The world-renowned British visual artist and musician Brian Eno will open his multimedia installation “77 Million Paintings” in Sarajevo on Wednesday. The exhibition will be displayed at the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina at 9 pm and will stay there for the next 77 days.
Eno's installation “77 Million Paintings” was first presented in 2006 in Tokyo, then followed the exhibitions in London, Venice and other European cities, the USA, Canada, Mexico and even Australia. Each of these installations has been created specifically for the room where it was presented, so will be the installation for the History Museum in Sarajevo.
This versatile artist said he was partly inspired by the graffiti seen on the streets of Bosnia's capital city.
“I've noticed that the graffiti in Bosnia and Herzegovina have somewhat sharper lines, which is not the case in other countries of Europe,” explained Eno.
The multimedia installation he is presenting in Sarajevo comprises 77 different combinations of audio and video contents generated by computer programmes, which never repeat. Eno said that every person could spend eternity watching this multimedia installation without seeing a picture twice.
“Once you realize that images are changing, but slowly, you come to the temptation to hold on and see what's going to happen next. And the next change comes slowly, very slowly, stays there for a while and transforms into something else. You become aware of the flow of time,” said Eno.
The British artist, who visited Bosnia during the 1992-95 war, emphasized it felt good to be Sarajevo again and see something that looked like a normal life.
Eno co-produced the U2's Miss Sarajevo, the song which reached No. 6 in the UK Single Charts. The collaboration is chronicled in Eno's book A Year with Swollen Appendices, a diary published in 1996.
