video installation, 2004

The most striking motif is taken from the German magazine Burda in the early Eighties and is an advertisement for children’s wear beneath the caption “No fear of small animals”. It is truly bizarre because we see three children wearing little dresses and dungarees covered with cat and rabbit appliqués. A small boy stands between the two little girls pushing a carrot into the mouth of the girl who is seated. We could say that this motif is quintessential in the sphere of Kaludjerović’s interest. First of all, we see here a parallel between this scene and the usual iconography of pornography. Then, we establish a relationship between the advertising code of the Seventies or Eighties and the present day where this motif would never appear innocently or spontaneously (which was not the case even up to 20 or 30 years ago). And finally, the relationships say us absolutely nothing about the children or their small animal toys but are focused on the world of adults which, at one moment, overlooks, and at the next moment, recognises the utterly bizarre quality of the scene.
So we have instability of meaning in a scene which is composed by adults to reflect innocence, blamelessness, an idyllic state of being, but which those same adults can condemn as an expression of perversion, a sick imagination, and a social danger.

Excerpt from the text by Branislav Dimitrijević

Keine Angst vor kleinen Tieren (2004)

video installation, loop