Jelena Rakin, Ph. D.
Artist Statement
In my artistic work, I principally explore the images of nature. I frame them into narratives that point out beyond the seeming, self-evident appearance of the surface phenomena in photography and video. I examine the possibility of subliminal presence, undercurrent principles, and tacit knowledge in the images. I am additionally interested in the clash of different regimes of knowledge, histories, or ideologies that appear unrelated or even juxtaposed. In this vein and in the academic context of my postdoctoral project about the aesthetics of the images of the cosmos in film and photography, I study the convergence of scientific and magical thinking. Building upon these interests, in my artistic work I find an even more compelling format to explore associative, somatic, and aesthetic approaches for combining different perspectives within images.
Short Bio
Jelena Rakin studied film and literature in Switzerland (Zurich), the United States (Princeton), Germany (Essen), and Croatia (Osijek). Since 2010, she has taught courses on the aesthetics, theory, and history of film and photography at the Department of Film Studies at the University of Zurich, where she is currently a staff member. From 2010 to 2018, she conducted and finished her doctoral dissertation on the colorized films of the silent film era, published in German in 2021 under the title “Film Farbe Fläche: Ästhetik des kolorierten Bildes im Kino 1895–1930” (“Film Color Surface: The Aesthetics of the Painted Image in Cinema, 1895–1930”). Jelena is currently working on her second post-doctoral project on the aesthetics of images of the cosmos.