OPA (Obsessive Possessive Aggression) – “Project Which Is Not a Project”
“PROJECT WHICH IS NOT A PROJECT”, video, 42 min, 2006
The project is a journey. During the years 2003 and 2004 OPA traveled across Europe by a 40 years old car. The journey was carried out by modest means thus variety of adventures and difficulties occurred. The visa applications, fight with embassies’ administration rules, car breakdowns during bad weather conditions and lack of money when important spare parts were needed for the car, were recurring obstacles. The documentation of the journey became a critical commentary to the Schengen wall and what it is representing to the artists from the non EU countries. Even though OPA lived and worked under the umbrella of different European cultural institutions and received support from the European Union for the journey.
In 2006 OPA made journey again, from Macedonia to Germany. With the departure from Macedonia the journey addresses the recent political development in Macedonia. On this note the car was being pepped up and improved for entering the EU. It became a metaphor of the Macedonian great effort for joining the EU. From these materials and the collected materials of the previous journeys, the video work of 42 min was developed.
Credits:
Authors: OPA: Slobodanka Stevceska & Denis Saraginovski
Camera: Slobodanka Stevceska & Denis Saraginovski
Camera helpers: John Grzinich, Elena Stojcevska, Vesna Dunimagloska, Alexander Sawatzky
Editing: Denis Saraginovski & Slobodanka Stevceska
Postproduction & sound: Denis Saraginovski
Actors: Arnd Heuwinkel, Nune Nuneski, Miki Lalić, Denis Saraginovski, Slobodanka Stevceska, Marjan Mijovski, Ljudmila Coric, Maja Pavlovska
Music: Denis Saraginovski & Project Zlust
Production: OPA (Obsessive Possessive Aggression) & Transeuropa 2006 (Europäisches Theater- und Performancefestival), Hildesheim
OPA (Obsessive Possessive Aggression) is an artistic collaboration founded in 2001 by the visual artists Slobodanka Stevceska (*1971, Macedonia) and Denis Saraginovski (*1971, Macedonia). Both of them studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje and are working on the borderline of art, media and performance. Their work focuses on researching the social, cultural and everyday issues, as well as ways of looking, thinking and behaving of certain community in the shifting social and political conditions.
OPA reacts to the actual situations conceptualizing them into an art form by meta-situations/positions/narratives. Thus their activities include actions, context-specific projects, video, TV screenings, mockumentaries, etc. Their projects are often related to the societal life of the artist and the art system, deconstructing the artwork on its units: artist/performer, object/artifact, audience, expectation, and more widely, curator/manager/institution. OPA’s most used topics so far are authority, intrusion, elitism, conformism, lethargy, ideology, utopia, and media manipulation.
OPA received residency fellowships in Estonia, France, Germany and Switzerland and has exhibited widely in group exhibitions and festivals such as Transmediale, Berlin; Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin; Transeuropa – European Theatre- and Performance Festival, Hildesheim; Instants Video Festival, France; Freewaves’ Biennial of New Media Arts, Los Angeles; I Had a Dream, Kunstraum Baden, Switzerland; etc.
www.o-p-a.org
