Bojan's first draft ToP

Based on some new knowledge regarding the method or the approach to structured thinking and consequently realization, my work and research in the last few months revolves around three projects in the process, which, however, intertwine in certain segments. And if I try to find a common denominator – a word for all three projects in process, the word would be archive. Archive as a collection and classification of documents of all possible materials and forms. Archive as the possibility of using stored material in the perspective of retelling a story or reinterpreting a certain object. I could briefly name each of them: Architecture and Power, Subversive Economy of Community in the space of Art and the final one is Found Objects / Belongings. My focus will be on Found Objects.

I still remember how it happened the very first time; one day I was casually walking and out of the corner of my eye I noticed a small black ring on the pavement in front of me. I stopped for a moment and stretch out my hand towards an interesting thing on the ground realizing that it was a hairband, an elastic with which long-haired people tie and style their hair. I used to have long hair long time ago and in some inexplicable way, I have always been attracted to lost or discarded objects, things that, according to some logic of things or just by chance, landed in places of unwanted oblivion or destruction and consequently, willingly, or unwillingly inhabited strange places. So far, I collected more than 500 of them. These small found objects fascinate me because they are connected to the intimacy of unknown people and they awaken in me curiosity of whom these objects belong to, who are these anonymous people, what is their fate?  And why am I collecting these objects, what am I going to do with them?  Is it connected with helplessness when following daily events and news from war and refugee zones, where human lives and deaths are reduced to data numbers only…

At a certain moment I decided to make a photobook of the found object. The whole thing should be like a carefully curated typological archive with one very important feature. I will assign attributes to each individual found hairband, which will refer to some parts from the treasury of world literature. For example, allow me to paraphrase one of the greatest poet´s verses: The darkest corner in hell will be for those who keep silence in time of social crises. I should mention that in the past I used to work for the archive of the National Gallery in Ljubljana-Slovenija for more than 20 years and that I closely followed so called historization of the identity of the young, newly formed state. Sometimes, I responded critically with an artistic intervention to the policy of management, particularly on inclusion or deletion from the national archive.

Some key words: Anonymity, Classification, Collection, Archive, Typology…