2-channel video installation

By combining newly filmed and archival material, Doplgenger reconsiders the representation of the “deep history” of minerals, as well as the representation of the political history of the 20th century. Record of the Termite Landscape examines images of socialist miners and compares them with the invisible representation of mining in capitalist society. Scenes of contemporary extractivism meet the image of the Vlachian uprising in 1935, the first environmental protest in Europe, and archival footage from the TV series Anticolonial Struggle. By questioning the materiality of their own approach and position, the authors attempt to penetrate the future horizon outside media spectacle, simultaneously questioning images of the past.

With its very title, the work evokes the eponymous poetry collection by Yugoslav revolutionary surrealist Oskar Davičo, in which the poet attempts, through an artistic action and by poetic attempts, to create new relations, phenomena and things, or – by dissolving existing ones – to imbue them with a new sense and meaning.

At the core of this video essay is the landscape as a mirror of political power dynamics. Visible traces of labour in industrial landscapes are contrasted with liberal-capitalist landscapes, where these traces are erased. Doplgenger highlights the role of the audiovisual in resistance, drawing connections from colonial history through socialist emancipation projects to the current situation in Serbia, addressing the colonial entanglements of extractivism.

Record of the Termite Landscape understands the audiovisual archive as a contested space that enables alternative narratives through fragmentation. Doplgenger not only document the past but also translate it into the present and future, thus expanding the boundaries of the visible and the imaginable.

• Sektion Section: Exhibition
• Programm Programme: Witnessing Witnessing