Ana Gligorova: Q & A

From the comic strip "Modesti Blejz"

SP: Zdravo Ana, thanks for agreeing to the interview, I know your very busy:)

AG: Zdravo Kerwin, and your very welcome:) I'm Ana Gligorova, born in 1968 from Skopje, Macedonia. I have a postgraduate of culturology studies, and have been director in tv (A1 and A2) of many documentary TV films and video art films (for Council of radiodifusion Makedonija). I'm currently working for the Gothe Institute (tv movie’ In the system “ from 2002), video spots, and TV shows.


SP: What is your opinion of the political state of Macedonia?


AG: When I think about my country, I think about implementing a civil society. What is civil society? It is a form of identity, which differs from all others and has a certain advantage over other forms of identity. Each individual who gives the most up to it can be to his people and the scope of his political community as a good civilian. How much does civil society exist in Macedonia?
I think that in Macedonia civil society doesn't exist in this moment. In my country  the freedom of a "blanket"(comfort) is not enough..  there exists selective art expression that depends on the author and his own culture. Financial resources are always falling into the hands of those who are close to power.


SP: The political videos you posted and have put together, what is the idea(s) behind them? 


AG: Tv video is a tv message. It is a medium koj e refleksiija, which is a reflection of political developments in the world. Mediums to manipulate the truth in in the whole world, and depends on the ideology of the creator in the background .The problem of the media is that the truth is deformed, hiding, or create a new truth..We are "mortgage"(prisoners) of the media, the tie world, nazi horizon,  misery, prison, we are living in. TV and movies create a new world which is full of lies. Mediums are full of simulations of war because the main interest-financial profits or transmitted ideology. How many more live for the moment, electric impulses so you are unable to make an analysis and sentient message that is an id reaction in a social sense. Art in the video field is a result of the inner world of the author or the policy environment.. The message in my videos is always the human factor and there resistance that has been between human and predatory powers  present in a society where we live, apparently on a global scale. 

Ana Gligorova of Skopje

The synthesis of music and pictures and is a collage post-modern suggestive,  the hidden truth behind medijuma.u. That means, I am looking for the truth to be in his videos.


SP: When did you become interested in politics?

AG: I've always been fascinated by human destiny within a system in which they live and so I wished to make use of postmodernism as assistance in the implementation of the video. Archival materjalifallen communist regimes are connected with new world technologies were a fantastic experience for me. As an example, in 2002 for Goethe Institut (“In the system”)I did a video movie that is based on the war in Serbia in 1999. Here I used the archival material of the war in Yugoslavia, and I merged it with clips of world cinema with films that deal with a parody of violence on the planet.


SP: What are the three major changes you think are needed in your government?


AG: Experience "has shown that the each man who has the power in the hands, has an affinity for me to abuse. It goes so far as he can not set limits". 

The first change that needs to happen in my land is the implementation of a true civil society and not its simulation we live. This means that every "author" who can influence that many in his field be helped financially in the form of free speech (the video-free images and text) Second, press freedom is the true path to understanding the reality of everyone in the country.
There needs to be erected, a level of educated people in every sense, especially for understanding the political situation in which they live.


SP: In all parts of the world people want change for the better, through cultural identity and art. How do you see this in Macedonia?

AG: The cultural identity of Macedonians is an important factor for Europe. Changes in Macedonia at the moment are a mixture of progressive and large retrogradnostic factors. Here the old Slavic spirit is present and the new wave propagation of ancient Macedonian cultural values. First, it is a great gap in time about 13 centuries, from Alexander the Great,  Cyril and Methodius, Slovenian teachers. It is a paradox for the synthesis of a cultural identity largely because of the holes in education that appeared in the time of Communism in Macedonia. If you want to know my country has to reform her art, which is mainly Byzantium root, which mixes with Turkish and European cultural factors.
The resurrection of the ancient cultural factors, which is now the same as the trend, as an example, italjanska culture, that is largely based on the Renaissance period that at one point begins to propagate itself as a direct descendant of (cultural) the Roman Empire. Certainly, the identity is a product of culture rather than genes. 


SP: If someone from NYC should want visit Macedonia, what are a few places they should see ?

AG: The largest tourist attraction is the old town of Ohrid, where lived Kliment and Naum (students of Cyril and Methodius). In 10th century there was a literacy orhrid school with about 3,000 students. Ohrid is a city with a maximum of Christian churches in Macedonia. Ancient archaeological sites, it is a city to Samoil, Macedonian king. Skopje is a city where you can see the passing of empires, kings, armies, the city of Justinian - Byzantine emperor, Islamic temples. And now the new attraction is the center of the city - with new sculptures related to the period of the 23rd century, the existence of the Macedonian cultural identity .


Ana, thanks so much for taking the time for Q&A and I hope we can do this again. "Art is the reason, art is the way". Interview by K.K.W