42m of intimacy, public space art intervention, Belgrade, 2020

For private zone lovers. The ones I share public/private space with. For everyone.

Beyond the rejection of issues of domicile, today's urban architecture has neglected problems of mass-housing. Today’s architecture seems to have abandoned life entirely and turned into a pure architectural fabrication. We still need living places that will reinforce our sense of human reality and the essential hierarchies of life.

Since the individual quarantines (due to the current pandemic) started in Serbia, the government prohibited movement and contact with other people. There is a building construction across my apartment, which reached the level of my fourth-floor balcony is part of my quarantine as well, eternal one. The building grew out of the blue and within a very short time. It became part of my only view as if someone had cut it from one piece of paper and glued it to another. We are suddenly really close while sharing the place. The tiny zone between these two buildings is an invisible space that frames our social interactions. I am being exposed to the people working on that building and will be to people living there in the future. It is not my private space anymore, it is ours.

The temporary intervention in the space called '' 42m of intimacy'' deals precisely with the gap or space between two buildings - the author's building and the building across from it, which is under construction. In the area where the whole settlement is planned (the urban plan for residential buildings in Vidikovac neighborhood) was a small forest where bees were grown and that place connected the highest point on Vidikovac with a view of the rest of the city. This installation deals with the privacy issue in public space, through an exploration of space between residential buildings, in particular.
As in many parts of Belgrade, buildings began to sprout in all available spaces, destroying all aesthetics, functions and most importantly, endangering private space for already existing tenants. The smaller and narrower that space is, the more intimate it becomes for us who are sharing it, whether we like it or not. This issue is recognized globally, but I am taking an example of personal experience.

The temporal installation presents usually an invisible line in the interspace between objects. I marked that space with a reddish 42m long tape in purpose to link my balcony with the building construction. At one point, the tape began to untie and move caused by wind, making an intimate scene. It was materializing the space in-between by its movement while slowly floating in the air.
With this intervention, I stepped on the huge field of intimate, public space and these are my first 42m.