Jasmina Cibic’s film Beacons is a cinematographic journey portraying eight women who Distil the archive of cultural workers from countries of the Non – Aligned Movement into a musical score. They translate and decipher words into sounds , music and choreography and meet within a proposition for an address recasting the unrealised promises of the past into a sonic address as a rehearsal for our present. Filmed on isolated architectures steeped in nature that once served the awakening of transnational solidarity, the project aims to re-inscribe the missing female voice into the history of world – building. For the script, Cibic utilised the speeches delivered at the first conference of cultural workers From countries of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1985, held in Titograd, Yugoslavia. During this event, academics, artists, curators, and politicians shared strategies for achieving cultural independence, spiritual decolonisation, moral rehabilitation, and the emancipation of deve loping Non-Aligned countries. These individuals were leaders in the cultural spheres, aiming to create new scenographic backdrops as part of the alternative world-building project of the Non – Aligned Movement (NAM) within the bi-polar division of the world during the Cold War. The locations in the film present a series of architectures and sites whose role it was to announce, defend, remind and alert a multinational state in its becoming. Cibic’s protagonists here use both the architecture and the landscape as amplifiers for their voice and action and inscribe a feminist reading of patriarchal architectural sites and re-engage with their worldbuilding potential via a feminist lens. The missing female voice from systemic and anti-systemic world-building projects is here embodied as a cypher that re-inscribes a possibility of an emancipated future of collective agency. But there is another lens through which Cibic selects the architectures for her film: all these structures are positioned within epic landscapes, serving as beacons and power verticals, metaphorically representing the pursuit of alternative world -building that they formally proclaimed. These protrusions manifest idealistic beliefs of attainable potential, which Cibic now revisits, albeit through a feminist corrective lens of their original world building purpose.
Biography
Jasmina Cibic is a London based artist who works in film, performance, and installation. She represented Slovenia at the 55th Venice Biennial with her project “For Our Economy and Culture”. Her recent exhibitions include solo shows at: Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, The Highline New York, macLyon, Museum Sztuki Łódź, Museum of Contemporary Art Ljubljana, CCA Glasgow, Phi Foundation Montreal, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead, Ludwig Museum Budapest, Kunstmuseen Krefeld along with group exhibitions at MAXXI Rome, Steirischer Herbst ‘ 23, MOMA NY, Marta Herford and Guangdong Museum of Art China. Cibic’s films have been screened at the Barbican London, Whitechapel Gallery, CCA Montreal, Pula Film Festival, HKW Berlin, Louvre, Les Rencontres Internationales Paris, Aesthetica, Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Dokfest Kassel and Copenhagen International Documentary Festival. Cibic was the winner of the MAC International Ulster Bank and Charlottenborg Fonden awards (2016), the B3 Biennial of the Moving Image Award (2020) and the Film London Jarman Award (2021). Cibic explores the intertwinements of state power, culture, and gender constructs. She examines the mechanisms of soft power— the instrumentalization of culture by political forces — during moments of historical social and ideological crises. Through archival research, Cibic seeks out artworks, architecture, and music in which political interests and the rhetoric of national power are expressed. She translates her research into films and immersive theatrical compositions that include photographs, performances, and installations