koštana banović

Kamen

2024, multi-channel, sound, 12 min

Reflecting on an event from 1968, when five villages were submerged during the construction of an electric giant in Herzegovina, the video work explores the consequences of this devastation. People were forced to relocate, and alongside their homes, churches, cemeteries, a Roman villa, and other cultural heritage sites were submerged. What remains now is a changing landscape with a lake that sometimes is full of water and sometimes reveals a dry, cracked bottom.


Reflecting on an event from 1968, when five villages were submerged during the construction of an electric giant in Herzegovina, the video work explores the consequences of this devastation. People were forced to relocate, and alongside their homes, churches, cemeteries, a Roman villa, and other cultural heritage sites were submerged. What remains now is a changing landscape with a lake that sometimes is full of water and sometimes reveals a dry, cracked bottom. In the summer months, the island in the lake turns into a mountain. The biodiversity has been severely disrupted. When the water recedes and dries up, the walls of houses, avenues with felled tree trunks covered in shells, walls, and graves from another time appear. The video examines and speculates on these circumstances in terms of spirituality, temporality, necro- and social politics, and global capitalism.