Projekt i izložba: U planinama / In the Mountains

Into the Mountains a cookbook

HDLU /\ Shed im Eisenwerk, 2018 1.

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Velebit Mountain June 11 - 17, 2018

Vanja Babić Ivan Barun Katja Baumhoff Maja Flajsig Nicola Genovese Bojan Mucko Jovana Popić Ivana Pipal Katrin Radovani Andri Stadler Aleksandar Tomaš Josip Zanki

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introduction

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equipment list: We are carrying three tents in case there is not enough sleeping space in the mountain shelters. There are water wells near every camping site.

The toilet is in the forest; if there is no forest, hide somewhere. Always put a rock on your doings afterwards.

tips:

There are mine field signs around one part of the trail, so do not go off the trail (where you are completely safe). Independent walks outside the marked trails are not recommended and every situation is different, so

Wild animals usually avoid people, but

consult with a mountain guide.

they can smell our cosmetics. They can be found around water sources in the morning and in the evening (wild boars, chamois, bears, and wolves). If

camping

there is rain and wind blowing in one

eating kit:

direction, be more careful because

fork,

they can’t smell us. Always use a stick

spoon,

at rocky sites to check for the presence

knife,

of poisonous snakes called Poskok,

plate,

especially before sitting down. The

cup

most dangerous time of day is in the

knife

morning and in the evening, since most snakes are in their holes during the day.

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lighter

Food will be carried by each

garbage bags

participant equally, taking

water bottle

into account the age and condition of each person.

There are group rules that include principles of walking as well as a

In the case of light injury, more

cooking and dish washing

experienced team members

schedule. These will be

can help, and in case of serious

agreed upon during our

injury, the rescue service, HGSS,

stay in the mountains and

arrives very quickly.

according to the affinities of the group.

hicking boots (or shoes) rain jacket

South Velebit is raw nature, so please

space blanket

listen to the guide’s instructions and

headlamp

avoid risky behaviour. Some mobile

cap

phone signal can be found in a few

map of the area

locations, but for the most part, there is none.

backpack sleeping bag (preferably for winter) sleeping pad 9.

Into the Mountains

by Katja Baumhoff and Bojan Mucko

a cookbook: While sitting around a pot of freshly cooked porridge at the mountain shelter Ivine Vodice in the Croatian Velebit Mountains, we were discussing the upcoming exhibition and its accompanying publication, when suddenly we had an idea: why not turn this art book into a cookbook?

Much of our thoughts throughout this trip revolved around food—the logistics of packing enough supplies for a dozen artists and students to last a week, dividing our stock into 12 backpacks and carrying it up the mountains, making fires, and inventing new recipes. We chose chefs and sous-chefs, and wanted to gather and incorporate as many native herbs and plants into our mountain cuisine without poisoning ourselves. We were sure about nettle, but… And given we were a group with mixed culinary tastes and food preferences, an occasional turf battle would emerge with vegetarians, vegans, and carnivores sharing and discussing their lifestyles. Nonetheless, I couldn’t fail to notice that most of us were walking on the edge of hunger throughout much of our journey.

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As editors, on the other hand, we are always on a quest of bringing different ideas, concepts, visions, images, and approaches together to form cohesive narratives. A cookbook presented itself as the perfect format for our explorations. With no obvious hierarchy or given order, the cookbook allows you to skip pages, start anywhere, leaf through, or simply look at the pictures. It is the ultimate democratic process that helps the reader browse many different ingredients in order to prepare a tasty meal.

This cookbook also serves as a guide on how to plan an international art project in the mountains. How to handle all the logistics—where do artists and students sleep for seven nights on Velebit, having enough food for three meals a day, carrying four tents, tons of snacks, and medical kits, including snake antivenin.

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the route: 09/06/18 Saturday

Zagreb - Privlaka Katja, Andri and Nicola arrive in Zagreb late in the afternoon.

They travel from Zagreb to Privlaka in the evening with 2 cars.

The Swiss team goes in one, and Josip, Maja, Katrin, and Ivan in another car.

Josip takes part of the food.

10/06/18 Sunday

Privlaka Aleks, Ivana, Vanja, and Bojan arrive from Zagreb to Privlaka during the day with a third car and the rest of the food.

Lunch preparation follows, with a chill out on the beach.

Short optional trip to the nearby historical site (a fortress) at sunset, or doing some mapping. :)

1 1 /0 6/ 1 8 Monday

Privlaka - Starigrad - Veliko Rujno - Struge Organizing of food and camping stocks in the morning.

Lunch preparation.

Driving with all three cars to Starigrad and rendezvousing at the Kvartir caffe bar.

Short excursion to Mirila (an ancient stone monument for the departed).

Driving to Veliko Rujno (900 m) and parking all 3 cars.

From Veliko Rujno, we walk to our first mountain shelter, Struge (1300 m).

We set up camp around the shelter and sleep for one night in tents / hammocks.

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Struge - Ivine Vodice

12/06/ 1 8 Tu e s d ay

Walk from Struge to our second mountain shelter, Ivine Vodice (1250 m).

The route passes over the tallest peak of Velebit – Vaganski Vrh (1757 m) and we walk through Čičina dolina.

Full day of hiking, taking as many breaks as needed.

We arrived in the afternoon and set up a camp around the shelter.

A part of the group sleeps in the shelter, part in tents / hammocks (according to the individual preferences).

13/06/18 Wednesday

Ivine vodice – Sv. Brdo – Ivine vodice Circular expedition to Sv. Brdo (1751 m).

Brainstorming ideas for the publication.

14/06/18 T h u r s d ay

Ivine vodice Free day for individual practices.

Optional short trips to the surrounding areas.

A walking workshop.

Ivine vodice -

1 5/0 6/ 1 8 Friday

mountain lodge Paklenica Walking from Ivine Vodice to our third location, mountain lodge Paklenica (480 m).

Stroll along the Paklenica River, climb the mountain peak Crni Vrh, explore caves and the Crno Vrilo spring.

Eating lunch at the lodge, sleeping in the common room.

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16/06/18 Thursday

Paklenica - Sklopine - Paklenica Short trip to the Sklopine caves and to the Veliki Mozak hill.

Workshop on vision, seeing, and performativity.

Having lunch and dinner at the lodge.

Double birthday party and open fire jam session.

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Paklenica - Starigrad 07:30 / Josip, Aleks, and Katja hike back to Veliko Rujno to pick up the cars.

08:00 / The rest of the team walks to the entrance of Paklenica National Park.

10:00 / We rendezvous in the parking lot with Josip, Aleks, and Katja, and drive back to Starigrad.

11:00 – 13:00 / Workshop with the Paklenica National Park employees (Josip and Bojan).

14:00 – 16:00 / Into the Mountains – final reflections of the participants in the form of a work in progress conference, with guest cultural anthropologists — Mario Katić, Jelena Kupsjak, and Nevena Škrbić Alempijević.

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1 photograph every minute for 7 days = 10375 photographs

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It also deals with some theoretical questions—what is the point of bringing a group of Croatian and Swiss artists and students to Velebit? How does one prepare the project on a conceptual level?

How to turn a hiking trip into an artwork? How to turn this shared experience into an exhibition, first in Frauenfeld, Switzerland, then in Zagreb, Croatia?

By using loose, non-hierarchical order when combining reflections, thoughts, ideas, outputs, pictures, memories, and works of art from all the members of our group, this cookbook fittingly transforms into an artbook, and vice versa.

One can say that the relationship between the mountain and the gallery is one of lived experience and the representation of that experience. This relationship is a loose one — the references might get transformed, fictionalised or even lost in the process.

So aside from trying to document the mountain project as it occurred, our aim was to inspire the readers and offer them a sort of a recipe for new mountain experiences.

Presenting a mountain project in an art space might appear problematic at first, but as a shared denomination, art spaces and mountains can both be regarded as heterotopic spheres. In reference to utopias and dystopias, the term heterotopia, coined by Michael Foucault, is used to describe certain cultural, institutional, or discursive spaces that are somehow other; spaces that have different layers of meaning— parallel spaces that are worlds within the world.

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menu strategy: The organisation of meals done by the ‘food group’ started at the bar in front of the supermarket on Saturday morning.

The plan was to grab a coffee, make a list, shop, and get it out of the way. But thinking about weeklong supply of food for 12 people in the mountains means sorting out the ingredients for 21 meals all at once. And it soon became clear that we needed a strategy to cope with this task.

After ordering a second round of coffee, we knew that to be as precise and economic as possible, we needed to think about the menu first. What do we eat in the morning, what do we eat after a daylong hike with no options to cook? Where do we cook, how do we cook, and what exactly do we cook?

Porridge for breakfast, homemade sandwiches and mixed nuts should work throughout the day, and something warm with the spoon for dinner—that was our menu concept.

After writing down recipes for every single day of the expedition, the list of ingredients could now be finalized...

We ended up spending 3 hours at the cafe drafting the menu and another two hours shopping.

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Later that evening, part of the team headed to Privlaka and took some of the supplies with them. We came the following day just in time for lunch, only to realise that they had prepared the meal using the ingredients freely, without consulting the ‘food group’ plan for the day! They used some ingredients allocated for day 3, mixed them with day 2 and day 5 ingredients and voilà – our strategy has failed.

Okay… So, we’ll improvise...

On Monday morning while packing, we had to distribute the weight of our food equally among the participants of the expedition.

The approximate weight of the backpacks should be 20 kilos. Step on the scale and check your weight. Put the backpack on, weigh again and compare. How much is it?

17 kilos? Ok, great, here’s three more kilos of food for you. If you’re carrying a tent, you don’t have to take the food. The first two days would be the most difficult because of the steepest terrain and longest routes.

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While thinking about the project’s concept, drafting sketches first and dwelling on the idea of temporarily withdrawing into the mountains, we exposed ourselves to a variety of local and global mountain related art pieces, practices, and theories.

We started with Petar Zoranić’s first Croatian pastoral from 1536, depicting shepherds’ journeys through the mountains, accompanied by many allegorical and mythological creatures. We then examined the 18th century concept of the sublime, studying Edmund Burke, reading about Gilpin’s concept of the picturesque, and followed by British and German Romanticism.

Yet amidst all these texts and references, the ultimate guide to withdrawal to wilderness instantly came to mind: Walden, or Life in the Woods. Henry David Thoreau published the work in 1854, after having retreated to a small cabin next to the Walden Pond, located close to Concord, Massachusetts. His text offered a philosophical reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings:

1 - Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods, 1st edition, 1854.

The quote is taken from the edition

by James Lyndon Shanley, Princeton 1971.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” 1 It somehow feels a bit embarrassing to quote Thoreau – considering the widespread distribution and commodification of his work, from tea towels to notebook covers – but Walden turned out to be one of the most influential guides for happy living, experiencing a new peak in popularity following Thoreau’s bicentennial in 2017.

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how we walked: As project curators, we did a field trip before the expedition in order to draft a plan, so we were familiar with the terrain. We decided that the person who is the fastest and most familiar with the mountain should lead the way, followed by faster members of the team.

One of the curators should always stay in the middle of the group, followed by the rest.

There should also be one person at the end of the queue, making sure nobody gets left behind.

So there were two groups walking the same path with different walking dynamics, everyone’s individual speed being taken into consideration. The two groups meet up at strategic points and then continue together until they spontaneously separate again.

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Before Thoreau set off to live at Walden Pond, where he ultimately stayed for two years, he went out for a weeklong boat trip with his brother and turned that experience into the precursor text to Walden – a manual of sorts titled, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. The book title suggests that it’s a travel journal, but that is deceptive. Much of the text covers diverse topics such as history, religion, poetry, a lamentation on the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, and much more.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers turned out to be a financial disaster for Thoreau. After having found no publisher, he decided to self-publish. In October 1853 Thoreau noted in his journal: “I have now a library of nearly 900 volumes, over 700 of which I wrote myself.” 2 Maybe that’s another aspect of Thoreau that contemporary artbook publishers can relate to easily.

The importance of simplicity and solitude is one of Thoreau’s recurring themes. But as the journalist Rafia Zakaria suggests in an article written for The Guardian in 2017, Thoreau constantly imagined solitude as an ideal – while omitting to mention the regular laundry service provided by his mum. In fact, Walden Pond was situated just two miles away from civilization known as Concord, MA, Thoreau’s hometown.

2 - The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Journal V, March 5 to Nov.30, 1853.

Edited by Bradford Torrey.

Boston and New York, 1906, p.459.

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To a modern reader, Walden reads like a combination of how-todo minimalism and an inspirational poster. It is the ancestor to all the modern guides on how to live and eat and think purely – yet on the flip side it is also the ancestor of the inherent hypocrisy of our contemporary wish to «return to nature».

So maybe there is not such a wide gap between Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond and the contemporary hype of cabin fever. In fact, 2007 marked a turning year where more people worldwide lived in urban environments rather than rural areas, and the hype of dreaming of pastoral tranquilities took another sensational push.

One of the many facets of the «return to nature» movement found its expression in the cabin fever —withdrawing to your cabin or a shelter in the woods, mountains, in the outback - but don’t forget your solar panels, your WiFi access, and most importantly, taking pictures and posting them. A cabin porn. Not surprisingly, the coffee table book Cabin Porn turned into a bestseller:

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Of course, while the ÂŤreturn to natureÂť movement hits hipsters, families, preppers, and persons with opposing political agendas alike, they are ultimately retreating because they simply wish to do so, either for personal reasons, leisure aspects, or self-development.

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The title of the project “Into the Mountains” might trigger many different connotations. It may echo the “back to nature” call flashing at us from the covers of some lifestyle magazines, or a teenage road movie poster, or from one of the many blogs dedicated to the so called “rewilding” strategies, a part of the outdoor living ideologies.

It could also be easily mistaken with catchy slogans such as “get natural” or “nature wants you back,” from the cover of a mySwitzerland magazine (published by the Switzerland Tourism Board, summer 2018).

It would certainly look appropriate written beneath the face of a muddy but smiling female biker, with the unnamed mountain peaks blurred in the background.

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All these echoes address us as

Yet, there are obviously people that

consumers, and are in relation

live and work in these mountains too,

to both our personal budget and

and while we prepared the project

the amount of free time needed

on our research trips to Velebit

to becoming natural again; buy

and Appenzell a year earlier, the

and read a magazine, buy a ticket

aspects of transhumance, tourism

and see a film, pay for a vacation

now and then, and contemporary

package and visit a country.

Alpwirtschaft /summer pastures were

Even getting discount camping

the basis for many of our discussions.

gear online and going natural by installing a hammock between two

Nowadays, Velebit is less and

trees in your own backyard means

less used for farming since many

we have free time in our schedules

shepherds left the region during

to actually do it.

the last war. The Swiss Alps, on the other hand, are still used for summer

Our project title is, in fact, an

pastures and thousands strong herds

artistic call to the mountains.

of cows can be seen, often guarded

And as artists, we’re exempt from

by modern day shepherds—urban

neither consumerism nor time.

professionals that temporarily

In order to get to the mountain,

become shepherds and use their time

we had to go shopping first. And

in the mountains as a form of burn-

we shopped a lot! The crucial

out prophylaxe. Not surprisingly,

difference between us and people

their summer shelters and cabins are

(mainly hiking enthusiasts) we

often equipped with all the modern

met on our path was the concept

day amenities.

of time. Even though we’d met at the same place and were there simultaneously, we were there in different time regimes – it was free time for them and working hours for us.

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Separate from the mountain tourism and farming, there is a different approach to the concept of withdrawal that is taking hold—the preparedness living, or the survival of the best-prepared. Preppers, people that prepare for whatever scenario (be it doomsday, the eruption of a volcano, or a nuclear attack) are gaining more and more ground. Maybe even Beuys can be regarded as a Prepper avant la letter, as he always carried around a backpack with his personal power plant.

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While many Preppers prepare themselves by stocking up on supplies and building bunkers close to where they live, there is a subcategory on the prepper scene that is specific to preparing for the withdrawal into the mountains. After a binge-watching session of Doomsday Preppers, a highly successful National Geographic’s TV series, we were discussing in our seemingly intellectual, liberal, emancipated, feminist voices, the ridiculous fact that there is literally not a single woman in the whole show.

Yet, what made it even harder to swallow was reflecting on our own group dynamics (“He’ll start the fire while she will cook!”).

So there seems to be a common thread of underlying hypocrisy or duplicity, weaving itself throughout all these «withdrawal into the mountain strategies and return to nature ideas». And whether or not Thoreau counted on his mother’s laundry services while praising—using his moral pointing finger—a life in solitude, we also carried out our trip to Velebit using our powerbanks, high end sleeping mattresses, and turmeric and ginger supplies.

But does this repetition of a well-known trope really help?

Isn’t lamenting about hypocrisy, a hypocrisy in itself?

We entered the heterotopic space of Velebit in order to reflect, to conduct workshops, to discuss, create, and enter the heterotopic space of art. We needed our powerbanks to be able to take great pictures, to produce art. Of course, we were childishly proud of the gathered nettles mixed with our instant soups – feeling bloated from the monosodium glutamate overdose, but also happy about our seemingly natural nutrition.

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But after all, it was not only Bora (bura) that lifted our horizon.

We had one (charged and economically used) mp3 player reserved for those rainy days in the mountains. The player contained a free podcast downloaded from ReWild Yourself Podcast webpage dedicated to “freeing ourselves from the degenerative effects of human domestication� 3.

3 - http://www.danielvitalis. com/rewild-yourselfpodcast/ 4 - Jon McKenzie, Perform Or Else: From Discipline to Performance, Psychology Press, 2001

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The title of the track was “Why We Were Born to Walk” and it was an interview with James Earls. The author was explaining the evolutionary causes of human bipedalism. In order to be able to walk on two legs and for long distances unlike other primates, our bodies have developed a movement strategy based on the elasticity of our fascia (when compared with chimpanzees and their muscular strategy). When we start walking, we sway our leg forwards and our whole body moves continuously with the help of the elastic features of fascia. Meaning it is easier and more “natural” for us to walk for few miles without stopping, then it is to walk with occasional short breaks. Interestingly enough, Earls calls this last type of walk “museum walk” and it appears that you need more calories to perform a museum walk then you need for hiking.

During the expedition, continuous walking was our main activity, and even though it wasn’t revolutionary (traces of our domestication are still quite visible), it was a proper collective work. Everything else surrounding it (like eating or sleeping) was there to help our collective bodies walk better. Lack of food, water, sleep, or shelter meant walking difficulties. In that sense, our performative work could probably be defined by Jon McKenzie as “organisational”.4 Now that the expedition has ended, the publication and exhibition will follow. But we want to keep our performance alive even upon the return to the gallery. We will try to avoid the “gallery walk” by all means, and would much rather have this publication be lost somewhere at the bottom of your hiking backpack, than exhibited on a shelf in your living room.

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recipes

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Recipes

by Katja Baumhoff

Slow Chickpeas with Red Lentils Pesto oil note: The bottle of olive oil tumbled out of the backpack during the hike from Struge to Ivine Vodice, so we had to use the oil from the pesto, scooping it

Heat up the oil and let the garlic roast gently. Add the spices, stir, and then add the carrots and the tomatoes.

Add the lentils and some water; let it boil for a while. Then add the rest of the ingredients one after the other,

from the top.

maybe you have to add some water

5 cloves of garlic, mashed

All in all, you should let the lentils

while stirring every once in a while. with fork

boils for around 15 min until they have got a good consistency.

1 spoon of cinnamon 1 spoon of curry

Serve it with couscous or mille.

1 spoon of curcuma (turmeric) 1 spoon of dried ginger 3 medium carrots 3 cans of sliced tomatoes (already spiced with basil and oregano)

Tip: Somebody should always

500 g red lentils

check the fire and see if it is still burning. In our

3 packages of chickpeas

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case, it went out and we had

200g of smoked tofu

to go into the woods and

1 can of Kichererbsen

collect branches again. The

Eintopf mit Kokosmilch

preparation should take

A few litres of water

about 20 minutes, but it took us more than an hour:

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Stinging Nettle Soup Kopriva juha / Brennnessel Suppe fresh garlic pesto oil

Put fresh garlic in pesto oil on the fire and roast it gently. Add hot water and stir in the soup powder. Stir and

3 packets of soup (in our case, mushroom) 1 package of tomato sauce

add the beans, chickpeas, and all the other ingredients gradually. Let the nettles just simmer for a few minutes.

1 can of green beans 1 can of chick peas 1 can of lentil soup with potatoes curry turmeric salt, to taste

Tip: Wear gloves while

lots of fresh nettles,

chopping the nettles!

chopped

Windy Nettle Soup with Bora garlic 5x packed soup

Follow the same instructions as for the soup above.

( Dalmatinska Juha, Juha od Rajčice, Gulaš paprikaš) peas chickpeas tofu lots of freshly picked Nettles 42.

Tip: Watch the fire, Bora is out there!

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Pasta Magnesio 1 kg of yellow lentils, washed fresh ginger fresh garlic 1 spoon turmeric 200 grams of smoked tofu Let it cook for a while, then add chick peas pesto rosso alle olive

Tip: Magnesium: Sous-chef Nicola took it by mistake instead of salt, but Doctor Ivan praised the mishap

1 spoon of magnesium or salt, to taste

since magnesium helps to rebuild and strengthen hiker muscles.

Serve with 1 kg pasta

Quickest Lunch 2 cans of chili sin carne

Heat up cans of chilli and red beans,

3 cans of red beans

add tomato sauce and tomato paste.

Let it simmer while stirring.

2 packages of tomato sauce tomato paste pesto rosso alle olive

curry to taste.

Tip:

salt

Serve with rice

turmeric

in fast cooking

curry 44.

As always add salt, turmeric, and

sachets.

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Hikers’ Porridge oats

Stir the oat flakes

Serve it and

1 spoon of salt

into 4 litres of cold

individually add

2 spoons cinnamon

water. Add a spoon

honey, trail mix

1 spoon dried ginger

of salt and bring it

and wild mint.

to boil, keep stirring, honey

add the cinnamon

trail mix

and ginger and let it

wild mint

boil for a little while.

Use salt for the perfect porridge. It’s a trick of Austrian

Tip:

confectioners: Sugar tastes much better in combination with salt.

Since we added honey instead of sugar, it was even tastier.

Oat Milk oats

Let the oats soak in hot water. Cut

water

a tiny hole into a small sachet and press the the milk out of the oats into a mug or small pot.

Tip: This is a job for at least three people.

Pancake a là Jovana flour salt sugar milk eggs lemon

Tip: You can make the pancakes with water, if you don’t

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have milk.

Sift together the flour, salt and sugar in a large bowl.

Make a well in the center and pour in the milk and the eggs. Mix until smooth.

Heat a frying pan and scoop the batter onto the pan, let it sit for a while, as soon as it gets solid, throw it in the air to turn it around. Serve with sugar and lemon juice.

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ingredients

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Petrified Spirits:

by Jovana Popić

I grew up under the wakeful eye of the Velebit Mountain.

I spent much of my childhood in a small house at the footsteps of its giant, purple-grey rocks. Its silent image dominates the landscape and the eye of the beholder; always present, distant and close, almost unreal. My memories of Velebit in those times, are tangled up with stories of respect and fear, with its wild winds, its wolves, bears, and snakes, lost sheep and goats, holes and steep passages of no return; tied to stories of fascination and mystery, with its legends and tales, its fairies and witches and secret places, with nightly fires and jackal cries; stories of love and admiration with its peaks bathing in majestic burning sunsets, and its canyons hidden in the murky fogs; the proud stories of its pagan gods and its hidden outlawed fighters, but also, funny stories of red faced alcoholic uncles playing Indians on its plains in a famous movie production.

Velebit is the spirit of its humans, plants, and animals petrified. It is a ghost and a mountain at the same time. It is neither the map nor the landscape that were ever relevant to me, nor many other facts about this place. I never wanted to go up on its slopes as a simple, single day trekker, but only when my path takes me to it. And so, there I was one day, my backpack fully loaded with affection, memories, thoughts, and expectations; my art becoming a mere tool whereby I can get closer to it. Our relationship, old and emotional as if of two beings, full of memories and open questions, urged me to feed that feeling of belonging deep inside; urged me toward the impression that we had both inhabited each other, since the very beginning.

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Position, Protection, and Projection

by Esther Mathis “In many museums, there are hidden rooms above the exhibition spaces that create the perfect conditions for the art works within to unfold. These light spaces are equiped with metallic blinds, lowered to shield the sun and raised to counteract the shadows of clouds.

Harsh, unrelenting weather reigns outside, always changing and marking time. But the museum light spaces hold the outside world at bay.”

Adapted excerpts of Shells, membranes and safeguards by Petra Tomljanović, written for my exhibition in Zagreb in June, 2018.

During the last four years, I researched and visited many of these museum light spaces. It is fascinating what has been engineered and built to protect art works. The aspect that interests me the most of such a protection is not the physical one, but the mind-guarding side of it: the attempt to create the perfect environment for something to reveal all its layers, without being inhibited by harsh light or cruel shadows.

I really like this idea of such protection designed for a person.

What would it entail, if it were possible to create a safe environment based upon reality, without it being as artificial as in a musuem?

There have been countless attempts to create physical protection for our bodies, but there is not much for our minds.

Feeling safe is a luxury and a phsycological need deeply rooted in the human condition. This need for protection has built the booming business of insurance companies and political agendas. On a more social level, we try to find a way through culture to find and keep values that might help us grow and evolve.

What is the recipe to live uninhibited while experiencing life unguarded?

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Velebit Mountain: In Search of the Miraculous

by Josip Zanki

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Lost Tradition: Mirila Mirila, a funeral ritual widespread in the mountain regions of Velebit, was practiced until as late as the turn of the 20th Century. Mirila is a relic of preChristian beliefs, yet it was considered ‘heretical’ when it continued to be performed into the 20th century, breaking with the religious dogma and state laws.

Physical death is the ultimate reason why Mirila lasted through the many ages, until it finally disappeared with the changing attitudes toward death. According to Michael Foucault: “Death is therefore multiple, and dispersed in time: It is not that absolute, privileged point at which time stops and moves back; like disease itself, it has a teeming presence that analysis may divide into time and space.” 1 Michael Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic.

An Archaeology of Medical Perception, Rutledge, London, 2003, p. 142.

In the funeral preparations, the deceased body was laid out on the ground. Flat, slab-like stones corresponding to the body’s length and width were placed underneath it. A round stone was placed at the feet and a similarly shaped but somewhat taller headstone at the head.

These two stones measured the deceased’s height. It is

‘Boga pomilova’, in Croatian, local dialect.

said that the person had thus been measured; that his Mirilo had been made. The ritual took place at sunrise, the deceased’s head turned towards east.

A few days later, carved stones with engraved symbols were disposed in the place of the headstone and footstone. The ornaments on the headstone varied from a crescent, moon, cross, stars, sun cross, and spirals, to simply the deceased’s initials, name, or the inscription ‘God Gave Mercy’. 2 59.

Mirila were places decorated with flowers and food offerings. According to old beliefs, they were places where the souls of the shepherds rested, next to their flocks. The tradition has been lost with the arrival of the roads, growth of tourism, and the changing lifestyles.

The walk of Mirila has reached its end. On Velebit, where Mirila are most commonplace, it is said that this is the resting place of the soul, while the body is in the grave; improving death as multiple, and dispersed in time. 3

Performativity in Croatian Visual Art: The Beginning At the beginning of performativity in Croatian visual art, Ivan Rendić (1849-1932) plays an important albeit almost unknown role. He was an important sculptor and “performer” in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the late 19th Century; the majority of his sculptural work was created in Trieste, Rijeka, and Zagreb, but also in other cities throughout the Empire. With the creation of nation states after World War I, his work did not fit into the new cultural and political narratives.

However, Rendić was also widely known for his buffooneries (bufonada, theatrical pranks), which can be considered as a form of performativity even within the contemporary art practices, and have influenced Zanki’s understanding and practice of performance art.

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One of his famous bufonadas took place at the Caffé Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic, p. 142.

degli Specchi in Trieste. In the famous café’s kitchen, Ivan Rendić replaced sugar cubes with pieces of mosaic.

The coffees were served to a large number of office workers that frequented the place before work. They stirred their coffees persistently; however the sugar in 4

their cups would not melt.

Duško Kečkemet, Anegdote o kiparu Ivanu Rendiću, Brevijar, Split, Supetar, 1999, p. 31.

Once, while he was in Volosko (today a suburb of Rijeka) where he was making an altarpiece for a local church, Ivan Rendić made some paper butterflies. He secretly put them on the shoes of his acquaintances in the Rijeka tram, which started operating the same year.

All the passengers on the tram were surprised at the butterflies that appeared in Rijeka during winter. 5

Ibid., p. 29.

Since a great deal of his work consisted of tombstone statues (post-funeral, memorial art) the artist also made a sketch for his own. A plain stone plaque was supposed to contain a bronze cast of Rendić’s cane, shoes, and hat with the commemorative inscription: ‘And where is Rendić?’ Ironically enough, Ivan Rendić died poor 6

and was temporarily buried in someone else’s grave in his hometown, Supetar, but it was quickly forgotten where his remains were. Rendić thus truly disappeared, improving in death his anarchistic and artistic strategy. 7

City of Supetar based on island Brač decided to support his own tomb after they collect money. They never collected money; in Croatian folk culture these islanders are perceived stingy.

Kečkemet, Anegdote o kiparu Ivanu Rendiću, p. 61.

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Walking on Velebit Mountain: Romantic Landscapes and Memories The Romantic conceptualization of the space originally 8

appeared as a picturesque idea, rendering elements of landscape as beautiful in themselves without the need for a utilitarian meaning. This aesthetic was further inaugurated through paintings of mountain peaks and valleys, hills and cliffs, and ruins of Gothic monasteries most notably

by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Caspar David Friedrich in Germany, and artists like William Turner and Thomas Girtin in England.

Croatian ‘mountain’ landscapes were transformed into a romantic aesthetic almost one hundred years later, when, in the 1920s, Menci Clement Crnčić created prints of the view of the hills of Bribir, Drivenik and Grižine in Hrvatsko Primorje near the City of Rijeka. Velebit Mountain, however, was artistically undiscovered and visually unrecorded until present day. Our task is to discover its rich symbolism and unravel its mystical layers.

Velebit Mountain enriches human consciousness and strengthens its internal power because of its inaccessibility, the wild history of this area, the purity of the forest, water, earth, and stones, and because of its perpetual obscurity. Velebit is hidden; the mountain of ancient and forgotten paths, curved roads, and rebellion shelters placed throughout the dark beech forest. As Robert Macfarlane pointed out: “Humans are animals—and like all animals we leave tracks as we walk: signs of passage made in snow, sand, mud, grass, dew, earth, or moss”.

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9

Velebit is the mountain of the Sun, its sprawling length turned to the cool azure of the Adriatic Sea, running along the tentacles of the grey islands of Krk, Rab, and Pag. Velebit Mountain was mythical playground of the 10

Arcadian figures from Petar Zoranić’s renaissance novel Mountains.

Fairies and heroes, satyrs and humans love and suffer, turn into and are turned into water, rocks, and woods, and pass through metamorphoses both spiritual and physical.

The north wind, Bura (blowing from Venice all the long way to Montenegro), sharpens the mind and brings pure contours of colour into nature. Objects in nature become as concrete and precise as in a Giorgo de Chirico painting; losing their sfumato and Pre-Raphaelite mist.

The tiniest stone on the slope of a ridge, the scree that constantly slides and is carried off by the torrent of stream ends in the sea; the bare stones that stand upright on the peaks of hills grown over with tiny, gnarled beeches; the dark oak treetops among abandoned lodges in the valley; the bare cliffs where Bura the wind was born (created by mistress Dinara’s witchcraft on the cave of Velebit)—all of them speak to us in unrecognizable voices. All the voices fade into silence and all the colours merge into the velvet blueness of the night. Turned to the Sun there we stand granted grace by God or Goddess.

First coined by William Gilpin, in 1782.

Robert Macfarlane, The old Ways: A Journey on Foot, Viking Penguin, New York, 2012, p. 13.

11

First novel written in Croatian language, published in Venice 1569.

Cf. Josip Zanki, „Mirila“, in Mirila, Eds. Mirjana Trošelj, Turistička zajednica općine Starigrad, Starigrad, 2012, p. 64.

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Power Fantasies from the Living Room Jungle

by Nicola Genovese

Is it possible to contemplate a landscape outside of the cultural constructs? Is there a space of authenticity that is still uncorrupted by human civilization?

Yes. The only available space is that of the imagination and the consequent narrations and tropes that revolve around it.

What does the phrase, “going back to nature“ mean in the today’s Western world when referring to Rousseau‘s concept of the human state of nature?

In everyday life it means buying natural food, hiking in the mountains, practicing yoga and other rituals which have been mostly stolen from other cultures; part of a never-ending process of cultural appropriation that exploits the ‚other‘ as a source of authenticity. All of these are attempts that enable us, the Westerners, to get in touch again with our “true, natural self”.

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Hercules (1630) unknown sculptor Historisches Museum Frankfurt

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However, I would say that there is a thin line between the romanticized contemplation of the landscape and the enhancement of supposed natural and authentic social models, such as the patriarchal one. ecological footprint. It reveals how It’s like an avalanche, or rather

the radical conservative political

a domino effect that overwhelms

position against immigration has

the opposing political views.

been recently disguised by ecological

Hence, “back to nature” is a

activism.

common trope based on the

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belief that there is an authentic

In this scenario, Post-Structuralism

self, beyond social constructions,

seems to be forgotten. The general

that can be revealed in the

tendency for a populist political

wild— used in either the alt-right

agenda to discredit scientific thought

or leftist discourse. Finding

and praise the ethereal “authentic

sustainable economic solutions

human nature,“ unfortunately mainly

and defending the traditional

corresponds to a conservative

farming lifestyle sometimes also

model of the society. Nature used in

goes hand-in-hand with keeping

political terms, means traditional

women domesticated.

family, male hegemony, normal

For instance, Ecopop is a

sexuality. In short, the biological

Swiss association that supports

truth. In terms the racial normality,

ecological themes and traditional

the naturality indicates the neutral

family values. In 2014, they

position of white males as compared

promoted a referendum called

to others. Nature in political speech

an eco-initiative. The aim of the

is connected to a patriotic ideology,

proposal was to limit population

and it’s frequently used in strict

growth (immigration control)

relation to religion, because nature is

in order to reduce Switzerland’s

authenticity and truth, i.e. God.

So what happens when it seems to be too late to re-approach nature because of the evil technological civilization? The only solution is to wait for the end of the world; the doomsday; the apocalypse, and in the meantime, develop fantasies about it. The fear and threat of the apocalypse is very much present in the Christian tradition, but confronted by the impossibility to re-establish the natural order, the apocalypse becomes a perverse alternative. The end of the world may happen because of a financial collapse, because of the Third World War, because of an environmental disaster, or it could be the Will of God. Or maybe even the feminized, globalized society that has taken over the real natural, masculine, hegemonic system.

Bear Grylls performing Born survivor Real TV show (2006-2011) on Ikea furnitures background 67.

Learn how to suture (2017) Youtube tutorial uploaded by Omega survival supplies Ohio

I will focus in particular on the aspects of the apocalyptic tropes that concern masculinity and how apocalyptic fantasies work as a relief in the rhetoric of the crisis of masculinity.

To be more precise, I will divide the apocalyptic trope into the preparation stage, the apocalypse stage, and post-apocalyptic stage. The preparation stage is particularly relevant because it holds a huge market share of 40 billion dollars and involves almost 4 million Americans.

Preppers—or survivalists—have to be ready to eat insects and to drink their own pee. In the meantime, they build bunkers to store food supplies and arm themselves to the teeth in case they need to fight hordes of zombies.

Only the manliest man will survive.

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“Apocalyptic survivalism involves a performance of ‘traditional’ masculine characteristics such as stoicism, physical strength, Christian morality, and skills associated with outdoor living.“

1

The Apocalypse and a dystopian future are the perfect scenarios where manhood can eventually re-establish its hegemonic position.

I used the term re-establish following the rhetoric of masculinity in crisis. To be more precise: the alleged crisis, or even better: the never ending enhancement process triggered by the explication of the crisis.

The crisis of masculinity has been a controversial topic of our century and what we are experiencing right now is the rhetoric of a crisis.

Defining the boundaries of this crisis is a hard task, but what is important to underline is the mechanism of the crisis itself.

In a globalized neoliberal system, where new market shares are literally invented daily in order to drive new consumer behaviors, crisis is used as a tool to redefine or rebrand either ideals or products that become threatened by changes in certain social trends. On the other hand, we can’t forget that performing masculinity creates huge social pressures on each male, and goes beyond cultural background, race and class. For example, the overwhelming male unemployment is considered one of the economic reasons that kicked off the problematizing of hegemonic white masculinity. White males were no longer the only ones feeding the family, and for the first time experienced a position of weakness—or at least an unstable position, feeling left behind by women and marginalized males. Beyond this framework, the path towards equality shouldn’t be seen as a dangerous one, but rather as a path of progress, and yet it seems that we cannot neglect the significant cultural implications of this perceived threat to 1 - The Apocalypse is Masculine – Masculinities in Crisis in Survivalist Film (2010) Briohny Doyle

hegemonic masculinity.

In the reality TV show, Doomsday Preppers, the titular preppers are simply fictional characters who are performing their roles without actually acting. The show has a specific script; it is directed and crafted in every detail.

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On the other side of the screen, there is an audience sitting on their sofas and watching with glee as they dream about the end of the world.

This toying with the idea of doomsday allows males to overcome their frustrations in relation with the rhetoric of masculinity in crisis. Obviously, the women in the show are bound to household roles, supporting silently the husband’s obsessions. Sometimes they help in very basic tasks without any active role in the decision making process.

So what happens in the apocalypse stage, according to doomsday preppers?

Well, they basically hold up inside their bunkers until the radiation clears, and until all of the looser who didn’t prepare, die.

What happens in the post- apocalypse stage, according to doomsday preppers?

First and foremost, a constrained

money and the reintroduction of

regression to Rousseau‘s state

the barter system; the collapse of

of nature where technology is

the feminized bureaucratic leftist

completely useless. Remember,

state with weak borders, that allows

the state of nature is the authentic

free immigration and supports all

human condition that has been

people indiscriminately, will enable

uncorrupted by civilized society (here,

the formation of small, exclusive,

basically meaning a society with civil

autarchic, closed communities

rights). In the state of nature, what

based on strict patriarchal rules.

matters for survival is strength and

This hatred towards technology

control over nature. The financial

seems to be in disagreement with the

collapse of the corporate system

classic patriarchal sex roles theory.

that results in the disappearance of

According to this theory, males

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Portable Multifunctional Outdoor Survival Folding Shovel sold on Banggood.com

are more rational and more prone

masculinity. And indeed, “going

to science, while females, more

back to nature� is more intended as

irrational and closer to nature.

control over nature, i.e. control over

And yet, recently, Silicon Valley‘s

women. In a doomsday scenario

masculinity model was depicted

where there is no electricity available,

through certain far right wing

what matters is manual skill. In this

discourse as the symbol of a

scenario, the labor division becomes

feminized society. Culture and

eventually clear; the women have to

technology are therefore associated

be re-domesticated, while men are

with gay behavior.

encouraged to craft new guns and gear

So instead, the hardness of nature is

out of trash, cut wood, build walls,

the perfect framework in which one

and whatever else implies efficiency,

can perform the role of traditional

creativity and bodily strength.

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Reality TV shows like Doomsday Preppers is just a small example within a huge entertainment industry that produces movies, books, and video-games about survivalism, the apocalypse, and dystopian scenarios.

The online prepper communities are also very active.

Blogs and tutorial videos about, for instance, how to practice suturing on a banana skin offer an endless variety of suggestions and tricks when SHTF. The acronym SHTF (Shit Hits The Fan) means to survivalists and general preparedness people: the big disaster; the chaotic collapse of civilization. In between dozen of web pages praising hypermasculinity I found a little dissonant note, an enlightened article about the six types of people who will die first when SHTF. In between the indecisive, the sentimental, the uncreative, the panicky, and the fantasy-world planners, we have (surprise here): the Macho.

“The prepping and survival community is filled with machoism.

Now, don’t confuse macho with the healthy personality trait of self-reliance and wanting to protect your family. Machoism is overly aggressive, assertive, and prideful. It is EGO and it will get in the way of survival!

Macho preppers are the ones who flaunt the lone wolf mentality. They believe that they can do everything themselves and won’t take help when it is necessary.

Macho preppers show off, which in turn draws attention and could make them a target.

Macho preppers are the ones whose idea of prepping is, “I have a gun. I’ll take what I want!” (And will likely get killed in the process)” 2

72.

2 - Six types of people who will die first when SHTF (2017) Jacob Hunter primalsurvivor.net

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74.

75.

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mountain space time

A contribution of Cultural Anthropology students under the mentorship of Nevena Škrbić Alempijević (Associate Professor at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb).

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Walking and Remembering, Paths and Memory

by Maja Flajsig

It was as if a messy ball of string started The moment I

to roll around the length of the mountain.

began walking,

Thoughts became more focused, intensified,

my thoughts

and clearer. Entering the field has never been

started to unravel.

more mentally absorbing and physically tougher. Walking as a mobile and embodied practice thus led me to a sensory approach which coincided with all of these new, clear thoughts that occupied me.

As a method of research, I used a ball of red string, analogous to the ball of thoughts that filled my mind. My first intention was to map out every step I took on our trip to create a reification of our presence in the mountain. The goal was to point out the fact that we affect our surroundings even though we don’t actually leave anything material behind.

Animals became wary to the sounds of our steps—steps which unintentionally crushed some insects and plants. Also, with our rhythmical and continuous steps, walking became a performative act that followed the path. And this path also became affected by us, as we made it clearer and stiffer just by walking on it. Each time somebody walks this path, it becomes more solid; more real. After all, mountain paths are only one possibility which many people choose.

The red ball of string was actually appropriated from the myth of The Minotaur described by the Roman 79. poet, Ovid.

According to the story, this monstrous creature was held captive in a labyrinth constructed by Daedalus on the command of King Minos of Crete. The creature was fed with Athenian youth, and when Theseus, legendary hero promised to slay it, Minos’s daughter, Ariadne, came to offer assistance. Since the labyrinth was almost impossible to escape, Ariadne gave Theseus a ball of string which he used to trace his path through the maze. Thus Theseus managed to slay the Minotaur without getting lost and safely returned following the string.

The red string traced Theseus’ steps and allowed him to focus on his goal.

He could wander through the labyrinth searching for the Minotaur while the thread protected him. The notion of tracing one’s steps initially led to my thought process regarding this research. Yet the impossibility of getting lost was of greater importance in the end.

While I was walking down the path, a trail of red string stretching out behind me, I began to pay attention to my own unique experience of the path with all my senses: the sound of wind, the smell of plants, the feeling of ground against my feet. All these sensations became more sharpened and tangible. According to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “turning to things themselves”, exploring our own experience is actually returning “to that world prior to knowledge of which knowledge speaks”. So, in fact, this notion of returning to the primordial was heightened by my bare presence in nature. Without electricity or any other products of civilization, this experience became even more intensified.

But, what is path actually?

This thought came to my mind while walking, and I realised that the only way to define it is to diverge from it.

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But as I continued to trace my movements with string into the rough woods, nervousness began to set in. The thought of getting lost in the woods was overwhelming, so I headed back to the safety of the path. And then it hit me. This is how the red string fulfils its role. It gave me an opportunity to go anywhere I wish, and made it impossible for me to get lost. It was guarding me.

Although I chose the red colour of the thread intuitively, its apotropaic values coincided with it. It guarded me literally, as it did Theseus. But as I was talking to one of our companions from Dalmatian Zagora and some local people from Paklenica, I found out its apotropaic values also work on a symbolic level.

So, as I pulled a ball of red string from my backpack, an older man from Paklenica commented “Somebody must be putting a lot of spells on you since you have all that red string”. Although placing the red string around one’s arm is significant in Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, around the Balkans, it’s typical connotation is that it’s used to repel black magic.

In this way, the red string method gave me a unique sense of security, having in mind all of the mythical creatures that reside on Velebit.

82.

And so, feeling completely safe in a somewhat hostile environment, my research could finally begin.

The first thing I noticed when I got off the path was how soft the ground was.

Since the path has been walked on thousands of times, it got stiff and hard. So a path could simply be defined by how many people have walked on it. Michel de Certau’s notions of tactics and strategies correspond to this realisation.

Thus, the path would be a strategy created by certain producers (in this case, the mountaineers), while any other way that leads to the same place would be a tactic made and used by individuals. And because of that, the vegetation and animals (and mythical creatures?) behaved differently around the path.

Consequently, smells were more intense off the path, as were tactile gestures of plants that touched my body. I found more beetles scurrying beneath my feet, and saw squirrels jumping from tree to tree.

The sounds were louder and diverse.

The chirping of birds and rustling of trees surrounded me, and soon, the notion of time faded. Time could be countable while following the path, as it is linear, just like our western concept of time. Only the string I left behind would be a tool of measuring time, but as I soon realised, even the linearity of the string was sublimated by my very thoughts whose amount, textures, and consistency changed thoroughly while walking, making it impossible to track time via string.

Although my initial thought was to trace my movements with the 83.

red string, I never intended to leave it on Velebit. I wanted to collect it so I could have a measured artefact of our presence in mountain. But something else happened while I was collecting the string and walking by exactly the same route I already walked on (making my own path at the same time!).

I spontaneously started to remember each thought that had come into my mind on my way there, and because I was pondering these thoughts, the return actually lasted a lot longer, shifting my perception of time.

A friend once told me that whenever he went to his grandmas and forgot why he came in the room, she would tell him to go back the same way. These mnemotechnics were actually researched by Giordano Bruno while he explored the art of memory.

This specific notion of spatiality of memory was examined in Architectural mnemonic, wherein Bruno explained how one could remember a speech.

A person could break the speech’s content into images or signs and place it inside a previously memorized location. This happened spontaneously while my thoughts travelled through the space. Even they had their own scents, colours, textures, and temperature which corresponded with my physical experience of the path. Worries were blue and droopy, new ideas were silky and cold, my thoughts about our little community were green and soft, while thoughts about myself were glass-like and warm.

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Since these thoughts were very clear and intense—as were the physical sensations—the return gave me yet another opportunity to resolve and reflect upon them.

This method of research gave some important insights that helped me to understand the everyday life in urban environment as well. We can gain this insight only when extracted from our everyday surroundings—and not just the space itself, but also the people who surround us. And this is quite important, since routine is a very dangerous thing. It leads us to one path and one path only.

85.

What’s the Time, Aleksandar?

by Aleksandar TomaĹĄ

Time is this, time is that. Time is relative.

We know that time flows in one direction. We know that time is universal and forever, constantly flowing and never-ending. And so, we think we know the definition of time.

Time is a social construct. How do you measure time in the mountains? What does this time mean to us? How does time flow in the mountains as opposed to the rhythm of time in the city?

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Day one, 9:15 am.

I have no idea what time it is and I don’t care. It is time, however, to slowly get up from my hammock and find something to eat and take a sip of coffee. The plan was to set out at 11 am. Such arrangements prove the practicality of our understanding of time. Someone who doesn’t have a watch can always ask what the time is, and they will know how much time there is to prepare for departure.

There were twelve of us on Velebit Mountain and I was the only one with a watch, so everyone kept asking me for the time. This role of a Timekeeper didn’t bother me at first, but soon enough I wanted a new role. Time and space in the mountains feel quite different than in my everyday city life, and I am beginning to realize this new perception of time and space in the mountains—measuring it in steps and breaths.

Our understanding of time in the conceptual framework of space means that time moves linearly through space—a line stretching from the past, through the present, towards the future, and we rarely consider time outside of that scope. Since time cannot flow backwards, we can define its course—always forward. We have made time spatial; defining minutes, hours, and weeks. This correlation can be clearly observed when analyzing mountain landmarks and signposts, where defining distances were expressed in the amount of time needed to go from point A to point B—as if the space became temporalized. When we reached the top of Vaganski Vrh, the first thing Professor Zanki asked me was, “What’s the time, Aleksandar?” It was in fact 1:45 pm. Zanki said, “Oooh, we’re good!” because we had arrived fairly quickly at the top and had plenty of time to rest and enjoy the scenery.

When on Velebit, I felt reluctant to work and ignored obligations that were outside of the hedonistic parameters that the mountain presented. Enjoying the mountains and focusing on survival meant that life became living. And in order to be inspired, 87.

work, and create, it takes time, as

my time was “free time,“ because I

well as a healthy serving of boredom.

choose to be at work from 8 to 4? Or

But it is not boring on Velebit, nor is

is the concept of freedom a social

there time to devote to a certain task.

construct?

The breakfast, lunch, dinner, packing and unpacking, all of these tasks take precedent over work.

I’m slow and when I do not have enough time, I’m unable to accomplish much. If I have enough

It was important to survive the

time, then I can do it all right.

mountain. I felt as if I could survive anything in the mountains if only I

I measured time in the mountains

had enough time. And I thought I had

by my footsteps and the sound the

all the time in the world—but when

stones made while puffing under

the rains started, I needed to quickly

my feet. Steps were my measuring

make a shelter. If I was fast enough, I

units. As was my breathing— heavy,

had plenty of time to set up. But if I

rhythmical breaths follow my

rushed it and made errors, I would be

ascending steps, carrying 20 kilos of

without shelter altogether. And if I

extra load.

was too slow, time would run out and I’d get wet. Being aware of the time

Time in the mountains is measured

in the mountains is important, as

by the pace of insects buzzing, which

time is needed for everything you set

seems to chime in the same rhythm.

out to do. And qualifying time often

The silence of the night would make

involves not minutes but the intensity

the time denser and non-fluid, slower.

of the weather Encounters with people in the Day five, 9:45 am.

mountains are different than the ones

I’ve managed to devote myself to my

in the city. I personally experience

tasks because we were not setting

the mountain as a wilderness, and yet,

off right away, we had until noon.

to someone who lives here on Velebit

The notion of “free time“ is another

it is not wilderness, it is just their

concept that was brought to us by

normal environment; their home.

the industrial revolution and Ford’s assembly line. The worker works from 8 to 4, and the rest of the day is their free time. But what if all of 88.

I don’t know how to actively listen in the mountains because I do not have any experience, but when someone would suggest a sound to focus on, I would begin to hear so much natural white noise that it even started to bother me.

Paradise on Earth and as if the time has stopped. Is this whole mountain chain a part of my imagination? Or is the passing time a construct in itself? Walking for two and a half hours in the mountains does not last the same as walking in the city, and the feeling one gets is uniquely different as well. It’s like there is no end.

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velebit diaries

Contribution of fine art students under the mentorship of Josip Zanki (Docent at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb).

91.

Ethnographic and Experimental

by Josip Zanki

During their expedition (residence) in the Velebit Mountains, Katrin Radovani and Ivan Barun created a cooperative work with Josip Zanki.

All artists used black notebooks on a daily basis, using different media while following the concept of a diary.

Katrin Radovani went to Velebit with drawing and painting supplies: acrylics, pastels, brushes and papers, and a Brunelleschi appendix: a small mirror. Her purpose was to explore Velebit as an artist and to explore herself through her creations. As she put it: “To draw is to seek with the line, and as days went on, I was seeking with lines, with brushes, and in colours. I was recording how I change with every passing day.”

She tried to capture how Velebit changed her own representation through self-images in painting, ‘she dug deeper, in pursuit of the inner world conceived underneath the physical form’. She revised the concept of the selfie by replacing the smart phone screen with a mirror.

Ivan Barun drew and performed Psychograms in his diary every day while blindfolded, incorporating spontaneous gestures and emotions that came from his surroundings.

He explored the ways in which hidden (subliminal) emotions and unconscious (liminal) processes can be expressed and represented through artistic media. He used an artistic expression in which he deprived himself of his dominant sense – the ability to see.

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This methodology dates back to the tradition of European Hermeticism as a way to improve one’s drawing skills. Formerly, this process took place during sunrise for one month, and at the end of the process, all of the drawings were burned in a fire.

The idea was that strength and power stays in the hand and not 1

on the paper.

According to the informant Žarko Boťnjak.

By putting the blindfold on his eyes (after soaking them in black ink) Ivan reduced the possibility by a large extent of controlling the direction in which the drawing was going to develop. He states that the movement of his body and his hands, which are soaked in black ink, the tactility of the surface and its resistance, the sounds of nature, and primarily his own emotions are the key elements which, in the encounter with his unconsciousness, spontaneously created the drawings as the trace of an emotional and bodily process.

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Josip Zanki created an ethnographic diary based on four layers: a Hal Foster, „The Artist as Ethnographer“, in Hal Foster The Return of the Real, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1996, pp.

171–205.

description of the daily events, a description of the researcher’s emotions, conversations with the other artists, and the presumption created as a result of cultural and social interaction. His idea was to recreate a scientific methodology through Jorge Luis Borges’ idea of history as imaginary and imaginary as creative history, Fernando Pessoa’s concept of heteronyms as alter-reality and pre-digital avatar systems, and the deconstruction of Foster’s concept of the artist as an ethnographer.

2

In real life Slaven is josip Zanki cousin.

Zanki’s heteronym was Slaven,3 a self-taught artist and mountain lover trying to use the experience to simulate common people’s way of life. The Velebit journal begins following real facts, but as days go by, it becomes more and more imaginary, converting events into a kind of fairy tale. The author, the participants in the project, and future readers lose track of what is truth, what is interpretation, and what is hallucinogenic or fabricated. Zanki doesn’t use a mirror or a blindfold to search for and recreate the experience of the mountain—on the contrary, he alters facts through textual interpretation. Image, gesture, and plain text give us descriptions of his Velebit journey. It is a symbolic path to the miraculous; being both visible and invisible at the same time.

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Walking Corpographies

by Ivan Barun Topographic Display of Distance to the Origin

Mapping the mountain path with one’s own physiological processes My most direct relationship with the mountain is through my own body. As I go uphill, climb the cliffs, cross the streams, or walk through the woods, my body reacts: my heart races, my breath quickens, my muscles use more of my body’s energy, etc. – I respond.

By measuring my vital parameters at specific locations throughout the hike, I became aware of my physiological processes in response to the mountain’s anatomy. I used the tool of my body to investigate the relationship with the mountain.

100.

Satellite Image of the Route

101.

102.

103.

104.

105.

106.

workshops

107.

Workshops:

eyesight improvement

by Bojan Mucko

exercises in open space such as palming and yoga for eyes muscles /

mainly practical workshop /

Vision, Seeing and Performativity of the Eye eyesight as a matter of performativity and unexplored visual consequences

shifting near to far /

tracing / the long swing /

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Walking tasks proposal for a round trip, from Ivine Vodice to Vlaški Grad and back:

Walking Workshop:

1.

Record the sounds without a microphone or audio recorder and make a report afterwards.

2.

Take a photo without a camera and describe the images you didn’t take a photo of.

3.

Look at the clock exactly every 10 minutes.

4.

Count your steps as you walk. Remember the highest score.

5.

At a certain point, use a blindfold. It’s a group game of trust with rules made up on site.

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Photographs that have never been recorded I have four. Two are landscape photos and two are photographs of my colleague Maja.

by Aleksandar Tomaš The first two are almost identical, but I photographed them with my eyes just to repeat the experience. The same is true with the second set. So I’ll describe one of the first two and one of the other two.

The first was inspired by the incredibly beautiful view from Vlaški Grad. I could not resist trying out Bojan’s suggestion to photograph with my eyes. In addition to that was the fact that I didn’t have a camera or cell phone. I took a deep breath and took a picture with my eyes. It took me a little longer than a camera would. To my surprise, my experience was emotional—melancholic, sad, yet comfortable, pleasant, and safe. It felt like revisiting my childhood.

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1.

In the first photo you can see the vastness of space. It’s wide and high, deep. We were very high, and below us you could see 5-6 hills and valleys. Every hill and valley was clearly discernible thanks to the sun that covered them. We could see very far away, and I remember seeing the forest and feeling like I could reach out and touch it with my hand, like touching moss. There were some clouds and fog, so I captured the rays of sun piercing through the clouds and scattering across the landscape.

Even though the picture may fade with time, the benefit of this kind of photography is that it is permeated with feelings, smells and sounds. I remember a gust of wind entering my picture.

2.

Then I turned a little to the left and saw Maja, and I wanted to remember that too. I made 2 pictures. She was almost in the middle of the picture, only a bit to the left. She had her back turned to me and I just saw a slither of her right cheek and nose. Her red, long, curly hair rustled by the wind dominated the frame. Again, emotions infused me, this time a bit more cheerful, emotions of excitement and elevation.

Maja sat, leaning on her walking stick a bit. In the lower part of the photo there are rocks; in the upper, the sky and clouds. She seemed to be sitting on the edge of the rocks. In this photo, Maja’s hair is in focus, while the first one is more hyperrealistic.

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112.

Game of Trust As we were returning from Vlaški Grad, time stopped again, as if it did not exist at all. I put on a blindfold and gave my trust to Ivan. First, he was behind me holding my shoulders and telling me where to go, and where to step. After that, I asked him to let go and just talk to me. I thought I completely trusted him, but actually I still believed in myself and my own ability to walk the mountain path without looking. It was completely dark. I was touching the ground with my foot and my stick and creating a mental image of everything. I did feel endangered, but only when Ivan said that he’s going off the track for a moment. And after just a few moments, the trust worked out. I just listened to what he was saying and doing. If he said to place my foot down and a little to the left, I did so... and did so for good 20 minutes. In the end, we decided that he would stop talking to me altogether and instead go in front of me and sing. And so, as Ivan sang, I followed his voice and walked. When I took off the blindfold and saw the daylight, it was pretty unbelievable, because I was convinced it was nighttime. In the end, I’d actually seen everything quite well, and for those 20 minutes I didn’t care about the time at all. It was important to just walk.

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113.

Watching the Clock We went to Vlaški Grad and I had to look at my watch every 10 minutes. That was the task. Just look. We started at 5 pm and the first time I looked was exactly 10 minutes later. The second time, after 9 minutes, and the next two times, at exactly 10 minutes. I didn’t do it consciously, but others were counting the number of steps and that somehow reminded me to look at my watch every 10 minutes. That precise looking at my watch came from the outside because I did not do it consciously. But on the other hand, if it was not consciously, it does not have to mean that it came from the outside, because I might have just subtly hit every 10 minutes. (The programmed internal clock can be very accurate, like waking up just a few seconds before the alarm clock starts.) I set the alarm at 8:17, I fall asleep around 1:30 am and wake up 3-4 seconds before the alarm goes off. I take my cell phone out and it says 8:16 am, and at that moment, the alarm goes off. We have completely accepted the current way of counting time and it has become a part of us. We are directed by time and the flow of our lives is determined by it, yet we do not fully understand it.

Somebody asked me what time it was, and this time I looked after 5 minutes. Then we came to the lookout and I made a mistake twice. When we climbed to Vlaški Grad, I did not look at my watch anymore, even though we were there for 30 minutes or so. It is as if time stopped at Vlaški Grad. My focus was not any more on the task and I simply forgot to look. Meanwhile, I’ve been taking photos with my eyes. I looked at my watch only when we got down from Vlaški Grad. It was 6:55. The agreement with Zanki was to get under Vlaški Grad by 7pm. This was our agreed time, and it was equally important for all of us. We all knew when 7 was and then we met. By the end of our trip, I almost stopped looking at my watch because I was also doing the third 114.

exercise, which was a game of trust.

115.

116.

biographies

117.

118.

Vanja Babić

Katja Baumhoff

Born in Zagreb 1984. Vanja Babić

Received her MA and Ph.D. in

graduated in Mechanical Engineering

American Studies and Art History

at Polytechnic University of Zagreb

from Heinrich Heine University

and received his MA for animation

Düsseldorf, Germany, and has been

and new media at Academy of Fine

a visiting scholar at Yale University,

Arts in Zagreb.

New Haven, US, focusing on

The inspiration and motivation for

American modernist art.

his work for the last few years is

Currently she works as an

based on questioning social and

independent art historian, author and

cultural prepositions, consumerism,

curator in Winterthur, Switzerland,

marketing, money and its role in

and is artistic director of the Shed

society, different kind of labour

im Eisenwerk, Frauenfeld. As a

work, the waste and recycling

curator of contemporary art, her

problem, and the way people manage

programmatic points of interest are

their lives between these parts of the

current social and social-political

system.

tendencies as well as material

vanjababic.wordpress.com

aesthetics. katjabaumhoff.ch

Nicola Genovese Born in Venice, Italy. He lives and works in Zurich.

He is mostly interested in issues related to masculinity, more precisely in the rhetoric of the the crisis of masculinity. The materiality of his performances and his installations highlight the ambivalence, the precariousness and the violence of the “maleness” cultural model. nicolagenovese.org 119 .

119.

Luise Kloos

Bojan Mucko

Born 1955 in Judenburg/Austria, lives and works in Graz. She works with graphics, paintings, video, installations and performances and has a broad international network. Since her studies at the University of Graz (Architecture) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna her work is focused on subjects like society, human conditions and cultural background. Since 2009 she is continuously studying Tibetan Art at Thangde Gatsal Studio of Master Locho and Sarika Singh in Dharamsala/

(Varaždin, 1983) is a freelance cultural anthropologhist and multimedia artist. Interested in interdisciplinary approach, connection between contemporary art practices and cultural anthropology. Identified with the position of cultural worker.

Works in different media, from text, photography and video to social practicies and performance. Equally interested in exploring and producing different aspects of culture.

India. Luise Kloos is founder of next – Verein für zeitgenössische Kunst, a contemporary art association based in

Ivana Pipal

Graz carrying out international artists in

Born 1990 in Zagreb, Ivana Pipal is

residence projects.

a freelance visual artist who works

luisekloos.at

with drawing, illustration, animation,

/

nextkunst.at

comic books, art books, design,

Esther Mathis Born 1985, lives and works in Zürich.

She studied Photography at IED in Milan and completed her studies in 2015 with a Masters in Fine Arts from the ZHdK in Zürich. Her work is based mostly on installations and videos that deal with space, processes of materials and time. She often uses glass because it can be invisible or transparent and change appearance, always in dialog with the light and space surrounding it. esthermathis.com 120.

installation, video and film. She got her MA in Animated Film and New Media from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. She received the Croatian Ministry of Culture grant for outstanding works of literature in 2013 and has published illustrated books in European countries and Korea in 2017. In her work she is visualizing human experiences, invisible phenomena, psychological ideas and social interactions. cargocollective.com/ivanapipal

Andri Stadler Born 1971. He grew up in the canton of Thurgau and currently lives in Lucern, Switzerland. He confronts today’s excessive flood of images with his radical and unpretentious

Jovana Popić

experiments in the medium of photography. His work has received

Jovana Popić was born in Zadar,

several awards and includes

Croatia. She began her formal art

photography, drawing and video.

studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts

andristadler.ch

in Belgrade under the Serbian State Scholarship for Science and Art Talents. In 2006 she received the Friedrich Naumann Foundation Scholarship and later the President’s Prize toward her master’s degree under Rebecca Horn at the Universität der Künste-Berlin. Since then she has received many other awards and residencies and she has exhibited work in Europe, the United States and Asia. She presently lives in Berlin. jovanapopic.com

Josip Zanki Graduated from the Graphic Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1994. Postgraduate Studies in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. Received a PhD with a thesis entitled “Anthropological Conceptualisation of the Space in Thangka Painting and Contemporary Art Practices“ on 11th February 2016.

Since 1986 he has been working in the field of graphic media, film, video, installations, performances, and cultural anthropology. Since 2017 Josip Zanki is teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. zankijosip.com

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121.

authors of visual work throughout the book Vanja Babić “Documentation guy” 1 2-5

Ivana Pipal

Ivan Barun

Bojan Mucko

“Walking Corpographies”

8-9

Ivana Pipal

11 - 17

Vanja Babić

Katja Baumhoff

18 - 21

Bojan Mucko

“Reflecting Spoons”

23

Ivana Pipal

24 - 27 - 29

Vanja Babić

32 - 34

Bojan Mucko

36

Ivana Pipal

41 - 43 - 45

Vanja Babić

47

Katja Baumhoff

50 - 53

Andri Stadler

54 - 55

Vanja Babić

56

Esther Mathis

58

Josip Zanki

67

Nicola Genovese

73 - 75

Ivana Pipal

78 - 85

Maja Flajsig

86 - 89

Vanja Babić

93 - 94

Ivan Barun

Maja Flajsig “Red Thread”

Nicola Genovese “Born survivor on Ikea furnitures background”

Luise Kloos “Mountain lines”

Esther Mathis “Position, Protection, and Projection”

Bojan Mucko “Desktop Mountain”

95

Vanja Babić

Ivana Pipal

96

Josip Zanki

“Drawings from the Now”

98 - 99

Katrin Radovani

100 - 101

Ivan Barun

Katrin Radovani

102- 105

Luise Kloos

“Postcards”

108

Ivana Pipal

109

Vanja Babić

Andri Stadler

111

Ivana Pipal

Ivine Vodice “Sketchbook 03” “Sketchbook 01”

112 - 115

Vanja Babić

118

Ivana Pipal

Josip Zanki “Slaven”

122.

impressum A mountain project conceptualized and coordinated by

Katja Baumhoff, Bojan Mucko and Josip Zanki

Editors

Katja Baumhoff, Bojan Mucko, Josip Zanki

Concept

Katja Baumhoff, Bojan Mucko, Ivana Pipal

Design Copy editing Proofreading English HDLU coordinator Printing and binding Edition Published by

Ivana Pipal Katja Baumhoff and Bojan Mucko Alexander Masters and Iva Masters Martina Miholić Kerschoffset d.o.o. Zagreb 300 Kultur im Eisenwerk

HDLU

Shed im Eisenwerk

Trg zrtava fasizma 16

Industriestrasse 23

10000 Zagreb

8500 Frauenfeld

Croatia

Switzerland

© for the texts: the authors © for the images: the artists All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher.

ISBN XXX 123.

The editors and the artists thank the following institutions for their generous support of this project and publication: Kultur im Eisenwerk Kulturstiftung Thurgau TKB Jubiläums-Stiftung Ministarstvo kulture Republike Hrvatske Grad Zadar Zadarska županija Općina Privlaka Turistička zajednica Općine Starigrad

124.