This piece is an audio installation that was presented on 29th of November, in cultural center FUNK, in Koprivnica. I recorded the purring sound of my cat Medo with a lavalier microphone, while he was sleeping. The recording was amplified through double sound system located inside the building. The building was enclosed with red and white marking tape. The installation lasted for three hours and was complemented with light installation designed by Luka Bošnjak.
The production of this piece was supported by City of Koprivnica.
IN FRAME is an ongoing series of multimedia installations in which I confine myself in various frames – those frames are physical limitations or limitations of the media I find myself trapped in. Inside those borders I perform minimal actions which represent situations of discomfort, fear, enclosure, emptiness or anxiety. By performing those actions I break the very limits of the media that’s imprisoning me.
As an opening of my solo exhibition in Galerija Prozori (Zagreb) named Das Unbehagen II, I performed a reading performance in children’s department of Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević library in Zagreb. I read few pages from Sigmund Freud’s essay Civilisation and its discontents (original in German: Das Unbehagen in der Kultur). Before the reading, I didn’t speak the whole day. This was my starting point of a symbolic journey through the culture – from birth to adulthood. Since I have a speech flaw, I stuttered through the whole text, making the viewers feel the uneasiness in the presence of traumatized body.
Freud’s essay discusses human happiness and the sources of human suffering. Despite all of our progress in technology (with which we try to defeat nature), mankind is maybe closer to God, but we are still unhappy.
ONE SPARK IS ENOUGH (original in Croatian: JEDNA ISKRA JE DOVOLJNA) is a series of 6 public interventions made in a small village Lipa located in the northern part of region Istra in Croatia. Interventions consist of six graffiti made with paint that glows in the dark – they charge up during the day and then they glow in the night.
Lipa is a village that suffered unspeakable tragedy during World War II. On 30th of April 1944, a group of German and Italian nazi-fascist soldiers came to Lipa, burned the village to the ground and during two hours killed almost every human and animal being in the village. Total of 269 people were killed. Youngest victim killed that day was a baby girl and she was 7 months old. Her name was Bosiljka Iskra (Iskra = spark). The crimes, arson and killings in Lipa are completely incomprehensible and it is difficult to even grasp the magnitude of this monstrosity. However, the death of a little baby who has not event begun to comprehend the world around her completely transcends any power of reason and leaves us in a state of shock and helplessness.
Title of the work and the main graffiti (painted on the wall of Memorial Center Lipa remembers) holds her name – Iskra (Spark). In this way, this interventions preserves the memory not only of the collective tragedy that happened to the people of Lipa, but also on one personal, specific story of little Bosiljka Iskra and her sacrifice. Sacrifices of every individual who laid down their life in Lipa in 1944 must give us the power to persevere in the fight against all kinds of opression, violence and crime.
Texts of graffiti were insipred by the authors such as Vladimir Nabokov, Danilo Kiš, Miroslav Krleža, Friedrich Nietzsche, Antonio Gramschi, Anvari and such. Every graffiti is placed in particular space in Lipa, referring to a specific place of tragedy or place where new life in Lipa is sparked. Since graffiti are written with photoluminiscent color, they fill up by day and light up by night, symbolically as a reminder that in difficult (dark) moments we must find strenght in those happier (brighter) times. The Spark that glows in the dark reminds us that there is very little needed for us to revive the fire that has been extinguished, just as citizens of Lipa have revived the whole village after the horror that struck them.
This piece was produced as a part of “Recognizing the abscence” program, which is a part of Rijeka – European capital of culture 2020.
This is our world (original in Croatian: Ovo je naš svijet) is a paraphrase of famous work by Željko Jerman This is not my world (original in Croatian: Ovo nije moj svijet) from 1976. While Jerman’s statement, however nihilistic, still offers an escape into his own, artistic world, since it suggests an existence of another world besides this one in which we all are forced to live, my statement doesn’t offer the possibility of escape. It’s a cold, simple thruth – this is our world and we all made it this way, this world is a consequence of our collective actions. There is no I anymore, but We. My statement was written with petroleum oil on 7 meters long canvas and hung in front of oil rafinery in Sisak.
Tractatus is a performance piece I did in former military camp in Koprivnica. I drag a large, stuffed bag in center of the frame. Then I beat it with a bat. After that I exit the frame. With the title of the performance, I introduce a word play where Tractatus has several meanings – originally, from
Latin meaning “to be dragged”, to more modern meaning “to discuss” or “treatise”. Tractatus also usually refers to work by Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus logico-philosophicus.
Untitled (Magna mater) is a light intervention on an object I found on a local flea market. Object is a small statue app. 15 centimeters tall and it represents somekind of goddess figure, probably from some pagan African religion. It has oversized breasts with serene posture and satisfied smile. Because of it’s size, I presume it’s a figurine for keeping at home. On the head of the goddess, I’ve pointed a laser.
This is site-specific piece made for Radoslav Putar Award 2020 exhibition made in Split. The graffiti was made with luminiscent paint which absorbs light from the Sun during the day and then emits it through the night. The graffiti was made illegally (with almost severe repercussions from local authorities) on former Dalmacijavino factory building. The text is a title from the essay by Aldous Huxley.
Das Unbehagen III is a piece I did for my solo exhibition in NMG Praktika gallery, which is part of Klub Kocka in Split. The exhibition was the last in the Das Unbehagen trilogy of exhibitions. As a first part of my piece, I did a reading performance of Sigmund Freuds text from Civilizations and its discontents. Performance was live broadcasted on independent radio KLFM. The reading was filmed and the video from the performance was displayed inside the gallery as a second part of the piece. The third element was an installation using 240 pieces of bread. I used 60 loafs of bread, inscribed KRUH on every of them (kruh means bread in Croatian) and place them throughout space in Klub Kocka and the gallery. The pieces used as a clues which led inside the gallery where I made a pile of those pieces of bread in front of the video from the reading performance.