2013
two-channel video / watercolour / props / books
A literary work, a travelogue, was Lala’s starting point for the two-channel video installation No Country Other than Liberty. The narrative stems from the observations of a 19th century thinker, anarchist, geographer and ecologist Elisee Reclus. In his book, A Voyage to New Orleans, he writes about the overlapping of modernity with nature, captures a young American society, and his descriptions seem to ring true even today. The images that accompany the narration in the video are shot at the Mississippi, where the river flows into the gulf of Mexico. That area, which Reclus describes in his travelogue, serves today as a base camp for numerous oil companies. In the video the artist uses quotes from Reclus, but also cites the writings on Reclus by John Clark, his translator in North America, who also appears in the video.
A literary work, a travelogue, was Lala’s starting point for the two-channel video installation “No Country Other than Liberty”. The narrative stems from the observations of a 19th century thinker, anarchist, geographer and ecologist Elisee Reclus. In his book, “A Voyage to New Orleans“, he writes about the overlapping of modernity with nature, captures a young American society, and his descriptions seem to ring true even today. The images that accompany the narration in the video are shot at the Mississippi, where the river flows into the gulf of Mexico. That area, which Reclus describes in his travelogue, serves today as a base camp for numerous oil companies. In the video the artist uses quotes from Reclus, but also cites the writings on Reclus by John Clark, his translator in North America, who also appears in the video.
“…If we disregard the particularity of specific contexts, in this case (both cases) the artist places the present within a concrete historical sequence.”
Fokus Grupa (Iva Kovač i Elvis Krstulović) from the text for the Lala Raščić exhibition at SIZ Galley in Mali Salon, Rijeka
No Country Other than Liberty
2-channel video
13min, HD, color, stereo
script: Lala Raščić after Elise Reclus and John Clark
actors: John Clark, Eric Bookhardt, Timothy Weeks
camera: Drew Stubbs, Matthew Dougherty, Lala Raščić
editing: Lala Raščić
video post-production: Redžinald Šimek
sound post-production: Tomislav Domes
Thank you: Jason Day for the swamp boat ride
Vast alluvia (according Google maps)
guache on paper, 79.5 x 53 cm
New Orleans Daily Delta
marker on paper, 61 x 53 cm
A Voyage to New Orleans, Elise Reclus
Glad Day Books, 2004.
editors and translators: John Clark, Camille Martin
Anarchy, Geography, Modernity, selected writings of Elise Reclus
PM Press, 2nd Edition, 2013 (unpublished)
editors and translators: John Clark, Camille Martin
Lala Raščić 