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Director: Igor Antić. Editing: IA Studio, Paris, France. Production: The Gallery of Matica srpska, Novi Sad. Country of production: Serbia. Year of production: 2016. Igor Antić was born in 1962 in Novi Sad. He graduated from the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad in 1988. Obtained master's degree in 1990 at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Admitted to the Institute of Superior Studies of Fine Arts in Paris in 1991. Since 1990, has completed over one hundred solo and group exhibitions across Europe, America and Asia. As a multimedia artist, he expresses his art in the media of painting, drawing, video and photography. The Gallery of Matica srpska was founded in Pest, in 1847, under the auspices of Matica srpska, the oldest Serbian cultural, literary and scientific society, where it remained until the seat of Matica srpska was moved to Novi Sad in 1864. From the very beginning, first as the Museum of Matica srpska and since 1947 as an independent institution, the Gallery has been engaged in the collection, preservation, study, presentation and interpretation of works of art belonging to Serbian cultural heritage. With its collections comprising over 9000 works of art, created in the period from the 16th until the 21st century, the Gallery of Matica srpska is one of the richest museums in Serbia. Among these, the most important ones are the collections of paintings, prints and drawings of the 18th, 19th and the first half of the 20th century, illustrating the emergence and development of Serbian art in the Modern Age, expressing the position and significance of national culture in European context.
Waggle Dance
The video "Waggle Dance" has emerged within the project "Beehive. Tradition and Contemporary Art" of the Gallery of Matica srpska in 2016. The Gallery has invited contemporary artists to interpret its symbol – the beehive. Igor Antić is one of the artists who interpreted the symbol through the medium of video. Scientist Karl von Frisch discovered in 1919 that bees possess a specific communication system based on movement, visual benchmarks, smell and sound. He called it the "Waggle Dance". Years later, a German-Danish team of researchers was able to construct a micro-robot that faithfully reproduces bee vibration and movement, which is also able to create new, quirky bee dances. Thus, thanks to new technologies, all of their parameters can be determined with precision. The video "Waggle Dance" by the artist Igor Antić was recorded and engineered in situ, at the Gallery of Matica srpska. Surveillance cameras that are positioned in various places within the gallery building and outside serve as means of monitoring and recording movements of employees, constructors, visitors, lecturers, pedestrians, and vehicles... Those movements are then simultaneously displayed on multiple screens. Igor Antić uses these technical aids and edits and combines the recorded images with sound to get the kind of choreography reminiscent of the movement of honey bees in the hive. Thus, a connection with the principles of Matica srpska is created both visually and symbolically.
The Gallery of Matica srpska was established in 1847 in Pest (present day Budapest), under the auspices of The Matica srpska, the oldest literary, cultural and scientific society of the Serbs. The Matica srpska, a meeting point for the Serbian people within the Habsburg Monarchy, was established with the idea of national development. The beehive was selected as a symbol, as it represents a place of assembly by its form and system of organization, hence, personifying gathering and functioning. The video "Waggle Dance" is part of the project "Beehive. Tradition and Contemporary Art", which was created to offer the symbol of The Matica srpska, the beehive, as an inspiration for creative work to its contemporary artists, in the year of marking the 190th anniversary of its establishing, while rebuilding and encouraging the noble idea of donating to the oldest Serbian scientific, literary and cultural society. The beehive, as a place of symbolic gathering and collecting represents a contemporary art treasury, thus equalizing itself with a museum/house where artworks are gathered and preserved. Works by contemporary artists, such as Antić’s "Waggle Dance", use the Matica srpska beehive as their ideological-visual stronghold, as a starting point for accomplishing visual re/interpretations of the realized traditional art forms (painting, drawing, graphics, digital print, sculpture, audio-visual recordings, texts, photos, readymade). Tendencies of modern art, sprouted with the emergence of installations, have established an extremely assimilating form toward all of these disciplines, and therefore, they more become elements that create topologies of certain places. Museum architecture becomes an elementary unit of the art, which is why the historical and cultural exhibition space of the Gallery of Matica srpska (with the beehive-emblem as a symbol of its work and program) becomes a place of installation – a collective exhibition of artists who responded to the given topic. The idea by which contemporary artists introduce the beehive motif in their own artwork emphasizes the symbolic effect of the work around a common goal with the purpose of expanding the voice of art.
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