Noam Chomsky

About Trans-formation

I am completely overwhelmed. It is really a delightful collection, and a calendar like none other that I have ever seen.

(Linguistics and Philoshophy professor Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., USA)

Dušan Pajin

Transformation Through Art

I will send you poems and pictures
to bring a smile to your face
(poem by B. Bacovic - detail)

Through his poetry and psychophotographics, Branko Bacovic invites us to a journey of self-knowledge and healing. He utilized visual art, and poetry, as means to articulate a spiritual journey of self-transformation. He also invited David Holler - a poet from San Francisco - to join him, and with their gentle and synchronous voices they soothe us, as they search for wholeness, and show how the mystery of our inner being is revealed, and transformed through art. With vivid images, deep insights, and spiritual courage - inspiring and stimulating - they present a profoundly moving personal record of transformative journey through art, when many doubt that such transformation is possible in brutal times that mark the end of the last, and the beginning of this century. Their struggle to reclaim such possibility and power is stimulating, and promising, even though cynicism seems to prevail almost everywhere. Their art and stand brings into this world more caring for this world. The depth and completeness of their presentation, and the vitality of their art, serves two purposes, which unite to make one whole - a transformative art.

Acknowledging also their faults, their art becomes a source of insight and healing. They explore their relationship to their inner child, and its potential of growth and transformation, inviting the reader / spectator to do the same for himself.

Empowering and exploring their own spirituality through poetic and photographic images, they connect the individual to the universal.

(Ph. D. - Aesthetics and art philosophy professor, Art University, Belgrade, Serbia)

Branko Cerovac

About Erotic Transformation

The series of black and white photographs by Branko Baćović called “Erotic Transformation” corresponds in idea to the author’s general tendency to the development of the Psycho-photo-graphics (available at www.transforation-art.com), that is to the “mission” of Transformation Art: “Transformation of our consciousness and thus the world we live in.”

 Hence, the specific question / our esthetic interest in this case is how the erotic photo genre reaches, even in Virtual Reality, the subliminal Alef – point in which the “inner integrity via stimulated creativity” can exist. The unity of the soul, the mind, and the body: Overcoming the fear?

What is actually recorded / shown on this exciting photo-safari over the exciting valleys and delights of desired parts? — where are the eye and the lens caught within the network of a yearning Body and anamorphic perception, a priori affected by the erotic intention/fascination: demonic imagination of Eros occupied by the fetish, ritual, ceremonial touching of erogenous zones and at the same time the Wholeness, the inner integrity of erotic feeling, not only the sweet sensation, but also the transcendental intertwining of the “passion of the soul” into the photo-erotic game (session)? What kind of alchemical transformation is happening between the author’s eye, the lens and the beautiful female body as the object of the “esthetic observation?”

As an artist, Mr. Baćović uses the erotic anatomy (combined with desire and pleasure) as a metaphor / metonymy for something “else,” complementary, “more” than the body itself: mannered “illusion”, “psycho-photo-graphics”. Photos such as “Transcendence”, “Anger”, “Expectation”, “Irresponsibility”, “Mental”, “Emotions”, “Happiness”, “Fear”, “Faith”, “Illusion”, “Changing”, “Fertility”, “Ego” indicate the interference of his imagination, dream, poetic projection into erotic perception/obsession, even metaphysical ideas.

Light, ambiance, setting, enlargements, choreography of the body’s detailed perception (the use of shadows on shiny, mirrored circular objects anticipated by the painter – mannerist), discrete insertion of fetish details/baits (berries or white feathers in the naked woman’s lap, shiny chain over the labia and neatly trimmed pubis, the body “tied” with rope, fluid dripping down the body: water from the shower, milk, and other…) introduce the observer of the photograph into the secret of a complex, subtly differentiated erotic story, which does not lack the excitement of meandering, suspense, incidents.

Both in the focused part of the torso (breasts, trunk), the lap (thighs, pubis, labia, the profile of the hips…), or the whole figure in the monumental vision (“Faith”) – the artist is inclined to discern the abundance of the holistic experience of erotic observation: towards “the integrity through the stimulation of creativity”. Naturally, the creativity is interactive – interchangeable between the photographer, the model, and the observer. Moreover, the element of (imaginary) music and poetic expression completes the optic and haptic quality of the image (photo – graph). (Slovenian/Serbian/Dutch) Branko

(curator “Museum Modern & Contemporary art” Rijeka, Croatia)

Stanka Hrastelj

About Erotic Tranformation

WHOSE LOVE STORY? ...

I beg to go into the world, reversed inside.

Branko Baćović built the collection of poems “Erotic Transformation” as a sequence of 48 days, which calls to mind the movie “Nine and a half weeks”, even more so due to the presence of erotic in the title. However, is it about addressing and seduction of lovers, describing their relationship in certain time period and exploring the togetherness of a man and a woman?˝

The question about whether the poems in this collection are a diary of one love, is partially answered in the title. Next to erotics there is an emphasis on transformation.

It would be wrong to judge Mr. Baćović’s literary creation separate from his central artistic expression – the photos. Female readers should be cautioned not to be scared by the “humiliation” of women, because the collection does not express the relationship of a literary subject (or even the author) towards the opposite sex. The poems are, moreover, a kind of permission of direct insight into the photographer’s internal dialog with his motive/model/object. Woman can be a muse and this status suits her, but second thoughts and objections are raised, when she becomes a phantasm and her dignity is reduced to a manageable object.

The photos are followed by usually inaudible elements of the creative process that find their visual form in the poems. By using simple verse and densely placed ellipses (which is quite unusual, even redundant in the poems), the author manifests the rhythm, breathing of creation – breathe in and breathe out, coincidental intervals, momentary pauses, longer pauses. Sometimes the object changes positions (You turn around like you’re leaving; Come, come closer!; Sit down, turn around, bend over), and moods (...you start to shudder), but most of all the photographer is constantly seeking, expecting or even demanding the story of an object (When you want to jump out of your skin) and distinctive feelings as well as the experience (It hurts you... but you want more!; Your knees shake). In this collection we sometimes even witness the author crossing the threshold of usual duality, but he experiences the world together with the one he observes (Under the skin, we are the same... when fire’s burning... when we reach our climax…) and thinks about taking photos (I was waiting for minutes... trying to condense...; We are trying to look inwards beyond images we created), sometimes accustoms himself to the story of his object, emphatically experiencing the positions and expression that he expects of her/him (You call me to ride the excitements; You drag me into the night. Shoe me with rain. Separate me from reason.). Everything mentioned is so much more explicit because the poems are not always spoken by the narrator. Sometimes a literary persona is addressing the audience and sometimes the literary persona is being addressed.

The photos in “Erotic Transformation” are the scenery, the poems their background. It is not necessary to emphasize how rarely a viewer has an opportunity to look behind the scenes. The book in your hands gives you just that – both.

(poet, Slovenia)

Danijel Trstenjak

Facing the concealed depths of the subconscious sometimes incites fear. However, it is those depths that make it possible to transcend the metropolis and turn dry bark into a living being. A transformation of the unliving into the living, the impossible into the possible, is pure creation of that state of awareness which free of prejudice, illusions and fears opens up new possibilities and a new meaning of existence. Short flashes of ideas brought to awareness, caught in fast-flowing longhand, retain the connection between the subconscious and the conscious dimensions. Too precious to fall into oblivion they become a melody which retains in our consciousness the vibration of beautiful possibilities for laying new foundations for our perception of the world.

Milan Vincetič

O knjigi Povezovanje

VSEBEŽNI KALEJDOSKOP

„Čas je neozdravljiva bolezen. / Pušča nam samo − / trenutek,” zapiše pesnik Branko Baćović v eni izmed svojih številnih lirskih refleksij, ob tem pa doda, da je „prva polovica odgovorov (o življenju) v vprašanjih, / druga polovica pa v napakah”. Kajti, kar se kot rdeča nit tke iz pričujočih pesmi, biti ni zgolj trajanje v (fizikalnem) času kot „rabljem hudim”, temveč predvsem vztrajno iskanje Resnice, Smisla ter navsezadnje Duše, ki jo plemeniti zgolj Ljubezen. Do sebe. Do ljubljene osebe. Do drugih. In navsezadnje do oziralnika „kateri”, ki naj bi v Besedi „nadomestila kaj in kako”; do Tiste, ki bi spet poklicala med nas Jezusa kot alegorijo Ljubezni, Pravičnosti in Nesmrtnosti. Ob tem pesnika še in še vznemirja diskurz med dobrim in zlim, pravičnim in krivičnim, videnim in slutenim ter med „soncem, ki je visoko na nebu”, in njegovim dvojčkom, ki je „globoko v duši”; torej tam, kjer „čustva naredijo iz golobjega peresa pavje”. Le človekova subtilnost, katere iskre pesniku preskakujejo tudi v sentimentalnost, odpira „vrata in okna v zidu”, v „bežanje v ostajanje” in konec koncev do Božjega, s katerim „sva midva vsi”. Naj so minulost, očetova smrt ali mladost še tako grenak spomin, jih je moč ublažiti z vero v Resnico, ki je „tako in tako nedoumljiva”, ter seveda s (samo)žrtvovanjem, kajti samo „véliko trpljenje nas uči ceniti male stvari”. In prav Baćovićeve pesmi so na videz drobne, povečini filigranske žuboreče lirske refleksije, ki „(s)tečejo izza razuma, / mirno in lahkotno” kot (vse)vidni vrtinci po sicer mrazni gladini življenja, v katerem nam, „ko slečemo preteklost, / prepojeno s solzami, / ne preostane drugega, / kot da oblečemo prihodnost, / prepredeno z nasmehom”. Optimizem, ki veje iz Baćovićevih pesmi, tako smelo prekriva „melanholijo, ki je barva preteklosti in naj tam tudi ostane”, obenem pa gradi na realnem zavedanju, da je „vsa prihodnost skrita – v tem trenutku”. Torej tukaj in zdaj, ki ne mara obotavljivcev, pač pa tiste, ki si „dovolijo napake”, ki si upajo „zapreti oči, da mrak postane mavrica in se odpre duša”. Za pesnika duša nima le religiozne konotacije, zanj je duša predvsem odpiranje svetlih notranjih prostorov, v katerih so nastanjene ne le tradicionalne etično-moralne vrline, temveč véliki (pod)zavedni Jaz/Humanus, ki se zaveže pesnikovi maksimi, češ „Bog je velik – / v majhnih stvareh. / Hudič je majhen – / v velikih”. Z lastnim pridušanjem v Dobro namreč tudi Smrt manj zaboli, še več, smrt ostaja zato zgolj povezovanje v „srcih vseh tistih ljudi, / katerih src smo se / dotaknili”. Dotaknili s povsem čistimi rokami, s „srcem na dlani”, ki utripa, kot zapiše Dani Bedrač, kot „solza umirajoče zvezde”, kot lahna svet(n)a bolečina „v sliki trenutkov” (Lidija Brezavšček), ko v tišini tako „kričijo misli, da se ne sliši življenja” (Branko Baćović). In prav v tej hrupni tišini nastajajo te pesmi, ki „nimajo meja, imajo le – tebe”, pesmi, ki v „ustih raztapljajo planete / (in) z vonjavami zasužnjujejo čutila”(Branko Baćović), pesmi kot (od)rešenice, za katerimi se „skrivajo krhka čustva” (Jovan Jakšić), pesmi, kovičene iz besed, ob katerih J. Jakšić celo podvomi, da bi „duh jezika izpisal nove”. V kar pa sicer trdno verjame pesnik Branko Baćović, ki nam je skupaj s sopesniki položil v dlani mehko (dvojezično) knjigo z bogatim slikovno-fotografskim gradivom, v kateri se kot alkimija ponavlja, da je „konec življenja začetek smrti – konec strahu pa začetek življenja”. Življenja, ki v teh verzih domuje predvsem kot vsebežni kalejdoskop.