DAN OKI: Generatio Aequivoca

Art is always posing questions about impulses that bring an artist to the processes and results we call artworks, and about duties of an artist as an important element of any given society. In this heterogeneous time of parallel worlds it is impossible to find a uniform answer to this complex question. In spite of the relativity of the role and the position of an artist in the contemporary society, no artist can avoid their own lives being present in their production. First-hand experience or imaginary impulses are reflected as the most significant impact field which authors transform on the basis on their own ethical and world-view perspectives, be it society-related or strictly intimate by nature. All fiction and social commentary holds a piece of their author's reality, each imagination brings reference to past experience, and each dream is a specific version of reality. Therefore, the simplest, the most effective and the only sensible way to comprehend the artistic production of Dan Oki is through the course of his life, which can give the most thorough answer to any question about the positioning and interpretation of his wide-ranging, experiment-based expression.

In the case of Dan Oki we need to go back to his early childhood, when he was given a super 8mm camera as a present. This marked the start of a great obsession of filming various sometimes very particular and seemingly trivial situations in his environment: after merely documenting his surroundings at first, he later – influenced by the rich tradition of experimental film – started to explore more complexly designed narratives and formal impacts of film language. Despite his young age and an amateur approach, his early films reflected special poetics and an immense devotion to this medium, which he was taking in by eruditely following film production. While studying political science and journalism at the Zagreb faculty, Oki tried to make his infinite love of creative production formal and enter an arts or film academy, but with no success. Thus, he bypassed the classical art education, which directs a young artist to a well-trodden path to technical command of drawing and painting, introduction to the theory of visual arts and a wider insight into the history of contemporary art currents. This was one of the reasons for his expression to remain highly specific: as an artist he stayed true to film as a means of self-expression of his original aspirations, he took up performance as an instrument of direct expression through the object-like nature of your own body and mind as the basic carriers of meaning, and photography to document these activities, which were usually unannounced and realised in the absence of an audience. 1991 brought a radical change. Dan Oki was accepted to De Vrije Art Academy in Den Haag, the Netherlands. Meanwhile, a war and a dark decade of ideological tension started in his home country. This all had a big impact on his further development as an individual and as an author. His new environment brought him the possibility to experiment more thoroughly with new media, which opened up new worlds in the field of motion picture as the core of his creative production. Since the moment he entered more determinedly the field of diverse artistic media, which he started to mix and match, his overall expression has acquired entirely new dimensions, new impetus and new focal points, without giving up his specific (film-inspired) starting point. As an artist he had been facing his personal and professional challenges by relying on his Dutch context and international collaborations, until he suddenly returned home, where he now teaches at the Split Arts Academy and works as a distinctively multimedia oriented artist. In his work, Dan Oki combines principles of what often seems incompatible: experimental film, computer database, video, computer animation, photography, performance, web projects and feature film. He brings all these tools, media and means together to conceptually comprehend individual elements; whether the focus is on formal explorations or on the narrative, the final arbiter is always the spectator.

Generatio Aequivoca (2008) is based on one of the most important theses of evolutionary theory, according to which "spontaneous generation" is a proof of continuous evolution of the organic, a proof that living beings are not static, but constantly evolving, and that living organisms developed from inanimate matter. By doing so, it dismisses creationist theories and the belief in the existence of the divine, placing on the pedestal the mighty nature in all its complexity. Generatio Aequivoca reflects the world view of Dan Oki, who uses his work to praise nature and celebrate life with a positive attitude. The "spontaneous generation" thesis was chosen as a framework for a poetic story about the future generation, which will decide the fate of the world based on its own aspirations, experience and values, partly inherited from its ancestors. A static video composition shows a variety of playful young swimmers on a beach in Split one sunny summer day, which (automatically) brings to mind Children's Games by the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel. Using minimal narration of a static shot, filmed with a telephoto lens from a great distance, which results in a two-dimensional feel to the image, the author tells a polysemous story of a human being's biological endowment, as each generation is only a stage in the constant biological evolution. By observing his environment in a sensitive way, Oki deliberates over the transience of biological material, over new energy replacing the old one, over blooming and withering. This work is part of the series created after the author had returned back home, where he began to record small, but significant stories from his immediate surroundings. As a modern representation of the Dance of Death, Generatio Aequivoca is a hologram of physical and mental living, while simultaneously representing the artist's perception of the fragility and magnificence of life.

As a counterpoint to this central image of the exhibition, the author shows his latest work Lost and Lost and Lost (2011), a three-channel video installation, the result of the author's observations of this same environment in a hostile, desolate winter time, when the sea cost is deserted. A lost dog on a leash but without the owner, jumping frantically in the rough sea, is a metaphor for disappearing, leaving, and some unspoken personal tragedy of universal dimensions. The indefinable static story is an in-depth reflection about a wider perspective of the local and the global, which define this remote place located far from centres of power, and attest to its indelible presence through silent melancholia.

A formally similar work is Body of Departure (Noah and Ceremonies on the Water) (1991), the origin of which coincides with the author's departure from his place of birth and a silent premonition of the coming war. A series of five static videos shows the rough sea with a menacing sky of Zadar, in which the author placed geometric shapes to represent symbols of Tibetan chakras of the human body. Using a personal turning point of his life when he started to practice meditation exercises, the author shows his body while leaving for the unknown future. Accompanied by repetitive spiritual music of Tibet, the idea of the piece is expressed though a complete neutralisation of space and time.

Video animations Kiss and Householder (1997) refer to formalist experiments, which Dan Oki was occupied with in the Netherlands in the late 90's. The comprehension of motion pictures expanded to computer generated and manipulated image of himself. Combining this with his distinct auto-poetics, he explored the principles and possibilities of common technological tools in an artistic context. Using a 3D scanner, he set out to find a hologram, which implicitly discusses ethical and philosophical questions of today.

In To Forget, To Remember and To Know (1998), the result of a collaboration with his life partner Sandra Sterle, Dan Oki used various forms of expression – performance, video and interactive installation – in a process to create a homogeneous account of the real situation. The authors spent seven days in a language centre, where they learned Dutch and encouraged visitors to participate. During the day, there was a microphone for the audience to utter words, which appeared on video in real time next to images of the authors. At night, an image of the sleeping authors was projected onto the street though glass windows. With this work, Dan Oki and Sandra Sterle explored the principles of language by transforming words directly into sounds and images.

Another work requiring direct participation is My Last Super 8mm Film (2008), which refers to the author's inherent love of film and telling small but significant intimate stories. An interactive, computer-generated database, which comprises over 100 short films made in preceding 20 years of the author's life, supports voyeuristic explorations of the audience with associative clues. Titles of films originate in the names of analogue and digital files in his personal archive. By selecting and watching films, a visitor walks through the artist's intimate life in an undefined context, and takes in the narrative though his or her own interpretative sieve. The tile of the work is a telling self-irony, as Dan Oki is very unlikely to ever completely give up the form of an 8mm short.

Miha Colner

1 April 2011 – 19 April 2011

Opening: 1 April 2011 at 8 pm

KiBela / KIBLA Maribor

Kindly welcome! Admission free.

KiBela, Space for Art, is open every day 9.00 am to 10.00 pm, Saturdays 4.00 pm to 10.00 pm, and closed Sundays.

MMC KIBLA wishes to thank the following for their support: EU-EACEA, Culture Programme, Brussels, Slovenian Ministry of Culture, Municipality of Maribor and Office of Youth. KiBela programme is part of the European X-OP project.