Exhibition Bombofon ▪︎ Nikola Macura

Accompanying program for the exhibition:

Tuesday, July 9, at 6 pm
Art Gallery, Knez Mihailova 6
Conversation and musical performance

Tuesday, July 9, at 8 pm
Square in front of the Cultural Center of Belgrade
Musical performance: Rusty Orchestra

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FROM NOISE TO SOUND

Describing his artistic practice as socially engaged, Nikola Macura emphasizes that most of his works also have a specific kind of utilitarian value. In his latest project "From Noise to Sound," he uses the method of upcycling: finding and taking weapons and other props from military waste in Temerin, and transforming them artistically into musical instruments, such as bombofon – a wind instrument made from projectiles/grenades for a hand launcher M57. The utility of these artistic objects lies in their ability to perform musical performances in collaboration with professional musicians and the "Rusty Orchestra," as Macura calls it. Through this artistic process, a series of possible problem frameworks are opened up for analyzing the relationship between the utility of art and its social, symbolic, or aesthetic functions.

...It is precisely these other functions of art, its utility, and the transformation of materials steeped in the powerful signifier of their original function – as is the case with weapons – that becomes the nexus of Nikola Macura's artistic project. Utilitarian objects that once produced the sound of gunfire, explosions, bursts, or blasts during the anti-Yugoslav wars are translated into the world of utilitarian objects in the artistic system, whose function is to produce sounds, music, and compositions with a clear anti-war message. The artist enriches the purposefulness of the objects, i.e., musical instruments, with additional symbolic content through performative actions. This is crucial at a time when strong tendencies of re-traditionalization, historical revisionism, and denial of crimes mark the social currents in the region. Finally, by creating a new and different utilitarian aesthetic component of art whose utility is realized through immediate use, Macura speaks of the transformative potential of art.

(From the text On bombofon and the utilitarian value of art, Zoran Erić. You can read the full text HERE.)

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Nikola Macura, a master of sculpture, is an associate professor at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. He was born in 1978 in Novi Sad. Nikola Macura's artistic practice connects various media and involves installations and interventions in space, sculpture, and drawing primarily in the form of socially engaged art. After completing his studies, he actively exhibits in group and solo exhibitions in the country and abroad. Since 2000, he has participated in the large-scale performance of LED art "Kunstlager," and from 2003 to 2013, he has continuously participated in the work of the Multimedia Center "Art Clinic." In 2002, he realized his first installation placed in public space, and in 2003, he exhibited the first in a series of interactive, procedural works from the "Interactive Sculpture" series. To date, he has carried out a large number of interventions and installations, and his latest project, which is still in progress, deals with reexamining the relationship between sculpture and sound, or the process of redesigning military props into sound objects.