The Time Suspended Anew

photography Bojan Mrđenović
written by Mira Stanić

 

Venari lavari ludere ridere hoc est vivere stands written in a well-known roman graffiti in the North African town Timgad. To bathe, together with some other equally hedonistic activities (hunting, playing, laughter), is to live. From the antiquity up until the recent history of human civilization, bathing had been the basic social activity; and in addition to its hygienic task, the key role was its social regenerative process; a physiological and mental recuperation together in a holistic approach. Despite the fact that it has only partially survived in this form, only in the sphere of leisure, and mostly during those summer months, by looking at the series of photographs by Bojan Mrđenović called The Spa, it seems like the social ritual of bathing has remained inscribed somewhere in the subconsciousness and that it can be called upon in the moment when the body, only seemingly even, frees itself from the pressures, both gravitational and mundane.