Serbian Interview

My interview for RTV Serbia's Artbox at the opening of my show in Novi Sad, Serbia.

Translation by Boris:

Translation of Interview for the Serbian TV channel RTV's Artbox




I have been raised with little awareness of my ancestral background which includes European and Native American blood. As far as my family was concerned, we were United States American since the beginning of time. I have recently begun exploring these ancestral and historical aspects of my heritage. Two different outlooks on this North American soil caused incredible catastrophes and injustices.....Told us American artist Flounder Lee, whose exhibition „Move / Removevisitors can see in next week, in Galley of Foto Kino Sveza Vojvodina, in Pasiceva street, in Novi Sad.




Flounder Lee grew up on a farm in Alabama. He now works as an assistant professor at Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis. Flounders work has been shown both nationally and internationally including Art, Technology, and Society at the Digital Media Center in Santa Ana, Ca; Documentation: Photography as Witness at the University of Maine; Bewegterwind (Moved Wind) in Hesse Germany, and the Santiago International MicroFilm Festival in Chile. The intersections between public and private, art and life, history and the present, among others, have always informed his work. He uses mapping and indexing to recreate/reconstruct various pockets of space-time.




Remove as it is in English has two meanings.... meaning is move and remove then is repeated move but also taking...




Exhibition is considered from two parts: one part is photographs like this on (1.53 minute) which following the contracts of the United States government and indigenous peoples, I wish to show territories which was taken from indigenous peoples, and in second part of exhibition I was Americans colonies move in Europe.

Some of my cousins were indigenous peoples, and that explain why I on European territories put those indigenous peoples territories which were taken by those the same Europeans people, except Serbians of course, that were mostly British, Irish, Germans.




By physically walking/driving boundaries and using tools such as GPS, Flounder Lee has been mapping interactions between indigenous peoples and various governments. For the last year he has been pulling maps from the Library of Congress of the treaties between various indigenous tribes and the United States government, overlaying them on the actual location in a GPS program, then going out and shooting at intervals along the entire boundary. He then overlay the photographs on the original map section in a grid format for the digital print.




Those segments are actually photographs, taken on borders of those territories and I found them using GPS, I use automatic setup because for me is not important quality, for me is important structure of final picture.

I do not take for me as photographer, but as artist, because I am creating what ever I wish, which works and most of artist today. Creating sculptures, recordings and etc... And I do it too... and so on this exhibition I have 2 videos.




And I learn my students that too... to not create sculpture or videos, but to create art, on the way how they see it...




In my blog on my internet site I do not write as I should, but I write art, and about mapping. Mapping is very important in my work. Art can not be limited, and to not be boring, art should follow happenings about world. I read, watch TV... I am trying to find out what is happening, I wish to be open and to see more... and about that I mostly write.

Category:

Film & Animation

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• serbia