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Alen Ilijić is a new media avant-garde composer and multimedia artist from Serbia. As Styria- Artist- in- Residence Ilijić has been engaged in his new media opera, a transdisciplinary project called ’’Ongevafren’’ (Disordered), which is dedicated to one of the most influential Austrian composers and painters of the 20th century, Arnold Schoenberg. During his three-month stay in Graz, Ilijić dealt with his complex project in a Schaumbad atelier as well as at the Afro-Asiatisches Institut. The new media opera consists of three main parts: artworks; a composition for piano, voice and electronics; and a video installation. These three approaches to expression coexist as interactive parts among each other, especially with the live performance of the artist. As inseparable and equal parts with respect to importance, they form a unit showing Ilijić’s great polymedial talent. 

His ’’Ongevarfen’’ with its new approach of expression is revolutionary, not just in terms of form, but also in terms of addressing the urgent questions about discrimination, destroyed  individuality, and the destruction of European and Judeo-Christian values. 

Although the new media opera is primarily dedicated to Schoenberg, it also brings all the voices from the genius minds that influenced the artist; these other voices remind us about concerns of all civilisations, which, again, are threatened by new and extended forms of fascism and terrorism, and which are deeply neglected. 

Milica Ilijić, art historian, 2016