Nina

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN MAKING?

I was always interested in marginalised groups, people from the edge of society, who are pushed away, maybe strange, maybe they just think outside of the squared reality. I am also interested in what all people give up for their comfort, in comfort of everyday life, in stereotypes, how West is distancing from nature, etc. What are other ways of living together, including all living organisms and forms, not just people. I am interested in power structure, in different angles of justice, in how to invite change. I am interested in the power of art as a form of change. What are the ways to change things, where does the power of change come from, can it arise from one person or it has to be mass of people. Tomi Janežič and the team, which I was part of as an assitant of the scenographer Branko Hojnik, we started to work on the play Beyond our power at the National theatre in Oslo, Norway, but the show was cancelled in February 2020, due to Covid situation. The text is still amazingly accurate today, it talks about man in power, who extract from the land and take advantage on people who live in the village and on the opposite those people, who live there and have enough of this toxic power relations. So at one point, when all these men meet in a castle up the hill, one of the villagers does a bomb suicide and kills them all, except one. This act opens up many questions, from how to make a change from bottom up, the rights of workers. It is not exusable to kill twenty people to make a better living for thousands, is this an act of bravery or an act of despair, where does greed come from, etc. I believe we can make change through art, I just got recently very inspired by the documentary 'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed' on Nan Goldin. It shows her life work, her photographic work and how it changed and influenced the life of many, the strugle of gay people in the AIDS era, her life and her recent protests against Sackler family as a form of activism. She personaly went through a lot in life and from this point she can make a change, when you survive so much, you are not afraid anymore and you became a force of change. I feel it adds the depth to a project, something I am looking for in everything I do. My most recent project is a short 4-minute long film about two intersex people from Slovenia.

HOW DID YOU DO IT?

I filmed, edited and directed myself. I used the voice recordings from their first meeting in summer 2022, when I asked Eros if he can record it. I met Eros In winter 2022 and Luka in summer 2022, after their first meeting. Their starting point is similar, but after their first year of life, they unfortunately lived two very different lives.

RELATION TO PREVIOUS PRACTICE

I did a project once, where I combined my photographs from the area I lived for several years in Ljubljana and my poems I wrote, based on experiences I had living in that area. I knew some of those people and talked to them, but also

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO MAKE NEXT?

WHY DO YOU WANT TO MAKE IT?

RELATION TO A LARGER CONTEXT

bigger question to which my work connects

REFERENCES

I have been working on a project, a few conversations between two homeless people and their observation about people on the street.

I got a call from a friend before Christmas, and she said she is having a hard time this year at this time, because she broke up with her boyfriend and she always had a nice time at his familiy’s Christam dinners and she is missing that. Dinners with her family were not as happy as of her ex-boyfrined’s, so she is not so eager to go home for holidays. I completely understand her, I also have mixed memories of spending Christmas with my family. The ones we celebrated with my broader relatives, for example with my cousin’s family and with my aunt, I have great memories of, because we were a group of 20 or more people, singing and dancing and eating really delicious dinners. The ones I have spent only with my family, were not so great because I had at least one fight per night with my father and it always turned out bed for everyone, unfortunatelly. When mine or my sisters boyfrineds were invited though, we had a nice time all together. Like if my family needs and outside person to establish piece and a nice atmosphere, to behave nicely to each other and to have the energy to enjoy.

This year me and Bonino stayed in Rotterdam during holidays and since we have just moved and we don’t know many people here yet, we haven’t been invited to any dinner, so it felt a bit lonely. I love to host or be invited to a dinner, it feels very intimate and it gives me special joy.

I have been walking a lot here, because I don’t have a bycicle, and when I bought one, the tire went flat in a month. I am mainly walking through the city center to school and I find it very strange to see, that there are so many shops. The city center to me basically feels like one big shop. No galleries, no underground spaces, nothing destroyed or damaged, there is only built environment for commerical use. Maybe also the colours have that affect, because everything is quite gray and dark and the winter weather doesn’t help either.

I also miss long walks in forests and walking up the hills, it makes me feel relaxed. In the Netherlands as far as I know there is no ‘wild’ nature. In Slovenia my parents live in the Alps and the nature there is quite beautiful and unpredictible, you can still meet a bear in the forest.

I am quite fascinated about the ways we see homelessnes, how we perceive that as something negative and why are we so opinionated about the people who are homeless. Us if they all had the same story. They might once lived life as we do now, but had a struggle that was too big to continue this lifestyle. Why we don’t judge the system that alows people to live on streets, which happens more in the cities than in countryside. And in cities, where people are so rich, some have to live on the street. Are they unfortunate or are they the rebels? What do they remind us of? What truth they bring? Why are we disturbed by them? Why are we not willing to give someone 1 euro, when we pay rents that are getting way too high and unregulated. Do people feel safe in systems? This brings a new topic, which I am also interested in, talking about life in cities, anonymity, distance, being invisible, being average.

Are homeless people really observing people or is their own struggle big too big, to take notice of others?

Is there homlesness in Metaverse?

TEXT

My body is just a shell is a 5'3'' long film I did on/with two intersexual people I met in 2022 in Slovenia. Through the video I want to show two different stories of two people who had a very similar starting point as babies, but lived very different lives due to the decision of their parents, based on their level of knowledge and not bein able to question? medical pressure. I first met Eros in spring 2022, Luka and Eros met in summer, we all three met in June. I asked Eros to record their conversation with his phone, because I was currious about their conversation. Although I didn't inted to use them, they allowed me to use them. The voice recordings ended up to be an hour long conversation of them speaking very openly and honestly about their life experinces as both being intersex people. Their voice recordings are the focal point of this movie. The video starts without an image, just with the sound. You can hear birds singing in the background, it is subtle, but it is also very important for the mood of the film. The voice recordings were made in nature, since Eros always proposed to meet in nature. He always said he only really felt accepted by the nature, the other title I had in mind was Nature heals.

The video might appear linear and simple, but I wanted to do it this way, to really put enhance on the narrative, which is quite dense and heavy and probably hard for a viewer to embrace?? in those 5 minutes. In the beginning the visuals are in the second plan, but become very important in the end. The narrative has a crescendo which escalates until the end, when I also show faces of both of them through the visuals, which poudari ojača? the messagge of the video. I edited the first draft of this film very intuitively a day before my first tutorial at PZI with Barend. My first edit was actually very similar to the final film. I took part of the voice recordings which was an introduction to a story and added videos of Eros's body parts to it, Luka didn't want to be filmed. I showed their faces only at the end of the video, which might come as a surprise, because their voice could be male or female, it is hard to define their gender if you don't have a picture. I latter added another two minutes of conversation and left the part in the end where they laugh together, because I was able to have 5 minutes instead of 4 minutes, which was the limit for Eye.

I was working with the material I already had, because I was not able to go to Slovenia at this point to shoot more and now i cannot do it because Eros died, so these are my only recordings I did with him. It is interesting how precious becomes a video of a person in the moment they are not anymore phsicaly present on Earth, to me video holds more presence and memory than photography, but even more their voice recordings. I hope this structure evokes emotions and sets a strong mood in the video, so the audinece can embrace their stories. Both the happines to live the life of such a special being, which can understand other beings on a more open REALM?, live more freely, look beyond social constructs and at the same time holds deep sadness of being rejected for who you are, in Eros's case by his family.

I have started to work on this project because in December 2021 a friend recommended me to read an instagram account of a doctor, who gives all sorts of health advices. In one post she wrote 'my dad was operating on intersex babies' which shocked me, because I didn't know about these operations. I have started to make a research about intersex people in Slovenia, but there were no information except of interviews Eros Murgelj, before Anja Murgelj did and were published online. I tried to make a contact with him and I finally did through a photographer from one interview. I met with Eros in spring 2022, we met outside on a meadow, on the outskirts of Ljubljana. Than we met several more times.

In october 2022 I started to think the short video for the Eye could be made from existing videos and recordings I had from the summer. I combined my video recordings I did with Eros and Luka in summer 2022 and their voice recordings they recorded at their first meeting also in summer 2022.

Since the time I met with Eros in spring 2022 I was asking myself how to approach the topic, how to present his body, which became something else that would be without medical intervention. How to not objectify it, but to question/chalenge the medical practice which is obviously outdated. How to approach the topic? How to bring his story to a public realm and how to change things in collaboration with him, because he wanted to change things for other intersex babies, so they didn't have to go through what he has. Not only psysical problems but also medical problems and complications which were caused by the surgery.

It is hard for me to write this text, because I couldn't say goodbye to Eros, he died unexpectedly and suddenly. He died in December 2022 because his body collapsed, due to him stopped eating hormons for adrenal gland, which also influenced his hormones to look more as a female, for which doctors claimed him to be as a baby and operated on him. I don't feel this film is a project, but is more part of a mission. I did the film, but more as an introduction for people to start thinking about this topic than making an artistic document. These are real people, not some fantasy, imaginary world, or some thoughts I had in my dreams. These two people suffered their whole life just because they could not be considered a man or a woman, which system forced them to choose from.

I was always interested in marginalised groups, people from the edge of society, being are pushed away, maybe strange, people who do not conform to so called reality. Also in people's psyche, fears, like fear of death, fear of unknown, anxieties, mental health and stygma of it, stygmas of any kind. I am also interested in what people give up for their comfort, how people are alseep by the comfort of everyday life, stereotypes, social rules, social expecations, how West is distancing from nature, etc. What are other ways of living together, systems which include all living organisms and forms, not just people, animal and plant rights. I am interested in power structure, how money value money changed through centuries, jobs as new slavery sysyems, in different angles of justice, in how to invite change. I am interested in art as a form of change but also as a space that embrace različnost and enables space for open talks. What are the ways to change things, where does the power of change come from, can it arise from one person or it has to be mass of people.

In 2014 did a so called poezin, a book of poems and photographs which I wrote and made while living in Bavarski dvor, an area of Ljubljana near the train station, where there were many homeless people. I had a room with a balcony facing the square, which was in between tall residental modernistic blocks. Manly concrete, only a few birches, the echo was so loud I could hear people talking to my balcony on the 9th floor. The poems are fictional but are inspired by events and conversations from this sqare and the surroundings of the square. I met, talked and had a drink with some people I took photographs of and listened to their stories. Now the area is chnaged, two new luxurious hotels were bulid in the last five years, so this poezin is also a document of change and gentrification of the area.

Another project that influenced me a lot is a theatre play after the text Beyond our power by Byornson. In 2021 Slovene Theatre Director Tomi Janežič was invited to do a show at National thatre in Oslo, Norway. I was an assitant of Production Designer Branko Hojnik. We started to work on the play, analysis of the texts and production deisgns already a year before. When we were in Oslo, in the middle of the rehearsals the show was postponed due to Covid situation. The text is still amazingly accurate today, it talks about men in power, who extract from the land and take advantage on people who actually live in the village and on the opposite those people, who live there and have enough of this toxic power relations. So at one point, when all these men meet in a castle up the hill, one of the villagers does a bomb suicide and kills them all, with only one survivour. This act opens up many questions, from how to make a change from bottom up, the rights of workers, etc.. Is it excusable to kill twenty people to make a better living for thousands, is this an act of bravery or an act of despair? Where does greed come from, etc. I just got recently very inspired by the documentary 'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed' on Nan Goldin. It shows her life work, how her photographic work changed and influenced the life of many, the strugle of gay people with AIDS, her life and her recent protests against Sackler family. As I have a background in theatre two other influences are Christoph Schlingensief, especially his project Ausländer raus! and Milo Rau. I am also very much inspired by art works of Tadej Pogačar and Mladen Stilinovič. Joseph Beuys, Warner Herzog, Ulrich Seidl. Hey, why is there only one woman? Susan Meiselas, Sinéad O'Connor, Svetlana Makarovič. But I also don't want to divide to female or male.

For me it is hard to write this text or watch the film I made, because Eors died in 2022 unexpectedly. I was not able to say goodbye to him and when I watch the film I am reminded of his pain and also of his da je oprostil staršem.. I also wanted to work with him on making this topic more visible in Slovenia and banning the operations completely. I wantthe Republic of Slovenia to ban the unnecessary operations, since the operations on intersex are just beauty operations, they are not necessary. I am in touch with NGO association and would like to invite more people to collaborate in the process, with their knowledge and thier support in all ways possible. I would like to meet with the Misiter for health and Minister of law in summer 2023. I would like to I want people to know this is still happening. I would like to make more research on how this transition was done in Germany and the Nethelrlands??, where operations on intersex babies are already banned and can be decided by them when they become 18 years, considering also the legal documents, where you need to determine your sex. I would like the European parliament to change this law on European level, and I hope also contries around the world. If only

The other thing is that I read and wrote a lot when I was younger, fiction and poetry, but I feel like I lost that muscle by now. I want to work on short stories, fiction and scripts, because I want to use story telling and narrative in my projects to invite change, evoke strong emotions, enable imagination, invite freedom to communal thought and behaviour. I would like to evolve my style, which might look simple by the first glance, but I do so on purpose, because I want to talk about heavy or hidden topics through humour and lightness to bring the awareness to the spectator by non evasive way so they can open up for the messagge. Around Christmas time I have recorded four conversations of two homeless people, it is fictional but inspired by my walks through the city of Rotterdam. Now I only have those recording, but I would like to combine them with another medium, maybe video or instalation.

I want to allow myself to create more freely, to be more experimental, to explore variety of mediums, not only video and sound, but maybe other mediums, with which I haven't worked until now like touch, emotions, smell, big instalations, performance, AI, digital space, ... I would like to detach myself from titles such as a visual artist, a production designer, an architect. I would like to (re)search more, experiment more, create more, enjoy more, travel more, explore furter, do more interviews, meet more people, see the World, maybe the Moon, maybe the Universe. With the speed of technology development it feels now that everything is possible. So let's go.