{"id":31010,"date":"2025-08-29T19:12:32","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T17:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/croatian-photography.com\/?p=31010"},"modified":"2025-10-03T11:36:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T09:36:21","slug":"bojan-fajfric-eagles-army-headquarters-and-football-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/croatian-photography.com\/en\/bojan-fajfric-eagles-army-headquarters-and-football-films\/","title":{"rendered":"Bojan Fajfri\u0107: “Eagles, Army Headquarters and Football Films”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Spot Gallery and the Office for Photography invite you to the opening of the exhibition Eagles, Army Headquarters and Football Films<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0by the photographer Bojan Fajfri\u0107<\/b>, which will be held on Monday, 15th September 2025<\/strong>, at 7:00 p.m.<\/strong> A guided exhibition tour and conversation with the author<\/span>\u00a0will take place on the same date, 15th September, at 7:30 p.m.<\/strong> A panel-discussion Urban Spaces and Political Narratives: Who Shapes the City? <\/em><\/strong>will be held on Wednesday, 24th September<\/strong>, at 7 p.m. <\/strong>at Spot Gallery. The exhibition will remain open until Friday, 3rd October 2025.<\/p>\n

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Bojan Fajfri\u0107, \u201cEagles, Army Headquarters and Football Films\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

What Was, What Remains \u2013 on Bojan Fajfri\u0107\u2019s project <\/b>Eagles, Army Headquarters and Football Films\u00a0<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Re)materialisations of spaces that were once inhabited, as undertaken, for example, by Korean-British artist Do Ho Suh, allow the spectators a peek into abandoned, forensically dissected apartments. Such scenes are not uncommon in other milieus either, including our own, which we often pass by, desensitised to the occurrences happening to the urban space. Multimedia artist Bojan Fajfri\u0107\u2019s practice could be observed along the lines of a similar experience, which I myself share on a daily basis: scars in the urban fabric that are easily \u201cdissected\u201d and torn down after years of neglect, on the remnants of history which we renounce, convinced that the new will cover the vestiges of an unwanted shared past. Perhaps, for most people, this is true. But I wonder what new generations will remember, who have no idea what modernisation of a mostly rural country such as Yugoslavia after World War II was like, with cities in which the flotsam of monarchies, kingdoms and other political structures left its mark, and newcomers sought their place?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In Belgrade, which Fajfri\u0107 continuously visits and records, there are three locations of particular interest to him \u2013 <\/span>Belgrade on the Water<\/span><\/em>, a so-called urban renewal project that promises a \u201cdream life\u201d, the General Staff building hit by NATO missiles in 1999, the work of famous modernist architect Nikola Dobrovi\u0107, who designed several important buildings and parks in Croatia in the interwar period, and thirdly, a film set and replica of 1930s Belgrade, transformed and largely unknown to younger generations. Although these three locations are unique, they speak to a broader phenomenon noticeable in transitional societies which often mourn a fictional image of the (distant) past, sentimentally evoking the \u201cgood old days\u201d, while simultaneously disowning the more recent periods by altering or rearranging narratives, mostly as it suits certain individuals or the current politics.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Which image of the place is \u201cthe real one\u201d; which history do we (both the artist and us) remember? Bojan Fajfri\u0107 resorts to spatial installations, forming simultaneous spaces in the exhibition, heterotopias in which we are confronted with his position as witness to a kind of cartography of violence, while at the same time re-examining our own experience. According to Rob Nixon\u2019s elucidation, this violence is slow, and transpires over a long period of time, often out of reach of the gaze that passes by the dilapidated and neglected buildings and city spaces. Most people do not perceive \u201curban renewal\u201d as violence, but when we become aware of the background of most such \u201cundertakings\u201d, we come to understand that much of what is happening in urban zones is actually driven by violence \u2013 economic, political, ecological \u2013 in the foundations of which lies social inequality. To this effect, the footage that Bojan Frajfi\u0107 has been recording for more than a decade is not a visual archive of the material substantiation of change, but a testimony to a discourse the meaning of which is often obscured by huge billboards. What is important remains concealed behind consumerist content about a dream life, behind artificially generated images of a non-existent \u2013 \u200b\u200bfake \u2013 future, in which we will have to partake one way or another.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sandra Kri\u017ei\u0107 Roban<\/span><\/p>\n

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Bojan Fajfri\u0107, \u201cEagles, Army Headquarters and Football Films\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bojan Fajfri\u0107<\/b> (Belgrade, former Yugoslavia) is an artist and filmmaker based in the Netherlands since 1995. A graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague and former resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, his work explores the entanglement of personal memory with collective historical consciousness and the unfolding of political events. Working primarily with moving images and photography, he creates layered narratives that reflect on history\u2019s impact on individual lives.<\/span><\/p>\n

His work has been presented at institutions such as Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead), San Telmo Museum (San Sebasti\u00e1n), De Appel (Amsterdam), the Belgrade October Salon, NGBK (Berlin), and the Center for Cultural Decontamination (Belgrade). His films have screened widely at international festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Vienna International Film Festival, DOK Leipzig, Sharjah International Film Festival, Tempo Documentary Festival (Stockholm), Rencontres Internationales Paris\/Berlin\/Madrid, and Impakt Festival (Utrecht).<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Related events:<\/b><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Guided exhibition tour and conversation with the author, 15th September, <\/span>2025, 7:30 pm, The Spot Gallery<\/li>\n
  • Panel Discussion Urban Spaces and Political Narratives: Who Shapes the City?, <\/em>24th September, 2025, 7 pm, \u00a0The Spot Gallery<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    The exhibition is supported by Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb, and Kultura Nova Foundation.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Spot Gallery and the Office for Photography invite you to the opening of the exhibition Eagles, Army Headquarters and Football Films\u00a0by the photographer Bojan Fajfri\u0107, which will be held…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":31003,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[272,25,19],"tags":[467],"class_list":["post-31010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gallery-program","category-actual","category-spot-gallery","tag-bojan-fajfric-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/croatian-photography.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/croatian-photography.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/croatian-photography.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/croatian-photography.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/croatian-photography.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31010"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/croatian-photography.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31521,"href":"https:\/\/croatian-photography.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31010\/revisions\/31521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/croatian-photography.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/croatian-photography.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/croatian-photography.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/croatian-photography.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}