Accidentally born in New York in 1988, I spent the majority of my life in Macedonia in Eastern Europe, where my parents are from.
I started doing animation in 8-grade and photography in 10-th, I never really understand either but enjoy doing both.
I hope you enjoy my work.
G.
5 weeks ago I got a call from “Bei The Fish” manager telling me that the video I made for them is going to play on the Eastern European MTV Channel.
Needless to say i was ecstatic. I had hoped the video was different enough to attract attention and expected it to play on MTV maybe once or twice, just enough so that
I can put it on my resume. In the following 3 weeks the video got on the charts and faced a competition of local and international artists.
Last week the video was voted no.1 on the MTV top charts and as of yesterday it stayed first for its second consecutive week.
Despite its success I keep feeling that all of this in some way or another is happening prematurely. I still don’t know how to take
advantage of it, or make money from it or anything. The part that I take the most pride in is that the video cost 50$ to make. Most of the other videos
that we’ve left behind were shot on a budget of 5 000$ or more.
About 2 weeks ago I had my first video promotion, and although I wasn’t able to attend since it was in Macedonia, I want to share the video that that was presented there.
The video was done for a Macedonian band that I met the past summer and decided to work with.
I didn’t get paid, but I also got to do whatever I want. Which pretty much was the best part about it.
You have already seen parts of it, but now it maybe functions as a whole.
Not really….but I thought it be interesting to show how one of his recent photographs inspired me. I think things like this should happen more often, we should see how we can combine our creativity in some way. It’s great to talk about work, but it’s also great to create work together.
Note to self and others: This image is not to be taken too seriously.
P.S: Matt, the building doesn’t disrupt the horizon line anymore
Original photograph by Chris Moore can be seen here:
Many sundays and wednesdays have passed and I have contributed very little, so I pick this Thursday to try and get back in with things.
Stop motion is something I always keep going to, it is the only time when I feel really comfortable working. I try and lock myself in a room, sit down with these
cars (reference video bellow) and try to figure out their potential in an animation. I don’t know why I got obsessed with toy cars, I bought 50 chinese-made metal/plastic cars,
and two really good ones. I sawed through 4 cars (as seen on video) and used then in different ways.
I also don’t have a real car.
This is probably some kind of a solution to my mental (car deficiency) problems .
I’ve been thinking about doing something like this for a while. I try and not forget where I come from,
a “world” very distant and unknown to the people that surround me at school. People (myself included) forget how far I go
every summer in hope of getting education and being a part of a community.
In that respect, this is a documentary (I guess) of my commute.
The U.S, the school we go to, the community is very easily taken for granted, this is just a reminder (more for myself then anyone else) of how
much I value my home and how much I value my travels.
Enjoy.
1,2, 3…go is an idea I recently got (as a result from a filming “mistake”) to film people without giving them instructions
on what to do. The videos are not going to be longer then 15 seconds, and all of them will start with 1, 2, 3 go. The immediate expectation from the audience is that something will happen although this will obviously not always be the case.
I’m also working/thinking on how to incorporate myself in all of them.
Right now Im showing you the “mistake” or rather the find I got a few days ago. This will be the first one in the series.
Also stay tuned for my video upcoming next Sunday of my “voyage” to Macedonia.
UPDATE: I actually say 1, 2, 3…ok in the video…might have to change that.:)
I really wanted to touch on this subject since my last post. Me mentioning a goat that gives me all of my ideas was
not just for a comic relief, although it definitely served that purpose as well.
People often ask, where and how you get your ideas. Fortunately enough the mind is too complex for us to explain it,
or on the other hand too scientific for it to bear any greater meaning.
“I get most of my ideas in the right hemisphere of my brain, when brain cells grow and collide to perform the most amazing colors never to be seen by man”
What people want to know in reality is “Why can you do this, when I can’t” and that is an answer that is a lot easier to explain.
I see life, as cliche as it may sound, as a puzzle. It’s a puzzle without corners though. Every piece will reveal a hundred other pieces and those will keep going in the
same manner till infinity. The more information the mind has, the more ideas it can generate.
My ideas are never done, never completed. They just enter an incubation period. I shoot a 100 pictures, Im done for class and then I incubate an idea. Sometimes they die in incubation but sometimes a lot later they show up 100 times stronger then before.
I also steal ideas, no idea is generated from “thin air”. Every idea i’ve had is stolen. I steal ideas from people that don’t even recognize what they have as an idea. I steal ideas from people that would never take action upon their ideas. I steal ideas, by stealing conversations, and by stealing experiences.
I guess you could switch the words steal and find for a more acceptable explanation, but my point is that no idea shows up just because you’re creative.
Even your stream of consciousness is something that has been built inside you mind since the day you were born.
Every experience, every relationship, every conversation generates ideas, all you really have to do is listen.
Some ideas bare fruit now, some will bear fruit in 20 years and some will never bear fruit.
Regardless, the creative process is not about output but more about input. Our minds are wonderful.
And I don’t mean our artist minds, but our human minds are all, amazing amazing machines.
So just throw some information into your mind turbine and see it transform, and see it become yours, because everything that comes into our minds
is only ours to keep.
Probably.
This compilation of video fragments is in a way my only accomplishment this year.
I like to put images next to each other and create movement where there is none.
I’ve been “swayed” by stop motion, and now I cant stop. This short video is a demo reel of
what I have done this past year. It’s going to change, and I hope, it’s going to grow.
Someone asked me the other day where I get my ideas, I told him that I have a live goat at home whose shrieks when I squeeze its balls can translate into the most amazing
stories. He was not satisfied.
Blast your speakers. It’s Thursday.
10th anniversary from the start of the bombarding of Yugoslavia.
It was my 11th birthday on the 24-th of March 1999, 7 days before the official release of the Matrix.
I was going to celebrate my birthday in a McDonald’s in downtown Skopje in the capital of Macedonia. We gathered my friends in front of my elementary school and got
into taxis to drive us there. As we were driving, for the first time in my life I heard a fighter jet fly over.
The NATO forces chose March 24-th as the day to start operation “Noble Anvil” and thus used Macedonian Airports to launch their bombarders and fighter jets towards Belgrade, a wonderful city 500 miles north. At the time, my parents were on the phone with all of their friends who were in bomb shelters in Belgrade. I didn’t really understood the situation at the time, war for me was very abstract.
I would hear the planes fly over, and sometime I would hear an explosion from an exercise ground or something similar, but I never imagined what was truly happening. I received a letter from the American embassy saying that I can take a non commercial flight out of the country if I deemed it to be necessary. This was due to my American citizenship that I will explain some other time. The war in Kosovo (which was the reason for the bombardment of Belgrade) created a wave of 245 000 refugees temporarily set in Macedonia. Many people have heard of Kosovo, but few know that Prishtina (the capital) is 30 miles away from Skopje.
My mother an experienced psychologist in post war trauma was on the field amongst the refugees sometimes for 10 hours at a time hearing stories of crimes and horrible atrocities that happened to these innocent people.
She taught me not to believe in war, and she taught me not to believe in violence. Without any religious background to the moral of the story, she brought what was happening out there in the real world. It was all intolerance, hatred and jealousy.
It wasn’t until 2001 when war for me got a different meaning. The war from Kosovo spilled over to Macedonia.
Now, Albanian insurgents which where already armed and prepared for the conflict in Kosovo used a chance to start a conflict in Macedonia.
My best friend was Albanian, and while we would still go out and play together we would avoid talking about the conflict. We knew who we were, we had a relationship, and neither of us wanted that to change. So in lack of words, we didn’t use any.
The main battles were in a village 7 miles away from my house. This time the explosions were a lot clearer, and the sounds of the Ak-47s used by both the Macedonian army and Albanian rebels some nights filled in on the sound of the crickets.
I would imagine the Ak-47s as really big crickets really far away.
It helped me.
My parents thought the war might be getting worse and they send me away to Slovenia. I was there for a month, almost glued to the screen
watching the war on television.
To be honest I was less scared being there in my house hearing the rifles, then seeing the war on CNN. It terrified me that my whole family was there, while I was not.
Before the end of August, a peace treaty was signed and I came back home. I was 13.
It was August 22nd.
20 days before September 11-th.
These images were inspired by how we are taught to treat war from an early age. We see it in movies, we play it with toys.
It’s a very naive depiction, and one that’s made us numb.
Here are my War Candy pictures through my naive children eyes.
