A Nowhere Pain

by Slađana Petrović Varagić, art historian and film producer 

Published on the occasion of Katarina Radović's exhibition When the Air Was Clean and Sex Dirty in Reflektor Gallery in Užice, Serbia, October 2023

The series of photographs When the Air Was Clean and Sex Dirty provides evidence of its author’s travels in the last few decades. But, in this context, the journey must be understood in its allegorical and symbolic aspects. Although the recorded visual documents testify to scenes from various ’distant’ places, they are not about travelling in space. The chosen motifs are not necessarily testimony to any particular topos; on the contrary, the author's lens depicts the universal contours of life on all meridians – the details of a carefree existence. By doing it in a very specific way – using an ‘outdated’ technology, more precisely, analogue films that expired a long time ago, Katarina Radović experiments with the past. With the atmosphere evoked by the colour palette and the contrasts within the photographs, she consciously tries to summon up emotions of nostalgia and melancholy.

We can conclude that this series is about travelling in time.

Nostalgia is a complex emotional state. It is sometimes held in disrepute in those circles of historians, philosophers and other thinkers and researchers who believe that nostalgia romanticises and idealises the past. The term itself was coined from the Greek words (nostos – return and algos – pain, suffering) by Johannes Hofer, in the 17^th century, as a diagnosis, the indication of a psychological condition – that of people who suffer by living far from their homeland, as was the case with Swiss soldiers on battlefields across Europe at the time. But today, nostalgia is defined as “a historical emotion, dependent on the new century’s transformation of the experience of time”[1]. Although originally the term nostalgia meant suffering for a certain faraway space (home), today nostalgic feelings predominantly mean regret for a certain elapsed time.

Could time be the home we suffer for?

Yes, indeed.

But there is no going backwards in time. Exile in time is eternal.

It is a pain without a location. A nowhere pain.

And it is anxiety about the present, and about the end of time.