Aleksandra Domanović: From yu to me

Video, 35 min, edition 5 + 2, 2012 – 2014

From yu to me traces the history of the domain .yu. Registered as the international country code for Yugoslavia in 1989 and deleted in 2010, its significance shifted during the course of the 1990s as the regions of the country gained independence. Beginning with Slovenia in 1992, each of the eight new countries was assigned its own domain, a process only completed in 2007, when Serbia began to use .rs and Montenegro, .me. Domanović’s documentary reveals how Yugoslavia became one of the first countries to be connected to the Internet at a time of intense social and political change. Domanović’s interviews with the computer scientists who helped establish the connection are interspersed with footage that she collected from Yugoslav television archives and recorded during the course of her research, revealing how a symbol of modernization became bitterly contested. The film traces the origins of the domain to the Yugoslav Network for the Academic Community (YUNAC) in Ljubljana, which established the connection for Slovenia and the rest of Yugoslavia in the months following the outbreak of war in 1991, as the Republic of Slovenia was being formed. It follows the story of its transfer to Belgrade in 1994, and eventually to the Museum of Yugoslav History, Belgrade, where it became the first virtual item to enter the collection in 2010. 

Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Leighton, Berlin

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Aleksandra Domanović was born in 1981 in Novi Sad and relocated to Slovenia in 1984. She has exhibited widely with solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Villa du Parc, Annemasse, France; SPACE, London; and Tanya Leighton, Berlin. Domanović was commissioned to create a large-scale public sculpture for the 4th Marrakech Biennale in 2012. Her other recent exhibitions include: Meanwhile, Suddenly and Then, 12th Biennale de Lyon (forthcoming), A Different Kind of Order, ICP Triennial, New York (2013), Les Cadeaux Du Présent, Centre d’art Neuchâtel, France (2011); based in Berlin, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2011); and Free, New Museum, New York (2010). Domanović lives and works in Berlin.

More about the artist: Aleksandra Domanović