Programme
LABORATORY EXERCISES 1
students of Academy of Fine Arts:
Margareta Dragicevic
Irena Kraljic
Anita Kuharic
Petra Ladovic
Ana-Marija Pacek
Predrag Pavic
Nevena Pilizota
Matea Sabic
Vlatka Skoro
Sanja Tarandek
Iva Tomac
Irena Topic
Ivan Valusek
Martina Vrbanic
Ana Zubak
7 - 15 May 2008
various city locations 
In cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, as part of the Academy as Laboratory project, a call was circulated to all students interested in participating. The suggestions and ideas around the subject of 'How we regret' were discussed during collective meetings, and Laboratory Exercises 1 are the result of this process. 15 students have tried their hand at different formats, from installations to urban interventions.
Margareta Dragicevic
3rd year, educational specialisation
installation
Lovacki rog passage
Photographs are hanged in a commercial passage, photographs of old parts of Zagreb that no longer exist, where new buildings, spaces, parking lots, shopping centres have been built, as well as images of reconstructions of certain parts, as a peek from the past into the future, that is, from a present that could become a nostalgic past. The chosen location - a passage - symbolises a return into the past, a time-gate, and the seclusion of the place offers the observer a discrete access.
Irena Kraljic
2nd year, sculpture
installation
Tram station on Frankopanska street, Tkalciceva street, Medvedgradska street, the Savska and Vodnikova crossing, Bogoviceva street, in front of Avenue Mall main entrance, in front of the entrance into the Importanne Centre, in front of the entrance into the Importanne Gallery, Ban J. Jelacic Square
Sculpture of the city covered with a white sheet bearing the words THE CITY IS DEAD. The sheets here symbolise the deceased city. Expansion and sudden growth are turning Zagreb into a large and cold city without an identity. Thousands of lost souls rush to and from work every day, time overtaking them in their race for money, and thus thousands of "citizens" live their lives somewhere in between office, tram and market...
Anita Kuharic
4th year, painting
WHEN WE HAVE, WE REGRET, WHEN WE HAVE NOT, WE REGRET
installation
Britanski Square
The quantities of sweet, liquid and potable waters that life in this world depends upon are limited, and Earth's population getting more numerous. The number of clear and clean over- and underground rivers, springs from which we draw water for life, diminishes day in day out, the water becoming ever more polluted. A chair is placed beside the water-pump and on it an empty glass. The work should prompt us to rethink this problem and, by a simple act of drinking, bring awareness to the individual as a participant in this negative development.
Petra Ladovic
3rd year, educational specialisation
intervention
various locations
Posters - collages, composed of statements by people of all generations expressing regret for the disappearance of the railway connecting Zagreb and Samobor, are placed on railway stations and parts of the route that Samoborcek used to travel. "We used the old Samoborcek a lot. It did get cold on the train sometimes. Still, this train was very important to us, people from Samobor Or "When cars were rare, and there was no television and similar trifles, the little train became the symbol of a Sunday out for many of Zagreb's purgers." Nostalgic pensioners associate the train with their childhoods, generations of students and adolescents express doubt, worry and mistrust towards the civic authorities who always make new promises of rebuilding the railway. Like a part of some common past, but also of a promised future, the story of the train leaves no-one indifferent.
Ana-Marija Pacek
year, educational specialisation
A CAPSULE OF FRESH AIR
installation
Kaptol Centre
Shopping centres are central spaces of city life, main attractions, and as such, they are often places of hurry. The work is an interactive installation which invites passers-by to 'dive' into the construction, and thus literally reach for fresh air inside the capsule, to pause and to breathe in.
Predrag Pavic
3rd year, educational specialisation
WAITING FOR THE OPPONENT
installation
park in front Academy of Fine Arts, Jabukovac
Around a sculpture representing Pablo Picasso, a boxing ring is placed, on which we read: sorry for the postmodernism. The ring symbolises an art-arena, which, in this installation, bears on its edges, like on the margins of the art-world, an apology. With this act of apologising, and by inserting the word 'postmodernism', I parody certain persons and phenomena I'm surrounded with, and the apology is sent out in their name.
Nevena Pilizota
2nd year, painting
NEXUS
poster action
various locations
As a variant of keeping records of the contents of the Official Gazette, in public space posters become an object of perception, a means of direct informal contact an individual has with formal structures. Unlike with "ordinary" posters, the recipients of the contents of "publicly-personal" Official Gazette undoubtedly form a part of this reality, reified on recycled paper - it is they who give it corporeality which the lawgiver's animus enters.
Matea Sabic
4th year, department of animation and new media
TEXTING
poetic action
11 May 2008 at 5pm
the Sava embankment
I leave connecting threads that gather words from being scattered/lost in space, marking a junction, a passage (between the worlds), a focused place of needing contact. I address a friend who died a year ago. I send him a text message. He was a seafarer, so texting was often our means of exchanging thoughts and actions. I impress the act into the material of the world, as if thoughts addressed to someone thus became more real, louder, clearer, as if they will be heard, sought, met, seen.
Vlatka Skoro
3rd year, sculpture
MAN WASHES FEET IN WASHBASIN / A DRUNK
actions
13 and 14 May 2008 / 10am - 2pm and 8pm - 10pm
Ilica - Ban Jelacic Square / bars in city centre
The initial idea is that of continually changing the space where sculptures will be exposed. With the sculpture "Man Washes Feet in Washbasin" in tow, the author starts from the Academy to the main square, where the sculpture is being placed beneath the Jelacic's statue. With the sculpture "A Drunk", the author makes a tour around several coffee shops in the city in search for a reaction, she drinks and grieves asking everyone to join them in regretting man's lethargic spirit.
Sanja Tarandek
3rd year, educational specialisation
RED CARPET
intervention
Splavnica / Dolac market
The red carpet stretches along the main stairway leading up to the Dolac open market. As a symbol of prestige, here the red carpet is spread out for the 'ordinary' people, the heroes of everyday surviving...
Iva Tomac
3rd year, sculpture
A LONELY CORNER FOR REGRETTING, WHICH IT ISN'T
installation
Kaptol Centre
"A veil as a symbol of isolation from the rest of the world and summing up one's life internally, aimed at making a distance from excessive pathos, clashing on the other side with total ignorance and with a need to desecrate privacy."
Irena Topic
1st year, educational specialisation
poster action
various locations
With this work, I wish to point to the social differences in society today, to sights I notice more and more every day as I wander the streets. On the one hand, people constantly buying new things, there are more and more shopping-centres, though still "not enough", and on the other hand there are more and more people in a poor financial state, who we see digging through garbage to earn a couple kunas selling bottles. Posters-collages seek to inspire thought on the growing social differences and the poverty that is becoming ever more present, and to express regret for such a social development and our incapability to make a change.
Ivan Valusek
3rd year, sculpture
installation
Roosevelt Square
A relief will be placed in front of the Mimara museum. The work is based on the relation between man and nature. The measure of man's destruction of nature will be the measure of nature's destruction of man. Amorphous forms represent the possibility that nature may fiercely react to some of the changes that humans provoke.
Martina Vrbanic
graduate, painting
FOUNTAIN
action
7 May 2008 at 10am, 9 May 2008 at 11am, 11 May 2008 at 12am
Mandusevac, Zrinjevac, Zrtava fasizma Square
The work is based on play and examination related to flows of motion, causes and effects. This game with boats is outcomes left over to chance, and it points to struggle and surrendering to flows, natural as well as unnatural. Paper boats represent our cruise through life, hopes or regrets for the way our city sails, that is for the way people live in it, how they follow or do not follow new circumstances, changes, how we sail all together into the new time of joining European standards. The action will be photographically documented, and will subsequently be presented in the form of a maquette.
Ana Zubak
3rd year educational specialisation
FRAGMENTS OF (NON)EXISTENCE
intervention
restaurant window at the National University Library
The work is based on the reconstruction of fragments from the author's life. Starting from autobiographical elements, situated in the neighbourhood where the author spent most of her life, the work branches in two directions, towards real and unreal memories. It aims at an account of the past, as a visible and tangible present, notwithstanding its truthfulness or falsity.
Locations
In Croatian only!
