APHASIA Concert-Performance

APHASIA is a concert-performance conceived by visual artist and filmmaker Jelena Jureša, evolving from her eponymous film project in collaboration with musicians Alen and Nenad Sinkauz, and dancer-performer Ivana Jozić.

Since its premiere at Kunstenfestivaldesarts, APHASIA’s questions have grown ever more urgent, mirroring today’s escalating global violence. Set within the immersive atmosphere of a (post-war) nightclub, the audience is drawn into an intimate exploration of violence, complicity, and individual responsibility—three decades after the war.

The project begins with a single, harrowing image: a photograph taken during the 1992 Bosnian war. It captures a Serbian paramilitary soldier—combat boots mid-kick, a woman on the ground. Decades later, that same man resurfaces in a different guise: a DJ in Belgrade’s clubbing scene. Amidst a sweaty, dancing crowd, a woman recognizes him, scrutinizing his movements and gradually discerning the face of a war criminal who escaped justice—the infamous “man who kicks the dead.” This space becomes a site of confrontation and complicity, challenging the audience’s role beyond mere witnessing.

The term aphasia refers to a medical condition impairing a person’s ability to speak, understand, read, or write language. For Jureša, it is a powerful metaphor: how does collective memory take shape, and how can we find language for what resists articulation? How are guilt and responsibility processed—if at all? Over the course of this haunting evening, it becomes clear that these questions transcend the Yugoslav wars.

Together with the Sinkauz brothers and Jozić, Jureša probes polarization, obedience, and the seductive pull of group violence. Within the nightclub’s visceral setting, the Aphasia team evokes war’s presence without projecting images onto the suspended screens. Instead, they confront us with the deafening silence that often conceals atrocity. What does it mean to witness? To silently participate? The haunting echoes of historical crimes resonate beneath the nightclub’s pulsating beats. Whispers of perpetration, standing by, and complicity reveal a grim reality: every revolution, every genocide leaves a soundtrack. We are invited to listen closely.

The Team

This performance is developed from the film project APHASIA, 2019.

CONCEPT & DIRECTION
Jelena Jureša

CREATED WITH AND PERFORMED BY
Ivana Jozić, Alen Sinkauz, Nenad Sinkauz

MUSIC
Alen and Nenad Sinkauz

CHOREOGRAPHY
Ivana Jozić & Quan Bui Ngoc

TEXT ADAPTATION
Asa Mendelsohn and Jelena Jureša, based on a monologue by Barbara Matejčić (Aphasia film and film installation, 2019)

VOICE COACH
Patrick Campbell

SOUND DESIGN
Hrvoje Pelicarić

VIDEO CONCEPT & EDITING
Jelena Jureša

VISUAL EFFECTS
Dejan Šolajić

DRAMATURGICAL ADVICE
Thomas Bellinck & Sara Oklobdžija

STAGE DESIGN
Stef Stessel

LIGHT DESIGN
Stef Stessel and Simon Neels

COSTUME DESIGN
Anne-Catherine Kunz

COSTUMES REALISATION
Salvatore Pascapè

FILM ARCHIVE
Royal Belgian Film Archive (CINEMATEK), Brussels; Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna; International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), The Hague; Österreichische Mediathek, Vienna; ZDF archive Berlin…

SCIENTIFIC ADVICE
Christophe Busch

TECHNICAL COORDINATOR
Maxim Maes

PROGRAMMING
Merel Vercoutere (KAAP)

APHASIA Film

This concert-performance is developed from the third chapter of the film project Aphasia.

Jureša’s film Aphasia traces a continuum of power, racism, injustice, and violence—from Belgian colonialism and Austrian anti-Semitism to the atrocities committed during the Yugoslav wars in Bosnia. The film was co-commissioned by the Contour Biennale, where it premiered in 2019, and was produced by Argos Centre for Audiovisual Arts, which also hosted a solo exhibition of the work that same year.

Since its release, Aphasia has been featured in numerous international venues, including the 2022 Manifesta Biennale, Kunstverein in Hamburg, BAK – basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht, Budapest Gallery, Display in Prague, Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, Cinematek in Brussels, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, the Center for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade, FOMU in Antwerp, De Cinema in Antwerp (MHKA), and DocLisboa. The film received the main award at the 23rd Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival.

The film is an unsettling inquiry into the representation of violence and the violence of representation—a highly corporeal documentary gesture in several movements that is deeply personal, political, and perpetually timely. This experimental work explores how collective crimes continue to repeat themselves, reflecting on social and political constellations and exposing the constructed nature of nation-states and national identities. The narrative moves from Belgian colonialism in the first act, to Austrian race experiments and Heimat films in the second, culminating in a third act that brings to life a well-known photograph taken at the onset of the Bosnian war.
Building on her meticulous research and close collaboration with the performers featured in the film, Jureša conceptualized and directed this eponymous concert-performance. Set in a disturbing, nightclub-like environment, the piece engages directly with the audience, confronting them with questions about group dynamics, polarization, and obedience to authority.

Jelena Jureša

Jelena Jureša is a visual artist and filmmaker, born in Yugoslavia who lives and works in Belgium. She has extensively worked with questions of cultural identity, gender, politics of memory, and oblivion through film, video installation, photography and text. In her works, she relates individual stories to collective processes of oblivion and remembrance. She unceasingly questions historical and political narratives and tries to destabilize our ideas of what is true. Over the past several years, her research and focus on practices of oppression—how they operate and implicate us in systems of violence—has resulted in multidisciplinary projects that are, on various levels, as political as they are highly personal.