Green Action, Frankopanska 1, the bicycle repair shop

Dear friends of UrbanFestival,

We invite you to a presentation of video/audio works and video documentation from last year’s UrbanFestival which thematically dealt with surveillance and social control in public space.

The program includes:

UrbanFestival X, Ivan Slipčević

Power Tower, Verica Kovačevska

Wake up! Upper Town, Grupa 4

Marking,  Siniša Labrović

Musical railing, Davor Sanvincenti

Watching is not enough, Nives Sertić i Sonja Pregrad

The charming Master of Ceremony will be Siniša Labrović, and after the projections a social gathering with drink and music will follow in the bicycle repair shop at the Green Action space who, for this occassion have reformed the ARCHIsquad – the guerrilla team for socially engaged architecture. This is a fantastic opportunity for creating a habit of coming because this marks the beginning of the series of events in the Green Action space in Frankopanska 1 organised by BLOK.
We look forward to seeing you,

Yours, [BLOK]

During May and June artists will realise individual projects, while the festival program in October will, through a series of discursive, presentational and performative units open a public discussion about the specific aspects of themes as well as the works produced.
We want to direct attention both to the skyscrapers built before the 1990s which have greatly defined city urbanism and the way in which citizens perceive and use the city, and which have today in large part lost their public character, as well as the skyscrapers built in the last ten years that are, as previously mentioned, a result of the capitulation of urban planning and political and legal support to large capital. The paradigmatic example of the former group is the Ilica skyscraper, which, aside from losing all of its architectural and artistic values of modernism in the renovation conducted without regard for any instructions and opinions of the profession, no longer offers the public a possibility of a view from the vista on the 16th floor. Even though the space was open for a long period of time to the public, the restaurant that operated on the top floor, according to the already new and implemented projects and logic of private investment, was open only to selected guests, and after its closure the space is completely inaccessible. It is unacceptable that private interests deny the public access to what is inalienably theirs – cultural heritage, memory, space, a view… An equally bad example of such a relationship towards public space and property is the Hoto Tower project built in 2004 in Savska, which, with its private access ramp, takes away from the pedestrian space. Moreover, whilst in the process of being built, the Hoto Tower requested additional permission to increase its original construction plan by almost half of the planned storeys, through which it exceeded its allowed construction space several times over. Like most Zagreb skyscrapers, the Hoto Tower also has a roof terrace, although it is intended solely for exclusive events like banquets or elite parties.

APOTHEOSIS OF THE SKYSCRAPER by Srećko Horvat. Essay on tower and skyscrapers building as a symptomatic indication of the state of our society. First published in Oris, magazine for architecture and culture, nr. 31, 2005, 16-31. An extended version published in Znakovi postmodernog grada. Semiologija urbanizma / Signs of the Postmodern City. Semiotics of Urbanism, Naklada Jesenski i Turk, Zagreb, 2007.

If there is in us a germ of great disease, oversensitivity, the source of our incurable and uncontemporary Hamletisms is in the fatal bizarreness of that place …

A.G. Matoš about Upper Town, 1905, At Home

On the hundredth anniversary of Matoš’s location of our Hamletisms in Upper Town, the Government of the Republic of Croatia passed a law prohibiting public gathering of St. Mark’s Square, achieving in that way a double castration of Upper Town urban space: on the urbanistic-architectural level, the function of a square was replaced by the function of an inner courtyard of a city palace, and on the social-political level the foundations of democracy themselves were brought into question. Like a rash on the skin of a sick body, over 50 surveillance cameras are the contemporary symptom of fatal bizarreness.[1]

Accepting that we are powerless in solving the problem of Upper Town – by moving the Government and the Parliament – we decided to put the “no” into brackets and rethink how artistic and cultural practices can work in the existing situation, in a space of with daily[2] prohibitions, the source of whose contradictions[3] is difficult to locate.

As opposed to optimism of Mogućnosti ’71 (Possibilities ’71)[4], we chose ambivalence: it stems from the concrete work on the festival and the context of time and place. This year’s program is at the same time a result of successful cooperations, realizations of ideas, making changes and opening closed doors, as well as the impossibility of communication, giving up, changing of original ideas and fruitless attempts. All of the Festival’s projects are tied to specific places, reacting to their problematic functions. A part of them starts from the impossibility of a place to function according to the needs and rights of citizens, searching for brackets for the negative prefix in actions/installations which introduce new ways of using space, and a part of them boldly starts with an assumption about the possibility of action, suggesting scenarios for direct, sometimes provocative, confrontation with the surveillance system. Their “no” is present latently, as a potential result of the performance itself and the reactions of the audience and the public.

Instead of the fruitless Hamletisms, we accept the ambivalence of (im)possibility and base concrete action on the tension it generates.

[1] Upper Town as a central space of political power and numerous cultural institutions is simultaneously a source of surveillance and a space where surveillance exhibits its effects. That dispersive and decentralized surveillance and control mechanism branches into all directions, like a rhizome, by which, consciously or not, it conceals its visibility.

[2] Example 1: a policeman asking citizens not to sit on St. Mark’s square under the excuse that they can block the traffic of Parliament vehicles
Example 2: an employee of a security company not allowing entrance into the courtyard of Jelačić Palace, owned by a public city institution, The Zagreb City Museum

[3] Example1: despite it functions largely as a residential zone, despite the educational institutions and a high concentration of museums and other cultural institutions, the desolation of Upper Town is disturbed only by sporadic groups of foreign tourists
Example 2: to solve the parking problem, a garage on Tuškanac has been built and the parking on St. Mark’s square prohibited. However, Government and Parliament vehicles are still parked there and the surrounding streets, squares and inner courtyards are clogged by cars

[4] One of the first manifestations of contemporary artistic practice in a public space, organized in Upper Town by The Contemporary Art Museum, which had been located there until 2009

Since its first edition in 2001 UrbanFestival deals with the questions of public space and the public in the widest sense through its thematic focuses and specific organizational forms. In the social climate of increasing privatization of public space, social atomization and a very intimate and individual consummation, it seems very important to keep opening and maintaining spaces of collective consummation, with the active participation of the wide audience and public. The program is regularly realized in public city spaces: streets, squares, parks, shopping malls, traffic infrastructure…, with the intention to broaden the territory of action outside the protecting walls of galleries and theatres, and on the other hand, animate the public spaces as spaces of co-existence, confrontation of different views, as well as possible antagonisms.

In an atmosphere of representative culture and an increasing number of festivals, UrbanFestival is thought primarily as a platform, a place of experiment, a structure ready to react to local needs and intervene in the immediate context. The understanding of the city as a space that exists independently of built-in objects and practices, as a place that regulates our everyday practices, city as an expression and means of state power or the cruel interests of capital, this understanding we have decided to replace with the political understanding of the city – city as a place that is always and anew produced by the practices of its inhabitants.

The format of the UrbanFestival implies new commissions and productions or adaptations to local context. From 2006 on the artists are hosted for a research; during these stays they conceptualize, prepare and work out the projects in very often close collaborations with city inhabitants, local institutions, NGOs, experts.
The projects realized in the program regularly evade traditional classifications, formal as well as disciplinary ones; it is multimedia, multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, the overlapping of visual, sound and performing arts, as well as art with urbanism, architecture, design, sociology and other social studies and humanities that is fostered, aiming at holistic, innovative and multilayered approach.

• 1.10.2010.Friday
  • 12.00 Siniša Labrović – Marking(performans)
    Markov trg
• 2.10.2010.Saturday
  • 11.00 Grupa 4 – Garden on wheels(action)
    courtyard of Basaričekova 11
  • 18.00 Verica Kovačevska – Power tower (performans)
    Lotrščak Tower, Upper Town streets
  • 19.00 (im)possibilities (izložba)
    Lotrščak Tower
• 3.10.2010.Sunday
  • 11.45 Grupa 4 – Picnic(action – installation through the duration of the festival)
    Vranicanijeva poljana
• 4.10.2010.Monday
  • 18.30 Le Zbor(music performance)
    Rakovčeva kurija,
    Markov trg 9
  • 19.00 History in the museum, the museum in history – from a baroque palace to a garage (round table)
    kuća Arko, Basaričekova 24
• 5.10.2010.Tuesday
  • 18.00 Nives Sertić, Sonja Pregrad – Watching is not enough(participative performance)
    meeting point at Lotrščak Tower
  • 19.00 Davor Sanvincenti – Musical handrail (musisocialising)
    Zakmardi Stairs
• 7.10.2010.Thursday
  • 18.00 Underground cinema – Želimir Žilnik – Black film (14′, 1971.), William Raban – About now MMX (28′, 2010.)(film program)
    tunel Grič, entrance from Mesnička street
  • 19.00 Grupa 4 – Birthday party (action, Vergl Grind concert)
    Markovićev trg
• 1. – 7.10.2010.Throughout the duration of the festival
  •   Ana Elizabet(light installation)
    Vranicanijeva poljana
  •   Davor Sanvincenti – Musical handrail (urbana intervencija)
    Zakmardi Stairs
  •   Grupa 4 – Curtains (installation)
    Zakmardi Stairs, Strossmayer Promenade- exit on Mesnička street
  •   Philippe van Wolputte – Forlorn hope (installation)
    Lotrščak Tower

[ BLOK ] – Local Base for Culture Refreshment

info@urbanfestival.hr
mob: +385 91 2 56 56 56

Siniša Labrović – Marking

Grupa 4 – Garden on wheels

Verica Kovačevska – Power Tower

Grupa 4 – Picnic

Philippe van Wolputte – Forlorn Hope

Le Zbor

History in the museum, the museum in history

Nives Sertć & Sonja Pregrad – Watching is not enough

Davor Sanvincenti – Musical Handrail

Grupa 4 – Curtains

Underground Cinema

Grupa 4 – Birthday party

ANA Elizabet – Are you breathing?

INTRODUCTION
GORNJI GRAD (UPPER TOWN) – A SHORT HISTORICAL
OVERVIEW
RESEARCH
REVITALIZATION
SURVEILLANCE
ART INTERVENTIONS
LITERATURE
SOCIAL LIFE
TRIVIA

[BLOK] – Local base for culture refreshment is a non-profit and non-governmental organisation that produces and organizes innovative artistic events, woks on widening and changing public spaces through inspiring citizens participation, hybrid artistic research project focused on rethinking social phenomena and urban structure. [BLOK] works on creating and preserving continuum of artistic effect in the public space.

mikropolitike

Sir i vrhnje

collaboration:

Operacija grad 2005

Operacija grad 2008

Forum za prostor

Prokleta brana

organizer: [BLOK] – Local Base for Culture Refreshment

concept and realisation: Ivana Hanaček, Petra Krolo, Ana Kutleša, Marijana Rimanić

UFX council: Sonja Soldo, Vesna Vuković, Isa Rosenberger, Maroje Mrduljaš, Dubravka Sekulić, Antonia Majača

public relations: Irena Borić, Ivana Hanaček

tehnical director: Marko Matošić

tehnical realisation: Paligasi d.o. o.

visual identity: Ivan Klis

editors: Ivana Hanaček, Petra Krolo, Ana Kutleša, Marijana Rimanić

translation: Dunja Bahtijarević-Pekić

web: Željko Dragosavac

photo: Damir Žižić

video: Ivan Slipčević

donors: Ministarstvo kulture RH, Ured za obrazovanje kulturu i sport Grada Zagreba, Nacionalna zaklada za razvoj civilnog društva, Ministarstvo kulture Republike Makedonije

sponsors: Drijen, TORTE i to, Botanički vrt PMF-a, Auris, Amelie, Vinoteka Bornstein, Prasac

media partners: kulturpunkt, Plan B, Zarez, PressCut

supported by: Klovićevi dvori, British Council, Hrvatsko društvo pisaca, Volonterski centar Zagreb

volunteers: Inia Herenčić, Diana Dumbović, Anita Delaš, Petra Kralj, Tanja Šaran, Gorana Marković, Lana Staroveški, Dijana Adžić, Ružica Babić, Sandra Mirković

thanks: Vesna Vuković, Sonja Soldo, Dafne Berc, Luciano Basauri, Marina Viculin, Jeremy Douglas, Foto-arhiv grada Zagreba, Iva Prosoli, Zana Šaškin, Hrvoje Jurić, Biserka Ipša, Snješka Knežević, Marija Braut, Irena Gessner, Fedor Kritovac, Hrvoje Kovač, Branimir Rajčić, Petra Belc, Želimir Žilnik, Saša Šimpraga, Biserka Juretić, William Raban, Goran Pavlić, Niko Gamulin, Toma Bačić, Gorana Perić, Robert Bernat, Gordana Brzović, Mario Krešić