Geska Brečević
Stockholm University, Department of Information and Media Studies, Department Member
- Geska Helena Brečević is an artist/filmmaker, writer, and researcher working mainly in Sweden, Mexico and Croatia. In... moreGeska Helena Brečević is an artist/filmmaker, writer, and researcher working mainly in Sweden, Mexico and Croatia. In 2005 she formed the artist duo Performing Pictures www.performingpictures.art together with her husband Robert Brecevic, creating film- and video installations that blur the line between still and motion media. Performing Pictures have exhibited worldwide and produced more than 20 solo shows, 50 group shows, and been commissioned for several permanent public art installations.
Geska is a recurrent teacher at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Sweden and LungA school in Iceland. She has been working with several artistic research projects in collaboration with prof. Karin Becker, and worked part time for two years as an artist and researcher at Stockholm University. Her artistic research has been carried out with the support of The National Arts Grants Committee, the Royal Institute of Arts and the National Swedish Research Committee. She is the artistic director of the www.smartkreativstad.com project investigating new perspectives
on moving images in public space.edit
An eerie mugshot displaying the hollow-eyed visage of an incarcerated helmsman in prison attire waited 63 years at the Národní archiv in Czechoslovakia to be discovered. Puzzling together the chronology proves to be a bit of a challenge,... more
An eerie mugshot displaying the hollow-eyed visage of an incarcerated helmsman in prison attire waited 63 years at the Národní archiv in Czechoslovakia to be discovered. Puzzling together the chronology proves to be a bit of a challenge, as the photo of his granddaughter’s first school day in Vienna turns up in a cigar box with old family relics. Did Stjepan move to Austria straight after being released in a spy exchange between Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia? Later in life, Milica wouldn’t retain the German language, nor could she remember why she was sent off to live with her grandparents in a foreign country. Perhaps a clue might be found in a
yellowed photo from the Adriatic that recalls the memory of summer 1987 when her son, Robert, joins his grandparents at a resort for war invalids in Montenegro.
Playing with the relationships between image and knowledge and past events and their documentation, photographs from personal and public archives are reframed and reimagined. Remembrance and fanciful reveries delineate the past as part of a personal and interpretive claim on history, in this case, postwar Yugoslavia. Throughout the stories, the mysterious number 5 reappears.
yellowed photo from the Adriatic that recalls the memory of summer 1987 when her son, Robert, joins his grandparents at a resort for war invalids in Montenegro.
Playing with the relationships between image and knowledge and past events and their documentation, photographs from personal and public archives are reframed and reimagined. Remembrance and fanciful reveries delineate the past as part of a personal and interpretive claim on history, in this case, postwar Yugoslavia. Throughout the stories, the mysterious number 5 reappears.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Texten foljer hur figuren Santa Ana, Marias moder och katolskt skyddshelgon, framstalls i olika sammanhang, medier och forestallande former i en by i sodra Mexiko som bar helgonets namn. Pa vilka o ...
Research Interests:
Cinesenseprojektet agde rum pa gator och torg, i vanthallar och shoppingtempel, bibliotek, butiker och skyltfonster. Dramatiskt kondenserade karaktarer introducerades for en oinvigd publik pa en of ...
Research Interests:
This essay traces the resurrection of the fotoescultura, a three-dimensional photographic portrait popular in rural Mexico in the early 20th century, as interpreted in recent works by Performing Pictures, a contemporary Swedish artist... more
This essay traces the resurrection of the fotoescultura, a three-dimensional photographic portrait popular in rural Mexico in the early 20th century, as interpreted in recent works by Performing Pictures, a contemporary Swedish artist duo. The early fotoesculturas were an augmented form of portraiture, commissioned by family members who supplied photographs that artisans in Mexico City converted into framed sculptural portraits for display on family altars. We compare these »traditional« photographic objects with “new” digital forms of video animation on screen and in the public space that characterize Performing Pictures work, and explore how the fotoescultura inspired new incarnations of their series Men that Fall. At the intersection between the material aspects of a “traditional” vernacular art form and “new” media art, we identify a photographic aesthetic that shifts from seeing and perceiving to physical engagement, and discuss how the frame and its parergon augment the photog...
Research Interests:
En kostymkladd affarsman med laderportfolj star i ett snotackt landskap. Han skruvar pa sig. Tittar angsligt up. Faller sedan raklang - som en fura. Bilden av mannen visas pa en storbildsskarm och ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article takes up the concept of performativity prevalent in the humanities and applies it to the design of installation arts in mixed reality mode. Based on the design, development and public access to two specific works, the concept... more
This article takes up the concept of performativity prevalent in the humanities and applies it to the design of installation arts in mixed reality mode. Based on the design, development and public access to two specific works, the concept is related to a form of research by design. We argue that the concept of performativity may be further usefully employed in investigations (design and research, artistic and public) into digital arts where complex intersections between concepts, technologies, dramaturgy, media and participant actions are in flux and together constitute the emergence and experience of a work. Theories of performativity are related to these two works in an argument that further suggests there is room in research by design to also include ‘performative design’. The article is the result of a wide-ranging interdisciplinary collaboration and aims to convey some sense of that in its reporting style, content and analysis.
Research Interests:
Discovered during a media-archeological investigation into optical illusions, trick photography, and discarded memorabilia, the photo-multigraph technique opened the door to an enchanted world of cloned appearances orbiting in a... more
Discovered during a media-archeological investigation into optical illusions, trick photography, and discarded memorabilia, the photo-multigraph technique opened the door to an enchanted world of cloned appearances orbiting in a self-reflective solar system. Shapeshifting into our preferred artistic medium, this turn-of-the-century photographic technique becomes the video-multigraph. It is bizarrely noteworthy that self-isolation would become not only the subject of the piece, but also – due to the unforeseen spread of a recently mutated virus – the prevailing circumstances under which the work was to be completed. In Verfünfungseffekt, we use the medium of video to create a kaleidoscopic portrait-in-motion where the perspective-shifting shards of ego are recorded in a synchronized performance of solipsist intersubjectivity. The video-multigraph allows for the compositing of tiny offsets in time-shifting delays applied to one, or several, of the mirrored selves – shattering the clon...
Research Interests:
Discovered during a media-archaeological investigation into optical illusions, trick photography and discarded memorabilia, the photo-multigraph technique opened the door to an enchanted world of cloned appearances orbiting in a... more
Discovered during a media-archaeological investigation into optical illusions, trick photography and discarded memorabilia, the photo-multigraph technique opened the door to an enchanted world of cloned appearances orbiting in a self-reflective solar system. Shapeshifting into our preferred artistic medium, this turn-of-the-century photographic technique becomes the video-multigraph.
It is bizarrely noteworthy that self-isolation would become not only the subject of the piece, but also—due to the unforeseen spread of a recently mutated virus—the prevailing circumstances under which the work was to be completed.
In Verfünfungseffekt, we use the medium of video to create a kaleidoscopic portrait-in-motion where the perspective-shifting shards of ego are recorded in a synchronized performance of solipsist intersubjectivity. The video-multigraph allows for the compositing of tiny offsets in time-shifting delays applied to one, or several, of the mirrored selves—shattering the cloned perfection, as well as the conformity, of the multiple presences. This optical illusion necessitates reflection on how media alters our perceptions of time and space; it thereby arouses wonder about our place in existence.
It is bizarrely noteworthy that self-isolation would become not only the subject of the piece, but also—due to the unforeseen spread of a recently mutated virus—the prevailing circumstances under which the work was to be completed.
In Verfünfungseffekt, we use the medium of video to create a kaleidoscopic portrait-in-motion where the perspective-shifting shards of ego are recorded in a synchronized performance of solipsist intersubjectivity. The video-multigraph allows for the compositing of tiny offsets in time-shifting delays applied to one, or several, of the mirrored selves—shattering the cloned perfection, as well as the conformity, of the multiple presences. This optical illusion necessitates reflection on how media alters our perceptions of time and space; it thereby arouses wonder about our place in existence.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This essay traces the resurrection of the fotoescultura, a three-dimensional photographic portrait popular in rural Mexico in the early 20th century, as interpreted in recent works by Performing Pictures, a contemporary Swedish artist... more
This essay traces the resurrection of the fotoescultura, a three-dimensional photographic portrait popular in rural Mexico in the early 20th century, as interpreted in recent works by Performing Pictures, a contemporary Swedish artist duo.
The early fotoesculturas were an augmented form of portraiture, commissioned by family members who supplied photographs that artisans in Mexico City converted into framed sculptural portraits for display on family altars. We compare these »traditional« photographic objects with “new” digital forms of video animation on screen and in the public space that characterize Performing Pictures' work, and explore how the fotoescultura inspired new incarnations of their series Men that Fall.
At the intersection between the material aspects of a “traditional” vernacular art form and “new” media art, we identify a photographic aesthetic that shifts from seeing and perceiving to physical engagement, and discuss how the frame and its parergon augment the photographic gaze. The essay is accompanied by photos and video stills from Performing Pictures’ film poem "Dreaming the Memories of Now "(2018), depicting their work with the fotoesculturas.
The early fotoesculturas were an augmented form of portraiture, commissioned by family members who supplied photographs that artisans in Mexico City converted into framed sculptural portraits for display on family altars. We compare these »traditional« photographic objects with “new” digital forms of video animation on screen and in the public space that characterize Performing Pictures' work, and explore how the fotoescultura inspired new incarnations of their series Men that Fall.
At the intersection between the material aspects of a “traditional” vernacular art form and “new” media art, we identify a photographic aesthetic that shifts from seeing and perceiving to physical engagement, and discuss how the frame and its parergon augment the photographic gaze. The essay is accompanied by photos and video stills from Performing Pictures’ film poem "Dreaming the Memories of Now "(2018), depicting their work with the fotoesculturas.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The metaphor of plasma is taken up to present and discuss movement and engagement by participants in mixed reality installation arts. Two works involving full body video portraits exhibited through large plasma screens in a variety of... more
The metaphor of plasma is taken up to present and discuss movement and engagement by participants in mixed reality installation arts. Two works involving full body video portraits exhibited through large plasma screens in a variety of public settings are covered. Machinic mediations of video realism are considered in terms of embodied interaction in which viewer-participants contribute to the ‘disquiet’ of gendered figuring. Processural, proximal and personal aspects of responsive engagement are discussed. This is extended to performativity that may lead us to critical reflection of our own actions and responses in mixed reality arts.
Research Interests:
Phototherapy claims that photographs can open up an exploration of us and others and, when the participant has primary agency, the affective force of the photograph is powerful and insightful. In the project "A Hand-Crafted Web of... more
Phototherapy claims that photographs can open up an exploration of us and others and, when the participant has primary agency, the affective force of the photograph is powerful and insightful. In the project "A Hand-Crafted Web of Personal Remembrance" we have been developing a workshop model and tools for using vernacular photographs as a therapeutic tool. The workshop has been conducted as an artistic project – what Weiser would categorize as therapeutic photography, i.e. a photographic practice done by people themselves (or their helpers) – rather than a therapeutic practice requiring the skills of a trained therapist or counselor. As artists, we have been interested in examining the mnemonic function of photographs, and how a physical manifestation and handling of the photos, the touch, could add a more physically embracing experience.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Vibrant Images—Vibrant City (Original title: Levande bilder—levande stad) is an anthology compiling new perspectives on film and moving images in urban space gleaned from our five-year EU project, Smart Kreativ Stad. We have looked into... more
Vibrant Images—Vibrant City (Original title: Levande bilder—levande stad) is an anthology compiling new perspectives on film and moving images in urban space gleaned from our five-year EU project, Smart Kreativ Stad.
We have looked into new forms of collaboration through eleven pilot studies, resulting in five new perspectives on moving images. These form the backbone of the five chapters of Vibrant Images—Vibrant City: new perspectives on space, on the expression and format of film, on the role of creators and filmmakers, on spectators and audiences, and on partnerships and structural development.
The anthology presents all that has been tested and accomplished in the project, and the results and areas for development that have emerged. It includes the voices of people who have participated in the project: creators and filmmakers, architects, property owners, researchers, et al. It includes a rich, inspiring collection of images, as well as lists of tangible advice and visions of the essential structural changes that can promote film in urban spaces. In the work with the book, the ongoing evaluation research has been integrated with the more production-focused operations of the project.
Editors: Geska Helena Brecevic & Annika Wik
Design & Art Direction: Joakim Sjögren
Print: Livonia Print, Riga, 2020
Published by Film Capital Stockholm supported by the European Regional Development Fund.
264 pages, color print
Print: ISBN: 978-91-519-5856-9
E-book: ISBN 978-91-519-5857-6
Read Online / Download here (PDF)
Mainly in Swedish, with some articles in English.
We have looked into new forms of collaboration through eleven pilot studies, resulting in five new perspectives on moving images. These form the backbone of the five chapters of Vibrant Images—Vibrant City: new perspectives on space, on the expression and format of film, on the role of creators and filmmakers, on spectators and audiences, and on partnerships and structural development.
The anthology presents all that has been tested and accomplished in the project, and the results and areas for development that have emerged. It includes the voices of people who have participated in the project: creators and filmmakers, architects, property owners, researchers, et al. It includes a rich, inspiring collection of images, as well as lists of tangible advice and visions of the essential structural changes that can promote film in urban spaces. In the work with the book, the ongoing evaluation research has been integrated with the more production-focused operations of the project.
Editors: Geska Helena Brecevic & Annika Wik
Design & Art Direction: Joakim Sjögren
Print: Livonia Print, Riga, 2020
Published by Film Capital Stockholm supported by the European Regional Development Fund.
264 pages, color print
Print: ISBN: 978-91-519-5856-9
E-book: ISBN 978-91-519-5857-6
Read Online / Download here (PDF)
Mainly in Swedish, with some articles in English.