markale|2016 - ulrich polster /concept

ulrich polster - markale|2016

The video-collage Markale|2016 is a unification of recordings from the years 1992-95, 2006 and 2016 as well as live broadcastings in Europe during June/July 2016. In its genesis this video work refers to two former works of the artist - MISH (2006) and REPORT (2016). MISH is a travelogue about the Balkans and REPORT a recherche labor about the coverage of the balkan wars and their documentation, starting from the 10-Day war in Slovenia 1991 up to the peace treaty of Dayton in 1995.

In summer 2016 the artist again went on a journey to the places he had already visited for MISH. While during the day Polster followed his own traces and the increasing rejections and estrangements of the three ethnic groups along the break and front lines, he during the night tried to get a picture about the events in the rest of Europe. In the process of film making the realities and political events in Europe mixed with those from former Yougoslavia: June 28th 2016 attack on the Istanbul airport, July 14th 2016 attack in Nice and July 15th/16th military coup in Instanbul. Those images and sequences began to overlap, complement and interprete one another. Religion as a moment of causing identity in different manifestations in the Europe of 1995 and 2016.

To the observer the dividing lines between past and presence, fiction and media report as well as those between cause and effect begin to blur. The impression intensifies that we are living in a reality which seems to be more and more pulse driven and irrational, and where economical and political interests are shifting out of focus.