Skalamerija [Contraption]
Installation, photographs (2009)
Commissioned by Stroom, The Hague, NL
Skalamerija follows up on my 2002 project Arizona Road. Skalamerija is a contraption aimed at de-formalizing the Arizona Market’s current highly regulated spatial order, which has led to its recession. Ever since its regulation in 2002, the trade and urban development of the Arizona Market in the Brčko district in the northeast of Bosnia- Herzegovina has been decreasing to a point where its extinction is foreseeable. While no sustainable development is planned at this point, the future of the Arizona Market and its eventual transformation into a place of both trade and living will depend on its becoming less oriented toward selling cheap imported goods and offer different, more valuable products at reasonable prices. Skalamerija capitalizes on locally available materials, resources, and skills in order to initiate production of home-made and locally specific food and handicraft products. The contraption thus provides infrastructure for cooking, barbequing, smoking meat, roasting lamb, sewing, ironing, and carpet weaving.
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Project commissioned by Stroom for the group exhibition Soft City at Stroom Den Haag, NL
Materials: 1 sculpture, 24 photographs / more info
Dimensions:
Concept and design: Azra Akšamija
Research: Ibrahim Akšamija, Dietmar Offenhuber (research contributions)
Production: The Stroom, The Hague
Photographs: Azra Akšamija, Dubravka Sekulić
Also see: Akšamija, Azra. “Arizona Road.” In Peraica, Ana. Smuggling Anthologies Reader. MMSU (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka,), 2015.