INTERVIEW: BOGOMIR DORINGER talks to FILEP MOTWARY

Dear iDEALS, usually I make an introduction before interviewing someone. In Bogomir Doringer's case I am forcing you to read what is about to follow. It is maybe the most intriguing interview ever presented on Un nouVeau iDEAL. You will soon realize that one's life is what one makes of it.

FilepMotwary: You are a person with multiple talents: fashion designer, artist. Photographer, magazine contributor, artistic director…how do you combine them all?
BogomirDoringer: Everything is linked with the other; none of these professions can exist by itself without using the help from another on the list. Fashion is for sure the best example of it; you and I are bigger examples than fashion itself. For me everything started from fashion. I wanted to keep my self busy in my early teenage period and I wanted to experiment with different art forms. Art and fashion in a package were my therapy. I had to resist from destroying myself with the so-called “everlasting party” located in Belgrade. So I was destroying myself three months a year and the rest nine months, by working like mad. I used to think that the need for all this creativity/expression comes from the fear of death. But I am more in love with death than I am with fear. I dropped this explanation in my life’s path.

FilepMotwary: Give as a small description of the time you were a small boy in former Yugoslavia until today.
BogomirDoringer: Oh, with all the pleasure. I am still not bored to respond on this question. I love to try new forms of putting it down when asked. In 1990 I became the last pioneer, Tito’s pioneer. I was proud. I loved color red and we got some nice photos afterwards.
In 1991 war started. Since I was listening about the 2nd World War all the time, I thought that experiencing war was just another normal happening, something that comes and goes. Like the rain in Amsterdam. Actually rain in Amsterdam never stops. Bad example I guess but you got the point.
1992 my family only had 10 Deutsch marks as their month payment when “fat blonde fans” of “Wurst”, jus a few borders across from Yugoslavia had 2500 marks in a bank. In the same year NIKE became so huge. Only Sasa Simonovic could afford it. He was seating behind me in the primary school I was a pupil at. Soon kids started stealing sneakers from each other. Sasa and I had to become the best friends rather than being enemies.
1993 A new Nike model came out, the “Air Max fucking something”. I had to wear my mother’s high heel boots because she couldn’t buy me winter shoes. No electricity. No water. Every second week my family had to wait in an early morning line for oil. Every second day, in the early morning, waiting in queue to be given bread and milk packed in plastic bags. Every day, in the early afternoon, my mother and father had regular fight sessions.
1994 More family fights (not only under my roof) School fights, market fights, inner self fights… Suddenly, a huge amount of immigrants with a weird way of speaking are in the same class as I am, in my playground. Most of them are older than my generation. Nike was not the biggest impression any longer. One of the immigrants from Bosnia had pubic hair. Same year, my mother and I were driving in a small white old car, in the night, to a restaurant where my father used to work and waited for him to throw us fresh meat and some other groceries in a garbage bag. We had a full refrigerator thanks to his illegal actions. One summer night, on our regular drive to him, we had a car crash. A man threw himself on our car. A few weeks later he died. This is how I learned the difference between dying and wanting to die. 1995 Nothing better than the year before. I stole Kinder eggs. I ate them in a bus, I put the toys together, and then I would get rid of it so that my family doesn’t find any traces of the theft.
1996 Student fights on streets of Belgrade. I started going to an acting school, just to be in the centre of a happening, to scream and dance with young fighters supported by techno sounds. Same year ecstasy became cheap. Almost for free. Students loved it. Soon they had much bigger problem than what the war caused. They became junkies. There were no more protests, I quit acting school and one year later, I started clubbing.
1997 The country’s situation is a bit better. I am a freak trying to fit in a picture but as no matter what I do, I feel unhappy. I started sessions with girlfriends. We went to forest to scream, bullshit, and dance in the rain. I was so certain I had supernatural powers. High school is almost starting.

1998 I meet Una. She loves Marilyn Manson and wears her hair shaved We are seating in the last row at school. She has a problem. I have a few. We talk about it. Mostly inventing drama plays together.
1999 Bombs!!!!! What a Great time! My best teen days: clubbing for free, cinema, theatre. Everybody was acting as if it is the last days of life. Watching the planes falling from the sky while at the same time counting light yellow, sometimes, orange bombs destroying buildings. I just didn’t care anymore. I was having the best time in my life with the best light system. I was falling in love with person wearing the new model by NIKE, the famous Air Max. Watching blood and horror on the news, while having dinner in Serbia in the war period was something so normal. Still, Belgrade was an amazing place till the end of the war. The way Serbia was presented in foreign media in
1990’s is what Serbia became later. All young people who were listening how bad they are, and how not good enough they are, accepted with their fresh mind the accusations and started acting as it was requested, indirectly from foreign media. This is where my interest in mass manipulation started being reflected in my work.
FilepMotwary:To what extend was the possibility of failure in your career, considering that you come from a country that has no reputation in fashion whatsoever?
BogomirDoringer:I actually think that coming from Serbia is just extremely exotic in my case. In the time of myspace.com and mass production goods, boarders and rules don’t exist any longer. Trade is huge and it is a good time to have some Serbian art and fashion around. I am the example of a young person whose creative need and deep trauma grew in a period of war. I am bringing with me very specific and interesting package that was forgotten for a while. For some bored people or fashion victims, addicts of anything new, this is a great satisfaction. Instead of having a luxury garment or art work from London they will go to Belgrade. Furthermore at the beginning of 1990’s, 200 000 intellectuals left Serbia. They live all over the world by now. At least 15% are in fashion or the art scene and actually placed in amazing good positions. We all know what networking means to a young immigrant, artist, and fashion designer.
FilepMotwary: You are only 24 years old but your C.V/ resume is full of competitions, prizes, video projects, and awards. Why do you get yourself involved in a competition? What does it mean for a young person to win and where do you think this will lead you?
BogomirDoringer: It is very individual. First a person should be aware of the reasons he does something in the first place. Why a person does have the need to expose his work? What does he want to make out of it? I never wanted fame. For me is always about communication, about spreading a message, about telling a story and discovering something new, or recovering from something old. As I mentioned it started as a self-therapy for me. Actually I ended in competitions by accident. Either I was pushed by others or because they suddenly decide to give me an award. I never actually applied my self. Only for YOU WEAR IT WELL festival (a project by Diane Pernet). Competitions do not matter so much to me, not for now at least. It sounds good being a winner and it is a great décor of one’s printed CV for sure. Projects though, are something different. Every new project is full of surprises and knowledge that comes because you ask for it. This is maybe the main reason why is good to work on a lot different projects when you are young.
 
FilepMotwary: I would kindly ask you to analyze the story of your film “DERANGER” with AVANT16. Where did the idea come from?
BogomirDoringer: After fashion collection “Pig” for which I had 9 huge pigs as part of stage design, I moved to Amsterdam and stopped working in any fashion field, whatsoever I needed a rest from it and I was seriously thinking about dropping out. I thought that fashion didn’t have the edge that I was looking for. I didn’t learn enough from exposing it only by making it I did and the crowd that I tried to communicate with didn’t give me enough in return. I am not talking about amounts; I mean the quality of the feedbacks I expected were very superficial. I started going to an art academy and I was keeping my fashion thoughts for some corners of my time. The organizer of the Fashion week in Belgrade was extremely pushing me to make something new, so much, that I won a Pantene beauty prize for best young designer when I was in the second year of my studies far away from doing fashion. The prize was a catwalk presentation during the Fashion week in Belgrade and all the things I wanted to make a show possible… Almost all… Finally I decided to make a new collection. I found out that I would exhibit in an old Jewish camp in Belgrade. Such a place has to be respected so I had to do some research about the history behind it. Looking for some story to be inspired by as always, looking for some hint, something that be integrated in to my new line. I am not sure any longer if I did really hear the story about a Jewish woman who run a way from a camp, hairless, white, and with hardly any female attributes on her damaged body, or if I just invented it in order to start working. Mostly when I invent a lie, it is actually the biggest truth. So from that lie (or truth) came up a concept and a uniform as a starting point for a new collection called “Untitled”, which is the best title I could have. Tim Zaragoza, an American friend in love with 16mm film, saw my latest line and propose a meeting in Paris during the Fashion week period there. I organized a crew of 12 people for that meeting. Our concepts crashed each others. I wanted to have a portrait of “aliens” in a crowded Paris. I wanted them to be just 10 % of a whole image. We wanted them to walk trough Paris. Tim wanted to make a love story. It was hard work. I had conflict with what I wanted, he wanted, what I wanted to see. At the end we came with a very beautiful-could be better-16 mm film “Déranger”.
FilepMotwary: How is your collection going? Where do your clothes stand in the market at the moment and what is that you really aim for?
BogormirDoringer:I started working on a new collection. I produce a collection when I only have the need for it and when I feel ready. Since I am firstly working as an artist I can allow myself skipping a season, that I indeed see it as something silly and unnecessary theses days especially for the fact that the earth’s global warming started. I don’t want to understand this need for speed. Some dead-scared person started it and everybody still follows it. Everything is in a silly speed. Hello!!! There is no need for it! It just produces massive repetition and slowly we are getting bored of fashion. I hate showrooms. Every time I do it, it just puts me in a position to question myself “WHAT THE FUCK am I doing in FASHION? I indeed prefer the art world. I mostly sell by orders. I had options for stores, but not time to bother with producing etc. I will as soon as my academy is done. For now, I sell by order and it works perfectly enough for Doringer’s needs.

FilepMotwary: Considering the reality of your life as it is today, where do you want to see yourself in ten years?
BogomirDoringer:I learned that living the present is the most important factor in order to enjoy life. My past was really weird. I was always happily thinking about future, enjoying in a sad nostalgia the past. At the time, present was just a foggy place. Full of Stress!!! A condition an artist must experience though, in order to get something done next. After moving to Amsterdam I finally managed to hear my self in “stereo” and grab the moment of now. Immigrant life is also something that doesn’t allow you to make huge plans. I often don’t have choice. I just have to re-act. I would compare such a life as similar to a shark’s; if I stop I am fucked. This kind of living with the right knowledge and experience can be great fun. I can just tell you that my future is amazing!
FilepMotwary: Would you ever return to Serbia? What do your parents say about your work? BogomirDoringer:Serbia? I am still not used to that name. Yugoslavia, for a snob like me has a better sound in my ears, I wonder why… Huh. I love going back to it. It is amazing place for sure, very inspiring. Everything started there for me, I cannot forget that. I am what I am because of my hard-core childhood in Serbia. Because of the struggle I had for my own identity, in my own way. At this moment I would prefer to keep it as it is. A short visit each time! I left Belgrade in order to love it. We have a very sadomasochistic relationship. We are perverts but Belgrade claims is not. Sometime in the 90’s locked it in a closet. Our relationship is much more pure since I left it. My parents… I saw my father after 10 years this summer and also saw the grave of his father, who died in February somewhere around my birthday. My father left my mother and me when I was 14. Actually I hoped for him leaving as He was a hard person for me. Thanks to him I started believing that it is normal to be depressive. Further on, Serbia confirmed my fathers influence. It was really interesting to meet him after all this years. He and his family know about me from TV and some other mass media. They see me as a showman; they know every line of my interviews. I am a pop star to them, and to me they are just unknown people who happen to share the same blood with. Communication with my father is quite hard for me. So talking about my work with him is/ was impossible. Back then, I didn’t feel that my work as an issue fits to any occasion. On the contrary, my mother is proud and her parents as well of course. My life is cliché in that sense. She is a proud mother standing with a big fresh -still young-smile dressed beautifully, with fresh colored-for the first time- eyebrows and I guess supporting what ever I do. I am her artwork. And she is still enjoying in exhibiting me in any way she can. I don’t mind.

FilepMotwary: What are your next projects?
BogomirDoringer:I am busy with continuation of a project that photo the book “Rijk” is part of. Also, spending some time with “Fashion Victim” that wears my clothes for one week and I am busy with a project for the best shop in Berlin. At Ideal Showroom to be more precise. I am making a special art-fashion collection for them which will be presented in January in Berlin. The project is focused on a costume life story. Also I am repeating the “Conflict box” which is a work more similar to “Illegal Chair” so there is nothing about clothes in it. There is a link with fashion, as branding and media influence on human behaviour. This work was something I did a few months ago together with Mediamatic gallery in Amsterdam. So now we are repeating it. It is very a very complicated work both technically and ideally. As in every social political artwork I do, I am part of the work. I stand there, living it. It is a box in which two persons, two members from the audience, unknown each other, get in fight by reading dialog in karaoke way. All this is filmed by 4 cameras, in a real time, edited and projected to the audience as a film.
FilepMotwary: An advice to young and talented people like your self?
BogomirDoringer:Train your intuition to be your best adviser and remember that there is a pattern for everything. Figure it out fast so that if you get bored , start something new, somewhere else immediately.

All rights reserved . Deranger Photos: Bobby Collins

Comments

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