History Now, 2015 (26 min)

The video work History Now consists of two recordings running synchronously. One is from 1993 and shows the artist’s mother with her two sons standing on the quay in front of the refugee camp “Flotel Europa”. They are making a video letter to the mother’s parents who’ve stayed behind in the midst of the Bosnian war. Juxtaposed on the screen is a recording of the artist’s mother today watching and commenting on the 1993 footage. As viewers, we watch today a past along with its protagonist and experience the collapse of time that memory engenders. Tomic’s method gives us not only access to the past but also insight into how we understand and connect to it now.