Collaboration between UrbanFestival 13 and CultureShock festival, Križevci

The intervention “Križevčanka” is a comment on the processes that shape the present-day town of Križevci. The title refers directly to the name of the renowned factory, which was extinguished in the process of privatization together with the other factories that formerly defined this industrial town. The starting point of this artistic intervention has been taken from the women’s history of Križevci (as “Križevčanka” also means “a woman from Križevci”), which mentions Magda Herucina, a woman who managed, owing to a political decision of the empress, to avoid being executed in the framework of a systemic persecution, subjugation, and dispossession of women. Who are the modern women of Križevci, and where are they – the Magdas of today? What are the contemporary mechanisms that deprive them of their social and economic rights, taking away their common property and common spaces in this new round of dispossession? These are the questions that we seek to answer by resorting to the urban space of Križevci. Every town has its own “Križevčanka”, every downfall is masked by a renewal: thus, the deindustrialization is accompanied by the so-called embellishment of the main square of Križevci, which has literally slayed any potential for producing the common in that space.

Watch the video here!