‘bal’ screening
“Hope Hotel Phantom”
Bojan Stojčić / Bosnia and Herzegovina, US / 2023 / 22’
In November 1995, the leaders of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia met in Dayton (Ohio) to broker a peace agreement that would end four violent years of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Negotiated at the Hope Hotel located on the grounds of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Dayton Agreement locked Bosnia & Herzegovina into a simulacra of democracy, through the proxy of a site that was a simulacra in itself: a military base on the other side of the world, an intimidation to the signing parties. 27 years later, in July 2022, I flew to America from Bosnia and Herzegovina and booked myself a room at the Hope Hotel. There, I filled the same beds and conference halls as the people who had once shaped my future — a phantom in the echoes of this historical event: a dream turned nightmare.
“Chou Hilou?! // !شن حلو؟”
Marija Nemčenko Aržanych / Lithuania, Lebanon / 2025
Chou Hilou?! // !شن حلو؟ explores the hunting and protection of migrating birds in Lebanon. It attempts to trace how these two archaic prototypes of engaging with the world function together, and what broader meaning they possess. The video work !شن حلو؟ questions an imported version of environmental laws that simply don’t work in politically, socially and economically complex places such as Lebanon. Taking the story of an Eastern European stork whose death prompted his carer to write a letter requesting that the then-president, Michel Aoun, impose strict anti-poaching laws as a starting point, the installation is built from fragments that speculate on why “strict anti-poaching laws” are not the sole answer to hunting. The title of the work itself points to a moment when, surrounded by bird-hunting guns and trophies, people exclaim in wonder at the sight of migrating storks in a video - an almost mundane, yet joyful constellation of contradictions, surrounding the act of hunting in Lebanon.