/ Red-iness: Robespierre

Red-iness: Robespierre is a part of the exhibition Subversion to Red which represents The Republic of North Macedonia at 5 8th La Biennale di Venezia

Images from the presentation at Venice

LR_North_Macedonia_Nada_Prlja_VB2019_3_Redi-ness II 01_photo Andrea Avezzù — ***Nada Prlja, Red-iness: Robespierre***
2019
Video (as represented in La Biennale di Venezia 2019)
Video, single screen, 5 min., loop.
Courtesy of Calvert 22 Foundation and Nada Prlja *Photo ©* Andrea Avezzù / La Biennale di Venezia

LR_North_Macedonia_Nada_Prlja_VB2019_3_Redi-ness II 03_photo Robert Jankuloski — ***Nada Prlja, Red-iness: Robespierre***
2019
Video (as represented in La Biennale di Venezia 2019)
Video, single screen, 5 min., loop.
Courtesy of Calvert 22 Foundation and Nada Prlja *Photo © Robert Jankuloski*

Screen Shot 2019-10-04 at 13.59.37.png — ***Nada Prlja, Red-iness: Robespierre***
2019
Video (as represented in La Biennale di Venezia 2019)
Video, single screen, 5 min., loop.
Courtesy of Calvert 22 Foundation and Nada Prlja *Photo © Raul Betti*

LR_North_Macedonia_Nada_Prlja_VB2019_3_Redi-ness II 02_photo Raul Betti — ***Nada Prlja, Red-iness: Robespierre***
2019
Video (as represented in La Biennale di Venezia 2019)
Video, single screen, 5 min., loop.
Courtesy of Calvert 22 Foundation and Nada Prlja *Photo © Raul Betti*

Red-iness, series of video performances is conceived as an attempt to re-introduce socialist or Marxist ideals into today society. Prlja has selected a number of motivational speeches from the past. Work Red-iness: Robespierre quotes Stevo Žigon re-apropriation of Maximilien de Robespierre’s famous speech, while addressing students in Belgrade during protests in 1968. Video work Red-iness: Gestalt reintroduces famous scene from Dušan Makavejev’s W.R. Mysteries of the Organism (1971) film.

Prlja has invited artists Briony Clarke, Sarah Cockings and Kai-Oi Jay Yung, to collaboratively re-examine and question how far these re-enacted speeches might applicable and become a driving force for change in our time.

Red-iness is a series of video performances that explore the idea of ‘time collapse’ and the applicability of past concepts in the present.

In the film Early Works (1969) directed by Želimir Žilnik, excerpts from a letter written by Karl Marx to his friend and fellow political philosopher Arnold Ruge are read aloud:

…In the eyes of the despot, men are always debased. They drown before his eyes and on his behalf, in the mire of common life, from which they always rise up again. Muta pecora, prona et ventri oboedientia. [“The herd is silent, docile and obeys its stomach.”]

For our part, it is our task to drag the old world into the full light of day and to give positive shape to a new one…

Early Works was conceived as an attempt to re-introduce Marxist ideals to the demoralised, devalued and unsophisticated form of Socialism that existed in former Yugoslavia in the 1960s. Similar re-appropriations of certain motivational speeches were carried out in public life at the time. For example, Žilnik filmed actor Stevo Žigon addressing students in Belgrade during protests in 1968, capturing him re-reading Maximilien de Robespierre’s famous speech from the French Revolution.

In Žilnik’s film and Žigon’s speech we witness how certain concepts can be applicable and become a driving force for change in different times and conditions. A new video work presented at Calvert 22 embodies this process, whilst raising the question of how far these re-enacted speeches might still be relevant today.