Darko Stojkov: Second Journey PDF Print E-mail
Written by Per Formo   
Sunday, 06 June 2010 19:24

 

Darko Stojkov now lives in Belgrade but he is originally from the city Kikinda, where approximately 40 men were taken by the Germans and sent to Norway in 1942 - most of them to Narvik, to work on the so-called "Blood Road". Kikinda has since the war been a friendship town of Narvik.

Darko Stojkov finished his art education at the art academy in Belgrade as recently as 2007, but he has been exhibiting his work - both drawing, painting, photography, video and other media - in galleries in Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, Slovenia and Hungary during the last 6 or 7 years. This is the first time he shows his work in Norway.

Darko's project for Falstad Kunst 2010 is a video called "Second Journey".

In April 2010, Darko Stojkov travelled the same route that the Serbian prisoners followed when they were sent to Norway - some to Falstad, others to Narvik - by the Germans in 1942, and he has documented this second journey on video. While he was travelling he had the written memories of two survivors from the first journey in mind: Petar Krasulja and Slavko Vukic. All the text in his video is taken from their memories of the journey in 1942.

One of the interesting thing about their memories is that in spite of being prisoners brutally taken away from their homes and families, they were able to enjoy the strange and beautiful new things they could see in the places they came to. Slavko Vukic writes that "We had not seen anything like that before so we were gazing curiously, forgetting our pain and bitter premonitions."

In the video "Second Journey" we see how some of these places look today - 68 years after the first journey - and in the video we can read the memories of two of the men who made this journey in 1942.

This makes a very complex and emotional impression. Especially when you think about what happened later to most of these prisoners. The video is very slow, simple and beautiful - but also melancholic, full of sorrow. "Second Journey" is a kind of reflexion on the distance, not between there and here, Belgrade and Falstad, but between them and us, then and now - 1942 and 2010. It is about someone trying to connect to history, but maybe also about how difficult it is to get in touch with the past.

"Second Journey" is something very rare: a serious and emotional memorial in the form of a contemporary video work.

 

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Last Updated on Tuesday, 08 June 2010 10:49