TANJA OSTOJIĆ

art action / series of photos

Waiting for a Visa was a six-hour queuing action in front of the Austrian Consulate in Belgrade, in August 2000. The action ultimately had no result. I lined up from 6:00 am until noon, in the regular queue with hundreds of other people, with more then twenty pages of documents and guarantee letters, in order to apply for a visa. At noon the consulate closed, so I shared the fate of failure with more than a hundred of others who were “too late”. Every day in Belgrade one can see the same scenario, which is prohibited to document with camera or other devices. This goes on throughout the whole year and almost 24 hours a day: people queue for visas. The Austrian, German and Croatian consulates are among the most popular, as they issue visas for different purposes: transit, tourist, student, business, family reunification, etc.

^{This project is a part of Crossing Borders Series (2000-2005) along with Illegal Border Crossing (2000) and Looking for a Husband with EU Passport (2000-05), by Yugoslav born artist Tanja Ostojić.}