Photo © Goran Bertok
People - NOMINEE: Goran Bertok
Survivors
Support this photographer - share this work on Facebook.
“One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic”
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin
Wars, states of emergency and continuing repression are immense breeding places for the pogroms against the people sacrificed in order to achieve political or economic goals. Terror that serves the ideology is a phenomenon imprinted in collective memory and is nowadays perceived as a consequence of so called human nature according to which, people are prone to domination, power tripping and competitiveness. It follows, that a human being is in fact an essentially evil and dangerous creature. The history of humankind, charged with bloody testimonies and traumatic memories, leads to identical conclusions. Parallel to the development of humanistic studies, science and technology the modern age has also encouraged the development of methods of elimination of adverse elements in society. Dogmatic ideologies haven’t (yet) lost their potentiality.
Throughout history mass killings and organised terror were taking place under different slogans and flags, though WWII has led to catastrophe of unimagined proportions: total war, global instability and the most extreme and brutal forms of disabling of potential opponents. The Nazi state developed the idea of repressive cleaning of disruptive individuals within society into a flawlessly functioning industry. However, concentration camps were not a novelty at that time. They were already conceived in the 19th century for the purpose of eliminating war prisoners from both sides of the American civil war (1861-1865) and refined during the Second Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902) when British military forces imprisoned tens of thousands of civilians who might have provided help to the rebels. A concentration camp is thus a place for extrajudicial imprisonment which a government uses to keep people who are either against that government or who it thinks are too dangerous to remain free.
Goran Bertok’s recent series of photographs is devoted to the protagonists who – either as victims of opposition and rebellion or as collateral damage of Third Reich’s demographic policy – experienced the horrors of Nazi concentration camps and survived; however, these places where human life is worth almost nothing have left indelible marks on their victims. The portraits of former inmates however don’t show explicit signs of violence visible on their bodies, these are instead ambivalent images of the elderly who have already stared into the eyes of death many years ago in front of the spectator. They are reminders of these tragic events for which the entire world has vowed they should never happen again. However, historical memory is indeed very short-lived. After 1945 the repressive apparatus – of both Western or Eastern powers – didn’t essentially soften; innumerable war prisoners and political dissidents were thus taken to forced labour camps in Siberia by Soviets while the American Army locked up and starved to death around one million Wehrmacht soldiers in improvised camps.
Reasons behind such violence are often very complex and deeply rooted in the socio-political and economic situation of a certain place and time when people’s plights are often transferred onto the Other. In her essay ‘On Violence’ Hannah Arendt stated that “power comes from the collective will and does not need violence to achieve any of its goals, since voluntary compliance takes its place. As governments start losing their legitimacy, violence becomes an artificial means toward the same end and is therefore, found only in the absence of power.” If powerlessness of this kind lead to the terror of incalculable proportions, only the conscious power of the people could prevent it. After WWII Europe tried to maintain an awareness of the inhumanity of nationally and racially intolerant totalitarian ideologies and thus created the enormous physical and mental infrastructure of memory that – in order to avoid the recurrence of ideological violence – demands empathy for millions of innocent victims – the ones who died and the ones who survived.
Miha Colner
About author:
1963 born in Koper, Slovenia
1989 graduated in Journalism at the Faculty of Sociology, Political Sciences and Journalism in Ljubljana; enlisted as a soldier into the Yougoslav National Army; after a month dismissed from the service with a diagnosis of a »psychopatic personality«
1990 first solo exhibition
SOLO EXHIBITIONS /selection/
2015 »Body and Flesh«, Photon Gallery, Vienna, Austria
»Fire, Red«, The Church of The Holy Spirit Gallery, Črnomelj, Slovenia
»Post Mortem«, Opservatorijum Gallery, Beograd, Serbia
»Family Album«, AQ Gallery, Celje, Slovenia
2014 »Survivors II«, National Museum of Contemporary, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2013 »Body, Meat and other Stories«, Kunsthalle Feldbach, Feldbach, Austria
»Survivors«, Photon Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2011 »Dead Nature«, Mocvara Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia
»Dead Nature«, Simulaker Gallery, Novo Mesto, Slovenia
2010 »Red and Black«, Kibela, MMC Kibla, Maribor, Slovenia
Photoport Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia
2009 »Red«, Kapelica Gallery, Slovenia
2008 Gallery Wallywoods, Berlin, Germany
2007 »Post Mortem«, Photon Gallery, Slovenia
2006 »Still Life«, Alkatraz Gallery, AKC Metelkova mesto, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Visitors«, The Belgrade Youth Cultural Center Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro
»Visitors«, Likovni salon Celje, Celje, Slovenia
2005 »Visitors«, Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Stigmata III«, SKC Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro
2004 »Stigmata II«, Alkatraz Gallery, AKC Metelkova mesto, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»The Burning Cross« /Dean Verzel & Goran Bertok/, Lipanjepuntin Gallery, Triest, Italy
2003 »Calligraphia Obscura«, Festival Ex Ponto, Public shelter under the Ljubljana castle, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2002 »Stigmata«, ZPK Dob prison, Dob pri Mirni na Dolenjskem, Slovenia
2001 »Prisons«, Festival Ex Ponto, Kazamate, Ljubljana castle, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»23«, /in collaboration with Obalne galerije Piran/, ZPK Koper prison, Koper, Slovenia
2000 Arkel Body Art Gallery, Bruxelles, Belgium
Marquis, Lyon, France
1999 »999«, The Maribor Art Gallery, IC Pohorje, Maribo-Ljubljana-Koper, Slovenia
Tribal Act, Paris, France
1998 »Omen«, Castle Podsreda, Slovenia
»East of Eden«, Gabriel Gallery, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina
1997 »I would like to tell you a story«, Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
1992 Art Gallery 90, Ronchi dei Legionari, Italy
Gallery Insula, Izola, Slovenia
1990 »Photographies«, ŠKUC Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
GROUP EXHIBITIONS /selection/
2015 »Crises and New Beginnings: Art in Slovenia 2005–2015«, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, +MSUM, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Splice«, ŠKUC Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Wunderkammer – The Grand Tour«, 13th Festival of Contemporary Art Art stays 2015, Mihelič Gallery, Ptuj, Slovenia
»The Magic of Art - the Protagonists of Slovene Contemporary Art 1986-2013«, Gliptoteka HAZU, Zagreb, Croatia
»The Magic of Art - the Protagonists of Slovene Contemporary Art 1986-2013«, Künstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria
2014 »Back To Black«, Equrna Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Visible Invisible. Affect and mood through photography«, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Celje, Slovenia
»Body Images, Expressive Figurative Art in Slovenia and Austria«, Koroška galerija likovnih umetnosti, Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia
»Body Images, Expressive Figurative Art in Slovenia and Austria«, Werner Berg Museum Bleiburg/Pliberk, Austrija
»The Magic of Art - the Protagonists of Slovene Contemporary Art 1986-2013«, Villa Manin, Passariano di Codroipo, Italy
2013 »6th Photodistorzija«, Photo Biennale, Gallery Zuccato, Poreč, Croatia
»Primorska likovna umetnost: nek drug pogled 1990-2013«, Obalne galerije Piran, Space for Contemporary Art Monfort, Portoroz, Slovenia
»Materiality«, Kibla Portal Gallery, Maribor, Slovenia
2012 »XIV. Winter Salon«, Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, Macedonia
2011 »Designing the Republic: Architecture, Design and Photography in Slovenia 1991–2011«, Museum of architecture and design, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Borderline Biennale 2011«, Le Demeure du Chaos, St. Romain au Mont d˙Or (Lyon), France
2010 »Abnormal Nudes«, Abnormal Gallery, Poznan, Poland
2009 »Forbbiden Death«, Center for Contemporary Arts Celje, Celje, Slovenia
2007 »The Unbound Eyes of Anxiousness – 27th Biennial of Graphic Arts«, MGLC, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2006 »One Year After«, Tresor, BA-CA Kunstforum Gallery, Vienna, Austria
»Fetish And Death, Hong Kong Salon Sexxchange«, Videotage Gallery, Hong Kong
»Arteast Collection 2000+23«, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Slovene Contemporary Photography«, Maribor Art Gallery, Maribor, Slovenia
»Figure On The Begining Of The Century«, Velenje Gallery, Velenje, Slovenia
»Body Politics«, The Belgrade Yout Cultural Centre Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro
»Junge Fotografie aus Süd/Ost Europa«, Fotogalerie im Grazer Rathaus, Graz, Austria
2005 »Photonic Moment: 1st Salon of Southeast European Photography«, Photon Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Territories, Identities, Nets: Slovene Art 1995-2005«, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Werkpräsentation der Artists in Residence«, Kultur Kontakt Austria, Wienstation, Vienna, Austria
2004 »The Seven Sins«, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Visions of Excess«, Castle Kodeljevo, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»The Circle of Violence«, National Museum of Contemporary History, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2003 »Blut und Honig«, Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg /Vienna/, Austria
2002 »Shock&Show«, Lipanjepuntin Gallery, Triest, Italy
2001 »The Eye and its Truth«, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Corpus del akti, Akt na slovenskem III«, Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2000 »Bloody_body_value_nobody«, Marino Cettina Gallery, Umag, Croatia
1999 »Slovene Photography, Tendencies 1990-99«, Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»homo.sapiens.3000«, Kibla Gallery, Maribor, Slovenia
1998 »When Art Is doin` It«, ŠKUC Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
1996 »Five years of collecting photographs«, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
1991 »Installations and Interventions«, Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin
Wars, states of emergency and continuing repression are immense breeding places for the pogroms against the people sacrificed in order to achieve political or economic goals. Terror that serves the ideology is a phenomenon imprinted in collective memory and is nowadays perceived as a consequence of so called human nature according to which, people are prone to domination, power tripping and competitiveness. It follows, that a human being is in fact an essentially evil and dangerous creature. The history of humankind, charged with bloody testimonies and traumatic memories, leads to identical conclusions. Parallel to the development of humanistic studies, science and technology the modern age has also encouraged the development of methods of elimination of adverse elements in society. Dogmatic ideologies haven’t (yet) lost their potentiality.
Throughout history mass killings and organised terror were taking place under different slogans and flags, though WWII has led to catastrophe of unimagined proportions: total war, global instability and the most extreme and brutal forms of disabling of potential opponents. The Nazi state developed the idea of repressive cleaning of disruptive individuals within society into a flawlessly functioning industry. However, concentration camps were not a novelty at that time. They were already conceived in the 19th century for the purpose of eliminating war prisoners from both sides of the American civil war (1861-1865) and refined during the Second Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902) when British military forces imprisoned tens of thousands of civilians who might have provided help to the rebels. A concentration camp is thus a place for extrajudicial imprisonment which a government uses to keep people who are either against that government or who it thinks are too dangerous to remain free.
Goran Bertok’s recent series of photographs is devoted to the protagonists who – either as victims of opposition and rebellion or as collateral damage of Third Reich’s demographic policy – experienced the horrors of Nazi concentration camps and survived; however, these places where human life is worth almost nothing have left indelible marks on their victims. The portraits of former inmates however don’t show explicit signs of violence visible on their bodies, these are instead ambivalent images of the elderly who have already stared into the eyes of death many years ago in front of the spectator. They are reminders of these tragic events for which the entire world has vowed they should never happen again. However, historical memory is indeed very short-lived. After 1945 the repressive apparatus – of both Western or Eastern powers – didn’t essentially soften; innumerable war prisoners and political dissidents were thus taken to forced labour camps in Siberia by Soviets while the American Army locked up and starved to death around one million Wehrmacht soldiers in improvised camps.
Reasons behind such violence are often very complex and deeply rooted in the socio-political and economic situation of a certain place and time when people’s plights are often transferred onto the Other. In her essay ‘On Violence’ Hannah Arendt stated that “power comes from the collective will and does not need violence to achieve any of its goals, since voluntary compliance takes its place. As governments start losing their legitimacy, violence becomes an artificial means toward the same end and is therefore, found only in the absence of power.” If powerlessness of this kind lead to the terror of incalculable proportions, only the conscious power of the people could prevent it. After WWII Europe tried to maintain an awareness of the inhumanity of nationally and racially intolerant totalitarian ideologies and thus created the enormous physical and mental infrastructure of memory that – in order to avoid the recurrence of ideological violence – demands empathy for millions of innocent victims – the ones who died and the ones who survived.
Miha Colner
About author:
1963 born in Koper, Slovenia
1989 graduated in Journalism at the Faculty of Sociology, Political Sciences and Journalism in Ljubljana; enlisted as a soldier into the Yougoslav National Army; after a month dismissed from the service with a diagnosis of a »psychopatic personality«
1990 first solo exhibition
SOLO EXHIBITIONS /selection/
2015 »Body and Flesh«, Photon Gallery, Vienna, Austria
»Fire, Red«, The Church of The Holy Spirit Gallery, Črnomelj, Slovenia
»Post Mortem«, Opservatorijum Gallery, Beograd, Serbia
»Family Album«, AQ Gallery, Celje, Slovenia
2014 »Survivors II«, National Museum of Contemporary, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2013 »Body, Meat and other Stories«, Kunsthalle Feldbach, Feldbach, Austria
»Survivors«, Photon Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2011 »Dead Nature«, Mocvara Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia
»Dead Nature«, Simulaker Gallery, Novo Mesto, Slovenia
2010 »Red and Black«, Kibela, MMC Kibla, Maribor, Slovenia
Photoport Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia
2009 »Red«, Kapelica Gallery, Slovenia
2008 Gallery Wallywoods, Berlin, Germany
2007 »Post Mortem«, Photon Gallery, Slovenia
2006 »Still Life«, Alkatraz Gallery, AKC Metelkova mesto, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Visitors«, The Belgrade Youth Cultural Center Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro
»Visitors«, Likovni salon Celje, Celje, Slovenia
2005 »Visitors«, Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Stigmata III«, SKC Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro
2004 »Stigmata II«, Alkatraz Gallery, AKC Metelkova mesto, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»The Burning Cross« /Dean Verzel & Goran Bertok/, Lipanjepuntin Gallery, Triest, Italy
2003 »Calligraphia Obscura«, Festival Ex Ponto, Public shelter under the Ljubljana castle, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2002 »Stigmata«, ZPK Dob prison, Dob pri Mirni na Dolenjskem, Slovenia
2001 »Prisons«, Festival Ex Ponto, Kazamate, Ljubljana castle, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»23«, /in collaboration with Obalne galerije Piran/, ZPK Koper prison, Koper, Slovenia
2000 Arkel Body Art Gallery, Bruxelles, Belgium
Marquis, Lyon, France
1999 »999«, The Maribor Art Gallery, IC Pohorje, Maribo-Ljubljana-Koper, Slovenia
Tribal Act, Paris, France
1998 »Omen«, Castle Podsreda, Slovenia
»East of Eden«, Gabriel Gallery, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina
1997 »I would like to tell you a story«, Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
1992 Art Gallery 90, Ronchi dei Legionari, Italy
Gallery Insula, Izola, Slovenia
1990 »Photographies«, ŠKUC Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
GROUP EXHIBITIONS /selection/
2015 »Crises and New Beginnings: Art in Slovenia 2005–2015«, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, +MSUM, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Splice«, ŠKUC Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Wunderkammer – The Grand Tour«, 13th Festival of Contemporary Art Art stays 2015, Mihelič Gallery, Ptuj, Slovenia
»The Magic of Art - the Protagonists of Slovene Contemporary Art 1986-2013«, Gliptoteka HAZU, Zagreb, Croatia
»The Magic of Art - the Protagonists of Slovene Contemporary Art 1986-2013«, Künstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria
2014 »Back To Black«, Equrna Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Visible Invisible. Affect and mood through photography«, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Celje, Slovenia
»Body Images, Expressive Figurative Art in Slovenia and Austria«, Koroška galerija likovnih umetnosti, Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia
»Body Images, Expressive Figurative Art in Slovenia and Austria«, Werner Berg Museum Bleiburg/Pliberk, Austrija
»The Magic of Art - the Protagonists of Slovene Contemporary Art 1986-2013«, Villa Manin, Passariano di Codroipo, Italy
2013 »6th Photodistorzija«, Photo Biennale, Gallery Zuccato, Poreč, Croatia
»Primorska likovna umetnost: nek drug pogled 1990-2013«, Obalne galerije Piran, Space for Contemporary Art Monfort, Portoroz, Slovenia
»Materiality«, Kibla Portal Gallery, Maribor, Slovenia
2012 »XIV. Winter Salon«, Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, Macedonia
2011 »Designing the Republic: Architecture, Design and Photography in Slovenia 1991–2011«, Museum of architecture and design, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Borderline Biennale 2011«, Le Demeure du Chaos, St. Romain au Mont d˙Or (Lyon), France
2010 »Abnormal Nudes«, Abnormal Gallery, Poznan, Poland
2009 »Forbbiden Death«, Center for Contemporary Arts Celje, Celje, Slovenia
2007 »The Unbound Eyes of Anxiousness – 27th Biennial of Graphic Arts«, MGLC, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2006 »One Year After«, Tresor, BA-CA Kunstforum Gallery, Vienna, Austria
»Fetish And Death, Hong Kong Salon Sexxchange«, Videotage Gallery, Hong Kong
»Arteast Collection 2000+23«, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Slovene Contemporary Photography«, Maribor Art Gallery, Maribor, Slovenia
»Figure On The Begining Of The Century«, Velenje Gallery, Velenje, Slovenia
»Body Politics«, The Belgrade Yout Cultural Centre Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro
»Junge Fotografie aus Süd/Ost Europa«, Fotogalerie im Grazer Rathaus, Graz, Austria
2005 »Photonic Moment: 1st Salon of Southeast European Photography«, Photon Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Territories, Identities, Nets: Slovene Art 1995-2005«, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Werkpräsentation der Artists in Residence«, Kultur Kontakt Austria, Wienstation, Vienna, Austria
2004 »The Seven Sins«, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Visions of Excess«, Castle Kodeljevo, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»The Circle of Violence«, National Museum of Contemporary History, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2003 »Blut und Honig«, Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg /Vienna/, Austria
2002 »Shock&Show«, Lipanjepuntin Gallery, Triest, Italy
2001 »The Eye and its Truth«, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»Corpus del akti, Akt na slovenskem III«, Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2000 »Bloody_body_value_nobody«, Marino Cettina Gallery, Umag, Croatia
1999 »Slovene Photography, Tendencies 1990-99«, Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, Slovenia
»homo.sapiens.3000«, Kibla Gallery, Maribor, Slovenia
1998 »When Art Is doin` It«, ŠKUC Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
1996 »Five years of collecting photographs«, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
1991 »Installations and Interventions«, Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, Slovenia