its
 architrave’s inscription "Equal Justice under Law" triggered this project. From 1 April to 1 July 2004 I was documenting their efforts
         to overcome the intriguing irony related to this remarkable architectural statement of power. Namely, each visitor when taking
      photographs in front of the building faces the same problem: either the faces of photographed people or the words of the famous
   inscription remain out of focus. With all protests taking part in front of this building and the media always present justices turns out
 into a spectacle for the cameras. The only intervention on the photographs was the question mark falsely “engraved” at the end of the
                                                                                                           text “Equal Justice under Law”.
                                                                   21
22
23
     Justice in Focus II, 2007
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                                                   Justice in Focus II, 2007
                                            4 channel video installation, DVD, 27’
                        National Gallery Macedonia, Multimedia Cultural Centre “Mala stanica”, Skopje
A follow up to the project Justice in Focus, dealing with the difference between justice and its institutions in Macedonia consisting of
four connected video projections. Consisting parts of the installation were three interviews with experts of human rights and justice
that I asked to speak about the problems within the Macedonian institutions of justice and the issues with realisation of the laws, and a
poll that recorded the answers to similar questions posed to twenty accidentally selected citizens: students of Faculty of Law in
Skopje, public administrators in various courts and lawyers, and five protestors - representatives of the Association of the laid-off
workers who created a camp in the public city park in front of the Parliament during a whole year (from February 2007 to June 2008).
In addition to the video installation, I organized a free workshop with instructions how to apply to the European Court of Human
Right in Strasbourg in cases of severe obstructions of justice for the workers who were denied the rights to work.
                                                                   25
26
     Space for Protest, 2012
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                             The camp of protestors in front of the Parliament in Skopje,
                                            Macedonia, 2007-2008
 The exhibition Space for protest is based on the eponymous research, interdisciplinary and participatory
project, where the main participants were the “victims of transition”. These victims are, in fact, the redundant
workers who were made redundant and laid off without any compensation or alternative employment. The main
theme I dealt with during this long-term project (2007-2012) and exhibition is the phenomenon of public space
protest, more precisely the protests of the redundant workers who seek to realize their right to work after being
made redundant. In my project Space for protest I touch upon various questions and related issues such as:
-the right to work and protest as a means to this end ,-the life, dynamics and power of the protesting groups,
-the creation of a personal space and achieving greater visibility, -the daily routine and life paradoxes in the
protestors’ camps, -the attraction of media coverage as an important means to the realization of the right to
protest, -the role of art and culture in a time of global economic crisis, the valorization of aesthetic tastes and
criteria, as well as the general need for art, especially in a time of pre-dimensioned political project related to
public spaces. Approximately 30000 redundant workers are a result of the transition, a period we have been in
during the past twenty years. A part of them, about 3000, organized in the association of workers with over 25
years of service and unregulated status, driven, above all, by poverty, protested for longer than a year at a camp
set up by themselves in the public space of park Žena Borec - Woman Fighter (4 March 2007 – 15 July 2008).
The protesting area in this particular case became one with the living area. The social and the public became
their private as well. The redundant workers became, on the one hand, visible to the public with their demands
and the fight for the right to work and subsistence, but, on the other hand, their private life, their daily activities
such as: cooking, shaving, doing the laundry, as well as the poverty, also came to light and visible to the public
and became a part of my video archive. Most of the redundant workers are still protesting for their rights,
blocking the roads and occupying public buildings. My exhibition strives to provide them with yet another
possible space for protest – the free space of art.
The art project Space for Protest by Sašo Stanojkovik will be displayed as an installation with six video
projections and one sound installation.
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29
 “Transfer of Responsibility”, Space for Protest, 2012
Collage glued on a ball, archive of newspaper cut-outs
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I Protest, Therefore I Am, 24 October 2012, National Gallery, Skopje
A public debate at the opening of the exhibition Space for Protest.
During the debate the representatives of different interest groups and initiatives formed for fighting against the
irregularities of privatization and calling for social justice and laid-off workers’ rights were gathered and
discussed their common issues and started collaborating in solidarity with each other against the right-wing
Government.
Moderator of the debate: Žarko Trajanovski, an expert for human rights
Participants:
Zdravko Saveski, FON University
Suad Missini, Research Centre for Civil Society
Toše Zafirov, Progress – Institute for Social Democracy
Irena Cvetkoviќ, Sexual and Health Rights of Marginalized Communities
Liljana Georgievska, Union of Laid-off Workers “UNIT”
Aleksandar Gocev, Citizens’ Initiative AMAN
                                                  31
     Let Them Eat Monuments, 2014
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21.05.2014, Sašo Stanojkoviќ, Let Them Eat Monuments, 2014, participatory performance with chocolate
multiples of Warrior on a Horse (10 copies), a part of the long-term project, Sašo Stanojkoviќ, Deliberative
Cultural Heritage (May 2016 - )
In the context of Chto Delat, Face to Face with Monument, Schwarzenbergplatz, Wiener Festwochen, Vienna,
and Academy of Fine Arts, CSEEAH course’s students, workshop “BYOM: Participatory Monuments”,
                                                    33
An Inventory of Questions and Answers, 2015
          34
             An Inventory of Questions and Answers, 2015
               Liljana Gjuzelova and Sašo Stanojkoviќ
                                  35
An Inventory of Questions and Answers
is a multi-part collaborative project that resulted from the long-term friendship between the Macedonian artists
Liljana Gjuzelova and Sašo Stanojkoviќ. The artists put together their individual critical projects: Liljana
Gjuzelova, As Long as this Government Is in Power, 2014, and Sašo Stanojkoviќ, The Legend of the ‘Leǵen’
(‘Basin’), 2004, and Not So White Cube, 2003, in which they shared similar interests and aims.
The project discusses the relations between artists, institutions and state. The first discussion was published on 31
July 2015 in the Macedonian daily newspaper Sloboden Pečat (run of 14.000). The artists also created an artist
book - a collaborative imaginary ‘inventory’ that instead of objects ‘collected’ their urgent questions and answers
about their artistic concerns regarding the institutional and state strategies, government’s cultural policies, calling
for institutions’ accountability and responsibility, particularly in relation to the large government’s project
“Skopje 2014”.                             The
The ‘inventory’ is an illustrated document in which these two artists of different generations and artistic interests
reflect on their fifteen-year-long conversations. During their discussions they express their critical opinions and
concerns about the profound impact of the conservative neoliberal politics of the state and the government on the
important decisions of the local leading artistic and cultural institutions during the drawn-out transitional period
after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and how this affected the artists and recent artistic practice in Macedonia. The
project was initiated on the occasion of the opening of the new collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art,
when Liljana Gjuzelova’s invitation to donate two works was withdrawn by the Museum’s Director and its new
collection’s curatorial team, after the artist made a very specific and bold request: that the works to be kept in the
Museum’s depot ‘as long as this government is in power.’ Afterwards, the never-exhibited caption clearly stating
the artist’s conditions became a work on its own.                                                   Suzana Milevska
Suzana Milevska
                                                     36
                  A Conversation between the Artists Liljana Gjuzelova and Sašo Stanojkoviḱ
                                     Sloboden Pečat, 31 July 2015
In 2014, the Museum of Contemporary Art re-exhibited the old/new collection, after a long twenty-year interval. During
that interim period only temporary exhibitions were being displayed, whereas the collection, consisting primarily of pieces
donated after the 1963 earthquake, had been ‘hidden’ from the public eye in the Museum depots for almost two decades.
We first met in 1998, when the current Display had already been closed, and the subject of the ‘hidden’ collection has
been an ever-present leitmotif in our discussions ever since. In 2013 and 2014, the Museum of Contemporary Art invited
several new authors, including Liljana Gjuzelova, to contribute works that had not been included thus far, and this was the
particular occasion for our conversation since in the end none of Gjuzelova’s works invited became part of the collection
and its current Display for reasons to be unravelled in this collaborative work that consists of our conversation and several
related art projects.
                                                             37
  The Legend of the “Legen” (Basin) I-II, 2002
Series of digital photographs, variable dimensions
                       38
      Not so White Cube, 2003
     Inkjet print, 130 × 150 cm
39
1. M                                                         6.
   Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Macedonia               Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Macedonia
2.
                            -                                7.
     Cabinet of the President of the Republic of Macedonia        Public Revenue Office of the Republic of Macedonia
                       Skopje
3.                                                           8.
     Monument of Fallen Heroes of Macedonia
4.                                                           9.                          -
     Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia                        State Market Inspectorate   Skopje
5.                                                           10.
     The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Macedonia         Bridge Freedom
                                                                          (20016-2018)
                                       ,                                (2016-2018)
                                                                                                                 (20016-2018)
                                                    ,         s Left of the Colourful Revolution? (2016-2018)
(20016-2018)
- - -
    -
                                  (2016)
                                                                                                                                       .
                        ,                                                         (2016-2018)
Ongoing participatory and artistic research project. It consists of a colorful and discursive archive of the last remnants of the protests in Macedonia
dubbed Colourful Revolution (spring-summer 2016). The project represents a kind of psycho-geography map (a photo-collage) and forensic
archaeology of the protests - the remained visible and invisible traces of the paint-balling interventions on the monuments and buildings. The two-
channel video is a discursive archive of ten partici                    their answers to the question              ft of the Colourful Revolution? The work
Petition (2016) was the artis official initiative with which Stanojkovi requested that the competent institutions declare monuments of cultural
heritage the last remnants of the Colourful Revolution. The main project s aim was to point to the contradictions and contentiousness of the
institutional understanding of the cultural heritage in R. Macedonia.
The project was first exhibited at the exhibition Transfer of Responsibility Mobile Gallery, Skopje, 10.10.2018). It is a part of the ongoing artistic
research project Deliberative Cultural Heritage, supported by the Ministry of Culture of R. Macedonia
Artist’s Statement
In my art and research projects I deal with groups or communities of people who gather around certain
common interests in arts, aesthetics or ethics. I am interested in their informal and irregular self-organised
activities and gatherings that are not officially registered and institutionalised so therefore are not easily
recognised as socially or aesthetically important. My projects address the relation between the formation
of such communities and the social, private or public art and working spaces they inhabit (galleries,
cinemas, homes, even parks). I use different media depending on the structure of my projects (painting,
photography, video, performance, advertisements).
For example, my project Film Marathon consisted of a research based painting, video and participatory
performance that all dealt with the lack of film audience in Skopje cinemas and with the recent
proliferation of pirated DVD’s in Macedonia. The performance To Whom it May Concern addressed the
cultural differences among the artists – members of the London Biennale collective (realised during the
exhibition Anywhere in the World: David Medalla’s London, Institute of Contemporary Art – London, a
part of the project of “London in Six Easy Steps: Six Weeks, Six Curators, Six Perspectives” curated by
Jens Hoffman, London, 2005). Justice in Focus was a result of my observations of the behavior of the
people visiting the building of the Supreme Court of Justice situated on Capitol Hill. During ninety days
that I have spent in Washington D.C. between 1 April and 1 July in 2004 I was documenting different site
specific situations in front of the main entrance of the building. I noticed a very simple but intriguing
visual irony related to this remarkable architectural statement of power. Namely, each visitor wanting to
take a photograph of his/her friends or relatives standing on the stairs faces the same paradox: it was
impossible to have a clear image of the famous inscription from the top of the building Equal Justice
Under Law in the same frame.
Due to the oversized building and the very high position of the inscription the tourists disappointingly find
out that the famous inscription always remains out of focus, or more precisely, it is either the faces of the
photographed visitors or the words of the inscription that disappear or become fuzzy and unfocused. I
became a witness of many humorous and exhausting attempts of the tourists from all around the world
who tried to find the right ‘angle’, ‘exposure’ or ‘distance’ in order to fulfil the desire of their companions
(and often their own desires) to have a photograph in front of the famous ‘slogan’.
Therefore the visual and aesthetical component of the project became a metaphor that emphasised the
urgency of questioning of the possibility to acquire any universal concept of justice and addresses the
issues of the relation between different cultural contexts and justice as well as the relation between justice
and the institutions of its regulation and distribution.
Such strategy is common in most of my projects thus enabling an intrinsic entanglement of aesthetics and
ethics as in the ancient Greek concept of καλοκἀγαθία (unity of beautiful and good) where there is no
privilege between these two key concepts as it is in the state of arts today. The most recent project
Deliberative Cultural Heritage deals with the issue of commons regarding the urgency for a participatory
and deliberative conceptualization of cultural heritage and its contestations in the contemporary art and
cultural institutions.
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Curriculum Vitae
Sašo Stanojkoviḱ
Franklin Ruzvelt 46 A I-5, Skopje 1000, Macedonia
Tel.+ 38923228198, +38975766836
E-mail. [email protected]
http://www.afonline.artistsspace.org/view_artist.php?aid=2590
Sašo Stanojkoviḱ was born in 1962, in Skopje, Macedonia where he lives and works as an independent
artist. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Art in Skopje in 1985 and he received his MA in 2011 from
the same Faculty. From 1986 he is a member of DLUM – The Association of Macedonian Artists and
from 2004 he is a member of the artist's collective London Biennale Artists. His solo exhibition Film
Marathon was a video and participatory project that dealt with the lack of film audience in Skopje
cinemas and with the recent proliferation of pirated DVD’s in Macedonia. The exhibition was organised
by the Museum of Contemporary Art - Skopje, in 2003. His participatory performance To Whom it May
Concern was realised as a part of David Medalla's exhibition that was curated by Guy Brett in the
Institute of Contemporary Art – London in 2005. His project Justice in the Focus consisting of two video
installations and one workshop was presented at Mala stanica – National Gallery in Skopje in 2007. He
participated in a summer residency programme in Marmara, Turkey in 2003 that led to his participation
in the exhibition …and…that was organised in the Military Museum in Istanbul parallel to the
International Istanbul Biennale. His paintings, installations, video and performances have been presented
widely in international exhibitions in Skopje, Istanbul, Belgrade, Stockholm, Castellon, Salamanca,
Madrid, London, Berlin, Miami, Boston, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Braunschweig, Rijeka, Bucharest, Sarajevo,
Athens, Thessaloniki, New York, Belgrade, etc.
2008            “The Renaming Machine”, conference, Stacion Contemporary Art Centre, Prishtina,
                Kosovo
2007            “Curatorial Translation”, curatorial workshop series, press to exit project space
2003            “…and…”, summer residency programme, Turunc, Turkey
Selected bibliography
Suzana Milevska, The Renaming Machine, Ljubljana, Slovenia: The P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute, 2010.
Nadica Smilevska, “Pravda vo focus”, Recenzii, Skopje, Macedonia: Feniks, 2009, 38-9.
Zlatko Teodosievski, “On Justice and On Art”, Artist-Citizen - 49th October Salon (catalogue), Belgrade:
        Cultural Centre Belgrade, 2008, 172-3.
Barry Schwabsky, “When Is a Painting not a Painting”, Modern Painters, [London] December
        2005/January 2006, 109-110.
Paco Barragan, “The Advent of Other Painting”, 2nd International Painting Prize - Castellon, Alcorcon:
        Centro Municipal de las Artes Alcorcon, 2006, 5-6.
Suzana Milevska, “…And…”, And, Istanbul, Turkey: Istanbul Art Museum Foundation, 2003, 18-25.
Žarko Trajanoski, “Apetitio Principi and the Prisoners of the Cave”, Film Marathon (catalogue),
        Skopje, Macedonia: Museum of Contemporary Arts, 2003.
Konča Prikovska, “The Art Lover on Scene”, On the Art Lover, Skopje, Macedonia: DLUM, 2000, 2-3.