Documents [2007], from the series RegistryIvan Petrović (RS)

photographs, 2001

The objects photographed are part of archival records taken over from the funds of the municipal criminal attorney’s office in Kruševac, Serbia. Since they belong to the said category of judicial investigation, they are not related to any given crime, but have perhaps been used in a beating up, taken away in a police raid and used as means of intimidation in a situation of conflict, in which some person, or several persons, has or have been physically endangered by another or others.

Administratively filed as evidence proving the guilt of someone, such objects ultimately are considered closed as archival records and five years after being deposited are destroyed on the advice of a commission.

By moving from one use area to another – from commodity item in a shop, via a private object to a forensic artefact, the object changes its function and semantic character. It is labelled on the basis of changes in its use value, the presence of people being sensed in the manner in which it was perhaps used, such an object opening up a space for questions and assumptions about the latent value of abuse.

Ivan Petrović (RS)

Ivan Petrović was born in 1973 in Kruševac, Serbia. He took his first degree at the Brača Karić Art Academy in Belgrade in the photography section. As well as photography, which is the basic area of his activity and work (art, research, teaching) he also deals with the short form of documentary film and video. His artistic practice is founded on the interrelations of documentalism, appropriation and revaluation, and is characterised by a heterogeneous performative approach. The main theme that this artist explores through his projects is the phenomenon of discontinuity, and analysis of it is a possible means in the process of the production of his works. He is co-founder and joint editor of the Centre for Photography (with Mihailo Vasiljević). He is initiator and editor of Foto-forum (2010-2011) and author of a book of the same name (2016). He won the Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos Prize in 2008 and a KulturKontakt grant in Vienna in 2004.

Contact: ivan73petrovic@gmail.com