Video performance ‘Salute’

Video

performance ‘Salute’ was created in June of 2014. in abandoned iron factory space of ‘Željezara Sisak’.

Authors: Vesna Mačković and Ana Opalić
Video and editing: Ana Opalić

Showings:

10.3.-23.3.2016., Zagreb, Annual exhibition of contemporary arts THT@MSU
Performance nights 2016.:
4.6.2016., Belgrade, Dom omladine
9.6.2016., Rijeka, Palach
25.6.2016., Split, Dom mladih
27.6.2016., Dubrovnik, Kula Lazareti
1.9.2016. Sisak, Star Film Festival (opening night)
22.10.2016., Sisak, Festival Željezara, Muzej Grada Siska
13.4.2017., Zagreb, Festival of tolerance, Kino Tuškanac

To the city which is dying, but has lived.
To the city with which I have never breathed as one.
To the soil that has soaked sweat and poisons.And happiness and smiles.
To the workers who are freed.
To the systems that come and go. And devastate.
To all of us who persistently walk forward, not knowing to where, why and how much more.

In 1990. I moved to Sisak as a 15-year-old in anticipation of all high-school days’ excitements and youth. The war and isolation due to illness that struck me made it impossible to even sniff the city of Sisak. After 13 long years, happy circumstances in my life put me in position of saying goodbye to isolation and disease, and war was also already long behind us. It seemed like a fairy tale when spoken aloud. But the story is different. The city was destroyed. Earlier, people had been breathing hardly because of the large industry and pollution. Now they have been hardly breathing because there was nothing. Eager for sunshine and getting to know the city, I could now only explore human depression and emptiness of a plucked city. I only knew how to … leave.
In this video performance I imaginary come back to Sisak. I try to deal with the city and my personal history after years of absence.

City of Sisak could be any city.
Lying for years due to illness isolated from people, the world, the city
must be the same in any city?
To stand up after a long illness
still I believe cannot be the same in any city.
City of Sisak. It had no air. I did not breathe with it.
I went away from it, I ran …
To search for other cities. That breathe. Or with whom I breathe.
By mistake I took anger with me.
Anger for not knowing how to change the cities that do not breathe.
So for a moment I reappeared.
I was hitting the walls that echoed, and the city yelled through my ears.
And I still do not know how to help it, how to breathe with it.
I’m leaving. Again.

3rd award at The annual exhibition of contemporary art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Croatia

www.msu.hr/#/hr/20909/

From the 172 works submitted this year to the competition, an international expert committee (consisting of MSc Snjezana Pintaric, president of the professional committee, director of the Museum and Museum Advisor, Rainald Schumacher, curator, Office for Art, Berlin; Marco Scotini, independent curator, Milan; guest profesor Sandra Vitaljić, photographer, Academy of Dramatic Arts, Zagreb, Nataša Ivancevic, museum advisor, assistant Director and head of collections and collections of sculptures MSU) has selected 35 of them, with the three invited artists it makes the total number of 38 artists who will present recent works in MSU until 26 March 2016.