The Art-Act or Seven Minutes to six.

‘’Voices and word that

Cause her to turn around

And scan the horizon for meaning

Sun-starved throughout’’

In the contemporary society, advances in technologies, telecommunications and information transfer, transform traditional spaces.

Being dependent of the new communication technologies is a growing trend. The appearance and transformation of various forms of image-making, associated with the recent development of digital technology, had a major impact on our perception and our concept of reality. Different technological innovations made a great influence in all areas of our life, as well in the arts, as they open new spheres for innovation and experimentation.

‘’The making of Balkan Wars: The game’’ project in Skopje, is a possibility to present to the Macedonian public, the new artistic tendencies in an unusual and new way, by combining the video game and artistic experience.

Artists from different areas of the peninsula and broader tell/show their Balkan stories through images and codes of the new technology using a common language of the new high-tech societies.

Museum of the city of Skopje is now the space of blending the cultures-the shift in sensibility: echoes of increased political awareness that involves the desire for change, of laws and attitudes, mindsets and behaviors, understanding and thinking.

The didactic nature of the project is seen through its popular nature-the videogame as a virtual space for the new reality, with all connections possible. The artists who create mind images through controlled technical procedures.

The players that interact and experience the pleasure of being central actively demanding and interfering.

Not being only passively receptive.

The presentation of this project become reality as a result of the intense co-operation between the Personal Cinema,

LOKOMOTIVA-Centre for New Initiatives in Arts and Culture and PAC Multimedia and with support of the Swiss Cultural Programme- Macedonia and Kunsthalle Fredericanum.

We are not five to twelve. We are seven to six in ‘’exploring the new worlds’’ beyond the spaceship Enterprise.

Welcome and enjoy.

Biljana Tanurovska

LOKOMOTIVA-Centre for New Initiatives

in Arts and Culture

The question of balance:

Balancing between the ‘’balkanisation’’ and ‘’debalkanisation’’ tendencies within the complex and braided reality of the region, is a task that should be surmounted in finest manner by every visitor and player deciding to be part of the virtual space of the Balkan Mall – computer video game that is in the midst of the Personal Cinema project entitled as ‘’The making of Balkan wars: The game’’. Compared with the commercial productions of epic and strategic nature, to maintain the balance in the Balkan Mall is not a factor of winning over the enemies, but rather a project offering greater possibilities for reflection and interactive movement, through spaces and different layers of the harsh, but also rich political and cultural topography of the peninsula-the way we know it and it has been avowed in the works of the fifty artists being insofar part of this project. The symbolical meaning of the balance within this metaphorical narrative serves as a precondition for a dialogue and provides space for an open and historically unburdened view to the Balkan reality.

The reasons why Personal Cinema are placing their project within the frames of the video game, in the genre known as the epic strategy, can be traced down to the ironic playground where the overlaps occur, between the real Balkan context and the tribal mythic content typical for commercial production of video games of this kind.

The irony is, above all, in the critical tone of the project being strikingly directed towards the unavoidable media representation where manipulation is overwhelming and the misuse of major stereotypes for picturing the region is such that often resembles exactly to the epic strategic games.

At the same time, what the creators undoubtedly want to announce through the

‘’Balkan Wars: The game’’, is that the use of democratic potential in the hands of the new information media such as the internet and many other interactive communication tools, may be the chance for de-fragmentation of an adamant shell created by the inherited animosities and misunderstandings. According to this belief, Personal Cinema collective project is a frame for replacement, as Popi Diamantakou states, of ‘’ ideologically charged elements of mythological constructions’’ with

a ‘’social change symbolized by the language of that same technology that has reproduced them’’. It is a perspective that many of us would like to see.

Zoran Petrovski