Sanda Kalebić
NEMANJA NIKOLIĆ: “PSYCHOPOLITICS”

“There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge.”
Intro of the TV series “The Twilight Zone”

The artistic praxis of Nemanja Nikolić can be divided into two segments: he produces paintings in the style of geometric abstraction and parallelly figurative, drawn video animations; what links the two media is his inclination to film as his main inspiration. The departure point of Nemanja’s drawings has been, from the first video animation, an appropriation of the stills from cinematographic creations of the mid-1950s, such as film noir, or the opus of Alfred Hitchcock. In his works Nemanja takes over scenes from films, cuts them, combines and recontextualizes them by producing new narratives accompanied by specially composed film music, and along with the animations, he always exhibits the drawings from which they were created. Although his early animations did not have any background, he decided to introduce it later so that, one drawing after another, make up stills over different printed editions. From his “Panic Book” (2015), over “Uncontained Images” (2027-18) to the monumental “The Plot” (2017-21) the backgrounds for his drawings have been books, maps, encyclopaedias published in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

In the new series “Psychopolitics” the artist continues his previous super positioning of drawn stills taken over from movie classics, using them for animations over diverse printed editions. Nemanja’s interest in cinematography from the mid-1950s and the scenes full of tension and uncertainty is easily resumed, and in this series, he turns to Rod Serling and the stills from his TV production “The Twilight Zone”. This famous American series, originally shown in the late fifties and early sixties (somewhat later in Yugoslavia), has won a cult status owing to its dramatic science-fiction and horror narratives containing intelligent and moralising messages. The more direct television format has made the series attractive, and the title become a specific expression for surreal experiences.

As in his former works, where scenes from great western films were drawn over Yugoslav books treating socialist theory, emphasising the Cold War tensions and mentioning the specific political and cultural position Yugoslavia held at that moment, this new series also makes the relationship between the background and the drawing crucial for understanding Nemanja’s work. This time, he does not choose only historic references, but mostly title pages of the Serbian daily Politika from 2020. In using contemporary publications, the artist makes his first step forward towards a more direct examination of and comments on the particular moment of the present day and thus his works, for the first time, treat the contemporary social topics and take a clearly apprehensible activist tone.

Big format drawings will be shown at the exhibition organised in Gallery RIMA, drawings with scenes from the series “The Twilight Zone”, executed over title pages of Politika, as well as those drawn over the pages of socialist political encyclopaedias related to his former works. In one of the drawings (“Gaze II”) he interweaves different stills and texts, also showing a television set; giving an image within an image and opening the potential for stratified interpretations that engage the audience on several levels. Apart from that, he also exhibits the drawings that made up the animation and, in the end, video animation itself, accompanied by special music composed by Pavle Popov, additionally reinforcing the cinematic effect and the suspense carried by the work.

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Politika is the oldest Serbian daily published in continuity. As such, it has built the reputation of a recognisable media brand and in the consciousness of many of its readers it has become a symbol of traditional non-sensational journalism. At present, Politika is one of rare dailies in Serbia without frivolous pages, or aggressive typography and dramatic “news” about an imminent beginning of a local or global war, usually placed directly to the latest gossip stories about show-people, crime-chronicles and frequently shameless texts about the daily topics. Nevertheless, although more decently packaged, Politika has a long tradition of using its authority for perfidious pro-government propaganda and nationalistic reporting. With this it comes close to numerous other so-called newspapers that make up the freedom of the media and independent reporting in Serbia, which is far from desired and ethical journalism. It is this visually restrained background that helps the author avoid the trap of over-saturated drawings and keep the visual subtlety and artistic poeticism, but also achieve, in contrasting title pages in the second plan and the drawings in the first, the degree of irony necessary for the reading and understanding of his work.

Titles referring to the success and determination of Serbian authorities (“The government of continuity, stability and progress”, “We shall be the nut that cannot be cracked”), with threats to the stability of the country (“When Serbia is strong they try to dismantle it in the streets”, “They will try to separate both the people and the Church”), the dramatic moments of the corona-crisis (“This is a state of war”, “We need an iron discipline”, “Corona has replaced the fear of bombs”), presenting those who clearly choose the right course in Serbian foreign policy (“Russia and Serbia have the same cultural code”, “China – when it is difficult”, “EU threatens Serbia because of its gratefulness to China and Russia”) or add fuel to the flames of the already fragile regional relationships (“The authorities in Sarajevo ‘drive away’ dead Serbs as well”), “Cold War in the air”, “The Albanians are queuing to get examined by Serbian doctors”), are needlessly alarming and devoid of right information, or ultimately absurd, but for those who have such a sense of humour, they can be even funny. Reporting on crises, either real, such as the corona-crisis that naturally dominated the title pages in 2020, permanent or actualised on demand, as the crisis of Kosovo, or simply artificially fabricated to empower the authorities to act quickly and non-transparently, or, on the other hand, to divert attention from unwanted topics and keep the public in a constant state of insecurity and tension. By various psychological techniques, such as propaganda, manipulation, persuasion or conditioning of behaviour, media are used to shape public opinion, mobilise the support and maintain political power. Crises are no longer transitional states that should be overcome but have become a political instrument; with media as manipulating tools, the reality is rapidly becoming a genre of psychological horror.

As in the episodes of “The Twilight Zone” our reality is becoming less probable as if slipping out of our perception. In reading the title pages of the papers, and even more in our consumption of the modern media which understand information as their own produce and news as the way to get a click, we seem not to be living in our own reality, but in a parallel world, in a bad film, in the twilight zone. An individual is unable to distinguish the truth from the rest in that sea of information and beat through the quantity of cheap and meaningless news. One can choose, in overall confusion, to stop paying attention, to accept his inability to have a showdown with reality or to endeavour and unmask the world that surrounds them. Therefore, we mostly live somewhere in between, relying on our personal capacities: absorbing the quantity of news we can handle and believe in what we feel to be probable.

Either we believe that the dramatic news around us are correct (and reality frequently convinces us that they might be) or we shudder over the false information and spins offered limitlessly and without any concern, we are connected; what connects us are confusion and helplessness. With his drawings and video animation from the series “Psychopolitics”, with those close-ups of people unprepared, wondering, crying in fear and disbelief, who had been included in the video by the manner and rhythm of stills interexchange, together with the cinema music rhythmically accelerated and amplified, perfectly dramatized and psychologised, Nemanja meticulously transfers emotional reactions and the charge that we feel in consuming the vast quantity of unscrupulous media contents that appear to grow worse every day. Apart from that, with his “Psychopolitics” the author directly comments on our everyday, the state we are in, because, as we shall notice, apart from the agony perceptible in the faces of those characters, we can see what comes afterwards: a manic laughter caused by the impossibility of control leading to almost paranoid states. Those states define our society where information has become just another branch of entertainment industry, while the truth is somewhere there – perhaps in reality, and perhaps in the twilight zone.