Aleksandra Domanović: From Yu to Me

On view 1 – 30 November 2018

One could say I am the mother of the Internet in Yugoslavia, the mother of this domain.(Borka Jerman Blažič)

„Borka Jerman Blažič, a professor at the University of Ljubljana, was one of two women computer scientists who were integral to the inception and growth of the internet in Yugoslavia in 1991. The domain which Blažič claims as her offspring is .yu —the internet suffix for a country that, at the time of .yu's birth, was breaking apart. This previously untold story is the subject of the film From Yu to Me by artist Aleksandra Domanović. She uses the conventions of the documentary form — interviews, archival footage and evocative music, but deliberately chooses to undermine any definitive conclusions. Her omission of concrete dates and place markers obscures claims to documentary truth. Instead it unearths a narrative about how technological infrastructures quietly influence and contradict geo- political realities, while refusing to present these ideas as an authoritative account.

From Yu to Me is one of a number of recent works by Domanović that create speculative narratives in order to reveal deeply personal interconnections between people and technology—specifically women and technology. (Her) sculpture and installations included in (parallel in the exhibition Computer Grrrls at HMKV) weave together the work of these pioneering female programmers, the marginalized position of women in sci-fi and cyber-feminism, with her own personal narrative — a narrative that corresponds directly to the rise of the internet and the collapse of her home in the former Yugoslavia." (Caitlin Jones)

Aleksandra Domanović, *1981 in Novi Sad (ex-YU, today Serbia), lives in Berlin. Solo exhibitions, among others, 2013 The Future Was at Her Fingertips, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin; 2012 Turbo Sculpture, SPACE, London; 2012 From yu to me, Kunsthalle Basel. Participation in exhibitions, among others, 2015 Inhuman, Fridericianum, Kassel; 2013 A Different Kind of Order, ICP Triennial, New York; 2013 Speculations on Anonymous Materials, Fridericianum, Kassel; 2012 Lux Biennial of Moving Image, Tramway, Glasgow; 2012 4th Marrakesh Biennale, Marrakesh; 2012 The First Kiev Biennale, Kiev.