Can’t you see them? – Repeat.

Sarajevo during the siege in 1992: A group of armed men walks along the banks of the river Miljacka. One man is led away, and the group crosses the river. The neighbouring Grbavica district is about to be taken by the Serbs. The footage was shot by a man from an apartment in an adjacent skyscraper without knowing who the armed men were. Are they Serbs, Bosniaks? His camera wobbles, searches, pursues and retreats. The artist Clarissa Thieme finds the man who shot the film and has him once again recount how it happened. Using a motion tracking program, she performs a metadata analysis of the original clip and calculates the camera’s position and movement. She feeds this data into a motion control system that projects light onto a screen. Light that moves, changes direction, trembles. From the interplay between narration, documentary material and light projected onto a screen, a resonance corpus is created: a body full of fear and anxiety, a body injured in war. A body that now can be experienced. Memory becomes tangible and visible. The trauma ascends from the skyscraper onto the screen and reaches the audience.
by Clarissa Thieme
with Nedim Alikadic
Germany / Bosnia and Herzegovina 2019 Bosnian, English 8’ Colour Documentary form

With

  • Nedim Alikadic (Off Voice)

Crew

Written and Directed by Clarissa Thieme
Cinematography Till Beckmann
Editing Clarissa Thieme
Sound Design Christian Obermaier, Jochen Jezussek
Archives Images Nedim Alikadic
In Cooperation with Library Hamdija Kresevljakovic Video Archive Sarajevo

Additional information

Can’t you see them? – Repeat. is also shown as an installation in the Forum Expanded Exhibition.

Clarissa Thieme

Born in Oldenburg, Germany in 1976. She studied Media Art, as well as Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Practice. Thieme works in the fields of film, photography, performance, installation and text, combining documentary and fictional forms with a focus on the processes of memory, identity politics and strategies of translation.

Filmography

2010 Was bleibt; 30 min., Forum Expanded 2010 · Was bleibt | Sta ostaje | What remains; 30 min., Forum Expanded 2010 2012 The Place We Left; 60 min. · The Place We Left; 60 min. 2013 Resort; 15 min. · Resort; 15 min. 2016 Die DDR hat es nie gegeben / Appell; 4 min. · Die DDR hat es nie gegeben / Appell; 4 min. 2018 Today is 11th June 1993; 15 min., Forum Expanded 2018 · Today is 11th June 1993; 15 min., Forum Expanded 2018 2019 Can't You See Them? – Repeat. · Can't You See Them? – Repeat.; 8 min., Forum Expanded Exhibition 2019

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2020