Text: Projekt6
The starting points for this project were Croatian admission to the EU, the country and union’s ensuing negotiations, and strings of measures and directions that need to be fulfilled by both parties for the admissions to take place. In this work the authors are interested in the admission process, which is structured in the form of directions for a state legislature to follow, with all the ensuing complications such as wrong instructions, mistakes, duplicates, and regulations went astray. Questioning the process, here, the authors deal with the question of how ready, capable, or willing we are to accept or implement some of the EU’s, perhaps, more advanced governing concepts.
Staying true to the central point sprawling through all their works, in this collaboration, once more the authors are interested in exploring the complexity of a process in which directions play the key role in communication on all levels, like those of acceptance, comprehension, modifications, or adjustments.
Gathered with the intention to experiment by mutually reexamining their attitudes, in this collaboration they go about translating the aforementioned admission process by making it more personal to explore the notion where each individual, in its own way, is engaged in reexamining communicational codes on different social levels and in different situations by giving directions to others while receiving the same.
Tea Hatadi‘s video work “Europe Like Wonderland II” is divided into two short stories, “Travel With Me” and “Call Me by Skype”. Both stories comment with sarcasm at the thrills of a foreign country, a notion that passes when one meets with the bureaucracy as well as with problems one is accustomed to deal on a daily basis within her home country. The sarcasm inherited in this work also aims at underestimating one owns abilities, values, and advantages, as well as at thinking and opinions most people have, the opinions relating to the notion that other people and places are far better off. Are individual countries civilization’s Disneyland or does is only appears to be so from our point of view?
Zdravko Horvat‘s drawings cycle “(Self)portrait of an Artist While Dreaming of His Living Quarters” is a variation of the work “(Self)portrait of an Artist While Dreaming” in which the author, for the exhibition “Directions for Rapprochement – vol.1″, has drawn on a gallery’s wall his own room in a measure 1:1. In this new work, differing from the previous one, the room is shown from three different viewing angles, on three different drawings allowing us to see the full extent of 360˚ of the author’s living space.
“Re: za popizdica” gives insight anew into Karla Šuler‘s thinking: “for rapprochement….. will be growing apart….. I’d like to talk to someone, monologue of 24h 365 days is pretty boring”. The dialogue Karla tries to establish by the e-mail, where she communicates the oncoming ideas for the upcoming projects with the members of the art collective Projekt6. At the end, she exhibits exactly that brainstorm, her thoughts about Projekt6 and art which intertwine with her critical and sarcastic views of Dublin’s everyday, of a city in which she currently resides.
Igor Juran exhibits a short video allegory about people who live at the same place, but never face their inter-being. The video has a structuralist approach, plays with the continuity of time and space, and questions human alienation in television watching moments and those one has when leaving for work in the early morning. “In those two parts of the day, people find themselves in an unaware hypnotic state”, concludes Igor who recognizes similar elements in Croatia’s admission into European union.
Martina Miholić‘s work “Everything You Need to Know about Me from A to Z” is a conceptual and organic sequel to the author’s previous oeuvre “Tagbox” and “Photoshooting” dating from 2008, in which Martina takes her self as the main subject of her observations. Searching for her own definition in the never static environment, in her new work “Everything you Need to Know About Me from A to Z” the author starts from reverse position. Collected associations concerning herself–that is, the terms and words she was described with in her previous opus–she feeds into an internet searcher and encounters strings of unexpected combinations and contradicting associations relating to a searched for term.
With such process, she measures the power of symbols, pictures, the term of association, determination according to learned patterns and questions a kaleidoscope of positions, perspectives, and values that we are being determined by. Martina doesn’t try to give an instant answer to the question “How to be closer to someone?”, but evokes and provokes a question concerning complexity of interrelations, perceptions, and string of factors influencing interpersonal relationships.
Maja Rožman tries to find an answer to the question “Should artists be politically and socially engaged in their work?”. Questioning the problem, the author studies the three wise monkeys: Mizaru covering his eyes and is therefore not being able to see anything evil, Kikazaru covering his ears and is therefore not being able to hear anything evil, and Iwazaru covering his mouth and is therefore not being able to say anything evil. Today, the phrase “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” is commonly used to describe a person who doesn’t wish to be included in a particular situation. On the other side, in the West have emerged a variation where the monkeys move their hands from their ears, eyes, and mouth and the phrase that goes with this variation is “listen to everything, see everything, and talking loudly in defense of freedom if you want to live in peace.”
Maja’s work tries to unite the Eastern and Western versions, where the Eastern version chooses not to look back at the socio-political events while on the other hand the Western version puts itself at the exact opposite finding it impossible not to look back at them. In accordance with those statements, Maja performs the actions of the three monkeys–covering her eyes, ears, and mouth with her hands–and at the same time tries to resist them. In this way, she confronts those two ideas and expresses her inability to answer the above mentioned question.
Comments are closed.