THE IRON GATES, 2023/24, in production
The Iron gates, research images, shot on site at the dunav (danube), hotel lepenski vir, narodni musej, beograd, musej lepenski vir, serbia, 2023
The Iron Gates is a major new sculpture and moving image work currently in development by artist Barbara Knežević. This project is named after a site called The Iron Gates, a deep scenic gorge at Đerdap on the Danube (Dunav) River located on the border of Serbia and Romania. The Iron Gates is also the name of the nearby Hydroelectric dam built in 1964 as a collaborative project between the governments of the former Yugoslavia and Romania. The Iron Gates will combine sculpture and moving image to describe the politics of migration, technology, knowledge and human development. The work focuses on Lepenski Vir an ancient civilisation located at Đerdap near the Iron Gates dam on the banks of the Dunav (Danube) in Serbia. The people of Lepenski Vir lived on this site between 9,000 and 2,000 BC and during their long settlement on the site it is believed that they transitioned from a hunter gatherer to an agrarian society. Lepenski Vir’s citizens, numbering about 200 at any one time, lived long and healthy lives and notably the inhabitants of the settlement created unique hybrid human/fish sculptures in dwellings as mysterious objects for co-habitation. Archaeological evidence suggests that these sculptures were carved into over generations and their figurative forms were influenced by the ecology of the Dunav river and the giant sturgeon (moruna) that swam up river each year to spawn.
Barbara Knežević’s Yugoslav family were deported to Germany from the Balkans during World War Two where they endured forced labour, before migrating to Australia in the 1950s as refugees after surviving the Second World War. The artist’s parents, and her aunts and uncles were born in refugee camps in Germany and Australia after the war. The film and sculptural elements of this artwork will, through on-site recordings, personal testimony, staged imaginings, dance, choreography and archival footage, retrace these stories of displacement, migration and forms of connection with sculpture and the natural world on the Dunav. The film will be shot in September 2024 on location in Lepenski Vir, Đerdap Gorge, The Iron Gates Dam, Hotel Lepenksi Vir and the Narodni Muzej in Belgrade.
Producer and researcher: Marija Stojnić, Set Sail Films, Photography: Tanja Dobrjak, Producer: Rayne Booth
Funding for research phase, Arts Council Ireland