Approximations by Belgrade raw
10th May - 14th June 2024
Darko Stanimirović
Nemanja Knežević
Luka Knežević Strika
Milovan Milenković
Andrej Filev
Aleksandra Mihajlović
Mane Radmanović
Dušan Rajić
Jelena Mijić
Saša Trifunović
Dejan Golić
Curated by Elaine ML Tam
Approximation, meaning 'to come near,' refers to the admission of imprecision and the challenge of fully describing something, as explored in Belgrade Raw's exhibition "Approximations" which highlights the imperfect, fragmentary nature of photographic representation and urban life.
Fugitive images are the subject of Approximations as much as they are the basis of the approach of Belgrade Raw, whose work evolves from group discussion and distributed authorship, and in so doing invokes the figure of nomadism.
What do we take to mean by ‘approximation’? If to put words to something is to attempt to excise meaning, then we are always already in the realm of approximations. What, then, should the word ‘approximation’ itself mean? Of late Latin origin ad- ‘to’ and proximus ‘very near’, it is suggested that may only ever approach the region of, but never fully arrive at, the thing in question. The ety- mological delve, insightful as it has been for making other deductions, here proffers nothing in the way of actualising meaning. In fact, the word ‘approximation’ deftly bypasses itself. While a blurred sunstruck field as seen through the window of a moving car works against our visual understand- ing of it, the blurriness of images however, may intimate more, insofar as the exposure is equally a registration of information like distance or speed.
To call something an approximation is the humble admittance of imprecision; we frequently dis- miss ourselves by saying ‘only an approximation’, which is tinged with a sort of insufficiency of lack. It is this quandary – of an ineptitude to fully describe – that foregrounds the Serbian collect- ive Belgrade Raw’s (est. 2009) exhibition of image-based work titled Approximations. What is at stake here is the crude quality of lens-based work: its non-negligible role in opticality, visibility, perception, and whose transparency conceals as much as it reveals, despite its claim to indexicality. This awkward baggage photographic discourse lumbers about is what the collective speaks to – a knowing from the outset that what is shown here is but a slice of life, rendered from a mere shutter speed’s fraction.
the act of photographing is in many senses a great chase, wherein the elusive moments captured are perhaps something closer to fugitive images.
Of course, Henri Cartier-Bresson might here warrant mention, but solely in light of his establish- ment of the much-too-important idea of the ‘decisive moment’, which we shall turn to momentarily in order to dispense with. Because how the term came into currency has to do with an approx- imation: the accident by which it became Cartier-Bresson’s English book title, unavoidably em- phatic. Find his 1952 French copy and it will read Images à la Sauvette, which translates to ‘Images on the Run’, radically different in meaning to The Decisive Moment. Were we in possession of a more accurate translation of the French, we might have inferred that the act of photographing is in many senses a great chase, wherein the elusive moments captured are perhaps something closer to fugitive images.
Fugitive images are the subject of Approximations as much as they are the basis of the approach of Belgrade Raw, whose work evolves from group discussion and distributed authorship, and in so doing invokes the figure of nomadism. Contra neatly bound photographic narratives, Belgrade Raw takes as its primary material the daily incidents of urban life in their native Serbia, instead privileging spontaneity, fragmentation and ubiquity. Exploiting the open-endedness of the image, Approximations assumes the form of what the artists refer to as a ‘visual cacophony’ – a slipstream of encounters with snapshots that can only be understood by synaesthesia. A stack of album-sized images are left to be handled, sprawling and smattering the table. A partial object or detail swans into view, and may be bisected by another, eliding grasp twice.