Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Nada Prlja

Give 'em Hell

Doc. expérimental | hdv | couleur | 4:40 | Macédoine, Royaume-Uni | 2010

The banner slogans represented in the video are: Stop the deportation, We are all foreigners, Stop war against Immigrants, Stop criminalising Immigrants, No worker is Illegal and Rights for foreigners. During the course of several days, the artist positioned protest banners on the streets of London and secretly recorded the unfolding scene with a hidden camera from the opposite side of the street. The video ?Give ?em Hell? shows a spontaneous action by a group of youngsters, who express their anger toward and mistrust of immigrants, by smashing the series of protest banners, the texts and slogans of which support immigration and the notion of equal human rights for all. The disturbing, violent scene in ?Give ?em Hell? is slowed-down and accompanied with music by Ludwig van Beethoven, as a reference to the aestheticised violence of science fiction film ?A Clockwork Orange? by Stanley Kubrick?s. Kubrick claims that ?A Clockwork Orange? achieves to represent a possible reality and it is not only a fiction (science fiction). Taking this as its point of departure, ?Give ?Em Hell? questions the representation of the violence in a manner similar to the way in which Kubrick addresses this issue.

Born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina. Lived in Skopje, Macedonia, since 1998 lives and works in London, UK. She received an MPhil research degree from the Royal College of Arts, London, after graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Skopje. Prlja is an artist whose work deals with the complex situations of inequality and injustice in societies, ranging from political to economic issues. Using different media, her projects are multi-layered, site or condition-specific. She works mainly in installation, video, public art projects. She took part in following Biennales: 7th Berlin Biennale, Berlin; Manifesta 8, Murcia(2010) and Printmaking Biennale, Ljubljana(2009). Selected group exhibitions: Dorsky gallery, NY(2012); INIVA Institute of International Art, London(2010); David Roberts Art Foundation, London(2009); Tina B-Prague Contemporary Art Festival, Prague(2008); Hong-Gah National Museum, Taipei(2008), etc. Selected solo exhibitions: FUTURA, Prague(2013), National Gallery of Macedonia, Skopje(2013/2007), Lakeside Kunstrum, Klagenfurt(2010), ORF FUNKHAUS, Vienna(2009), MC Gallery, Zagreb(2009), The Museum of City, Vzigalica, Ljubljana(2009), Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje(2008), etc. Selected public presentations: ICA, London; INIVA, London; Tate Modern, London; University of Aberdeen, UK; Goldsmith University, London, etc. Prlja lectures in Metropolitan University in London, since 2004, she is Board Member of Open Space - Open System, Vienna, Austria.