Programme
Martin Krenn
Austria
MONUMENT FOR A JUST CITY
in cooperation with:
Sonja Lebos, Marija Lopac, Dina Roncevic, Sonja Soldo, Vesna Vukovic
a social sculpture
10 May 2008 at 12am
Marshal Tito Square 
Martin Krenn's works explore the socio-political field. 
Conducting projects in a non-hierarchical and process-based manner, communal development of strategies and dealing with institutional and critical art practices are important presumptions of his practice. During research process which he develops with individuals and groups an exchange between his artistic and other positions takes place.
During his research residence in Zagreb Martin Krenn has held a three-day workshop in which an answer to the theme of this year's festival was sought collectively in conversations about the social situation. The result is an action: the erection of a Monument that demands a Just City.
The public is invited to participate in building a monument out of beverage industry waste - used plastic bottles. In developed countries, the beverage industry usually bears the expense of managing packaging waste while in Croatia the introduction of the Regulation on Packaging and Packaging Waste has simply resulted in a jump in the prices of these products. Following the introduction of the deposit system in 2006 according to this regulation, 
dumpstering the waste provides the income of the increasing number of inhabitants of the city living in poverty. The deposit system has made the ever deepening social division visible, a division that defines the movement of particular citizens and the general choreography of their everyday life.
The monument is raised as a symbolic gesture of critique towards the governing politics that ignore this situation.
Martin Krenn studied electronic music and applied art at the University of Vienna, where today he is a lecturer (at the University of Applied Arts). Since 2006 he has been the president of Austrian Artists' Union - IG Bildende Kunst. In his artistic work, Martin Krenn explores and probes socio-political subjects, focusing on strategies and methods of resistance to the governing relations of power. In this, he makes use of different media, mainly photography, video and internet and realizes his projects in the form of expositions (moving from the position of artist-participant, to that of curator), web, and interventions in public space.