ROTATIONS, CIRCLES, CYCLES
by Diana Nenadić

In the beginning, there was a role, a circle with a film/video tape. Rotating on a camera case and/or projectors/recorders, the role could have recorded and/or reproduced any movement from either animate or inanimate objects. Soon, the camera wished to become alive as well, to move, to achieve whatever was impossible for a static image or a photography image, to capture an image from every angle and – if possible – in one single take, without any interruptions, to stimulate the perfections of a character incorporating other characters, a primeval and resulting form of all forms - circle and, in the end, to find the core of a circular world, to enter the very essence of the cosmos and the medium itself.

Whether perceived merely as a descriptive instrument, a structural principle, an expression of alchemist inclinations or purposes (or as having a purpose in itself) the geometry of a circle has always been more favored by “objectives” of radical methodological choice which were, by their nature, placed on the margins. Taking a look at our own alternative back yard, the most radical person out there is Tomislav Gotovac, whose films, created in a period span of 35 years, like a dragon eating its own tail, close the circle of such ideas in this program.

While rolling his film camera for the first time on the top of a skyscraper in Belgrade, during the global structural experiment phase that occurred in the 60-ies, Gotovac’s film The Circle (Jutkevič-Count), 1964, stated that his methodological caprice could be more potent and could have more content than what might be seen at the first glance. Panoramic circulation of the camera across the city architecture, as the cameraman was rotating, was interrupted only by a single image and a sign stating “circle”, and was transferred by a spiral ascent from an urban space into the abstract sky. Three and a half decades later, in Glen Miller 2000, the camera was equipped with a mechanism enabling it to make a 360 degrees cycle, then fixed on to a vehicle which was interruptedly driven in circles through a circular intersection in one of Zagreb’s suburbs. The effect was similar to the first one: in a collision of the “firm” and the ethereal, the low and the sky-high world during the rotation, the real, actual space merged with the cosmic, thus giving it a metaphysical dimension.

Similar practice was used by Sanja Iveković, in the pioneering stages of video production, in Reconstructions 1952 – 1976, in order to affirm video as a medium of an intimate space and personal reflection by rolling of the camera in an interior familiar to her. She placed an object in the middle of Monumentum (1976) and described male body as a statuary object in itself by spiral circulation. Other members of Croatian video-pioneering threesome, Dalibor Martinis and Goran Trbuljak were at that time interested in the possibilities and natural suppositions of this new medium. However, circles and circulations were inevitable here as well, becoming a component of a (meta)media exploration recorded in one continuous take and in real time. Martinis thus transformed his own body into a role to wind a videotape of a recent recording of his performance on (Open Reel, 1976). Trbuljak kept his distance by just observing the spinning of a videotape in a video recorder with an open reel.

Željko Kipke will associate the circle and the rotation of a camera with alchemist domains-in the 80s, in his film Black, blacker than the black (1985), where the 8 mm camera attached to a rotating bike was shooting one of his painting performances/rituals. Afterwards, each one in his own decade, Petar Fradelić (Ego, 1987) and Darko Vernić–Bundi (Center of the World, 1997) will contribute to the discussion on the position of a person/an author in the everlasting rotation of the universe. Fradelić is creating Gotovac’s “circle”/panorama (of Split) on the open sea from a moving boat, and his Ego is circulating around the centre, while Bundi, not without self-irony, puts himself in front of a camera attached to a merry-go-round.

For a photography and cinematography veteran Kruno Heidler such mystifications on geometry do not exist. In a one-minute-long film The Circle (2007), they retrocede before a simple, but symbolic haiku scene – a boat, floating on the river creates a full circle in less than 60 seconds. And not just its own!