Archive of the gone

In this work, I present a projection of stock footage of wild horses onto a canvas placed within their former natural habitat on Stara Planina in eastern Serbia, a landscape that has been profoundly altered by human intervention. Today, memories of the horses that once inhabited this space remain almost the only trace of their presence, following intensive urbanization and the gradual disappearance of their habitat.

By using generic, commercial stock footage and documenting the projection itself, I emphasize the distance between lived reality and its mediated representation. The projected image, detached from its original context, appears as a substitute rather than a continuation of presence of something that no longer exists in situ. This gesture highlights how contemporary visual culture often replaces direct experience with reproducible, decontextualized imagery.

At the same time, the work questions anthropocentric models in which nature is reduced to a resource, spectacle, or aesthetic surface, rather than understood as an autonomous and complex system. By reintroducing the image of the horse into the landscape through projection, the work creates a fragile and temporary reappearance that underscores absence rather than restoration. In doing so, it invites reflection on loss, memory, and the ways in which contemporary society negotiates its relationship with the natural world through images rather than through coexistence.