2024 – 2025
installation / 5 synchronized dia-slide projections / sound
A greasy girdle through earth passed.
What am I?
Starting with a riddle, to which the correct answer is: snake, Frau Ritter is a meandering audio-visual essay that addresses a myriad of positions toward the tandem of Woman and Snake.
Frau Ritter was premiered in the natural history pavilion of the National Museum of BiH in Sarajevo, in a room colloquially called “zmijarnik”, the “snake-room.” Reacting to the site-specific context the artist identified the elusive, yet real, character of botanist Hilda Ritter-Studnička as a vehicle to delve into an extensive survey of biases and manifestations – both cultural and scientific – towards the snake as animal and snake as symbol and its correlations to woman and womanhood. Using references to the international pantheon of mythological creatures, Aby Warburg, contemporary scientific discoveries, local folklore, the museum’s history and incorporating the artist’s personal narrative, the essay winds into an unpublished tale about a snake-princess.
The essay, narrated by the artist, is accompanied by a collaged display of images reproduced via 5 synchronized dia-slide projectors. Digital open-source images collected across the internet and photographic material shot on site underwent a media transmutation, from digital to analog. The artist used black and white dia-slide stock to transport images from screen to the physical medium of film and experimented with photo-chemical processes to achieve effects of tinting, solarization and granulation. This nod to media history goes back to Aby Warburg who delivered his seminal lecture Serpent Ritual in 1923 to the accompaniment of a carefully crafted sequence of dia-slide projections.
Created in collaboration with the museum’s herpetology and ethnography professionals Adnan Zimić and Nirha Efendić and singer Azra Pondro, Frau Ritter delivers a critical overview of the overreaching negative attitudes towards both Woman and Snake. The artist informs, berates and gives a fairy tale twist to the otherwise unnerving realization, best described by feminist Jasenka Kodrnja:
“From culture’s sentiments towards primeval nature and the woman stem its essential inclinations towards her symbols – from veneration to degradation.”
READ ESSAY TRANSCRIPT IN ENGLISH
READ ESSAY TRANSCRIPT IN BOSINAN/CROATIAN/SERBIAN
FRAU RITTER
2024 – 2025
installation: 5 synchronised dia-slide projectors, dia-slides, sound
Text, narration, photography: Lala Raščić
Singer: Azra Pondro
Sound recording and design: Lala Raščić | Hrvoje Nikšić
Content consultants: Nirha Efendić | Adnan Zimić
Speech coach: Anita Tripalo
Production assistant: Luana Lojić
Production: Lala Raščić • <rotor> • Zemaljski Muzej BiH
Thank you: CRVENA • Branka Cvjetičanin • Andreja Dugandžić • Alma Gačanin • Lejla Hodžić • Klubvizija • Lejla Kalamujić • Emir Kapetanović • Neža Knez • Ivana MešTRoV • Martina Miholić • staff at POGON and National Museuum of BiH • Luka Miholić • Ognjenka Raščić • Lidija Stojanović • Sabina Šabić • Danilo Trbojević • Azmir Vatreš • Timothy Weeks
Support:
Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia • City of Zagreb • HDLU • Pogon, Jedinstvo
Lala Raščić 