Katarina Petrović
area: ArtScience, Media Art, Digital Art
Key Facts
nationality
Serbiaarea
ArtScience, Media Art, Digital Artresidence
The Haguerecommending institution
frei_raum Q21 exhibition spacetime period
March 2021 - March 2021Katarina Petrović is an artist and researcher working at the intersections of art, science and humanities. Her work focuses on cosmogony, the process of creation and the notion of (infinite) generativeness, using media such as text, language, sound, and code.
Tracing the concept of creation as the (scientific) problem of ultimate origin (the birth of cosmos or the emergence of something out of nothing), her work explores the mysterious moment of appearance - the moment of noise becoming a signal, a random disturbance becoming meaningful information and words becoming flesh. Computation found in language, the magic technology of an executable code and the act of deep listening - all fundamentals to her artistic practice - aim to open up the space for imaginative to become real and for the real to become imaginative again.
Her works are essentially systems, developed in a series of iterations and presented as modular installations. Because these works are interdisciplinary by nature, she often collaborates with scientists and specialists from different fields, from (astro)physicists and philosophers to (computer)engineers and various craftsmen.
Katarina holds a MMus degree from ArtScience Interfaculty, Royal Conservatoire and Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague, and an MFA equivalent from the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade. She is a co-initiator of the ArtScience Forum platform and a podcast and art/media project Femkanje. She is currently the chair of Trixie The Hague artist collective, Stroom Den Haag and ULUS. From 2014 till 2016 she was a member of the RecPlay ensemble for electro-mechanical improv music in The Hague.
Recent Exhibitions:Wat ik je nog wilde zeggen, TENT Rotterdam, 2020;Window <3 Lab 1.0with Sophia Bulgakova, Trixie The Hague 2020; Femkanje - Spaces of Togetherness, Podroom gallery, Cultural Center Belgrade 2021; [蒸汽船] Steamboat @ Trixie, The Hague & ruimteCAESUUR, Middelburg 2020; Isekle smo kablove, Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Novi Sad; Finalist’s exhibition, Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos award, Remont gallery, Belgrade 2019.
Awards: Winner of Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos 2019 award [Young Visual Artist Award] for emerging visual artists from Serbia. Her work was previously nominated for the Emotional Synthesis, FutureDome prize in Milano, 2018 and in 2016 the Master ArtScience award, Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague.
0rigin v.2.0 is part of an ongoing research on creative processes, generativeness and the point of origin - cosmogony, the beginning of the world. The project consists of a sound installation of vacuum chambers, books and performance of negative poetry, research materials and a follow-up program that is planned to be presented as a solo exhibition at the Cultural center of Belgrade, currently scheduled for December 2021.
The generative sound installation is an open system and network of custom built vacuum chambers that is in continuous interaction with the environment. It explores the properties of sound in low pressures and consists of a network of chambers and tubes periodically vacuumed to pressures lower than normal atmospheric pressure. The work is in part a proto-scientific experiment and a performance instrument.
During my residency, I will continue the research by creating a system for sound observation and notation of changes, keeping my reading and research diary in the form of texts, images & video recordings.
During my residency stay at Q21 in Vienna, I focused on the project I am currently developing (working title) Origin v.2.0. This was the research phase, so I spent my time researching relevant materials, reading, meeting with fellow artists and visiting museums. I was lucky that during March this year, Vienna has just re-opened their museums so I was able to visit most of the places I wanted to. The museums I visited: Kunsthalle Wien, Secession, Mumok, Naturhistorisches Museum and Belvedere 21.
I was looking to make connections with fellow artists and cultural workers so to gain more references for my research and work. I was hoping to meet with people who are doing interdisciplinary research and having an extensive network of my own I managed to meet with several old and new friends: Natalia Dominguez Rodriguez, Hrvoje Horvat, Sophie-Carolin Wagner, Žarko Aleksić, Isidora Nikolić and Gabriel Roland.
My solo exhibit at the Cultural Center of Belgrade, where the project Origin v.2.0 is to be presented, has been rescheduled because of the pandemic circumstances and is now postponed for May 2022. I am currently in the second stage of the work - moving from research to practical implementations and experimental setups. The residency allowed me to focus on the research afresh and leaving enough time to read, meet and visit exhibitions. For this I am quite thankful to the Q21 organization and I am also very happy to have had the opportunity to reacquaint myself with Vienna. There are so many interesting places and people working in the city, and I hope to be back soon, learn more about Vienna’s art scene and perhaps realize an exhibition and/or presentation.