“Global Village”, a term coined by Marshall McLuhan in 1962, conceptualizes the fact that human relations intensify all over the world by means of various social media and social networking, allowing to improve mutual understandings about humanistic thoughts and cultural differences. By 1989, the international community had been divided into two principal camps (capitalist and socialist), generating misunderstandings, confrontations and even unavoidable sacrifices. Since the collapse of the Soviet regime, post-socialist countries have tried to integrate and catch up with the world through Perestroika, subsequent democratization as well as neoliberalism.
This effort of integration meant that Eastern European countries expected to become member of the European Union and most of them succeeded to fulfil this goal since then. Russia also enjoyed economic prosperity and became one of the BRICS countries. The optimistic atmosphere that spread out in the global age created the belief that this process of integration leads to a better future. In fact, the state of transition and transformation in political, economic, social and cultural aspects is still persisting and lingering in the everyday life of local people, whose state of mind is characterized by a sense of in-betweenness.
The video research project entitled The In-between State of Mind is dedicated to artists who experienced the drastic change after the end of the communist regime and witnessed how people embrace the new capitalist lifestyle, but also perceived the alternative local responses given to this binary system and responded to this post-socialist condition with visual lyricism, witty irony and creative imagination.
Artists: Miloš Tomić (SRB) / Katrina Neiburga (LV) / AES+F (RUS) / Goran Radovanović (SRB) / Šejla Kamerić (BiH) / Nika Oblak & Primož Novak (SLO) / Vlad Buzaianu (RO) / Anastasija Piroženko (LT) / Boris Kozlov (SRB) / Marius Gherasim (RO) / Katarzyna Kozyra (PL) / Ciprian Mureşan (RO) / Zaneta Vangeli (MK) / Mina Mileva & Vesela Kazakova (BG) / subREAL: Călin Dan, Iosif Király and Dan Mihălţianu (RO) / Blue Noses (RUS) / Igor Grubić (HR) / Jan Pfeiffer (CZ) / Gentian Shkurti (AL) / Olson Lamaj (AL)