Igor Simic
After graduating from Columbia University, New York, with a double-major in Film Studies and Philosophy, Igor Simić (1988) started making short films that have been shown both in the film festival circuit and in the contemporary art context.
The Thinker in the Supermarket is Rodin’s Thinker’s stream of thought in front of a supermarket shelf. Cost-Benefit-Love is about two lovers passionately kissing, while mentally doing cost-benefit analysis, weighing their interest to be with the other person. Melancholic drone is a stream of thought of a drone flying over Belgrade, an AI becoming emotionally attached to the city while yearning for freedom from his military operators. These works are simultaneously film, video art, spoken word, and performance. They have a conceptual basis, but the humor and succinctness of internet videos.
Spine 2.0 is a bionic implant for human augmentation to reduce back pain, increase flexibility, and for chakra-alignment, but also gives moral uprightness with nano-morality fiber technology. If you want to build moral leadership, just buy our Spine 2.0 and get free updates on your smartphone. Spine 2.0 takes on the aesthetic of Silicon Valley commercials, but with a satirical spin, and contains a 3d-printed sculpture of Spine 2.0, a fetishized high-tech product. Similarly, X <3 Y is a commercial for a dating app that matches people by their genetic and financial status. Unlike these satirical videos, the last in this trilogy, Sublime Search Engine, is a hypnotic threat, a piece of video poetry performed by the multifaceted, disembodied search engine.
This playfulness with the fluid nature of media, translates in Igor Simić’s work on video games. Crisis Expert is an infinite runner mobile game about austerity economics. In Children’s Play the user runs a factory where child-workers make toys while the gamer’s goal is to keep the children awake. As the co-founder of the company Demagog Studio, Igor Simić designed the cross-media project Golf Club: Wasteland, a video game about the ultra rich who moved to Mars after an ecological catastrophe and now play golf on the ruins of Earth. This is simultaneously a cinematic mobile game, a conceptual music album with stories and original music, and a series of animated music videos.
These works were shown at international film festivals, such as Edinburgh IFF, Encounters, interfilm Berlin, Kurzfilmfestival Cologne, Thessaloniki IFF, Vienna Independent Shorts, Moscow IFF, and many others. They won first prizes in competitions at Art.Fair Cologne and Loop Barcelona while being exhibited in museums, biennials, and entering private and public collections, such as the MACBA. With a blend of art, philosophy, and storytelling, Igor Simić is also recognized for his engaging artist talks.