KÜNSTLERHAUS WIEN
“On stage: narrative and performance in contemporary Croatian video”
“The Other Reality: Croatian emerging painters”

17 NOV  - 4 DEC 2011
opening on Thursday, 17th NOV 2011 at 7pm

Künstlerhaus, Karlsplatz 5, A - 1010 Wien

On stage: narrative and performance in contemporary Croatian video

The selection is focused on some of the most recent works of the Croatian artists, members of the Croatian Association of Artists in Zagreb, that have been active, both on national and international level, since 2000. Their latest production, in accordance with personal interests and researches already present in previous works, in different ways refers to the notions of narrative, fiction, storytelling, history and performance in the medium of film and video.

Damir Očko’s  video „The Moon Shall Never Take My Voice: three songs for muted voice and various sounds” stages solo performance of deaf women in three acts: fictional and historical narrative is a starting point for the extraordinary interpretation that translates voice in visual, distorted sign language, and mediates sound through acoustic elements of corporeal expression.

Ana Hušman’s „Football” as a historical starting point has a football match in Mexico City in 1986 and legendary score of Diego Maradona given by his hand. The re-enactment of the play is done though testimonies, followed with an artists attempt to transfer the boys game into sound, i.e. to reinterpret it in a manner of sport radio journalism, uncommonly performed by female voice.

„Staging Actors/Staging Beliefs” by Renata Poljak deals with ideological constructs of past and present, personified in the figure of a movie character, based on a real person, partisan boy Boško Buha, who fought in WW II. The character figured as an imposed role model for children growing up in Yugoslavia after the appearance of the movie in 1979. Twelve years later, the actor for whom it was the only role, faced the real war, where he fought against the Yugoslav army. An interview with him presents 2 opposed ideological constructions and views on war and 20 years of Croatia’s independence.

Dystopian travel in near future is narrated in Lala Raščić’s storytelling video performance „The Damned Dam”. The plot, based on some real events, like the total panic that a radio drama caused in the Bosnian town of Lukavac in 2000, and on its fictional consequences, is told and performed with reminiscence of traditional epic poetry in Bosnia. But forget folklore, since the artists interpretation transforms traditional images and language into fantastic world of „heroes and fairs, love and dystopia, rivers and lakes, damns and factories, BiH and EU” evoked and told in the beautiful scenery of Lukavac, where it all began.

 Jasna Jakšić

The Other Reality: Croatian emerging painters

This generation of Croatian artists gave us a reason to start talking about painting again. They present their thoughts in a playful way, often supported by theoretical backgrounds, and hiding deeper and more complex meaning than it could be grasped at the first sight. While older generations focused their interests mostly on abstraction, both in motives of the paintings and motives for painting, today’s emerging painters play with the figuration and possibilities that allow them to create different worlds. 

The idea of showing the hidden or neglected queer history in order to put the present and the future in the rightful context is the focus of Helena Janecic’s works. In this series she paints women living in the rural conservative surroundings and doing everyday housework while being happily involved in a lesbian relationship. In a witty and engaging manner, Helena speaks about the life in a village and links it with a personal fantasy thus creating the connection between the fictional and the real world.
Dino Zrnec deals with the idea of the past more directly, reminding of the socialist era by posing in front projections showing old socialist factories; he paints the scenes in the airily, almost transparent manner to stress out the absence of one’s personal memory of such places. Nonetheless, his autobiographical approach, both in portraying himself and by sharing his personal memories, is more an adventure than seriously engaged political work.
As well as Dino, Mirna Kutlesa paints with an unusual lightness using a whole spectre of symbols in her paintings. Emphasizing that the world is a wildness which should be discovered and tamed, by putting the people in the wild she discovers her own way to show us the long forgotten but newly rediscovered human freedom.
Both Ivona Juric and Martina Grlic have a quiet introspective approach to painting. While in Ivona’s paintings that insight is amplified with the cycle called “A minute of silence in a day” where she paints trees and plants, the symbols of ever existing life, Martina paints scenes from everyday life happening during the moment of the detonation of an atomic bomb. And just as we are unaware of the quiet life that pulsates in plants, we are unaware of an explosion that sweeps the whole life leaving all in the misty dust.
Sebastijan Dracic thoughtfully uses various elements to create the specific atmosphere of a certain space, would it be interior or exterior, and often plays with the feeling of absence within the painting. This time, Sebastijan presents the old stories and human believes about the end of the world. By painting trees in a forest he actually talks about the life cycle, about the trees that regenerate, lost from sight in the group of many. Both him and Rene Bachrach Kristofic use literature, films, and music to conduct ideas from an abstract thought into a final work. Rene also deals with The End, looking on it from a very personal perspective. Almost sketch alike, he uses the different formats to create the polyptychs, and gives the viewer a choice, almost like a story with multiple endings, to navigate the work in its own way.
At first sight, Pavle Pavlovic uses fun and an easy-going approach to painting, playing with human figures and elements, which tell us some long-forgotten story or set us back to childhood. In spite of it, his painting approach is all but superficial; the concentration and the precision he uses to build those compositions give a touch of the real, making us believe that the story could be personally ours.

Maja Rozman

We are cordially inviting you to the opening of the first Croatian Biennale of Painting which will take place from the 3rd of November to the 3rd of December 2011 at the Home of Croatian Visual Artists. The opening of the exhibition will be on Thursday the 3rd of November at 8pm.

Croatian Association of Artists is a professional guild organization of visual artists in Croatia, which has decided to establish the first Croatian Biennale of Painting. We aim to evaluate Croatian painting scene as well position it within a European and global context. Namely, in Croatia we have witnessed an exceptional revival of painting, during last years as much as through the activities of middle generation of painters, as well through emersion of the youngest. At the Biennale, we will present the most interesting occurrences on the Croatian painting scene and give a framework for its theoretical reflection and reevaluation. Apart from presenting what is new in Croatian painting today each new instance of the Biennale will present relevant tendencies in painting in particular cities, regions and countries. This year we have invited a reputable British curator with a Berlin address, Mark Gisbourne, in order to select and present to the Croatian public what he considers most interesting in what is momentarily the freshest painting scene in the world. As a result of his selection in the Barrel Gallery, and as part of the Biennale of Painting, we will present eighteen of the most prominent Berlin based painters in an exhibition titled “I am a Berliner”.

Selected artists: Damir Babić, Jagor Bučan, Željka Cupek, Sebastijan Dračić, Fedor Fisher, Danko Friščić, Martina Grlić, Paulina Jazvić, Ivona Jurić, Koraljka Kovač, Mirna Kutleša, Lovro Lapuh, Ivan Latin, Gordana Meštrović, Davor Mezak, Zdravko Milić, Pavle Pavlović, Tanja Ravlić Čelić, David M. Shrem, Krunislav Stojanovski, Domagoj Sušac, Josip Tirić, Vanja Trobić, Ivan Tudek, Zlatan Vehabović, Anabel Zanze, Marko Zeman, Dino Zrnec

Invited artists: Lovro Artuković, Gordana Bakić, Boris Bučan, Duje Jurić, Zlatko Keser, Željko Kipke, Davor Krelja, Željko Lapuh, Ivica Malčić, Zoltan Novak, Igor Rončević, Đuro Seder, Bojan Šumonja, Matko Vekić, Zlatan Vrkljan

Mark Gisbourne’s selection: Martin Assig, Daniel Biesold, Norbert Bisky, Martin Borowski, Axel Geis, Valerie Favre, Katharina Grosse, Harald Hermann, Gregor Hildebrandt, Christian Hoischen, Michelle Jezierski, Ruprecht von Kaufmann, Clemens Krauss, Robert Lucander, Gerold Miller, Frank Nitsche, Peter Stauss, Miriam Vlaming

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The exhibition is kindly supported by the Croatian Ministry of Culture and the Goethe Institute in Zagreb.

Art in the name of… is a presentation of a newly established SIZ Gallery in a renowned space of the PM Gallery. The exhibition will open on the 26th of September 2011 at 8pm and will stay open until the 14th of October 2011.

The exhibition Art in the name of… presents artists from post-conceptual backgrounds whose works actively questions social, economical and political contexts in which they achieve communication. The title of the show suggests art that recognizes it’s affect as conditioned by the wider social, economical and linguistic context, as opposed to practices based on the idea of autonomy of the artwork and the strength of the artistic personality as the initiator of meaning. On the other hand, as stressed by the title of the show, critical practices are the result of the materialistic interrelationship, institutional frames as well as extra-institutional idioms which define their positions and strategies.

SIZ or the Self-managed interest community is an association of authors who are approaching the art market collectively.

Materialistically grounded in social reality, SIZ Gallery, has chosen to confront the problem of financing artistic practice on the ideal and practical level. Drawing from historical avant-garde, which has due to mostly ephemeral artistic practices experienced the dissolution of the concrete art object that can be marketed (to which the art market has continuously adapted) SIZ considers the economical exchange of artistic goods and questions new social frames that grow from modified economical models.

On the level of ideas, discussing the art market , SIZ defines itself through the economically discarded but artistically never more relevant model. Collective affiliation of equal individuals made in order to jointly approach the public and the market is the modus operandi as well as the associations name*. By emphasizing the collectivistic aspects of the organization, but without strictly outlining financial plans, SIZ, in all it’s potentiality to shift from the artistic to the economical sphere nevertheless stays an art project. A similar approach can be seen from the so called Agreement [Ugovor] drafted by Sanja Iveković and Dalibor Martinis who when suggesting the ways of regulating the relationship of artists and cultural institutions manifest specific artistic positions more than place a valid legal document that serves for extra artistic reasons. [Iva Kovač&Elvis Krstulović]

The exhibition includes works from: ABS, Milijana Babić, Tomislav Brajnović, Nemanja Cvijanović, Janez Janša, Janez Janša i Janez Janša, Siniša Labrović, Cesare Pietroiusti, Oliver Ressler i Slaven Tolj

* Self-managed interest community were collectives gathered on economical basis in order to stand jointly and strengthen their position inside the Yugoslav planned economy. The artist and curator, Nemanja Cvijanović, established SIZ Gallery in 2009 in order to apply the principles of organization of the ‘productive classes’ to the developing concept of the ‘creative classes’. Artists, design groups and an NGO constituting SIZ are ABS, Art Fun Club, Milijana Babić, Tomislav Brajnović, Nemanja Cvijanović, Drugo more, Igor Grubić, Janez Janša, Janez Janša and Janez Janša, Iva Kovač, Elvis Krstulović, Siniša Labrović, Cesare Pietroiusti, Oliver Ressler, ŠKART i Slaven Tolj.

Announces

THE ANNUAL CONTEST FOR EXHIBITING IN 2012 IS PROLONGED UNTIL 10th June 2011

PM Gallery, Karas Gallery, Barrel Gallery and Ring Gallery

• THE APPLICATION CAN INCLUDE:
• - exhibition proposals
• - educational projects
• - international programs, inter-institutional and regional collaborations
• THE APPLICATION MUST CONTAIN:
• − cover letter
• − title of the program, brief description of the program/project, gallery selection, information about the applicant or group exhibiting (CV, catalogues), goals, phases of project realization / Please fill out the application
• − for international, inter-institutional and regional collaborations: list of participating countries and written proof of collaboration/ if the application is for an exhibition the applicant must fill the application and provide all the material requested for visualizing the exhibit and sketches of the installation within the space. Floorplans of the gallery spaces can be downloaded: Barel Gallery, Karas Gallery, PM Gallery, Ring Gallery
• - photographs/sketches of the proposed project/printed or on CD - (resolution 2400 x 1600 pixels in JPG or TIFF format)
§ video in DVD PAL format. The DVD must be able to work on standard DVD player
§ Sound work must be on audio CD. The CD must work on standard CD player. Please make sure that the CD and DVD is functioning. In case of malfunction the application will not be considered.

INCOMPLETE APPLICATIONS WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED.

Application material must be picked up within 30 days of the announcement of the results.  The results can be found on the HDLU web page (www.hdlu.hr). After 30 day deadline, HDLU is no longer responsible for the work. HDLU will not return work by mail. HDLU reserves the right to use the application as promotional material of the yearly program in all types of media, catalogues, invites and web and facebook pages of HDLU.

DEADLINE FOR APPLICANTIONS IS  10.06.2011. (postdated)

• Applicantions can be delivered by hand (workdays from 9-13 oclock)
• address: Tajništvo HDLU, Trg žrtava fašizma bb, 10000 Zagreb
e
• or by mail labeled: GALLERY PROGRAM 2012
• or by e-mail:
 info@hdlu.hr

HR

First collaboration between Croatian Association of Artists and the National Association of Painters Ukraine will start with the exhibition Draw!ng Outline.

The exhibition will be on view from 5th to 15th May 2011 at the National Association of Painters Ukraine.

Our fist collaboration will start by representing seven young artists from Croatia who in their work reference drawing.

While listening to the sound of scratching we cannot easily identify its source. Likewise, in “The War of the Worlds,” the same sound could represent everything from the static of a radio transmission to the landing of aliens—it becomes audibly embodied in a piece of drawing paper through the act of drawing. Maja Rožman does not reveal the visual result of the recorded action; rather, she inspires the drawing process. In response to this stimulus, we are compelled to present this overview of young Croatian authors who in their work, approach the medium of drawing.

Ines Matijević documents certain details among the ruins of the still unrenovated “Tito’s Castle,” which testifies to collapsed social order and the neglect of heritage. The drawing is predictably marking (instead of substituting) reality by negating the referent. However, in this case we also see a photograph on which the same drawing covers what it represents—it positions itself as a document regardless of the inability to verify.

Culture is built through and based on the concepts of choice and rejection. Anonymity is the majority’s destiny. Dino Zrnec presents the monograph of the art collective “Zemlja” [Land], which in the 1930’s searched for the “Balkan mountain genius” as the last hope for the apathetic European culture. The anonymity sought by the group discloses itself through canonization in historical art narrative. It is identical to the very narrative it absolves by emphasizing ‘some’ and forgetting ‘others’ as is the practice in cases which are not striving to reach such high ideals.

A decoration, amulet or sign of belonging; an awkwardly drawn image of a naked woman on the father’s hand, Božidar Katić appropriates and transposes onto his own body. The sexual motif becomes the center around which a personal history extricates itself, implying questions of memory and tradition rather than sexuality, even though it is placed on the body and represents a body.

Sexuality, which does not aspire to be elaborate, manifests itself in its variations. The gender of the author becomes crucial in understanding and interpretating the work. Helena Janečić, by adopting the language and the codes of comic books, talks about sexuality wherein the gender roles are based upon stereotypes, while the sexual roles are inverted with regard to the dominant culture. Miron Milić by over exaggerating heterosexual fantasies uncovers their counterparts through emancipated female sexuality.

When drawing, Marko Tadić constructs whimsical narratives which are usually presented through the medium of animation, and are dominated by the sound of old radio dramas. By appropriating the sound of famous radio drama, the plot reveals itself through a séance with an intermediary spirit, who unravels the mystery before our eyes with the help of a black Ouija board, a standard requisite of such events.

• Five more days of artOmat!
• Trg žrtava fašizma bb
• 10000 Zagreb

• 10. - 24.12.
• work days 2 i 9 pm
• weekend 12 i 7 pm
• *Entrance to the fair is free of charge!
• **Donation to the DJ’s for the Total DJ Night is 10 Kn
• ***Participation on each workshop is 100 Kn per participant to cover the costs of organization and management of the workshop.

Program Workshops, Events and Music

• 21.12. Tuesday
• 14.00 - 19.00 / Collage workshop in all its forms and various possibilities with Josip Ivančić - Pino
• 15:30 - 17:00 / From Kitch to Art, AntiMuseum and collaborators - Vladimir Dodig Trokut - lecture
• 19:45 - 21:00 / Licitation - expert selection of objects from the collection of the AntiMuseum of Vladimira Dodig Trokuta i collaborators

• 22.12. Wednesday
• 17.00 - 20.30 / Beneficiary Art Auction - with Mario Kovač, DJ Mario Kovač & Wine Tasting
• 17.00 / concert - Borna Šercar
• 20.30. / Krešimir Tadija Kapulica - Life is Great

• 23.12. Thursday
• 14.00 - 17.00 / Pompons - wool balls workshop in pompom making with Ivana Vulić
• 18.00 - 24.00 / Total DJ Night - Howconvinient, DJ Ivna, DJ D-gree

• 24.12. Friday
• 14. 00 - 19.00 / Closing day - DJ Mario Kovač
• 17:00 - 18:30 / Dejan Kljun “Auction” / Barel Gallery

• 26th October - 2nd November 2010
• 26th October 2010 at 7pm exhibition opening
• 27th October 2010 at 5pm video screening and conversation with the artist

We are inviting you to the exhibition opening “This is not Walking, it’s a Getaway” of Ana Hoffner, Austrian artist of Serbian descent. The exhibition will open on 26th October 2010 at 7pm. On the 27th October 2010 at 5pm we are organizing a screening event and a conversation with the artist.

View the video announcement on Vimeo !

Ana Hoffner in her performative work “Was ist Kunst?” reveals the genealogy of the contemporary art phenomenon, the lecture performance, that she herself extensively utilizes even prior to revealing it’s origin. Paraphrasing the artist, lecture performance emerges as a medium resolving the insufficiency of the personal/biographical as the sole element of artistic/performing expression by adding research to personal confessions. The amalgam that emerges possesses the legitimacy of a scientific work and thus fits better the contemporary, capitalist mode of production. Ana employs this method in all four works exhibited at the “This is not Walking, it’s a Getaway” exhibition in the PM Gallery. Thereby, other than using the strategies of reenactment to quote historical performances, she quotes her own work and thus perpetuates the present moment.

By titling most of her work according to the originals she is paraphrasing: “I’m too sad to tell you, Bosnian Girl!”, “Was ist Kunst - a Product of Circumstances?”, “Movement, Privatized”, “Transitional Europe”, Ana assures us, using theoretical discourse, that we are mere viewers which nothing, apart from prior experience of her work, could prepare us for the intensity that follows.

Differentiating performative practices and performativity, Ana draws from early performances by approaching the public as an emancipated object who by speaking becomes a subject. But she is not a benign Western subject as Bruce Nauman is, who presents the civilized resistance to heronormativity of his times. Ana strategically represents the aggressive subject of the East who bites, smacks, purposely endangering itself and others. Thorough substantial analysis, the political and emotional tension intensifies culminating in Dr. Jackleys transformation to Mr. Hyde. Ana takes up the role of the notorious East who, as she exemplifies, disappears from the political discourse with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, but does not disappeare from the minds of the people, even those who never confess.

Ana’s work is reflexive but not didactical since she omits many of the links which revel her thought flow and therefore implies understanding or withdraws from communication. Utilizing existing artworks as her material, Ana presents herself not only as an artist but also takes up the role of an art critic and social critic. (Iva Kovač / curator)

Exhibition opening

MEDIA-SCAPE, Zagreb 2010

www.media-scape.info

“The Year we Make Contact”

20 Years of Media-Scape (dedicated to Pierre Schaeffer*)

© Sibylle Hoessler - photo series „SEQUITUR: to be continued“

Program:

Events consists of  exhibition, concerts, performances, screenings

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Exhibition, Croatian Association of Artists (HDLU), Zagreb

09. - 29. October

08. October 6 p.m. opening with performance

28. October 6 p.m. video Screenings

29. October 20 p.m. closing with performance

Screenings, Media Facade of Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

www.msu.hr

08. - 10. October, 19 p.m.

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Concerts, Gorgona Theatre at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

www.msu.hr

08. - 10. October, 19 p.m.

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Curators and Organizers: Heiko Daxl and Ingeborg Fülepp GbR, Media in Motion - Berlin / Zagreb, www.mediainmotion.de

Concert Curators and Organizers:

Nikša Gligo, Seadeta Midžić, Daniel Teruggi, Dalibor Davidović

Film Program: Jacqueline Schaeffer

Partner Event:

International Conference: „Pierre Schaeffer: MediArt“, Rijeka, October 6th- 7th, 2010, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka

www.mmsu.hr

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© Dieter Jung - hologram “Fedestahl”

© Enes Midzić - mobile photo portrait from Pierre Schaeffer “Portrait ’71″

Participants: Exhibition

Vladimir Bonačić, Andy Cameron (GB), Paulo Chagas (BR/USA); Costantino Ciervo (I/D), Miro Cimerman (HR/D), Heiko Daxl (D), Dunja Donassy (HR/D), Alen Floričić (HR), Darko Fritz (HR/NL), Ingeborg Fülepp (HR/D), Dieter Jung (D), Thomas Gerwin (D), Giulia Gianola (I), Sibylle Hoessler (D), Malcolm Le Grice (GB), Timo Kahlen (D), Zlatko Keser (HR), Hans Peter Kuhn (D), Lynn Lukkas (USA),  Antal Lux (H/D), Mia Makela (FIN), Dalibor Martinis (HR), Enes Midžić (HR), Magdalena Pederin (HR), Ivan Picelj (HR), Ulrich Polster (D), Nika Radić (HR/A), Jakob Schaible (D), Christina Scherrer (D), Goran [kofić (HR), Jan-Peter E. R. Sonntag (D), Wolfgang Spahn (A/D), Henry Stag (D/HR), Maren Strack (D), Yukihiro Taguchi (J), Tobias Trutwin (D), Branka Uzur (AUS/HR), Armin Wagner (A)

Participants: Performances

Maren Strack (D), Junko Wada (J/D)

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Concerts with the music by: François Bayle, Michel Chion, Frano Djurovic, Silvio Foretić- Janko Jezovsek, Pierre Henry, Ivo Malec, Bernard Parmegiani, Pierre Schaeffer, Daniel Teruggi, Christian Zanési

Financial Support and Sponzos:

Ministarstvo kulture Republike Hrvatske; Gradski ured za obrazovanje, kulturu i šport - Zagreb; British Council of Croatia; Directors Lounge, Berlin; EUNIC - European Union National Institutes for Culture; European Commission, DG Education and Culture, Culture Programme 2007 - 2013; Hrvatsko društvo likovnih umjetnika (HDLU), Zagreb; IFA - Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart; INA - Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, Paris; Institut Français de Zagreb; Instituto Italiano di Cultura Zagreb; Koncertna direkcija Zagreb; Le Groupe de Recherches Musicales; Media in Motion, Berlin/Zagreb; Muzej suvremene umjetnosti, Zagreb; Muzej moderne i suvremene umjetnost Rijeka; Österreichisches Kulturforum, Zagreb; SakamotoContemporary Berlin, Sound of Cities, Berlin; Strictly Berlin; X-OP.eu: eXchange of Art Operators and Producers

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*“Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995) is considered one of the most influential experimental, electroacustic and subsequently electronic musicians, having been the first composer to utilize a number of contemporary recording and sampling techniques that are now used worldwide by nearly all record production companies“. (from Wikipedia)

His almost unknown works on the interaction between sound and image will be presented in Media-Scape in a wider context. 2010

WHAT IS MEDIA-SCAPE?

Media-Scape is as a set of exhibitions, performances, concerts, actions, film/video programs and symposia bringing together international and Croatian artists in the context of media art. Media-Scape is open to a dialogue between public, artists, curators and theoreticians. It has always been the driving spindle and elixir of avant-garde art to condense intellectual trends, social developments and technical innovations into an up-to-date interpretation of reality. Media-Scape focuses critically on these developments, their pre-history and their future perspectives. The concept of current trends, historical passage and future visions are presented through exhibitions, performances, concerts, lectures, film and video screenings.

Media-Scape marks the necessity of a human-shaped media-landscape to present concepts, ideas and artistic reflections in the discipline of media art. Other than curators who are first writing concepts and than looking for the artists fitting into their ideas, Media-Scape looks first for the works of art and personalities who are searching for the new expressions of the media art language. In its exhibitions, Media-Scape aims to have a point of view on the arts, where the space and objects have a dialogue within itself. Media-Scape stays on the traditional paths of video installations as sculptures, as objects or as part of environment, of video-stage, performance act or concert of new music.

Held in reference to the historically pivotal Croatian important art movements such as EXAT 51 in the fifties, NT (Nove tendencije) in the sixties and symposia “Dialogue with the Machine” (Zagreb 1969) and “Television Today” (Zagreb 1972) and Music Bienale in Zagreb (since 1959) and in coalescence with the important contributory role Zagreb has made to the avant-garde of visual arts music.

Media-Scape was founded in Zagreb in May 1991 during the international CAD forum (symposium for architecture and design) by Heiko Daxl, Ingeborg Fülepp, Bojan Baletić and Malcolm Le Grice.

Media-artists and theoreticians came together for the first time to discuss the role of new media in their artistic work and the need for a continuing dialogue. Out of this came the idea of what is today called Media-Scape.

“During the 1990s, years of war and transition, the Croatian artistic production stagnated, with the exception of the continual tradition of video art. Given the right-wing (retrograde and traditionally bound) official cultural policy, the presentations of foreign media art became rare and the scarce work of Croatian media art was the product of individual enthusiasm without the support of institutions; it was mostly done abroad. The only people who continually exhibited media art were Media in Motion (Heiko Daxl and Ingeborg Fulepp), who have since 1991 been organizing Media-Scape - the annual exhibition and symposium on media art.” (Darko Fritz “A brief overview of media art in Croatia “)

Due to the war situation in Croatia, it took a year to organize the first Media-Scape. From 1993 to 1999 Media-Scape was held regularly every year in Zagreb but often on different locations.

In 2006 Together with Jerica Ziherl, art historian, director and curator of the Gallery RIGO and

Museum Lapidarium and recently director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, and Nikša Gligo, member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts and professor at the Music Academy of Zagreb University, in the past one of the most prominent organizers in the best year of Music Biennale in Zagreb, decided to continue Media-Scape in a small but, reach with cultural history, city of Novigrad/Cittanova. The concept remained the same; only that Media-Scape became more oriented to the communication between participants and a local public. Nevertheless, as Media-Scape was organized on the end of touristic season, many other visitors came to see exhibition or attend to the symposia, performance or screenings.

THE SUBJECT BETWEEN TRADITIONS AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY

by Heiko Daxl

“The cult of info-underestimates the role of experience and pre-existing knowledge in the processing and generation of new knowledge.” Jules Marshall in Mediamatic

Our present time evokes more and more the necessity to reflect terms of tradition. It would be

ridiculous and fatal to abandoned these terms and with them the tradition, but it would be even more naive to escape by redefinition. To follow them without being critical is in most cases also impossible.

Events that follow each other are not independent from each other. Events of the past are so to speak the cause of events in the future. Time has a direction and absorbs everything what happens. The sense of sequel is a result from inter linkage of events in direction of new events, but must not be necessarily in a linear causality. Causality probably just exist as individual experience. The past is seem as the fact, as unchangeable. The future on the hand has the potential possibility of realisation.

Events in the future are open and are characterised by not yet know or experiences facts.

“Aboriginals, when tracing a songline in the sand, will draw a series of lines with circles in between.

The line represents a stage in the Ancestor’s journey. Each circle is a ’stop’, ‘waterhole’, or one of the Ancestor’s campsites.” (Bruce Chatwin: The Songlines) If events are facts at every time, there is in principle just the possibility to explore the undiscovered and to open it for our consciousness. This actual creates nothing new, but it links facts in a different way. Does is not give the chance for free structure, for conception and creation in the very sense of the word? We know today, that we are not observing the world in an objective way, but that we always part of the observation.

The determining linear principle of classical causality does not help anymore to achieve and

understand our present word. It is more replaced by a non-linear autopoetic philosophy. This new systems of thinking get and keep their identify, even when their components are constantly changing or interlining. There is no sufficient explanation by talking is as a mechanistic function of its parts.

“The function of an autopoetic awareness is the observing and listening of the reality, to rethink it in the mirror of the mental repertoire are recombine it by internal plans and imaginations. So conceptions of the word and cultures can progress, e.g. reflections of internal conceptions in which me move and act.

‘We’ are the human society, that was on one hand created by ourselves, bur on the other hand is integrating us in its network. by creating our culture we are creating our conditions as well and in the and the structure of our future.” (Ronald Fischer)

Gradually the sciences are transforming the conventional view on our universe into a complex system of interdependencies, which is not only beyond the general understanding and description, but is rattling the basic of the absolute proof of mathematics and physics. Random, chance, dynamic erratic developments, instability or quite generally the dissolve from order to chaos are the synonyms for this confusion, a kind of Heisenberg’s “relation of the unsharp” of causality. We have reached today the situation that our world is like gigantic laboratory, more uncontrolled than controlled.

In a world, accelerated by means or transportation and media, our ability of absorbing sensory impressions has also been accelerated, but we can even state today, that media is still following the constructions of images that were developed already in the older techniques. obviously the technological evolution is similar to the biological; that as a rule - even if the opposite is proclaimed - nothing news is developed from nothing, but that new constructions are always build on the foundations of the old. Perception is the verification of pre-dreamed hypothesis. We are looking for so much order, that the word does appear senseless and for so much chance that is does appear boring.

A new mode of creativity is shaping its form. This mode is a transversal one, because it is operating between the faculties and categories. through navigation and inter linkage it is on the way to new forms and views. Perception is the verification of pre-dreamed hypothesis. We are looking for so much order, that the world does appear senseless and for so much chance that it does appear boring. A new mode of creativity is chapping its form. This mode is a transversal one, because it is operating between the faculties and categories. through navigation and inter linkage it is on the way to new forms and views.

“It might happen for example that someone, who is used work transversal, is understanding the ‘ratio ascend’ of our presents society much deeper, than by studying for years sociological, culturediagnostically or philosophical writings. And that he might get through this interdisciplinary view to a solution of an old philosophical problem of our century, the problem, how highly different rationality’s - this difference is defining the dynamics of modern times - are connected, how today in a diversity of rationality reason is still possible.” (Wolfgang Welsch). This complex confusion a challenge and a change to achieve new perspectives in a time of staggering definitions.

What we can learn from tradition is the richness in the multiplicity of the regional and individual, the suspension of norms and standards by a global dogmatism to avoid an alienation from future experiences. We should let traditions act on us; we should take time that they can echo in rethinking.

What we should add is our hope and our engagement in a peaceful but discursive side by with the inherent possibility of a more human shaped future. The future lies in the open communication, the pollywog of traditions. Every individual can proof here his competency. It is not the field for teams, parties or groups in political, diplomacy, economic, media and culture, that even want to tell us, how an apple should look like. It is the task of the individual to look around, to experience and to accept advises from time to time, to re-focus for transparency. Because a belief in the development of history that follows a logic, does not anymore correlate with the facts.

“Information is a difference that makes difference” (Gregory Bateson) and not a endless recognition of the eversame patterns.