Dust Breeding

While the former Serbian leader Radovan Karadžic is being tried at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Sarah Vanagt inspects the courtroom using paper, pencil and chalk. When the courtroom is empty between sessions, she places sheets of paper on top of objects and then scrapes a pencil back and forth across them to reveal the underlying surface structures. It’s a technique that produces images in their plainest form. A small digital camera follows the hand of the artist as she makes her rubbings – of the table where witnesses stand and give evidence, of the chair the accused sits in, and of the window the translator sits behind. Shots of her hypnotic ritual are accompanied by fragments of sound and footage from the legal proceedings in which the accused, who is defending himself, questions the authenticity and interpretation of images depicting war crimes committed under his rule. Dust Breeding examines the obstacles that present themselves when reconstructing a war, even when the events concerned are abundantly documented. By zooming in on the tangible objects in the courtroom and treating them as if they were items of evidence, the artist is attempting to decipher a code from the traces left by the war. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)