Hollywood Hallucinations

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In what is, perhaps, a pun on Microsoft's operating system, photographs of actual windows form the navigation system in Sarajevo-born artist Maja Bajevic's new web-based work. It's a fitting motif for the artist, who is known for her installation/ performance pieces that focus on the soft boundaries between public and private spaces. Commissioned by the Dia Art Foundation, Bajevic's first new media work, 'I Wish I Was Born in a Hollywood Movie,' combines photographs of said windows, facades, and a few interiors taken in locales as diverse as Mexico City, Paris, and Venice. Clicking elements in each image opens another series of photos, creating an immersive labyrinth of atmospheric spaces. Despite the disparate sources of the images, Bajevic weaves them into a singular gloomy world that gives the impression of a brooding film noir. The result is doubly uncanny: on one hand the images of actual places seem literal and familiar, but on the other, the mise-en-scene evokes film cliches--as if someone is walking through a real space while hallucinating about the movies, adding a level of Hollywood stylization to the banal and everyday. Climb through the window, into her dimly-lit world, to see so for yourself. - Bill Hanley