Dušica Dražić

Projektor

Wim Janssen, Dušica Dražić

An old 35mm film projector was entirely disassembled, a mould was made of every part, a bronze copy was then created and the bronze parts were subsequently assembled. The whole process was filmed, to then be projected by the new, bronze projector. The observation that a projector projects the process of its own creation goes beyond a purely conceptual statement. This project is simultaneously an ode to craftsmanship and to how that changed radically over the course of the 20th century. The precise type of projector, the Iskra NP-21, also calls a complete history to mind, as Iskra was as omnipresent in Tito’s post-war Yugoslavia as Bosch and Miele in the West. In this manner, what is perhaps the very last, ultimate 35mm projector simultaneously becomes the first fully-fledged monument to a culturally supremely important device.