Urban intervention   

Master I want to make you rich
30. 06. 2011.
facade of Cibona Tower, 22:00-00:00h

I thought about the invitation of the UrbanFestival curators to participate in this year’s edition that problematizes the Zagreb skyscrapers primarily as a way of understanding the roles within the pre-established divisions between players in festival events: artists on one side and curators and organisers on the other. I was interested in whether it is possible to, and how to realize, activist work within the formal organisation of the festival, and re-examine defined relations of initiators and authors from the perspective of the everyday practice of a graphical designer who does not work “for” but “with” (someone).

My proposal, in which the curators were included as active participants, thus consisted of a direct intervention in one evening on the façade of the Cibona Skyscraper, a sport-business centre built on the occasion of the Universiade [World Student Games] being held in Zagreb in 1987, that is today the headquarters of Agrokor, the biggest Croatian private company. One of the tallest skyscrapers in Croatia, the tower is among the most prominent examples of eighties’ architecture in Zagreb and the modernization of the broader downtown area and is also a symbol of the sporting success of the Cibona basketball team from that time and, indirectly, of the Yugoslav national team.

Agrokor’s decision to move their headquarters to this exact place, “occupying” fourteen of the highest floors of the skyscraper and placing its logo on its top, can be read as a “sample” of the process of the privatization of public space during the last decade and as a form of symbolic representation of the social and economic power of private equity over public good, which is best expressed precisely through architecture and such changes to the urban fabric of the city.
On the 30th of June 2011 an unannounced action took place in which participants were located in a hidden location from which they projected textual and visual materials designed by the already invited authors, as a commentary on the business dealings of Ivica Todorić and his company. Wanting to increase the visibility and to see the media reaction, after the two-hour action with the projector we forwarded the documentary photographs to the media.

05 from ivan slipcevic on Vimeo.

Photo: Damir Žižić, stills from Rafaele Dražić’s video

Rafaela Dražić

Rafaela Dražić (1981, HR) uses design primarily as a means of producing and distributing content from cultural and non-governmental organizations. After graduating, she did her internship at Barnbrook Design in London (2005/2006), and then worked as an assistant at the Department of Visual Communication Design, University of Split (2007 – 2009). In 2009 she enrolled on her doctoral studies at the Art Academy in Warsaw. She has won several professional awards. She continually exhibits at home and abroad.

www.rafaeladrazic.net