Miloš Trakilović and Šejla Kamerić
Colourless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously

In conjunction with Miloš Trakilović’s exhibition, KW presents a screening of two works: Trakilović’s Colorless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously and 1395 Days Without Red, by Šejla Kamerić in collaboration with Anri Sala and Ari Benjamin Meyers.

Both works reflect on experiences and memories of the Bosnian War (1992–1995) and its aftermath, revolving around the central presence of a color in the constitution of memory.

The event takes its title from Miloš Trakilović’s eponymous 2023 video. The work is rooted in an account by the artist’s mother, who fled the Bosnian War with her two children in 1995. Upon their arrival in the Netherlands, she experienced the brightness of grass as a revelation of a new state of freedom. Taking this memory as the starting point, the work embarks on a quest to retrace and recreate that moment through various visualization techniques, unfolding as a poetic dream sequence that fluidly shifts between simulated and real landscapes. In this way, Trakilović speculatively explores the fraught relationship between vision and truth, focusing on their interplay in relation to war, recollection, and visual culture.

1395 Days Without Red follows a woman making her way through the nearly-deserted streets of Sarajevo. At every crossing, she stops, looks, listens and runs. The taken route became known as Sniper Alley during the siege of the city between 1992 and 1996. At this time, its citizens were advised not to wear bright colors that might alert the snipers in the hills surrounding the city. Throughout the siege, the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra continued to play. While the woman is reliving the experience of the siege as an individual journey in the collective memory of the city, the orchestra stops and starts to play, the woman’s movements alike. As such, the work is a poetic mediation on human persistence despite severe challenges of war.

Running order:

Miloš Trakilović, Colorless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously, 2023, 25 minutes

Šejla Kamerić in collaboration with Anri Sala and Ari Benjamin Meyers, 1395 Days Without Red, 2011, 63 minutes. Starring Maribel Verdu and Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra. Commissioned by ARTANGEL, UK