A Minefield about which few maps agree.
D A Calf, Maja Zećo
18 Jun–12 Jul 2025
A Minefield about which few maps agree is presented as part of the Blindside x Liquid Architecture 2025 Sound Series .
The former Yugoslavia is a region which serves as a microcosm for many contemporary global issues. While the conflicts of the 1990s led to new national borders, tearing apart communities and displacing millions, many disputes that are still unresolved, creating a number of prominent liminal states of play. Notable are the two examples addressed by this exhibition – the unsettled status of Bosnia post-Dayton Agreement (1995), and the stalled recognition of Kosovo as a sovereign nation. Maja Zećo and D A Calf are both artists primarily working with sound, and with longstanding engagements in the region. Maja lived through the siege of Sarajevo as a child and completed a PhD contrasting the permanence and symbolism of soil as a record of homeland with the ephemerality of sonic worlds that signify belonging. D A is currently completing a PhD on the problematics of monument sites in the lost futures of post-socialist Europe, and spends much of the year engaged in fieldwork in the former Yugoslavia, focusing on Bosnia, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia.
PROUDLY PARTNERED PROJECT WITH
By establishing a dialogue between the work of two artist-researchers deeply engaged with post-socialist South-East Europe, this exhibition delves into the experiences of borders, (im)mobility, and territorial divisions through the ephemeral character of sound as a means of understanding place and memory.
A Minefield about which few maps agree is presented as part of the Blindside x Liquid Architecture 2025 Sound Series.
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
D A Calf is a sound and installation artist, field recordist and researcher, based between Naarm/Melbourne and Belgrade, Serbia, and working predominantly with sound, text and photography to explore archives – impossible, hidden, contested, and otherwise, of place. Calf’s cross-disciplinary research incorporates memory studies, geology, linguistics, anthropology, ethnography, social history and sound studies, the findings of which find form through processes of serialisation, cartography, expanded drawing, sculpture, sonic composition and publication. Current research focuses on four monument sites in the former Yugoslavia and the contemporary issues – asylum-seeker routes, extractivism, neo-colonisation and the liminality of unsettled borders – that impinge uponand reterritorialise them.
Maja Zećo (Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, Scotland) is a contemporary artist originally from Sarajevo and now based in Scotland. She works in sound, video, and performance art. Her pieces are often site-specific and relational, negotiating personal and group narratives of identity and history. In 2019 Maja obtained a PhD in fine art, on sound and performance art practice, based at Gray’s School of Art (RGU) with the support of the Sonic Arts Programme at the University of Aberdeen.
Zećo’s practice-based research explores identities and listening in spaces of socio-political tensions and post-conflict areas. This work informs her practice of de-colonising through critical engagement with institutional, group and individual narratives. Her sound and performance pieces have been presented internationally, including London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Zurich, Vienna and Sarajevo. Her research on the contextualities of listening through soundwalking and sound field recording was published in Organised Sound (Cambridge University Press) and Journal of Sonic Studies (Leiden University Press).