Mission Statement
By Tanja Ostojic

During summer 2000 I did three works embodying, with a bit of irony and (black) humor, the situation of dealing with the World while being Yugoslavian passport holder. Basically, this works show possible approaches in reflecting such humiliating every day life situations.

The first was Illegal border crossing, which consisted of two simple actions on Slovenian/Austrian border, which is the border to European Union and where approximately 8-9 illegal person are captured per day.

For some administrative reason that is useless to describe now, my application for EU visa in June 2000 was not taken intro consideration. In that time I was living in Ljubljana. I actually, wonted to join informal international, group of artist meeting/workshop, which was happening in Austria. So, I decided to make small art action and to join them. My both way illegal crossing became possible because of huge help of my friends who came from Austria, who picked me up in Slovenia and who guided me throw tinny mountain roads to Austrian territory. One of them who draw me by car throw small mountain road risked a lot. We were equipped with detailed maps of territories we were going throw and with small digital camera, we used for minimal documentation of this event. It was exciting and still less stressful then legal procedure that I went throw when I got proper visa few weeks before when I had exhibition and performance in Carintia.

Waiting for a Visa took place in front of the Austrian consulate in Belgrade during August 2000. It was six hours queuing action, with no result. From 6am until noon, I was standing in regular queue with hundreds of other people, with about 20-document papers and few guaranty letters, in order to get visa. Everyday in Belgrade you can see the same picture, which is forbidden to capture with photo or other camera, any season and almost 24h per day- people are queuing for visas. (Austrian, German and Croatian consulates are the most popular ones, for the reason of transit, tourist, business and other types of visa). (Tanja Ostojic and Nenad Andric captured photos.)

Finally, Looking for a husband with EU passport, was an interactive web project, still work in progress. I received and exchanged about 500 very different letters initiated by my advertising that I placed on the net. Some of the letters, which arrived by January 2001, are available on [link] Some magazines in Slovenia, Belgium, Holland and Australia published this add too.

After six months long correspondence with German media artist Klemens Golf, which was also initiated by this add, we finally met for the first time. I organized this meeting as 60 minutes public performance that took place on the grass field in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, 28. 11. 2001 at noon, with the live web streaming on the net. On January 9, 2002, we got officially married in Belgrade, and with international marriage certificate I applied for permission to live in EU. This procedure takes about 8 weeks. Next step is to get EU passport, and I hope it won’t take more then 10 years to get it.

“While using her own body within different cultural and social contexts as a retort to various power-games Ostojic inevitably entered the realm of "gender troubles". Her reflection on gender issues is focused on the economic and political phenomena that accompany the phantasm of European Community that is shared by many Eastern European countries. In her project "Looking for a Husband with a EU Passport" she reveals and ironizes the truth about the traffic with women, prostitution, pragmatic marriages and all other "side effects" of transition. In such conditions the economy of gendering is inevitably the economy of power over the body. The self-irony of this project is contained in the intentional aesthetics of artist's usage of her own image for the Internet add: her skinny shaved body without any traces of sensuality and seducing gaze or gesture conveys completely opposite visual message. From this conflict of the textual invitation with the visual repulsion was born the gap of ambiguity between attraction and abjection.” … (From essay by Suzana Milevska)

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