Video installation NEMA MJESTA PANICI
NO CAUSE FOR ALARM / NO REASON FOR CONCERN / NO REASON TO WORRY /
Room dimensions vary: minimum wall height 300cm, approximately 450cm in width, and roughly 800-950cm in length.
Video file size and format: the image height runs from floor to ceiling; the height-to-width ratio is 6:1 (e.g., 300 x 50 cm).
The audio-video is projected onto the wall of an empty room.
Video installation consists of a darkened, empty room (or space) and one audio-visual piece that is projected onto the wall. The video is projected from the ceiling onto the front wall.
Position of the video image: centred horizontally, from floor to ceiling. The rest of the wall is covered with black fabric on both the left and right sides of the image. The speakers are elevated and positioned in the left and right corners of the room.
Duration: loop interchange: the audio video (duration 92:96 s) and projected white soundless screen (duration 30 s). Both video and white intervals are projected towards the same position and in identical dimensions.
The video installation “No cause for alarm” seeks to transform the familiar, stale media phrase “No cause for alarm” into a specific environment through sound and moving images, both literally and metaphorically. The absence and non-existence of the supposed cause for alarm, in our minds and the socio-political media landscape, is expressed in various ways: through a horizontal constriction and narrowing of the image frame, which reduces the opportunity for a rhythmic exchange of choir singers, and through sound saturation of an empty space, with a polyphonic choir performance of the song “No cause for alarm” (where the repetition of the verse “no cause for alarm” is the sole sound amid short silences). The upside-down image signifies an inversion of the “Solemn and Sublime” conveyed in the choir performance, and the “Comforting and Suggestive” message transmitted through media.
While the space is dominated by sound, and the image is compressed into a narrow longitudinal light gap, the blue and semi-alive faces of the choristers (those “from the far side”) are crawling and breaking through from both the left and right, thus becoming pendulous moving targets in the sight of the spectator-voyeur.
This work was produced as part of an artistic and theoretical postgraduate research that explores the expressive, symbolic, and rhythmic potential of multiplied repetitive images, as well as questioning spatial–temporal intervals, interstices, and frame edges – where the inexpressible (at least according to Lacan) Real might be reflected.
Video information:
Camera operator: Milivoj Kuhar Mimi; Editing: Kristina Horvat Blažinović
Original music composition „No cause for alarm “: Concept: Kristina Horvat Blažinović; composer (for purposes of this video): Tomislav Cvrtila; Performers: „Josip Vrhovski“ Choir from Nedelišće; Conductor: Branimir Magdalenić
The video shows a choir singing a song in Croatian, repeating the phrase: “Nema mjesta panici / No cause for alarm.” The English translation omits the key word from the Croatian phrase, which is “mjesto/room.” A literal translation would be “no room for panic,” implying there is no physical space for panic or anxiety. Metaphorically, this phrase suggests that there is no reason for alarm or panic and is often used in the media at the end of news reports on issues that could evoke fear, insecurity, or anxiety among viewers. The format of the video is focused to highlight the limited “space” or room for panic—mirroring the extent of the ajar curtain.