Drifting through Cityscapes Drifting through Cityscapes MTL final copy | Page 46

In 1968 student protests took place in Yogoslawia. At
that time, Katarinas grandmother came from the vil-
lage she had spend her childhood in, to the city. She
began protesting with the students, visiting assem-
bly’s and listening to the speakers stating the aims of
the protests. She was part of the crowd. Katarinas
grandfather took a photograph randomly. In the
photograph you can see a young woman (Katarinas
grandmother) wearing all black in a massive crowd,
giving an effect of her being the only one in the
crowd. When he noticed his future wife, he fell in love
immediately. She was 17 at the time and they got
married 3 months later and a year later they had
their first child, Katarinas mother. 1986 was a difficult
time for many, but for some, it was the most import-
ant time that built families, irreplaceable memories,
and unbreakable connections. This isn’t only a time
of protests and political disappointment, as the say-
ing goes ‘’Love conquers all« Katarinas grandfather
was lucky, but this story tells a tale of how if you pay
just a little bit of attention on your surroundings, you
may see something life changing. In 2018 they are
still happily married with 3 children and 5 grandchil-
dren. Follow the traces it could lead you to incredi-
ble things. We took this as a posing question and
started our work with the idea to reenact this photo-
graph. How can we leave a trace? The traces peo-
ple leave are not visible but nevertheless can have
massive impact. Taking a photograph is only one
way of many to capture a situation, creating proof
that it had taken place. But a picture is only an ex-
cerpt. With a photograph, you cannot see the de-
velopment that set this picture into movement/what
happened after the image was taken; thoughts be-
hind it, an object, or a group of people. Who is the
person that makes the mark, the trace? Is it the indi-
vidual standing/sitting in the space or is it us when we
view and record this trace? With 1968 as our focus
we decided to focus on crowds, masses of people
who together, walking create traces around the city.
From this, space and the people passing through
spaces became our medium. The city provides a
scene for a set of interactions, which then leave trac-
es, the remnants of the gathering of people. These
remnants, interactions, gatherings, are not normally
traceable and tend to go unnoticed within a busy
city life. Our aim was to highlight the things that nor-
mally go unnoticed and leave a physical, visible
mark in public space. Using tape as the material to
map out and draw the quick and movements of the
gathering of masses, travelling and intervening with
our surroundings. We went to crowded spaces in the
city, tourist hot spots. It was not however the archi-
tecture, historical or cultural relevance of this tourist
hot spot that was important to us. What was import-
ant was the concept of moving itself and how we
can trace and make this visible.