Cindy Tereba: You were born in Sarajevo, how long have you been living there and how did these experiences influence your live and work?

Damir Radovic: Yes, I was born in Sarajevo and lived there until 1992, when the war in Bosnia and Herze¬govina began. Since 1993 I’ve been in exile in France, the country that has somehow adopted me. Having to leave my country and my hometown, Sarajevo, under very difficult circumstances has left deep marks on me and had a strong impact and influence on my artwork. All that has given me a different worldview. I had to relearn everything — even a new language, new rules of conduct, the codes of a new culture and society, but I also gained a new approach toward contemporary art.

CT: You have been living in France for a few years. Through the grant program of the Lepsien Art Foun¬dation, you had the opportunity to gain deeper insight into the cultural environment of Germany. How did this influence your work?

DR: The Foundation program gave me the oppor¬tunity to live and work in Germany for several months. I therefore had a chance to compare some of the diffe¬rences between France and Germany, on the artistic as well as the cultural level. Private culture sponsoring for young artists is much more developed here in Germany than in France. I assume that the decentralized German public sector has opened up to private culture-spon
soring initiatives. In this respect, France is still way behind Germany.
I live and work in Lyon, but I also travel much more often than before. Constantly traveling around and being in new places is an important source of inspira¬tion for my artistic work. In my drawings, for example, I started integrating the German language, in addition to French, English, and Bosnian. The ideas emerge in different languages independently, but they neverthe¬less remain strongly connected. I collect them in my own environment and during my travels.

CT: You use different materials and techniques in your artworks. How do you select these materials, and what meaning do they have for your works?

DR: The idea forms the project. I then seek the best material to describe my thoughts accurately. I don’t specialize in only one medium, because I prefer to have more freedom of artistic expression. This openness allows me to combine different media. As an artist I demand complete freedom of scope.
The notion of the « carnivalesque » appears often in my work, perhaps as the reappearance of a repressed popular culture.
« The carnival, defined as the length of time in which the social hierarchy is reversed in favor of popular liberty, that is both valuable and provisional. »
Perhaps my work is the statement of a complete break with the unique style.
In fact, it is as if we lived in an essay by Guy Debord, « La Societe du Spectacle. »

CT: Some of your artworks depict war scenes and elements of battles. In this context the element of memory plays an integral role. How do you understand the role of memory in your work?

DR: The work of an artist is a constant battle and so is memory. I consider the transmission of memory to be very important. In my work, I often use the collective memory from cinema, literature, history, and geography. For me these are the real facts. This is the basis of my work. I mix and organize this data for the sole purpose of creating a new memory. Building these new spaces and temporalities can also be interpreted as leaving the land — in its significance as ground, as gravity — behind and discovering lightness, as an experiment as nomad¬ism, beyond immateriality and transparency. Art helps us to understand the world around us through memory.
As an artist I wish to express my opinions and unsuccessful attempts to change the society in which we live. Person¬ally, I cannot change anything. I can just give people a small dose of cynical humour when our paths cross.The world is a boring place to live and I am just one of many participants, with my personal conception of relief in this huge chaos. Architecture, for example, should be used as relief from the civilization, and not to defend a bad ideology.

CT: How have your artworks been perceived and reflected on in your hometown, Sarajevo?

DR: I hope well! It’s up to the people of Sarajevo to.