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Introduction to

I Wish I Was Born in a Hollywood Movie


Maja Bajevic's multi-faceted body of work has often addressed the permeability of the boundary between what is public and what is private. In her early projects the driving force behind her performances and installations was often conflict (specifically war) and its impact on people's lives. With I Wish I Was Born in a Hollywood Movie, her first web-based artwork, she shifts her focus from politics to a broader cultural force, the Hollywood "dream machine." Wishing to explore its influence, specifically the personal, internal conflict created by the disparity between the idealized and glamorized representations of life found in popular movies and the stark realities of everyday life, she wrote, "When reality gets confronted with that ideal picture it can only lose."

In I Wish I Was Born in a Hollywood Movie Bajevic presents photographic images she took in Mexico City, Paris, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Venice, Sarajevo, and elsewhere. In contrast to images of the kind found in tourist brochures, she sought out places reminiscent of scenes from cinema noir: morose exteriors, gritty interiors with fixtures in various states of decay, bleak stairwells, windows without views, stained walls, and more -- "sad" as Bajevic described them, yet somewhat paradoxically, also "nostalgic." A soundtrack of a recorded street musician plays throughout, punctuated by occasional sound effects, including the sound of knocking, planes flying overhead, breaking glass, and a creaking door hinge.

As visitors to the website click to explore the project, the images overlay each other, presenting multiple paths through which to navigate the work. Some layers move while others transition through dissolves and lighting effects, creating a low-tech kind of animation. Layers are presented much like windows in an operating system, with the ubiquitous "X" in the upper right corner signifying the method to close. Images of actual windows appear at multiple junctures. According to the artist, "they are internet windows and images of windows that make an overlaying of reality and fiction, like in the filmic/real layers of the web site"

I Wish I Was Born in a Hollywood Movie

Posted by: slÖ / 4:22 p.m.