There Aren't Words for What We Do or How We Feel so We Have to Make Them Up

Investigating the significance of nature for the nationalist discourse, the film There Aren't Words for What We Do or How We Feel so We Have to Make Them Up (opens in a new tab) is both political and escapist. Trough contemplation of the narrator and the imagery of national parks, the film explores the questions of representation and the notion of the “national essence.”

Fokus Grupa is taking its language out of a variety of sources from the Croatian national anthem to nature documentaries and tourist campaigns, in order to compose the text for the narration. Through various topographies, from open plains to mountain peaks, the camera explores the notions of the sublime, establishing it’s (critical) relationship to romanticism, and making a full circle, all the way back to contemporary (Croatian) nationalism.

When exhibited as an installation, the film’s premise about the relationship of nationalism and nature extends into gallery space via the use of the work Altar of the Homeland that transforms the national monument into an auditorium for the film, serving also as its ideological framework.

Details

technical info: video installation, improvised furniture/ dimensions: variable / year 2012
exhibition view: People Love Monuments, Transmission Gallery (opens in a new tab), Glasgow, ThT Award (opens in a new tab), Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, A Proposal for the Monument to the New (Inter)Nationalism (opens in a new tab), GMK Gallery, Zagreb
photo credits: Tor Johnson, Ana Opalić, Nikola Zelmanović