Marta Popivoda
area: Film, Media Art
Key Facts
nationality
Serbiaarea
Film, Media Artresidence
Berlin (GER)recommending institution
frei_raum Q21 exhibition spacetime period
August 2016 - August 2016Marta Popivoda’s (b. 1982 Belgrade, Yugoslavia / based in Berlin) work explores concerns with the discursive power structure of the contemporary (art) world, intersections between performance and film, as well as with the Yugoslav socialist project, through the production of films, video installations, photography and performance. Her work is strongly related to the TkH (Walking Theory), a theoretical-artistic platform and journal, where she is a member of the editorial collective. Her works have been part of exhibitions and programs at Tate Modern London, MoMA New York, M HKA Antwerp, 21er HAUS Vienna, the Beirut Art Center, Musée de la danse Rennes, Museum of Modern Art + MSUM Ljubljana, Documenta 12 Kassel, Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst, HAU - Hebbel am Ufer, SAVVY Conteporary, NGBK, and District Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Matadero and La Casa Encendida Madrid, Forum des Images, MK2 Beaubourg, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, and Khiasma Gallery Paris, Beursschouwburg and Kaaitheater Brussels, Museum of Yugoslav History and Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade etc. Her latest feature documentary Yugoslavia, How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body premiered at the 63rd Berlinale, and was later screened at great number of film festivals worldwide, like Festival dei Popoli Florence, Sarajevo Film Festival, DZM Docs Seoul, Home Works Beirut, Beldocs Belgrade, Zagreb Dox, Mumbai International Film Festival, Watch Docs Warsaw, Make Dox Skopje, DOK Leipzig, etc.
Popivoda is initiator of illegal_cinema (Belgrade, Paris, Bilbao…) and artistic director of REZ, contemporary experimental film festival in Belgrade. She studied philosophy, holds BA and an MA in film directing from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and Meisterschülerin postgraduate degree in experimental film from the Universität der Künste Berlin. For her studies in Germany she received a DAAD scholarship. In 2014 she was part of Berlinale Talents program for up-and-coming filmmakers by Berlin International Film Festival, and in 2015 she is a recipient of the Berlin Art Prize for the visual arts by Akademie der Künste, and Edith-Russ-Haus Award for Emerging Media Artists.
During the residency I will do a research for the project / exhibition with a working title “Viennese Odyssey (gastARTbeiters' stories)”. The idea behind the work is to display and confront the stories of the workers who came from Yugoslavia in the 1960s for the sake of temporary work in Vienna and those of the artists and cultural workers coming to that city in the past 10 years.
Viennese Odyssey raises the question if and in which way is the notion “Gastarbeiter“ still relevant for understanding the work force in the times of global(ized) nomadism. Apart from its economic aspect, the moving and movable work force questions the political and cultural ideas of belonging to a national identity and its “diaspora“ today.