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Dejan Habicht
& Tanja Lažetić: Home..., 1999/2000 Dejan Habicht has commented on the photographic project Home..., which he has carried out in co-operation with Tanja Lažetić, as follows: "Yes, a translation is also an interpretation, even if the translator attempts to keep to the original. And the situation is not better as far as the documentary aspect of the document is concerned (neither is it worse, of course). Tanja certainly does not try to make the flats look more beautiful in the photographs than they are in reality; I certainly do not attempt to make the houses look more hideous in the photographs than they are in reality. However, we are both aware of the fact that we are far from the neutrality of being objective, in which only naive people and journalists still believe. And yet, although we do not explicitly indicate the social status and gross annual incomes of the inhabitants of the photographed flats and houses beside our photos, somehow this information can be gathered from the images. In this connection I would not follow the well-known Chinese saying about the image and its thousand interpretations: the extent to which someone understands an image depends on his ability to read it. But at least, in the case of an image, it is not possible to say 'read between the lines'." The 'documentary' work comprises shots of buildings as well as the appertaining partial views of rooms which were taken in flats within these buildings and which are of a smaller, panorama-like quality. Seemingly casually, many of the partial views show the inhabitants of the flats in their customary living conditions. In a period of twelve months, i.e. since November 1999, Habicht and Lažetić have 'portrayed' the flats of singles and couples, all of them friends or acquaintances of the artists. On their website http://www2.arnes.si/~tlazet/ dom/index.html, which makes up the main part of this fieldwork project, they describe their subjects under investigation as follows: "all are between twenty eight and forty five, all work in the field of culture and/or science, and their living conditions are more or less secure." The exhibition shows the first of eighteen series of photographs, which focuses on the artists' own flat, the starting point of their visual research activities. The systematic representation gives a socio-cultural insight into the housing conditions of a selected social group. This is confirmed by a statement on the website of the artists: "Picturing a flat is like portraying the inhabitant and photographs of the house are like a puzzle-portrait of a town." As far as content and form are concerned this work comes very close to the visual-anthropological approach typical of Vesna Moličnik's project The Taste of City, which even offers an "insight into the pictures, i.e. visual impressions, in the world of thought of individual persons". The functional value of both analyses lies in the context in which they are presented (in other words, between the strictly scientific and the artistic context). Yet, both projects are 'studies' of individual persons or long-term relationships which not only give information on the social attitude and behaviour of the individual or group, but also depict the society and its conditions on the basis of common features such as age group, acquaintance or common interests and habits (demonstrated, for example, by the usually disordered, i.e. frequently used books in the flats). This is shown by the aesthetic ideas of the photographed people regarding the lay-out of their flats, ideas which are conveyed by the series of photos. According to Pierre Bourdieu the aesthetic attitude can be considered as "one aspect of an objective, distant and self-assured behaviour to the world which requires distance and safety". This distinction entails a certain behaviour in everyday life which is among other things moulded by institutions such as state and nation. p.s.: excerpt from Gregor Podnar: Vulgata, U3 -3. Trienale of Contemporary Slovene Art, exhibition catalogue, Moderna galerija, 2000 Ljubljana, pp.44-46.
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