Beacons

2023

An octet of allegories transforms a lost archive of the Non-Aligned Movement into embodied signals, carrying forward histories of resistance and reactivating the unrealised promises of alternative world-building.

Beacons is a cinematographic journey portraying eight women who distill the archive of cultural workers from countries of the Non-Aligned Movement into a musical score. They translate and decipher words into sounds, music and choreography and meet within a proposition for an address recasting the unrealised promises of the past into a sonic address as a rehearsal for our present. Filmed on isolated architectures steeped in nature that once served the awakening of transnational solidarity, the project aims to re-inscribe the missing female voice into the history of world-building.

For the script, Cibic utilised the speeches delivered at the first conference of cultural workers from countries of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1985, held in Titograd, Yugoslavia. During this event, academics, artists, curators, and politicians shared strategies for achieving cultural independence, spiritual decolonisation, moral rehabilitation, and the emancipation of developing Non-Aligned countries. These individuals were leaders in the cultural spheres, aiming to create new scenographic backdrops as part of the alternative world-building project of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) within the bi-polar division of the world during the Cold War.

The locations in the film present a series of architectures and sites whose role it was to announce, defend, remind and alert a multinational state in its becoming. Cibic’s protagonists here use both the architecture and the landscape as amplifiers for their voice and action and inscribe a feminist reading of patriarchal architectural sites and re-engage with their world building potential via a feminist lens. The missing female voice from systemic and anti-systemic world-building projects is here embodied as a cypher that re-inscribes a possibility of an emancipated future of collective agency.

But there is another lens through which Cibic selects the architectures for her film: all these structures are positioned within epic landscapes, serving as beacons and power verticals, metaphorically representing the pursuit of alternative world-building that they formally proclaimed. These protrusions manifest idealistic beliefs of attainable potential, which Cibic now revisits, albeit through a feminist corrective lens of their original world building purpose.

Video Stills

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Installation views

Installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, 2025

Installation view, Beacons, exhibition U3: Triennial of Contemporary Art in Slovenia, curated by Tevž Logar, Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, 2024, photo: Matevž Paternoster — Installation view, *Beacons*, exhibition *U3: Triennial of Contemporary Art in Slovenia*, curated by Tevž Logar, Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, 2024, photo: Matevž Paternoster

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Trailer

Full film available for online viewing upon request.

Credits

Commissioned by IMMA, Irish Museum of Modern Art, co-produced by Waddington Studio London, IMMA and Snaporazverein. Supported by the Non-Aligned Countries Laboratory, Museum of Contemporary Art Montenegro; ZOOM Europa – Cultural Association for Central and Eastern Europe, Biennale Jogja 17 and Friends of Nomad.

Film credits

Beacons, two channel HD / single channel UHD, stereo, 23 minutes, 2023

Written and directed by: Jasmina Cibic

The script for the film is drawn from the archive of the first conference of the art workers of the Non-Aligned Countries held in Titograd, Yugoslavia in October 1985.

Cast (in order of appearance)

Katarina Stegnar - The Messenger

Dejana Sekulič – Forest Strings

Patrycja Kujawska – Violin

Maja Povše - Timpani

Nivanthi Karunaratne – French Horn

Petra Đorđević – Clarinet

Valerie Ebuwa – The Semaphore

Rita Estevanovich - The Interpreter

Anna-Louise Plowman – The Narrator

Crew

Director of photography - Mark Carey

Choreography – Roseanna Anderson

Composer – Chris Bemand

Composition for Morse code and tree strings – Dejana Sekulić

Editor: Sue Giovanni

Colourist: Jason R. Moffat

VFX: Zohaib Mansoor

Sound design: Leandros Ntounis

Hair design: Chris Kurz

Make-up designer: Louise Constad

Slovenia

Production manager - Matea Lajtner

Production coordinator - Jure Jenko

Production assistant - Manca Bajec

1st AD - Sara Isa Djukanovič

Script supervisor - Martina Koren Šmid

Still photographer - Pete Moss

Focus puller - Domen Rakef

2nd AC - Rok Ponikvar

Drone operator - Matej Lavka

Drone pilot - Marko Ružič

DIT - Gregor Galjot

Art director - Niko Novak

Props on set - Jean Žvan

Strings in forest construction – Andrej Zavodnik in Jasmina Cibic

Make up artist - Tinka Prpar

Key grip - Goran Veselinovič

Grip - Martin Gruden

Gaffer - Blaž Sluga

Technician - Nejc Hafner

Sound technician - Vinvent Laurence

Boom operator - Urban Fijavž

SFX crew:

Tomaž Žužek

Janez Arko

Urban Stanko

Jan Špik

Animal handler - Neža Podpečan

Animal handler - Nejc Novak

Driver - David Prekadinaj

Catering - Brunarica Dražgoše

Camera rental: M.B. Grip

Bosnia

Production manager – Ensar Halilović

Location manager – Haris Kamenčić

Script supervisor – Anja Maksimović

Still photographer - Pete Moss

Focus puller – Sasha Zharkov

2nd AC – Oljeg Ogi Ražnatović

Drone operator – Hajrudin Suljić

DIT – Jasmin Hrnica

Hair and make-up – Lamija Hadžihasanović - Homorać

Gaffer – Predrag Kovačević

Electrician - Miroslav Davidović

Sound recordist – Nirvan Nino Imamović

Driver – Rusmir Kamenčić

Driver Cineplanet – Jovan Despotović

Catering – Tentorium, Tjentište

Camera rental: Cineplanet

Violin courtesy of Bridgewood and Neitzert London

Serbia

Location producer – Non-Aligned Films, Belgrade

Production manager – Čarna Vučinić

Production coordinator – Luka Nestorivić

Production assistant – Vladislav Marković

Script supervisor – Katarina Popović

Still photographer – Marijana Janković

Assistant to the director of photography – Izzy Johnson

Focus puller – Ivan Milev

2nd AC – Stevan Veljković

Drone operator – Dragan Trifunović

DIT – Aleksa Borković

Props on set – Stefan Svilenković

Hair and make-up – Irena Miletić

Costume assistant – Anja Knežević

Gaffer – Oleg Namakonov

Grip – Jovan Ivanković

Sound recordist – Dejan Kragulj

Boom operator – Koča Kaštavarac

Driver - Miško Mijović, Aleksandar Ivanović

Catering – Dobroslav Lalević

Camera rental: Cineplanet

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Translations: Senada Kreso and Rawley Grau

Locations

Sutjeska memorial, Tjentište, Bosnia and Herzegovina; architects: Miodrag Živković and Ranko Radović, built 1971

Avala tower, Belgrade, Serbia; architect Uglješa Bogdanović, built 1961-65, reconstructed 2006

Monument to the unkown hero, Avala, Belgrade; artist: Ivan Meštrović, engineer: Stevan Živanović, built 1934-38

Belvedere, Bled, Slovenia; architects: Jože Plečnik and Vinko Glanz, built 1930, modified 1947-1977

Dražgoše monument, Dražgoše, Slovenia; artists/architects: Stojan Batić, Boris Kobe, Ive Šubic, built 1975

Filmed on locations with permissions of JP Srbija šume, JU Nacionalni park Sutjeska, Občina Bled, JGZ Brdo, Občina Železniki, Krajevna skupnost Dražgoše-Rudno, Združenje borcev za vrednoste NB Škofja Loka.

Thanks to

Damir and Dragica Cibic, Pete Moss, Una Cibic Moss, Christina Kennedy, Johanne Mullan, Imogen Kavanagh, Blaž Jelnikar, Nataša Ferenčak, Alessandro Vincentelli, Tevž Logar, Anita Ćulafić, Marina Čelebić, Nada Baković, Natalija Vujošević, Nadine Gandy, Vanja Žanko, Tilen Vrhunc, Domen and Klemen Lušina, Vesna Krajnc Šaponja, Barbara Koželj Podlogar and Maria Federica Bianchi

Commissioned by IMMA, Irish Museum of Modern Art

Co-produced by IMMA, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Waddington Studios London and Snaporazverein

Supported by: The Art Collection of Non-Aligned Countries Laboratory project - CCA Montenegro, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia

Additional support by

Jogja Biennale XVII, ZOOM Europa – Cultural Association for Central and Eastern Europe, The National Opera and Ballet Ljubljana, Friends of Nomad.

Publications

Nicoletta Rousseva (Post) Socialist Futures: Jasmina Cibic’s Art for a World to Come 2025

This essay examines how the filmic artwork of Jasmina Cibic foregrounds site-specificity, orality, and the voice as a means to explore socialist histories and sociopolitical sensibilities across Southeastern Europe. My argument, briefly put, is that Cibic’s films return to socialism’s sites and sounds in an effort to establish vital continuities that harness this contested history as a touchstone for crafting new aesthetic and political possibilities. Eschewing outworn narratives of nostalgia and typologies of the East European artist as an anti-state dissident or provocateur, Cibic’s artwork conveys a subtler dialectical approach that strives to not simply criticize the disaster capitalism and resurgent authoritarianisms of today but proposes alternatives in their place. Analyzing the artist’s films and situating her artwork as one example among many, this article charts a critical turn in contemporary art that aims to cull from socialism’s discarded histories new political horizons and revolutionary futures.

Read: (Post) Socialist Futures: Jasmina Cibic’s Art for a World to Come

Ameli Klein How many voices does it take to form a choir? Jasmina Cibic’s anti-systemic world-making, Camera Austria, issue 167 2024

Ameli Klein’s text examines Jasmina Cibic’s work as a sustained investigation into the relationship between art, architecture, and ideology, focusing on how cultural production participates in systems of power. She frames Cibic’s practice as one that reveals the mechanisms through which nations construct and project identity—particularly through architecture, exhibition formats, and performative staging.

Klein emphasises Cibic’s use of historical material and reconstruction, noting how the artist reworks archives, fragments, and absent structures to expose the instability of official narratives. Rather than presenting history as fixed, Cibic’s works demonstrate how it is continuously rewritten through visual and spatial strategies.

A key thread in Klein’s analysis is the role of performance and display: bodies, buildings, and images are choreographed to articulate ideological positions, often masking underlying tensions between political ideals and their realities. Cibic’s work thus operates in a space between fiction and documentation, where constructed narratives reveal the artificiality of national myths.

Ultimately, Klein positions Cibic’s practice as a critical form of “world-making”—one that dissects the visual languages of power while proposing alternative ways of reading history, identity, and cultural representation.