Thanks to the sincere interest of the British Council in Zagreb and London to actively present British art in Croatia my proposal to finance residency of a few young British artists in Croatia resulting with the exhibition at the Miroslav Kraljevic Gallery was accepted. The idea was based on our mutual experience that transport of artists is simpler and cheaper than transporting the artefacts. Financial resources were sufficient for 3 residencies/exhibitions, each one-month long. During the preparatory period I realized that such a project would not entirely fulfill our mutual goal to create lasting, effective bonding between Croatian and British artists and/or institutions. British artist will be physically present in Croatia, but as a matter of fact they would be in the isolated time-space capsule, concentrated on his/her solo exhibition and without real contact with the local art scene. Cultural interaction and exchange, the purpose of projects such as Blind Date, certainly would not happen. Thus I came to the idea that project needed an additional element that would induce the exchange and I proposed that Croatian artists should take part in each residency. The entire project reached different level and meaning. We were given the chance to test on 3 separate cases possibilities and range of the collaboration of the artists from different sociopolitical and cultural environment, meaning Northwest and Southeast Europe in this case. Here is a potential of the interesting dialog. But, certain difficulties were predictable. No fruitful co-operation could be granted. The ‘artistic ego’ and eventual feeling of coercion might have been presumed as permanent obstacles. The optimal mode of selection and subsequent matchmaking of artists sholud be found. Nevertheless, the idea seemed to interest everyone involved in the organization of the project. I have proposed the solution that might reduce potentially negative aspects of the project. It should be maximally open, congruent to unpredictable creative energy. The artists should know that any result of their cooperation is going to be accepted no matter what happened: joint work, two separate works or complete misunderstanding with no exhibition in sight. The only objective conditions of residency remained given time frame and orientation towards contemporary art expression that corresponds to the profile of the Miroslav Kraljevic Gallery. It was sheer luck that 6 months before supposed commence of the project I met Chris Byrne, director of the New Media Scotland in Glasgow. He agreed to organize British participation and selection. In the meantime, I decided to include other Croatian art centers in order to obtain a broader participation. Interested partners were found in Multimedia Center of Rijeka and Multimedia Department of the Art Academy in Split. In order to keep the project more intriguing I proposed that artists should remain completely unknown to each other till they meet. Due to the many unpredictable factors Blind Date seemed appropriate choice for the title of the project. The basic principles were established. Each of the partners will select their artist according to their criteria and methods (artist from Zagreb was the only one I have personally selected). The artists schedule and available time were the factors that defined future collaborators. The time-table was set at the end of November, 2000: Kevin Kelly will work with Tanja Dabo during January in Rijeka, Smiljana Safaric with Anne-Marie Copestake in Zagreb during February and Karen Cunningham with Stefan Haus in Split in March. I decided from the beginning not to interfere with the development of the particular collaboration. To each artist I should be just a person to turn to for any kind of help related to the problems that could arise. Here I have to say that besides technical aid or advice regarding the realization of the exhibition, none ever contacted me. I made it clear to the artists that exhibition is important, but not the exclusive aim of the project. Establishing and deepening of the communication were its preferred goals. It turned out that making the exhibition was the least of the problems. As a side program I proposed a series of lectures on New Media Scotland. Chris gave them on February 27 in Zagreb, March 1 in Split and March 3 in Rijeka. I made arrangement with the Gallery O.K. in Rijeka and the Multimedia Center’s Gallery in Split to present Blind Date exhibition as a group shows in May and June 2000. I decided to print catalogue at the end of the project. The catalogue will include essays by Chris and myself, short statement I asked artists to write and Kevin’s Rijeka Diary. The Glasgow exhibition in the autumn 2001 is still an option.
The exhibitions are completely different, but share paradoxical characteristic. Though neither one presented joint work, but two separate works, each of them had a formal unity to the point where superficial visitors concluded that they were watching a single art work executed by one artist. Prior to separate analysis it should be stated that artists from Scotland in general reflected their Croatian experience, and local artists remained within their personal esthetics’ agendas. Through the conversation I found out why some of the attempted joint works didn’t work out. Intriguing head shaving that Tanja wanted to perform on Kevin on Goli otok/Bare Island (former notorious communist penitentiary) was prevented by windy January weather that didn’t allow journey to the location. Performance would be presented by video and Kevin planned some related photographs. Their favorite thing was simultaneous jump that they performed as an impromptu act for the huge number of the media photographers at the first opening of the Blind Date project. None of this was published. The proposed interactive Karen’s and Stefan’s ambience was not realized because of subtler, private and to me not completely known subjective reasons. Smiljana and Anne-Marie combined their conceptions to create total ambience around heterogeneously conceived video works.
Branko Franceschi
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>> BLIND DATE 1
Tanja Dabo & Kevin Kelly Blind Date Project was inaugurated by this visually restrained, but conceptually multi-layered exhibition. Though generated from diverse incentive the interest of both artists was focused on the commercial advertisement and the function of the exhibition space. Both artists used method of the appropriation. Kevin was inspired by the advertising plate of the local tire- repair service in Rijeka, executed by the local sign-painter. The shot of the plate was printed in actual size on the self-adhesive foil, mounted on the aluminum plate and exhibited carefree leaning against the gallery wall. Besides the fact that such a signpost is still widely in use in Croatia, Kevin was also attracted by the eventual pun. Gumy (the name of the service) is deducted from the Croatian word ‘guma’ (rubber), but to English spoken person could be understood as ‘gummy’, adding a funny turn to the meaning of the entire message. Tanja based her work on the latest advertising campaign of the DrMartens Company. Their latest publicity shot was installed at the office section of the gallery and her work from the ‘Before – After’ series (laureate of the latest Salon of Youth, Zagreb) with the motive of the DrMartens boots was exhibited at the window of their shop in Ilica (Zagreb’s main shopping district). Gallery thus became promoter of the company while its shop window became exhibition space. Kevin did similar thing by installing advertising elements of ‘his’ plate at the gallery’s window, fooling passers-by that function of the space was (finally) changed. It should be mentioned that the street where the gallery is located houses numerous car spare parts shops, tire-repairs and car services. The fact that this newly ‘opened’ service cannot be reached by car added to Kevin’s amusement. The selection of motive is interesting from the cultural point. Tanja used multinational company that uniformly advertises itself and boots people around the world, founding its marketing on the sell-out of the romanticized freedom of youth. Kevin used old, rusty, uncared-for, but romantically unique and out-of-time advertising plate of the local, possibly no longer existent enterprise. Kevin installed a few more ready-made (bought) objects to fill the gaping gallery void. They were connected with the rest of his work through the diverse and rather loose associations, thus provoking many astonished questions.
>> BLIND DATE 2
Anne-Marie Copestake & Smiljana šafarić Anne-Marie and Smiljana’s exhibition appeared to be more relaxed. They started from the point that gallery’s space is cold, hard, sharply edged and angular, so they wanted to soften it. Their installation was total ambience, full of color, sound, smell and moving images. The boring gallery space, clean white ‘cube’, was liven with a discreet touch of the new psychodelia. Smiljana was obsessed with red color, desiring the saturation with color and smell. The lights were filtered red, black TV box was padded with shaggy reddish fabric. The red armchair was borrowed to smooth conditions of perception, in addition strengthened by poignant aroma of Indian incense. This suggestive environment was just a frame for Smiljana’s fundamental theme, close shots of natural and plastic flowers in the full bloom. Its structure is meant for the hedonistic audience: the laidback rhythm of editing and blending merged with the quiet, dreamy, barely audible sound of the street. In spite of this, the obvious de-erotisation of the floral motive was surprising. Stamen, petals, pistils and soft tissues, the images of real ones combined with artificial and contrasted with the dry rose discretely put in the tall yellow vase behind the TV set, alluded to ephemeral like so many XVII century still lives where abundance is a messenger of the doom. Anne-Marie’s part of the exhibition was under the sign of the letter and sound č /t?/, one among the things she found essentially Croatian. The video is made on the streets of Zagreb where she could frequently find it at the neon signs. Anne-Marie wrote its Glagolitic variant on the big, colorful, overfilled paper sacks that held each other as a single object. They enigmatically charmed the public. Poetical text, hand written on the torn peace of paper, leaning on the sacks read: ‘as much as you want, as often as you wish, as late as you like’, wasn’t enough to them. The real intrigue was the content that strained fragile material and seams of the sacks. Nobody knew what it was and yet felt it was important. Equally mysterious was the motive of the human marks that alternated letter č on video. Thoroughly recorded, with the same circular motion, over any imaginable surface (mud, glass, asphalt….) in the variations of hand, feet, sole etc trails, it was an obvious metaphor. Anne-Marie told me that in the brief period of few weeks she has touched just a surface layer of Croatia, the most obvious differences. The essential content remained hidden. Hers was a choice of music. The sound backdrop was composed and mixed by her new friends ‘Zvuci broda/The Sound of Ship’ from Zagreb’s Internet Club Mama. The international sound of the house music.
>> BLIND DATE 3
Karen Cunningham & Stefan Haus The last date utmostly exposed peculiar bipolar nature of the project. During the installment it was clear that creative communication between participants didn’t exist, but after the completion of both works and despite diverse media and disciplines I was stunned by the formal unity of the exhibition. The focal Karen’s artifact, video ‘Bez naziva (Svijet pogleda)/Untitled (Images of the World)’ was a subtle communication piece with her colleagues from the Art Academy in Split. She asked them to draw their image of the world with the chalk on the blackboard and than to erase it. There is no sound recorded. The range of images and performances is astonishing: from minimalist circles and grids to elaborate compositions; from defined, arrogant stroke to useless attempts of the verbal explanations. The camera is static, frame filled with blackboard. Participants change places in double exposure through the continuous linear fluidity of image. On the entire surface of the two walls flanking highly positioned monitor, Karen installed black and white prints of the single video frames. They appear to be positioned randomly, but closer look reveals that dynamic knotted form of its abstract white line on the left side turns slowly to the quiet, almost straight line on the right end of the installation. On the floor in the center of her side of the gallery Karen installed big, soft paper airplane using the famous childhood technique. It obviously cannot fly (I don’t want to dwell on the meaning of this metaphor). Secretive Stefan Haus, after a few solutions he toyed with, at the day of installing decided to use risky variance of work ‘on the spur of the moment’, largely based on the material available in the gallery. He covered the chosen wall of the gallery with the squares of black nylon. In front of the divide of this shiny, wavy black wall, Stefan erected a construction made of the cubical forms of gallery’s pedestals. In the end he draw contours of the hill with white line over the black surface. Its top is hieratically positioned in the center of the composition, above the peak of the rising construction. Stefan’s work looks like materialized variance of Karen’s ‘Image of the World’; of which he naturally didn’t take part.
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When you first visit another country, certain thoughts might start forming: how do the people here create their culture? What makes this place different from home? What is familiar?
These questions around identity, the strange and the familiar, the unique and the shared are I suppose a common method of navigating and orienting oneself within a newly encountered environment. It is fitting then as the basis of a line of enquiry for an artists exchange between two small countries at the edges of Europe: Scotland and Croatia. On the surface, there seem to be certain things we have in common: our populations are almost identical; the rugged topographies and many islands within the borders of each territory have echoes in the other. At the same time, the differences are huge: the historical, social, and cultural contexts reflect not only our relative geographical positions but also the relationships to Europe’s economic and political currents.
Another cultural exchange took place recently between these two nations – the international football World Cup qualifiers. The importance that this sport has played for both peoples says something about their struggles to define unique identities in close proximity to larger, more powerful neighbours. The symbolism in Scotland has become cartoon-like: what did the citizens of Zagreb make of the Tartan Army, clad in kilts, tammies and orange wigs? The result of the game was a draw, perhaps a good omen for the imminent artistic exchange.
The Blind Date theme seems appropriate to the process of cultural contact between Scotland and Croatia. Perhaps neither party knew quite what to expect in terms of artistic agendas, practices or modes of address. How can artists from such different cultures and backgrounds begin to explore common ground?
The aims of the Blind Date project are to pair artists in order to promote collaborative working. Over a concentrated period of time, the pairs work towards an exhibition. Artistic collaboration is a complex process. How to realise an idea together? What discussions need to take place, what agreement reached, to make a truly joint work? Perhaps inevitably, given the short timespan of their working periods, this ideal situation did not take place. Rather the artists embarked on individual projects in parallel, but with significant commonality in ideas and approaches. So they created a dialogue around similar ideas, expressed through different means or in alternative forms. This is somehow like a journey, people gradually coming together from separate departure points.
Kevin Kelly performed a détournement, a comment on the situation of the gallery in Zagreb, part of a suite of shops in the basement of an office block. By fitting the gallery with the signage from another enterprise, a tyre garage, Kelly plays with the ambiguity of signs within architectural form. At the same time he addresses a specific location and its social and linguistic context. In a similar way, Kelly’s accomplice Tanja Dabo appropriates an advertisement for Doctor Marten’s boots – a boisterous cultural icon from the UK, closely identified with the skinhead and punk movements of the 1970’s and 1980’s. As well as wearing these boots buffed to a high gloss, Dabo also hand polished the gallery floor before each of the three Blind Date shows. Her highlighting of this simple act affords us a unique viewpoint on both the iconography of UK popular culture, and the gallery as workplace.
Annemarie Copestake explores place and language, searching for what might define specialness. Her discovery of a unique character in theCroatian alphabet led to her training a video camera upon the many instances to be found in neon on the streets of Zagreb. Repeated serially through video and on large, paper pillow-like constructions, these signs seem to merge together into a single statement. She adds shots of wet footprints left on the streets of the city, traces of individuals in transit. Both constitute signifiers of location: do both fade with time? Alongside, Smiljana Safaric concentrates her electronic eye on luminous images of flowers from stalls at Zagreb’s central marketplace. The readings are multiple – the blossoms symbolise feminine sexuality, but equally locate a specific space dedicated to exchange.
Karen Cunningham questions our concepts of geography through exploring the broadest of icons – the map of the world. She records lines of chalk, drawn on a blackboard. Made at the Academy of Fine Arts, Split, it seems there is some comment in this work on the role that educational institutions play in forming our perceptions of the globe and the borders (both real and imagined) between different countries. The placement of an oversized paper plane within the installation perhaps represents the lessening of distance with growing international travel but also perhaps the use of air power in recent conflicts in the Balkans. Stefan also uses the white line line on black. This time, the representation is more ambiguous. Is this an allusion to the conventions of business graphics, graphs and charts, the ebb and flow of financial markets? Or an abstracted urban landscape with a mountainous backdrop? It can be read as both, in common with Cunningham’s work it raises issues both global and local.
Chris Byrne / New Media Scotland
New Media Scotland
Tel. +44 141 564 3010
P.O. Box 25065, Glasgow G1 5YP
Fax. +44 141 564 3011 Scotland, UK
http://www.mediascot.org
