Mila Panić
Burning Field, 2017
“The video is recorded in real-time, showing the intentional burning of the field. The work presents the field that is supposed to be mine one day, as part of my family inheritance. It is common in the Balkan region to burn crops and weeds on the fields after the autumn harvest, an annual (illegal) process to clear and fertilise the land for the next year – or at least many believe that to be the case. With this work, I’m asking about my responsibility towards my heritage and my inheritance in the context of displacement. Our relationship to the landscape often speaks of a longing for the land that is familiar to us, which was or is ours and has defined our sense of ourselves. The longer one watches the more intense their anxiety and lethargy, thus the duration becomes coexistent with the weight of the field.” (Mila Panić)
HD video, 106 min, still frame, courtesy of the artist
Mila Panić is a Bosnian-born artist and stand-up comedian based in Berlin. Her practice ranges from personal documentation to highly poetic visual and discursive elements, from drawings to found footage, photographs, and stand-up comedy. Thus she creates a cycle that interprets the various inheritances of migration by providing glimpses into the consequences of the process, revealing what is not documented, shaping the whole picture, unmasking different cultural narratives that exist quietly in the very idea of migration. She is the host of Broken English podcast, which explores the politics of language and the question of how it is to live between two or more languages. She is the co-founder of the collective and association Fully Funded Residencies, which provides an overview of paid opportunities for all cultural workers.
