Katarina Zdjelar

Would that be allright with you if I bring my cat along?

Katarina Zdjelar, There Is No Is, video still, 2006.

Katarina Zdjelar’s work deals with cultural translation. Her final project focused specifically on how we exist in language and how we have to renegotiate our identity and subjecthood when learning to speak in a foreign language.

Zdjelar joined a Dutch language course for immigrants and filmed her fellow-participants. Rather than focusing on how we manage or fail to communicate meaning in another language, Zdjelar’s work focused on the physicality of speech. In her video and audio recordings, speaking a foreign language turns out to be first of all about the physical efforts to (re)produce the sounds of a foreign language; our bodily incompetence in pronouncing unfamiliar sounds; the body as a language apparatus; and the organization of bodies and behaviour in a language class.

"The ideal of communication is: I say something and you should understand it. Our notion of language holds the ideal of perfect communication within it. This ideal message, if it existed, would be conveyed in the least ambiguous way, with the minimum of "feedback" or "noise". We are told that language is a code, and therefore, if we follow its binary logic this clear message will be received and there will be no misunderstanding because the perfect machine does not stutter, stumble or search in desperation for the best word. You will say something and I will understand it. Actually, language, particularly an unfamiliar language, doesn’t work like a well-oiled coding machine. When we struggle with a new language we struggle with our lungs, our tongues, our teeth and our lips. Our hands make shapes in space, we rock backwards and forwards and we become aware that the words we say are part of our body." (Steve Rushton)

Katarina Zdjelar, Would that be allright if I bring my cat along?, video still, 2006.

In her project report Zjelar related the insights her artistic research provided her on what it means to enter a foreign language with the language philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, Mladen Dolar, Sarat Maharaj and Steven Pinker.

Katarina Zdjelar, Untitled as Ms. Laker, sound piece installed at Mirta de Mare Gallery in Rotterdam, 2006.

Zdjelar realized four video works and a sound piece, which were presented in solo presentations at Hedah, Maastricht (2006), Mirta de Mare Gallery, Rotterdam (2006), and in the PZI Graduation Show at TENT., Rotterdam (2006). She was also awarded the first "Promotieprijs" for her work.

Katarina Zdjelar (Serbia) studied at the Piet Zwart Institute from 2004-2006, and is currently based in Rotterdam. Her recent group exhibitions and projects include Belgrade in the Past and Present, Prodajna Galerija Beograd, Belgrade (2005); Radiodays, De Appel, Amsterdam (2005); The Peekskill Project, Hudson Valley Centre for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, USA (2006); Paranoia, Leeds City Arts Gallery, Leeds; Focal Point Gallery, Southend (2006) and Freud Museum, London (2006); and a residency at Platform Garanti in Istanbul (2007).

Together with Renee Ridgway, she is also the editor of Another Publication (2007).