Shoum
(Maastricht / Bassinkade 13)
In Katarina Zdjelar’s (1979) video Shoum, two men are listening to an iPod and are writing down the lyrics they are hearing, the old hit Shout by the famous 80s pop group Tears for Fears. We do not see the men, only their hands are visible and the piece of paper that they are trying to decipher the lyrics on. The men are finding it very difficult to understand the text they are hearing; they are clearly not fluent in English. Due to their poor command of the English language, their pronunciation is a phonetic mimicry of sounds from the song. The image seems to suggest that we are witnessing two scientists who are trying to decipher an ancient, unknown language. In fact, the men are musicians who earn money on the side by playing cover songs in the cafes of Belgrade. The video refers to man’s survival strategies in which access to a world language offers better economic perspectives.