ALEN FLORIČIĆ: VIDEO 1998—2017

Izdavač / Publisher: Muzej moderne i suvremene umjetnosti Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Za izdavača / For the publisher: Slaven Tolj Urednica / Editor: Sabina Salamon Tekstovi / Texts: Sabina Salamon Mladen Lučić Vladimir Vidmar Branka Benčić Prijevod / Translation: Martin Mayhew Zana Šaškin Nataša Radović Sabina Salamon

Fotografije / Photographs: Dejan Habicht (ŠKUC) Ivan Vranjić (MMSU) Alen Floričić (MMSU) Videostilovi / Video stills: Alen Floričić Obrada video stillova / Video stills editing: Igor Crnković Grafičko oblikovanje / Graphic design: Željko Serdarević Tisak / Printing: Kerschoffset, Zagreb Broj kataloga / Cat. no. 371 © MMSU, Rijeka, 2017.

ISBN 978-953-8107-15-3

Lektura / Proofreading: Gordana Ožbolt Martin Mayhew

CIP zapis dostupan u računalnom katalogu Sveučilišne knjižnice Rijeka pod brojem 140117062.

Publikacija je izdana povodom tri izložbe Alen Floričić: Video 1998.—2015./2016., održane u Muzeju moderne i suvremene umjetnosti, Rijeka (studeni, 2015.), galeriji Škuc, Ljubljana (siječanj — veljača, 2016.), Studio Tommaseo, Trieste Contemporanea, Trst (rujan, 2016.).

Published on the occasion of Alen Floričić’s three exhibitions: Video 1998 — 2015/2016 held at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka (December 2015), Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana (January — February 2016), Studio Tommaseo, Trieste Contemporanea, Trieste (September 2016).

Izložbe koje su povod ovoj publikaciji, temeljile su se na pregledu videografije nastale od 1998. godine do 2015./2016. godine. Razloge nalazimo u pravovremenoj aktualizaciji i promociji konzistentnog umjetničkog opusa koji predstavlja hrvatsku suvremenu video produkciju. Slijedeći različitost izlagačkih prostora, varirao je i broj izloženih radova.

The exhibitions that motivated this publication were based on the overview of videography created between 1998 and 2015/2016. The reasons are found in a timely actualization and promotion of a consistent artistic opus that represents contemporary Croatian video production. The number of exhibited works changed in line with the characteristics of the exhibition spaces.

Uz potporu / Supported by

U suradnji s / In collaboration with

ALEN FLORIČIĆ VIDEO 1998—2017

Galerija ŠKUC, Ljubljana Kustos / Curator: Vladimir Vidmar

MMSU / Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka Kustosica / Curator: Sabina Salamon Postav izložbe / Exhibition set-up: Alen Floričić Sabina Salamon Tehnički postav / Technical set-up: Vanja Pužar Anton Samaržija

Postav izložbe / Exhibition set-up: Alen Floričić Vladimir Vidmar Tehnički postav / Technical set-up: Atila Boštjančič Studio Tommaseo, Trieste Contemporanea, Trieste Kustosica / Curator: Sabina Salamon

Odnosi s javnošću / Public relations: Ivo Matulić

Postav izložbe / Exhibition set-up: Alen Floričić Giuliana Carbi

Edukacija / Museum educator: Milica Đilas

Tehnički postav / Technical set-up: Daniele Zerjal

Dokumentacija / Documentation: Diana Zrilić

Odnosi s javnošću / Public relations: Costanza Grassi

Alen Floričić

Video 1998–2017

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Sabina Salamon

Bez riječi Without words

15 23

Mladen Lučić

Bez naziva Untitled

29 33

Vladimir Vidmar

Mračno srce modernog doba The dark core of modernity

41 45

Branka Benčić

Suvremenost i lom Contemporaneity and fracture

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Sabina Salamon

Razgovor s Alenom Floričićem In conversation with Alen Floričić

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Postav / Set-up Izložba / Exhibition

73 74

Videografija / Videography Biografija / Biography

99 103

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 02/02, 2002.

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Bez riječi

Ako su nam riječi našeg jezika jedino moguće 1mjerilo, činimo im nepravdu.1 Na početku, potkraj 1990-ih, svjedočili smo autentičnom jeziku jednostavne forme one shot (i long take) videa, svedenog na samo jedan lik — autora samog. Prikazujući jedan prizor ponavljan unedogled, bilo bi nemoguće prepričati njegov sadržaj premda bi ostavljao dojam nečega duboko osobnog. Alen Floričić nikada ne govori, predstavlja se kao biće koje titra i zrači, skače, trza se ili samo sjedi... Umjesto čitljive teme, djelatni su ritam ponavljanja, vibriranje elektronske slike, izostanak riječi i linearne strukture vremena.

Neovisno o tome je li snimljen u stvarnom okruženju ili postavljen u apstrahirani prostor, gledatelju ne omogućuje svjesno rasuđivanje o tome što vidi — zagledan u Floričićev video, prolazi kroz iskustvo uskomešanih osjećaja uznemirenosti, podvojenih stanja, od humora do zbunjenosti. Jer, kako sa stajališta zdravog razuma objasniti netremično zurenje u jednu točku, ‘dugometražno’ sjedenje, beskonačno isplivavanje iz mora? Čime opravdati radnje koje činimo u osami, jer nisu za pokazivanje, poput nervoznog trljanja noge o nogu? Neortodoksni i drukčiji od svega što suvremeni video nudi, Floričićevi su radovi na prvi pogled bespredmetni — ne postoji supstanca koju bi mogli opkoliti i imenovati, tlo iz kojega bi mogao izrasti smisao.2 Ne zanimaju ga teme i sadržaji koji se mogu prepisati ili preuzeti od drugoga. Zanima ga vizualna forma koja će poslužiti kao pupak kojim se spuštamo u nepoznato.3 Potvrdu nalazim u izbjegavanju opisivanja ili dozivanja sadržaja radova u naslovima; svi su bez naziva, indeksirani rednim brojem i godinom nastanka. Nastavljajući se na Freudovu metaforu interpretacije snova, Floričićev video ne može biti razriješen jednoznačno. Asocijacije se šire u svim smjerovima i proizvode trvenja labavih ideja iz nesvjesnog i fiksnih misli svjesnog uma. Širi obzor predstavljaju teme proizišle iz zapitanosti nad idejama napretka i stvaranja uopće, svojstvene modernitetu čijem nasljedstvu autor pripada.4 Pod bremenom smisla vlastite pozicije umjetnika, njegove nedoumice nose ideju života kako su je tumačili egzistencijalisti, strepnju pred mogućnošću izbora i neizvjesnosti koju sloboda stvaranja podrazumijeva.

Muči ga nemoć odgovora. Otud radovi koje prepoznajemo kao manifestacije unutarnje psihičke stvarnosti. Ne skrivajući se za paravanom istrenirane retorike uvaženih tema i pomodnosti, ti nas radovi odvode u skrovišta tjeskobe, straha i neuroze — k onom ljudskom, nikada neposredno opisanom, prisutnom tek u osjećaju, a ne izravnoj poruci.

Slijedimo li tu misao, mogli bismo reći da je Floričićev video zapravo neprikazivački, da su se usmjerenost na sebe, reprezentacija u ja-formi i performativnost nametnuli kao vodiči sadržaja koji se nalazi negdje drugdje. Doduše, njegove bi radove doista gledali kao performanse kada postprodukcijskim tehnikama ne bi okrnjio njihov realitet — semplovima 1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, Wiley Blackwell, 1998., str. 23.

2 Vlastitim likom kao predmetom radova na domaćoj sceni koristi se i

Goran Škofić čiji radovi većinom slijede dramaturšku liniju zapleta, kulminacije i raspleta; u tom smislu njegov je jezik filmičan, posve različit od Floričićeva.

3 Freudova metafora za interpretaciju snova.

4 Za usporedbu, Badiou tvrdi da se nastupom moderniteta napušta klasično pitanje istine kao jedne

jedine, a nastupa epoha pluralnosti smisla; vidi Alain Badiou, Metafizika stvarne sreće, Kulturtreger-Multimedijalni institut, Zagreb 2016.

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distorziranog zvuka koji nisu tek glazbeni ornamenti. Njegova je posebna zadaća osnažiti dijegetičko polje onako kako ga tumači Rick Altman raspravljajući o filmskoj glazbi.5 Polazeći od njegova očišta prema kojem svaki gledatelj ima potrebu otkriti izvor zvuka koji čuje, filmsku glazbu dovodi u relaciju s trbuhozborcima koji, posuđujući glas nekom drugom (npr. animiranoj lutki), moraju prikrivati stvarni izvor zvuka. U Floričićevu slučaju postoji upravo ta mogućnost — da zvuk smjestimo u tijelo koje umjesto izgovorene riječi ispušta zvuk koji postaje subjekt interiorizirane drame pričvršćene na spiralu beskonačnog loopa.6 Altmanova opservacija da artikulirani glas prenosi vidljivu, a trbuhozborac skrivenu istinu, pogađa mjesto učinka Floričićevih videa — komunikaciju s nesvjesnim.7 Pa ipak, fizičnost je bitna, biomehaničke zakonitosti tijela su imperativ — napor, umor, svrbež, nemir — sve je performativno, osim konačne forme definirane montažom.

Ništa što radimo ne može biti konačno, jedino 8u odnosu na nešto drugo što je utvrđeno.8 Floričić radi u korist onoga što nije moguće opisati ili opravdati smislom u kojem prebiva das Unheimliche kao tipično stanje koje prati otkrivanje potisnutog.9 Jedna od situacija u kojoj se dogodi susret je s dvojnikom kojega Floričić više puta donosi u varijantama umnoženoga sebe, najočiglednije u seriji radova na crnoj pozadini iz 2005. godine. Premda nerijetko prisutan, dvojnik predstavlja jednu od autorovih neobrađenih tema. Započet ću time kako je sasvim sigurno da se njime ne koristi s namjerom; kao većina motiva koje upravo iščitavamo, u proces stvaranja ukrcao se slučajno, kao prikladan i poticajan estetski potencijal. S druge strane, povijest motiva dvojnika toliko je bogata da bi bila šteta ne spomenuti nekoliko aspekata koji su ga kroz tisućljeća učinile arhetipom. Od starobabilonskog i antičkog mita koji ga prikazuju kao partnerski raspoloženog pomagača i srodnu dušu do novovjeke psihoanalize koja ističe konfliktnost upisanu u razlici istog i drugog, što koincidira s pojavom raspuknutog subjekta, odnosno razdvojenog sebstva.10 U tom se rasponu pojavljuje i u Floričićevoj videografiji: teško je razabrati da li u prepirci ili nadmetanju, dvojnici iz videa Bez naziva 05/00 vraćaju na prvo pitanje: tko je zapravo dvojnik, a tko je izvorni Ja? Čini se kako ideju sretnog rješenja netrpeljivosti između subjekta i njegova suparnika, koju je psihoanalitička struja razriješila zrcalnim stadijem u kojem dvojnik otpušta identifikaciju i prepozna se, “dođe do svog Ja” (Lacan), nosi rad Bez naziva 01/05.11 Ipak, par zagrljenih dvojnika koji složno, ali sporo cupka lijevodesno, ostaje i dalje izazov preispitivanju pojmova rivalstva i sjedinjenja, istosti i sklada; u koreografiji usporenog stupanja svatko može razaznati sputanost ljubavnika u zagrljaju.

Podsjetnik na želju za totalitetom savršenih polovica, koju starogrčki mit utjelovljuje u dvospolcu. Novovjeki dvojnik, budući da je raspolovljen, prije je smetalo nego savršena 5 Dijegetičko polje je prostor koji nužno ne vidimo, ali je implicitan, pridonosi cjelovitu razumijevanju rada. Vidi: Roy Armes, On Video, str. 173.

6 Rick Altman, Moving Lips: Cinema as Ventriloquism, Yale French Studies, br. 60, Cinema/ Sound, 1980. Prema Altmanu, skriven u trbuhu, izvan domašaja nadzora društvenih

konvencija, zadržava iskrenost i osobnost, za razliku od uglađenog artikuliranoga glasanja pod prismotrom cenzure svjesnog uma.

7 Ibidem, str. 78.: U staroj Grčkoj trbuhozborcima (grč. engastrimanteis) pripisivali su moći proricanja iz trbuha, u locusu nesvjesnog uma.

8 Wittgenstein, op. cit., str. 23.

9 Das Unheimliche se uglavnom ne prevodi, a označava stanje nelagode koje izvire iz potisnutog. Nastaje kada oduvijek poznato, ali prikriveno, dođe na vidjelo. Etim. negacija njem. heimlich — blisko, udomaćeno. Psihoanalitičko tumačenje smješta ga izvan označiteljskog niza, gdje interpretacija (smisao) ot-

kazuje; vidi: Mladen Dolar, Das Unheimliche, Društvo za teoretsko psihonalizo, Ljubljana, 1994.

10 Najstariji poznati je Mit o Gilgamešu, slijedi Ilijada, a Freudov doprinos je radikalni obrat u interpretaciji dvojnika.

11 Bez naziva 01/05 se referira na sliku Ljubavnici Giovannija Segantinija.

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 05/00, 2000.

polovica.12 Floričićevim prikazima dvojništva i umnoženih entiteta struji nelagoda jednako kao i smijeh. Bez obzira na to što su formalni razlozi za to lako uočljivi i čine se nadasve jednostavnima — neurotično repetitivno ponašanje je sveprisutno — to treba prepoznati kao posve jedinstven slučaj. U razmjerno zastarjeloj literaturi poput Bergsonova eseja o smiješnom, nalazimo kako ljudsko biće koje poprima značajke stroja, bivajući na rubu živog i neživog svijeta, uzrokuje smijeh. Takvi su Floričićevi antijunaci.

Kad je riječ o humoru, kao glavnu stilsku odrednicu izdvojila bih združivanje oprečnosti. Majstor je dvoznačnih osjećaja, stopljenih krajnosti, mislilac i umjetnik, u tuzi veseo, u veselju tužan.13 Pirandello zapaža kako smijeh humorista vidi, ali oprašta.

Ne izruguje se beskompromisno. Bergson ga pak smatra društvenom gestom koja korigira nesavršenstvo. Premda sve navedene reference opisuju floričićevsko smiješno, priklonila bih se Freudovu razmišljanju o humoru, koji ga dotiče najpreciznije. Smatra ga vrstom obrambenog mehanizma ega u obračunu sa stvarnošću koja mu nanosi bol. U želji da preduhitri eventualnu patnju, ego se izdiže nad situacijom tako što se odlučuje za humor. Freud to naziva trijumfom narcizma. Za usporedbu, amplituda po kojoj se odvija Floričićev video ovakva je: napetost uzrokovana repeticijom manipuliranih sekvenci traje i traje, zatim iznenada popusti. Kad se pojavi humor — napetost nestane, i tako redom...

Pritom je crta razlučivosti između jednog i drugog stanja našoj percepciji posve nevidljiva.

Sigurno je jedino da takva dinamika gledatelja ne iscrpljuje, dakle video nije dosadan.

Možda je najprikladniji dokaz tome rad Bez naziva 02/05 u kojem se referira na Oplakivanje Krista Andrea Mantegne. Krist zamijenjen za autorovo tijelo (ili obratno), laganim se zumiranjem približava gledatelju. Umjesto uskrsnuća, gledamo silazak! Zbog neoče12 Rosalind Krauss tvrdi kako se u vrijeme analogne tehnologije, umjesto kompjutor-

skim alatom, dvojnika moralo pronaći u zrcalnoj snimci.

Primjer su dva videoperfor-

mansa u kojima se Vito 13 Navod iz Pirandellova Acconci snima u ogledalu — eseja O humorizmu odnosi Centers, 1971. i Air Time, 1973. se na Giordana Bruna.

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kivanog obrata izmjenjuju se stanja napetosti (pomisao na smrt) i oslobađanja (prepoznavši polumrtav-poluživi lik koji zamahuje stopalima, približava se i udaljava, u ritmu naprijed-nazad). Sasvim je, dakle, prihvatljiva opaska da humor ima dostojanstvo.14 Iako prema nekima video pretpostavlja frontalnost kakvu voli slikarstvo,15 upravo je začudno u kojoj to mjeri vrijedi za Floričićeve uratke. Kada bi im oduzeli pokret, bili bi slika: klasično kadrirani prizor u zlatnom rezu, portret u interijeru ili prirodi.

Atipičan je primjer trokanalna instalacija (Bez naziva 03/04) sastavljena od tri identična prizora u pleneru: par u zagrljaju (Alen i Natalija) pozira pred kamerom. Prikazujući tri identična prizora istodobno, autor, skoro pa subverzivno, sliku pretpostavlja snimci, točnije, jednu sliku trima snimkama, zamišljajući pitanje radoznalih: jesu li sve tri jednake? Odgovor je, nažalost, nepristupačan, skriven u promišljanju logike medija, a možda glasi ovako: svako prenošenje realnosti zajamčeno je medijacijom ili — sve što vizualni jezik prikazuje, može biti samo posredovana realnost. Između slikarstva i videa u tome nema razlike. Prednost je videa mogućnost neposrednog prisvajanja životnosti koju situacija i mjesto nose, bez mimezisa, golim snimanjem. Drugim riječima, video je jednostavan odgovor na pitanje kako najlakše dohvatiti pokret, vidljiv u titranju svjetla u sobi.16 Rad Alena Floričića to je začudniji što smo dublje uronjeni u vrijeme eksteriorizacije umjetnosti. No poticaj za ulaskom u gramatiku njegova rada proizlazi iz želje da dokučim postupke koji ga čine nesvakidašnje dojmljivim, a nedokučivim. Jedan od alata kojim to postiže svakako je vladanje strukturom vremena, što se ne odnosi samo na uporabu zatvorene (cirkularne) forme loopa. Tiče se onoga što Nam June Paik smatra ključnim za stvaranje videa: manipulacija vremena u procesu montaže utemeljene na razlici ‘realnog vremena’ koje kamera snima (ulazno vrijeme/input-time) i onoga subjektivnog ‘koje percipira mozak’ (izlazno vrijeme/output time). Premda je jasno da se vrijeme proizvoljno može produljiti ili zgusnuti, razmišljajanje u tom smjeru opetovano me vraća na isti zaključak o tome da je struktura vremena koju Floričić u montaži stvara podudarna s nesvjesnim, a da ne znam kako to postiže. Freudovskom optikom, lako je zapaziti podudarnost s pojavom uzastopna ponavljanja karakterističnog za tikove koji izazivaju nelagodu jer se pojavljuju nenadano. Iz njih progovara otpor (ili odmazda) tijela upućen onome tko ju je potisnuo — gospodaru kuće — da bi osujetilo njegovu umišljenu svemoć. Floričićeve ubrzane i kratke, ali pritom ponavljajuće, u krug zatvorene radnje, prizivaju traumu prisile.

Dok su primjeri ovakva zgusnutog vremena česti, rjeđe korišteno ‘prošireno’ vrijeme predstavlja već spomenuta trokanalna instalacija (Bez naziva 03/04) u kojoj prizor zagrljenog para na uzvisini pratimo na tri simultane projekcije poredane u niz. Osjećaj dugotrajnosti može proizići iz znanja da kameri ili fotoaparatu poziramo kratkotrajno, a ne unedogled kao ovdje, no protok vremena izrastao je na sasvim drukčijoj konstelaciji, trostrukoj opoziciji — jedva primjetnog pokreta u kadru, nepomičnog poziranja protagonista i sveprožimajućeg puhanja vjetra koji aktivira prostor (fizičko mjesto u koje je smješten rad) i gradi dodatan dijegetički prostor. Pravilo je tu: već u najmanjem pokretu pulsira zbivanje. Tada i gledanje na čudan način rezonira sa zvučnom nervaturom u prostoru i čini prizor uvjerljivijim.

14 Freud, ibidem, str. 162–165.

15 Hollis Framton, Withering Away of the State of the Art, predstavljeno na konferenciji Open Circuits: The Future of

Television, MOMA, NYC, 1974., str. 166–167.

16 Potreba za videom pojavila se u drugoj polovici 1990-ih godina. Čitavo ljeto izrezivao je oblike koji nisu prikazivali

ništa, niti su nosili ikakvo značenje. Izrezivao ih je bez svrhe i cilja. Potreba za snimanjem pojavila se kada je htio prenijeti, uprizoriti hrpicu papirića kako se raspršuju po prostoru

dok je radio s njima (naknadno ih lijepio na tapetu). VHS kamerom dokumentirao je vrtložastu formu i izložio uz tapetu na koju ih je zalijepio.

To je prvi susret s videom.

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U umjetnosti je najbolje ne reći ništa.17

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Izostanak riječi u njegovu radu gotova je stvar. No vrijedi podsjetiti da je disfunkcija komunikacije jedna od njegovih najpoticajnijih i stalnih tema, premda jasno artikulirana u svega nekoliko radova. Prisutna je u inačicama biomehaničkih metafora — logoreji utjelovljenoj u ‘kugli brbljalici’ (Bez naziva 10/02) ili niskofrekventnim slow-motion recitacijama ‘mumljalice’ (Bez naziva 02/13). Ignorirajući leksik, koristi se semplovima nastalim procesiranjem originalnih snimaka koji se gledatelju obraćaju bojom i intenzitetom zvuka. U novijem radu, četverokanalnoj instalaciji (Bez naziva 01/13), autor se prvi put pojavljuje u ulozi potencijalnoga govornika. Komunikacijski nesporazum inscenira kao klasičan nastup na pozornici gdje se potencijalni govor preobražava u negovor, erupciju emotivnog naboja bez dometa riječi, sapet emocionalnim naporom za komunikacijom. Rezultat je ambivalentan — zapreka budi nemir, a lik — sam autor, koji grozničavo fiksira komunikaciju obraćajući se gledateljima, oslobađa komično.18 Premda ostaje upitno je li riječ o njegovu umjetničkom svjetonazoru iza kojega stoji kritička pozicija, Floričićeva sklonost k onome što bježi logici i opire se artikulaciji, u umjetničkom je smislu posebno postignuće i njegova autorska pozicija. Recept koji se ne da prepisati jer je u pitanju osjećaj za mjeru i jezik medija.

Sabina Salamon

17 Wittgenstein, op. cit., str. 26.

18 Roland Barthes, Camera lucida, Antibarbarus, Zagreb, 2003., str. 67.:“Nemoć imenovanja dobar je znak nemira”.

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 10/02, 2002.

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Without words

And insofar as the words of our language seem to us the only possible 1standards of measurement we are always doing them injustice.1 At the very beginning, at the end of the 1990s, we witnessed the authentic language of the simple form of the one shot (and the long take) video, reduced to just one figure — the author himself. By displaying one scene repeated endlessly, it would be impossible to retell its content although it would leave an impression of something deeply personal.

Alen Floričić never speaks, he presents himself as a being that vibrates and radiates, jumps, twitches or just sits… In place of readable themes, there are an active rhythm of repetition, the vibrating of an electronic image, a lack of words and a linear structure of time.

Regardless of whether it was filmed in a real environment or set in an abstract space, it does not allow the viewer a conscious reasoning about what he sees — peeked at in Floričić’s video, he passes through the experience of unsettled feelings of anxiety, divided states, from humour to confusion. Because, how from the standpoint of a healthy mind to explain an unflinching staring at one point, a “feature-length” sitting, an endlessly resurfacing from the sea? How to justify the actions that we do in solitude, because they are not to be shown, like the nervous rubbing together of feet? Unorthodox and different from anything that a modern video offers, Floričić’s works are at first glance futile — there is no substance that we are able to envelop and name, the soil from which a meaning could sprout.2 Themes and contents that can be copied or taken from another do not interest him. The visual form that will serve as a navel by which we descend into the unknown interests him.3 I find confirmation in the avoidance of description or naming of the contents of works in the titles; all are without titles, indexed with a sequential number and the year of creation. Continuing with Freud’s metaphor of the interpretation of dreams, Floričić’s video cannot be resolved unambiguously. Associations are spread in all directions and they produce frictions of loose ideas from the unconscious and fixed thoughts of a conscious mind. The themes derived from the questioning over the ideas of progress and creation in general, characteristic to the modernity to whose legacy the author belongs, represent a wider horizon.4 Under the burden of the sense of his own position of being an artist, his doubts bear the idea of life as the existentialists interpreted it, anxiety before the possibility of choice and uncertainty, which the freedom of creation implies. The inability of the answer torments him. From here come the works that we recognise as the manifestations of an internal psychic reality. Not hiding behind a screen of trained rhetoric of esteemed themes and hype, these works lead us to a haven of anxiety, fear and neurosis — to that which is human, never directly described, present only in an emotion, and not a direct message. If we follow that thought, we could 1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, Revised Edition, Wiley Blackwell, 1998, p. 23.

2 Goran Škofić uses his own figure as the subject of the works on the local scene and

his works mostly follow a dramaturgical plotline, of culmination and resolution, and the act is retold; in this sense his language is filmic, totally different to Floričić’s.

3 Freud’s metaphor for the interpretation of dreams.

4 For comparison, Badiou claims that with the appearance of modernity the classic question of truth as one

whole is abandoned, and an epoch of the plurality of sense appears; see Alain Badiou, Metaphysics of Real Happiness, Kulturtreger — Multimedia Institute, Zagreb 2016.

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say that Floričić’s video is in fact not unpresentable, that being focused on himself, the representation in the I-form and performativity have imposed themselves as guides of the content, which is located somewhere else. Admittedly, we would really look at his works as performances if their reality were not ruined by post-production techniques — by samples of distorted sound that are not just musical ornaments. His particular task is to empower the diegetic field the way that Rick Altman interprets it by discussing film music.5 Starting from his point of view according to which every viewer has a need to discover the source of the sound that they hear, he places film music in relation to ventriloquists who, by borrowing a voice from someone else (e.g. an animated doll), must hide the real source of the sound. In Floričić’s case that exact possibility exists — that we place the sound into the body, which in place of a spoken word, it releases a sound that becomes the subject of an interiorised drama fixed to a spiral of an endless loop.6 Altman’s observation that an articulated voice transmits a visible, and a ventriloquist a hidden truth, matches the place of the impact of Floričić’s videos — the communication with the unconscious.7 However, physicality is essential, the biomechanical legalities of the body are an imperative — effort, fatigue, itching, restlessness — everything is performative, apart from the final form defined by the editing.

Nothing we do can be defended definitively. But only by 8reference to something else that is established.8 Floričić acts in favour of that which cannot be described or justified with a sense in which dwells das Unheimliche as the typical state that follows the discovery of the repressed.9 One of the situations in which an encounter happens is with a double that Floričić many times depicts in variations of a duplicated self, most evidently in a series of his works on a black background from 2005. Although often present, the double represents one of the author’s untreated themes. I will start by saying that it is completely certain that he doesn’t use it with an intention; as the majority of motifs which we see, in the process of creation it is embarked upon accidently, like an appropriate and encouraging aesthetic potential. On the other hand, the history of the motif of the double is so rich that it would be a shame not to mention a few aspects, which over millennia have made it an archetype. From the old Babylonian and ancient myths which depict it as a helper partner and a soul mate, to the Modern Age psychoanalysis that emphasises the conflict embedded in the contrast of the same and the other, that coincides with the appearance of a broken subject, in other words of a separated self.10 It is in this range that it appears in Floričić’s videography too: it is difficult to discern whether in an altercation or competition, the doubles from the video Untitled 05/00 return to the first question: who is in fact 5 The diegetic field is a space, which we don’t necessarily see, but it is implicit, it contributes to the overall understanding of a work. See: Roy Armes, On Video, p. 173 173.

6 Rick Altman, Moving Lips: Cinema as Ventriloquism, Yale French Studies, no. 60, Cinema/Sound, 1980. According to Altman, hidden in the belly,

outside the scope of the control of social conventions, it holds the honesty and character, unlike the polished articulated voicing under the surveillance of the censorship of the conscious mind.

7 Called engastrimanteis (belly-prophets), the ventriloquists of ancient Greece were taken to be prophets and

were said to emit their prophetic voice from the belly.

Ibidem, p. 78.

8 Wittgenstein, op. cit., p. 23.

9 Das Unheimliche is generally not translated, but means a state of discomfort that arises from the supressed. It emerges when the always known, but hidden, comes to light. Etymology: negation German heim-

lich — close, familiar. The psychoanalytical interpretation places it beyond the identifier’s range, where the interpretation (meaning) fails; see: Mladen Dolar, Das Unheimliche, Ljubljana, 2000.

10 The oldest known is the Myth of Gilgamesh, the Iliad follows, and Freud’s contribution is a radical reversal in the interpretation of the double.

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/05, 2005.

the double, and who is the original ‘Me’? It seems that the idea of a happy solution of the intolerance between the subject and his rival, which psychoanalytical course resolved with a mirror stage in which the double releases identification and recognises himself, “coming to his own ‘Me’” (Lacan), is shown in the work Untitled 01/05.11 However, the pair of embraced doubles who harmoniously, but slowly jumps left to right, still remains a challenge to the questioning of the concepts of rivalry and unity, uniformity and harmony; in a choreography of a slow march each one can recognise the inhibition of the lovers in the embrace. A reminder of the desire for the totality of perfect halves, which ancient Greek myth embodies in a hermaphrodite. The Modern Age double, being that he is separated, is a botherer rather than a perfect half.12 Through Floričić’s displays of duplicity and duplicated entities, discomfort flows equally as well as laughter. Regardless of the fact that the formal reasons for that are clearly visible and seem above all straight forward — the neurotic repetitive behaviour is omnipresent — it should be recognised as a completely unique case. In the relatively outdated literature such as Bergson’s essay about laughter, we discover how a human being that acquires the traits of a machine, being on the edge of the animate and inanimate world, causes laughter. Floričić’s antiheroes are as such.

When it concerns humour, as the main stylistic determinant, I would single out the bringing together of oppositions. He is a master of ambiguous feelings, of fused extremes, a thinker and artist, in sadness happy, in happiness sad.13 Pirandello notices how a humourist sees laughter, but forgives. It does not mock uncompromisingly. Bergson 11 The work refers to the painting The Lovers by Giovanni Segantini.

12 Rosalind Krauss states

how in the time of analogue technology, in place of using computer tools, the double had to be found in a mirror

recording. Examples are two video performances in which Vito Acconci filmed himself in a mirror — Centers, 1971 and

Air Time, 1973.

13 The quote from Pirandello’s essay About Humour relates to Giordano Bruno.

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however considers it as a social gesture that corrects imperfection. Although all of the mentioned references describe Floričić’s “funny”, I would chose Freud’s deliberation about humour, which touches upon it most precisely. He considers it a kind of defence mechanism of the ego in a settlement with reality that inflicts pain on it. In the desire to prevent possible suffering, the ego rises above the situation by deciding on humour.

Freud calls this the triumph of narcissism. For a comparison, the amplitude at which Floričić’s video takes place is like this: the tension caused by the repetition of the manipulated sequences lasts and lasts, then suddenly abates. When the humour appears — the tension disappears, and so on… In doing so, the line of the differentiation between both states is completely invisible to our perception. The only thing that is certain is that such dynamics do not exhaust the viewer, therefore the video is not boring. Perhaps the best evidence for this is the work Untitled 02/2015 in which The Lamentation of Christ of Andrea Mantegna is referred to. Christ replaced by the author’s body (or vice versa), is brought to the viewer with a slow zoom. Instead of a resurrection, we’re looking at a descent! Due to an unexpected reversal the states of tension alternate (the thought of death) and liberation (recognising a half-dead, half-alive figure who is wiggling his feet, approaching and moving away, in a back and forth rhythm). Altogether it is, therefore, an acceptable remark that humour has dignity.14 Although according to some the video assumes frontality, which is preferred in painting,15 it is in fact amazing to what extent it is valid for Floričić’s creations. If the movement was taken away from them, they would be a picture: a classically framed scene in the golden ratio, a portrait indoors or outside. An atypical example is the three-channel installation (Untitled 03/04) made up of three identical scenes en plein air: a couple holding each other (Alen and Natalija) pose in front of the camera. Displaying three identical scenes at the same time, the author, almost subversively, juxtaposes the image on the recording, more precisely, one image with three shots, raising the question of the inquisitive ones: are all three identical? The answer is, unfortunately, inaccessible, hidden in the consideration of the logic of the medium, but maybe it sounds like this: each transmission of reality is guaranteed by mediation or — whatever the visual language shows, can only be a mediated reality. In that, there is no difference between painting and video. The advantage of video is the possibility of the direct appropriation of vitality that the situation and place have, without mimesis, with a bare recording. In other words, the video is a simple answer to the question of what is the easiest way to seize the movement, visible in the vibration of the light in the room.16 The work of Alen Floričić is more astonishing the more we are deeper submerged in the time of the exteriorisation of art. However, the motivation for entering the grammar of his work derives from the wish that I figure out the processes that make him unusually impressive, and unfathomable. One of the tools with which he achieves it is certainly the mastering of the structure of time, that it is not applied only to the use of the closed (circular) form of a loop. It concerns what Nam June Paik believes key to the creation of videos: the manipulation of time in the process of editing based on the difference of ‘real time’ which the camera films (input time) and of that subjective ‘which the brain perceives’ (output time). Although it is clear that time can be freely extended or condensed, pondering in that direction repeatedly returns me to the same conclusion that the structure of time that Floričić creates in the edit is congruent with the unconscious, and that I don’t know how he achieves it. Through Freud’s lens, it is easy to notice the congruence with the appearance of the consecutive repetition characteristic for the ticks that cause discomfort because they appear unexpectedly. From them speaks the resist-

ance (or revenge) of the body directed to the one who repressed it — the master of the house — in order that he thwarts its conceited omnipotence. Floričić’s rapid and short, but in doing so repeating, closed in a circle operations, invoke the trauma of coercion.

Since examples of this kind of condensed time are frequent, less frequently used ‘extended’ time is represented by the already mentioned three-channel installation (Untitled 03/04) in which we follow the scene of the embraced couple on a hill on three simultaneous projections arranged in series. The feeling of longevity might result from the knowledge that we pose to the video or still camera briefly, and not indefinitely as here, however the flow of time derived from an altogether different constellation, a triple opposition — a barely noticeable movement in the frame, a motionless posing of the protagonists and an all-pervasive blowing of the wind which activates the space (a physical place in which the work is located) and builds an additional diegetic space.

The rule is here: an event pulsates even in the smallest movement. Then even the watching in a strange way resonates with the audible nervous system in the space and makes the scene convincing.

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In art it is hard to say anything, that is as good as: saying nothing.17

The absence of words in his work is a fait accompli. However it is worth remembering that the dysfunction of communication is one of his most stimulating and permanent themes, although clearly articulated in only a few works. It is present in versions of the biomechanical metaphors — logorrhoea embodied in the ‘blabbering ball’ (Untitled 10/02) or in low frequency slow-motion recitations of the ‘mumbler’ (Untitled 02/13). By ignoring the lexis, the author uses samples created by the processing of original recordings, which address the viewer with the colour and the intensity of sound. In the most recent work, a four-channel installation (Untitled 01/13), the author appears in the role of a potential speaker for the first time. He stages the communicational misunderstanding as a classic performance on a stage where the potential speech turns into a non-speech, an eruption of emotional charge without a range of words, bound by an emotional effort for communication. The result is ambivalent — the obstacle provokes restlessness, and a figure — the author himself, who frantically fixates the communication while addressing the viewers, releases the comical.18 Although it remains questionable whether it concerns his artistic worldview, behind which stands a critical position, Floričić’s affinity with that which escapes logic and defies articulation, in an artistic sense is a special achievement and his authorial position. A recipe, which cannot be copied because it is about the sense for the measure and language of the medium.

Sabina Salamon

14 Freud, ibidem, pp. 162-165.

15 Hollis, Frampton, Withering Away of the State of the Art, shown at the Open Circuits conference: The Future of Television, MOMA, NYC, 1974, pp. 166-167.

16 The need for video appears

in the second half of the 90s.

The whole summer he cut up forms that demonstrated nothing, nor did they have any meaning. He cut them up with no purpose or goal. The need for recording appeared when he wanted to transmit,

to stage a small pile of papers as they spread over the space while he worked with them (he stuck them to wallpaper afterwards). With a VHS camera he documented a whirling form and displayed them with the wallpaper on which

he stuck them. This was his first encounter with video.

17 Wittgenstein, op. cit., p. 26.

18 Roland Barthes, Camera lucida, Antibarbarus, Zagreb, 2003, p. 67: “The inability of identification is a good sign of restlessness.”

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Bez naziva / Untitled, 2009.

100 x 100 cm, akril na platnu / acrylic on canvas

Bez naziva

Retrospektivna izložba videoprodukcije Alena Floričića, postavljena u Muzeju moderne i suvremene umjetnosti u Rijeci (u malo manjem opsegu predstavljena je u ljubljanskom Škucu i tršćanskom Studiju Tommaseo), obuhvatila je razdoblje od prvih videoradova iz 1998. do recentnih ostvarenja ovoga značajnog istarskog i hrvatskog umjetnika. Dakako, takvu je retrospektivu itekako zaslužio jer je Floričić jedan od najznačajnijih domaćih videoumjetnika, o čemu ova izložba rječito govori. Naziv izložbe Alen Floričić: Video 1998.

— 2017. indirektno se referira na naslove Floričićevih radova koje umjetnik u pravilu ne naslovljuje, odnosno označuje ih s Bez naziva. Alen, naime, u svom radu izbjegava natruhe izravne naracije i deskripcije te su i nazivi njegovih radova ostali bez naslova koji bi gledatelju, svjesno ili nesvjesno, nametnuli određeni kut sagledavanja umjetničkog djela, što bi se kosilo s njegovim principom nesugestivnog, minimalističkog i antinarativnog pristupa umjetnosti. Floričić naslovljuje svoje radove isključivo godinom i rednim brojem kako su u toj godini nastajali, slično kao što fotografi svoje radove najčešće naslovljuju datumom i mjestom snimanja motiva. Ipak, prije tih podataka autor stavlja naslov Bez naziva upravo kako bi istaknuo nebitnost bilo kakve fabulizacije. Sam o tome kaže: “Nenaslovljavanje radova na tragu je nezauzimanja pozicije, nedopuštanja pojmovnom, verbalnom diskursu da poremeti finu strukturu umjetničkog jezika koji se ne sastoji od pojmova i narativa.”

Floričić je, što je bilo jasno vidljivo na izložbi, u svome dosadašnjem umjetničkom opusu pokazivao iznimnu naklonost redukcionizmu te se, oslobođen deskriptivnih elemenata, bavio samom biti umjetničkog djela, na tragu teze o umjetnosti kao egzistencijalnoj, a ne estetskoj kategoriji. Premda su na izložbi zastupljeni isključivo videoradovi ovog umjetnika, trebalo bi, da bi se dobila cjelovita slika Alenova umjetničkog rada, spomenuti radove koje je ostvario i u drugim medijima jer, kako sâm kaže: “Medij je u osnovi sporedna stvar. Zanima me tek kao sredstvo, što, naravno, ne umanjuje čisto senzornu fascinaciju njime, kao i svojevrstan užitak u radu s njim. S obzirom na to da sam radio u raznim medijima, nisam ih nikad osjećao kao jasno ograđena i odvojena područja... U mojim prvim pokušajima video je bio tek jedna od komponenti unutar instalacija koje su se sastojale i od drugih materijala kojima sam se u to vrijeme koristio, kao što su izresci iz časopisa, sapuni, drvo i dr. Video je bio logičan izbor u trenutku kad su me zanimali mediji koji su u neposrednoj blizini tzv. realne stvarnosti, kako bi je mogli što efektnije subverzivno tumačiti.”

Tu izjavu rječito argumentira Floričićev cjelokupan umjetnički put koji je započeo još kao student krajem osamdesetih godina prošloga stoljeća velikim platnima slikanim u neoapstraktno-ekspresionističkom duhu, zamijenivši ih ubrzo slikama rađenim svojevrsnim postmodernističkim manirizom, iz čega je malo poslije proizišao Oblik, tijelo ili lik (ovisno o kontekstu) amorfne forme poput elementa puzzle ili otiska stopala. Oblik se prvi put javlja kao otisak u sapunu, odnosno plastički zapis koji nužno asocira na ljudsko stopalo te se može čitati i kao umjetnikovo htijenje za ostavljanjem autorskoga traga. Riječ je o objektu reducirane kiparske forme koji će Floričić vještim i smislenim manipulacijama dugo varirati, a gomilanje tih, po podu rasutih, elemenata poništava arhitektonsku čvrstoću izložbenog prostora, čime je Floričić započeo i svoja prostorno-

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ambijentalna promišljanja koja su postala obveznim i integralnim dijelom njegovih kasnijih videoinstalacija. “Ulaskom u galeriju nastojim pri postavu u potpunosti integrirati zadani prostor u svoj rad. Ta postojeća arhitektonska zbilja sa svojom zapreminom, otvorima, akcentima i perspektivama postaje na taj način modulator konkretne pojavnosti rada.”, riječi su Alena Floričića izrečene negdje na početku njegova umjetničkog puta, koje svjedoče da je Alen već tada zauzeo čvrste stavove i postavio jasne premise svoga umjetničkog djelovanja. Floričiću je podjednako važna ideja kao pokretač njegova rada, medijski prosede (pretežno video) kojim je rad izveden, kao i prostor u kojemu će finalni artefakt biti predstavljen. Autorovi radovi u biti predstavljaju ravnopravnu simbiozu svih navedenih elemenata te čine određeni i specifični Gesamtkunstwerk koji besprijekorno korespondira s duhom vremena u kojem nastaje.

S vremenom Oblik u Floričića postaje svojevrsnim autorskim potpisom jer će se kao lajtmotiv pojavljivati u njegovim serijama za koje je karakteristično gomilanje iste forme u različitim tehnikama i materijalima. U to vrijeme, a govorimo o sredini devedesetih godina proteklog stoljeća, Alen se sve češće okušava u mediju videa u kojemu je jedini protagonist, odnosno subjekt radnje on sâm, dakle autor osobno, te bi se moglo ustvrditi da je posežući za novim izražajnim medijem, Oblik zamijenio svojim likom. Kao što nije bio zadivljen samom formom Oblika, već ga je zanimao sustav u kojem će i kako ta forma saživjeti u nekom drugom kontekstu, tako već od samog početka bavljenja videom nije bio impresioniran ni vlastitim likom. Na snimkama Alen će biti prirodan, nedotjeran, bez ikakve šminke, a čudni pokreti koje izvodi, računalno ubrzan ritam te semplirani zvuk daju mu, bez sumnje, dojam karikaturalnosti. Neznatno prije nego što je krenuo u svoja videoistraživanja, Floričić je svoj lik aplicirao u raznim ambijentima i na raznim objektima, primjerice svoju je fotografiju otvorenih usta zalijepio na središnje stijenke pisoara u muškom zahodu. Ta instalacija inaugurirala je autorov lik kao jednu od konstanti Floričićeva opusa u kojem je najčešće on sâm temom svojih umjetničkih radova i svoj lik koristi kao eksperimentalno polje koje podnosi sve, pa i najgrublje vrste manipuliranja. Koristeći sebe kao jedini subjekt, autor postavlja problemsku suštinu radnje, a polemizirajući sâm sa sobom obraća se okolini kojoj socijalno pripada. Floričić potencira personalni govor koji se poigrava sa zahtjevnom tematikom apsurda, što se očituje u introspektivnom pristupu prožetom gotovo satirično-sarkastičnim elementima koje autor upotrebljava kao parabolu za aktualne društvene probleme. Apsurd, kao jedno od polazišta Floričićeve umjetnosti, bez sumnje je autorovo sredstvo kojim se koristi kao odgovorom na upitnost današnjih civilizacijskih parametara, ali njime ukazuje i na besmislen položaj umjetnika u našoj sredini u kojoj vizualna umjetnost nije čak ni među prioritetima novouspostavljenih kulturoloških realiteta. Floričić svoj lik, transponiran u medij videa, zapravo poistovjećuje s pojomom apsurda, a ogolivši ga od bilo kakve deskripcije i estetiziranja te izvodeći radnje bliske stanovitom minimalističkom ekspresionizmu, postavlja pitanja treba li se umjetnost prilagoditi novim uzusima ponašanja, s njima polemizirati ili se izdići iznad njih.

Floričić se u biti bavi egzistencijalnim pitanjima umjetnosti, odnosno analizama njezine samosvojnosti i internih jezičnih artikulacija, dakle njezinim bitkom i njezinom suštinskom naravi. Njegova interpretacija tih temeljnih pitanja izazovni je to više što se Floričić prvenstveno izražava u novim tehnologijama, rijetko u klasičnim likovnim medijima (slikarstvo, skulpura, crtež). Upravo je stoga njegov rad u mediju videa specifičan (ne samo u Hrvatskom već i u svjetskom kontekstu) jer raščlanjuje i ogoljuje primarne principe umjetničkoga govora, težeći njegovim osnovnim polazištima. Takav stav o umjetnosti, ali i egzistenciji umjetnika Floričić je jednom prigodom ovako sažeo: “Moja pri-

sutnost u vlastitim radovima ima cilj otvarati pitanja o osobnosti i položaju umjetnika u društvu, tj. na relaciji umjetnik — umjetničko djelo — publika (maniristička situacija umjetnika-izopćenika). Sama umjetnost koja nema više što reći u ideološko-estetskom smislu okreće se pitanjima same strukture umjetničkog procesa. Držim da je umjetnost stalno dinamičko preispitivanje vlastite slobode u smislu harmonizacije svog odnosa prema prirodnoj i društvenoj okolini, odnosno u smislu oslobađanja kroz pomirenje i suživot.

Sama umjetnost kao proces postaje jedina održiva realnost — izvor i cilj umjetničkog djelovanja.”

Floričić ovakvu problematiku rješava u biti konceptualnim umjetničkim postupcima transponiranim u medij videa kao što su autorefleksivnost (doslovna i kao umjetničko sredstvo), pojam i fenomen apsurda te postupak multiplikacije. Njegovi radovi ritmički su strukturirani, a autorovo tijelo kao subjekt radnje reducirano je na elementarne funkcije, odnosno krajnje minimalizirani pokret. Parafrazirajući izjavu Billa Viole da je tijelo instrument spoznaje, Floričić će, izražavajući se tjelesno, zapravo govoriti o mentalnom.

Njegova tjelesna ekspresija preslika je svakodnevice koja donosi niz frustracija, tjeskobu, napetost i neizvjesnost te bi se moglo ustvrditi da su videoradovi Alena Floričića, između ostalog, karikaturalni prikazi bolesti današnje civilizacije. Artificijelna zbilja koju Floričić svojim izrazom zaziva, metafora je čovjekove otuđenosti u današnjem svijetu u kojem autor ne nalazi smisao svoje nazočnosti te se kao umjetnik osjeća pomalo suvišnim i frustriranim, ali dovoljno jakim da snagom duha prebrodi postojeću zbilju. Upravo stoga njegovi radovi egzistiraju s one strane realiteta, kao što i sama umjetnost, ako je istinita, nužno mora u sebi sadržati određenu dozu metajezika koji joj daje potreban duhovni diskurs, što je izdvaja od materijalne stvarnosti. Ono što Floričićev rad čini specifičnim i pomalo izdvojenim od današnje hrvatske videoprodukcije prije svega je složenost do u detalje isplaniranoga umjetničkog postupka. Razlog je tome, dakako, što je Floričić još u samim počecima svoga bavljenja videom shvatio i razumio medij kojim se služi, a iznimno svrsihodno koristeći elektronsku sliku i zvuk, kao i ostale njegove tehnološke karakteristike, izbjegao puku ilustrativnost određene ideje, usvojivši ga kao posebno sugestivan medij koji će jedini smisleno artikulirati njegove autorske zamisli. O tome kaže: “Nastojim odvojiti galerijski video od klasičnog filmskog videa. Uvijek sam smatrao da video u galeriji treba imati bitno drukčiji dimenzionalni predznak. Mora biti živa slika.”

Oko 2010. slijedi kratak Floričićev slikarski povratak kada se ponovno pojavljuje u početku teksta opisani Oblik. Zanimljivo je da se Alen i prije kratkoročno vraćao slikarstvu koristeći se njime kao svojevrsnom kreativnom pauzom u kontinuitetu videoprodukcije, ali i kao autodisciplinskom mjerom koja će otvoriti nove eksperimentalne poligone. Tako je bilo i sa slikama iz 2010. u kojima će, ponovno rabeći i multiplicirajući svoj davno osmišljen element (sada u serijskim nizovima s nijansama sive boje), istraživati i analizirati bit slikarstva, odnosno neevokativnim likovnim jezikom polemizirati sa slikarstvom kao činjenicom. Bitna razlika između tih slika i njegovih videoradova u tome je što u slikama nema transponiranja bilo kakvih psihičkih i emocionalnih stanja na njihovu površinu. Riječ je o istinskoj želji da svoje promišljanje umjetnosti sada usmjeri isključivo prema fizičkim i materijalnim zadanostima slike kako bi došao do novih sinteza i nikad do kraja zaokruženih zaključaka o samoj biti umjetnosti. Cjelokupan umjetnički rad Alena Floričića emanira i gradira od materijalnog do duhovnog i obratno, odnosno neprekidno propituje umjetnički bitak jer autor umjetnost shvaća i kreira kao svojevrsno utočište, stanovitu oazu u kojoj je moguće nekonkretno i transcendentalno bivanje budući da je Floričiću umjetnost ipak važnija od stvarnosti.

Mladen Lučić

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Bez naziva / Untitled, 2012.

100 x 100 cm, akril na platnu / acrylic on canvas

Untitled

The retrospective exhibition of the video production of Alen Floričić, set up in the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka (in a slightly abridged show in Ljubljana’s Škuc gallery and Trieste’s Studio Tommaseo), encompassed the period from the first video works from 1998 to the recent accomplishments of this significant Istrian and Croatian artist. Of course, such a retrospective is well deserved because Floričić is one of the most significant of Croatian video artists, about whom this exhibition articulately describes. The title of the exhibition Alen Floričić: Video 1998 — 2017 refers indirectly to the titles of Floričić’s works to which the artist typically does not gives titles, in other words, he names them Untitled. Namely, in his work, Alen avoids the hints of direct narration and description, and so his works have remained without titles, which might, consciously or subconsciously, impose a certain angle in the observation of the artistic work with the spectator, which would be inconsistent with his principle of a non-suggestive, minimalistic and anti-narrative approach to art. Floričić titles his works with just the year and a serial number in the way that they are created during that year, similarly as the photographs of his works are most often titled with the date and the place where the motifs were taken. However, in front of this data the author places the title Bez naziva (Untitled) in order to just highlight the unimportance of any kind of fabulation. About which he says: “The non-titling of the works is based on the non-taking of a position, of the non-allowance of a conceptual, verbal discourse that disturbs the fine structure of the artistic language which does not consist of a concept and narrative”.

Floričić has, which was clearly visible at the exhibition, in his previous artistic opus shown an exceptional leaning towards reductionism and has, liberated from descriptive elements, dealt with the very essence of the artistic work, in the pursuit of the thesis of art as an existential and not an aesthetic category. Although in the exhibition only the video works of this artist are represented, it should be mentioned, in order to gain the complete picture of Alen’s artistic work, works which he has created in other media, because as he himself says: “The medium is basically a secondary thing. It interests me only as a tool, that, of course, does not diminish the purely sensory fascination with it, as well as the kind of pleasure in the work with it. Considering that I have worked with various media, I have never thought of them as being clearly confined and separated domains... In my first attempts video was just one of the components within installations that also consisted of other materials which I used at that time, such as cuttings from magazines, soaps, wood and other things. Video was the logical choice at the time when I was interested in media which were in the immediate vicinity of the so-called real reality, in order that they would more effectively interpret it subversively.”.

This statement articulately demonstrates Floričić’s entire artistic journey which began as a student at the end of the 1980s with large canvas paintings in the neo-abstractexpressionist spirit, substituting them quickly with paintings made in a post-modernistic mannerism, from which a little later emerged Form, a body or character (depending on the context) of an amorphous shape like the piece of a puzzle or a footprint. Form appears the first time as a print in soap, in other words, a plastic record which is inevitably associated with a human foot and that can also be read as the artist’s wish to leave an authorial

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/01, 2001.

trace. It concerns an object of a reduced sculptural form which with skill and meaningful manipulations Floričić would alter for a long time, whilst the accumulation of these, scattered on the floor, elements he obliterates the architectural firmness of the exhibition space, whereby Floričić also began his spatial-ambient deliberations which arose with the obligatory and integral part of his later video installations. “On entering a gallery I strive to completely integrate the given space into my work upon the setup.

This existing architectural reality with its capacity, openings, accents and perspectives in this way becomes a modulator of the concrete appearance of the work.”, are Alen Floričić’s words uttered some time at the beginning of his artistic journey, which shows that Alen even then had taken a firm stance and set a clear premise in his artistic activity.

For Floričić the idea is equally important as the initiator of his work, the procedure of the medium (predominately video) with which the work is carried out, as well as the space where the final artefact will be presented. The artist’s works in essence present a balanced symbiosis of all the mentioned elements and make a defined and specific Gesamtkunstwerk that corresponds impeccably with the spirit of the time in which it emerges.

Over time Form for Floričić became a kind of authorial signature because it will appear as a leitmotif in his series behind which is a characteristic accumulation of the same form in various techniques and materials. At that time, and we are talking about the mid-1990s, Alen was more frequently trying the medium of video in which he was the only protagonist, in other words, the subject of the act was himself, the artist personally, and it could be ascertained that by reaching for a new expressive medium, he replaced Form with his figure. As he was not impressed with the shape of Form itself, although he was interested in the system in which and how that form would fit in some other context, so from the very beginning of working with video he was also not impres-

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sed with his own figure. In the recordings Alen would be natural, rough looking, without any kind of make-up, and the strange movements, which he performed, the computer accelerated rhythm and sampled sound gave him, without doubt, the impression of a caricature. Just before he began with his video exploration, Floričić applied his character to various environments and onto various objects, for example he stuck a photograph of his open mouth to the centre of a urinal in a men’s toilet. This installation inaugurated the artist’s figure as one of the constants in Floričić’s opus in which he himself is the most frequent theme of his artistic works and uses his image as an experimental field where he endures everything, even the roughest kinds of manipulation. Using himself as the sole subject, the artist sets the problematic essence of the act, whilst polemicizing himself he addresses the surroundings to which he belongs socially. Floričić potentiates a personal speech that is played out with a demanding theme of the absurd, which is manifested in an introspective approach imbued with almost satirical-sarcastic elements, which the artist uses as a parable for current social problems. The absurd, as one of the starting points of Floričić’s art, is without doubt, the artist’s tool which is used as an answer to the questionability of today’s civilizational parameters, but for him it also points to the meaningless position of the artist in our environment in which visual art is not even amongst the priorities of the newly-established cultural realities.

Floričić’s character transposed into the medium of video, actually equates with the concept of the absurd, and by stripping it from any kind of description and aestheticization and by performing acts close to a certain minimalistic expressionism, he poses questions of whether art should adapt to new customs of behaviour, to polemicize with them or to rise above them.

In essence Floričić deals with the existential questions of art, in other words, the analyses of its autonomy and internal linguistic articulations, therefore with its being

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Bez naziva/ Untitled No. 01/09, 2009.

and its essential character. His interpretation of these fundamental questions is more challenging because Floričić expresses himself primarily with new technologies, rarely with classic visual art media (painting, sculpture, drawing). In fact, his work in the medium of video is specific (not only in Croatia but also in the global context) because he analyses and strips the primary principles of artistic speech bare, striving with his basic starting points. Such an attitude towards art, as well as the artist’s existence Floričić once summarised like this: “My presence in my own works has the aim to open questions about the personality and position of the artist in society, i.e. in the relation artist — artistic work — audience (mannerist situation artist-outcast). Art itself which has nothing more to say in the ideological-aesthetic sense turns to questions of the very structure of the artistic process. I believe that art is a constant dynamic re-examination of freedom in the sense of the harmonisation of ones relation with nature and social surrounding, in other words in the sense of liberation through reconciliation and coexistence. Art itself as a process is becoming the only sustainable reality — the source and goal of artistic activity.”.

Floričić solves this kind of issue in essence with conceptual artistic procedures transposed into the medium of video such as auto-reflexivity (literally and as an artistic tool), the concept and phenomenon of the absurd and the procedure of multiplication.

His works are rhythmically structured, and the artist’s body as the subject of the action is reduced to elemental functions, in other words to an extremely minimalised movement.

Paraphrasing the statement of Bill Viola that the body is an instrument of comprehension, Floričić will, expressing himself physically, actually speak about the mental. His physical expression is a copy of everyday life which delivers a series of frustrations, anxiety, tension and uncertainty, and it could be said that the video works of Alen Floričić are, amongst other things, caricatured depictions of the illnesses of today’s civilisation. The artificial reality which Floričić invokes with his expression is a metaphor for

man’s alienation in today’s world in which the artist finds no sense of his presence and as an artist he feels slightly superfluous and frustrated, although strong enough that with the strength of spirit he surmounts the current reality. It is precisely due to this that his works exist on that side of reality, as art itself does, if it is genuine, it must necessarily hold within itself a certain dose of metalanguage which gives it the necessary spiritual discourse, which separates it from material reality. The thing that makes Floričić’s work specific and slightly separate from current Croatian video productions above all is the complexity in the details of the planned artistic procedure. The reason for this is, of course, since the very beginnings of his work with video Floričić realised and understood the medium which was being used, whilst the exceptional purposeful use of electronic image and sound, as well as the rest of his technological characteristics, he has avoided the sheer illustrativeness of a defined idea, adopting it as an especially suggestive medium which will solely meaningfully articulate his authorial ideas. About this, he says: “I strive to separate gallery video from classic film video. I have always believed that video in a gallery should have an essentially different dimensional connotation. It must be a living image.”.

About 2010 there followed a short return to Floričić’s painting when the Form described at the beginning of this text appeared again. It is interesting that Alen also returned briefly to painting using it as a kind of creative pause in the continuity of video production, as well as a self-disciplinary measure, which would open new experimental polygons. It was the same with the paintings from 2010 in which, by reusing and multiplying an old design element (now in serial rows with shades of grey), he would explore and analyse the essence of painting, in other words with a non-evocative visual language to polemicize with painting as a fact. The essential difference between these paintings and his video works is that in the paintings there is no transposition of any kind of psychological and emotional states on their surface. It concerns a real desire that he now directs his consideration of art exclusively to the physical and material predeterminations of the image in order to arrive at new syntheses and never to the end of rounded conclusions about the very essence of art. The entire artistic work of Alen Floričić emanates and graduates from the material to the spiritual and vice versa, in other words it ceaselessly questions the artistic being because the artist understands and creates like a kind of shelter, a particular oasis in which an unspecified and transcendental existence is possible since for Floričić art is still more important than reality.

Mladen Lučić

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 06/00, 2000, instalacija u Galeriji Ĺ kuc / installation view, Ĺ kuc Gallery, Ljubljana, 2016.

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 02/13, 2013, instalacija u Galeriji Ĺ kuc / installation view, Ĺ kuc Gallery, Ljubljana, 2016.

Mračno srce modernog doba

Šturi naslov suradničkog izložbenog projekta Video 1998. — 2017. po mnogočemu sažima praksu Alena Floričića. U prvom redu aludira na djelo koje se namjerno i u potpunosti odriče narativnosti i dramaturške strukture. Suočava nas s krajnjim zgusnućem minimalne situacije koja, međutim, ne djeluje kao literarna figura, već inzistira na tjeskobnoj trivijalnosti koja postupno prerasta u napetost. Floričićevi radovi sadrže minimalnu pripovijednost, hotimice se pokazuju u svojoj goloći, sirovovosti i formalnoj strogoći.

Na taj se način urezuju u naše iskustvo i proizvode osjećaj stiješnjenosti, nelagode i tjeskobe. Možda bi zato prva teza o Floričićevu radu mogla govoriti u prilog egzistencijalizmu. Na to već upućuju zatamnjeni interijeri u kojima se zbivaju repetirajuće radnje, a njihovi opsesivni zvuci, koji se nesputano slijevaju u kakofonije, gledatelja sve više uznemiruju. Umjesto događaja imamo ponavljanja, umjesto glazbe ili govora, tek goli neartikulirani zvuk. Kao da se autor namjerno odriče značenja te u maniri kakva Camusa gledatelju podastire misao da značenje, mimo onoga čemu sami pripisujemo smisao, zapravo i ne postoji te da nam preostaje ustrajati na apsurdu kao u videu Bez naziva 06/00 u kojem u kadru pratimo muški torzo i mišićave ruke kako se uvijek iznova pokušavaju izvući iz vode i uspeti na rivu. U loopu kratkog videa gledamo neprekidno sudaranje s pristaništem, opetovane pokušaje i osjećaj nemoći na putu ka dostizanju cilja. Tu smo suočeni s modernim Sizifom koji svoj iscrpljujući zadatak obavlja lišen aure romantičnog patosa i herojstva, zakidajući gledatelja za katarzu pri susretu s neizbježivom stvarnosti.

Konceptualno se Floričićeva umjetnička praksa kreće između dviju krajnosti: (umjetnikova) tijela i medija umjetničkog posredovanja. U toj su dihotomiji raspeti umjetnikovo djelo i tijelo budući da je Floričić glavni i većinom jedini protagonist svojih videa, u napetosti između svakodnevnog života i umjetnosti koja ga pokušava osmisliti.

Ovakvu tematizaciju bilo bi pogrešno tumačiti na način neoavangardnih strategija brisanja granica, prelaska i stapanja umjetnosti sa svakodnevnim životom. Upravo suprotno, ovdje je riječ o ustrajavanju na radikalnoj heterogenosti, njihovoj međusobnoj nesvodivosti. Na jasan i neposredan način, Floričićevo tijelo postaje laboratorij za istraživanje tih uzajamnih napetosti. Tijelo je izvitopereno, mehanizirano, podvrgnuto iskrivljenju i shizofrenim repetitivnim pokretima, ali ne i posezanjem u meso kao u body art praksama.

Dok tradicija body arta ustrajava na neposrednim intervencijama u tijelo kao organskoj cjelini, u namjeri da preispita granice njegove izražajnosti-izdržljivosti i pomicanja društvenih granica njegova poimanja, Floričić simptomatično djeluje na njegovoj posredovanosti. Zahvati u tijelo ne teku na tijelu samom, nego na njegovoj slici, snimci, sekundarnoj pojavnosti. Ne usredotočuju se na tjelesnu izdržljivost prisutnog umjetnika, već na načine posredovanja njegova tijela, na ono što se tijelu, kao slici i prilici neposredne izvjesnosti života, dogodi tijekom posredovanja. Naglašavanje činjenice da je neposrednost kao takva nemoguća, otvara vrata u Floričićev sustav promišljanja čovjekova stanja, za čije je razumijevanje ključna umjetnost kao proces medijacije. Budući izvorni sklad i podudarnost ne postoje, slijedi da i naše iskustvo biva posredovano, drugotno i fenomenalno te da je čovjek kao biće izvorno izbačeno iz prirodnog poretka. Zbog toga Floričić u neposrednosti života ne pronalazi utjehu, već, suprotno, zgušnjavajući razmišljanja o posredovanosti smisla, preispituje umjetnost kao jedan od privilegiranih načina

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 02/05, 2005.

promišljanja. To je ono što Floričićev rad čini egzistencijalističkim, ne pokušavajući ni laskati ni udovoljavati, pokazuje sklonost radikalnom redukcionizmu kao vizualnoj dopuni preciznom seciranju mehanizama umjetnosti. Stoga česte povijesnoumjetničke reference ne iznenađuju. Video Bez naziva 02/13 suočava nas s dramatičnom baconovskom distorzijom čovjekova lica; snimka nastala s fisheye objektivom, ultraširokom lećom postiže hemisferičnu sliku, prikazuje lice muškarca koje u vertikalnoj putanji poput mjeseca izlazi i zalazi. Usporena snimka pretvara govor u prijeteću buku, sprječavajući time bilo kakvo razumijevanje i komunikacijski protok, što jednako tako spada u simptome egzistencijalizma. Još je očitiji primjer vizualno prizivanje Parmigianinova autoportreta u konveksnom ogledalu, slikanom na konkavnoj podlozi. Na istoj liniji citata je i video Bez naziva 02/05 koji iz atipične perspektive prikazuje figuru polugolog muškarca u ležećem položaju: gledamo ga iz neuobičajena niskog rakursa sa strane njegovih nogu. Iako je sasvim miran, njegova se stopala nekako neprirodno trzaju i tresu, gotovo pa mašu. Čitava se figura pomiče i piramidalno giba iz donjeg krupnog plana, a što se više uspinje prema vrhu, to se brže smanjuje i nestaje. Takva perspektiva gledatelja smješta tik pred umjetnikova gola stopala koja gledamo en face u trenutku suočavanja s umjetnikovim intimnim dijelovima tijela. U tome bi svaki revniji povjesničar umjetnosti, kao i mnogi ljubitelji umjetnosti, prepoznao Mantegnino Oplakivanje Krista iz 1480., kultni primjer ovakva dramatičnog perspektivnog skraćenja. Za razliku od Mantegne koji geometriju prilagođava vizualnom učinku pa Kristova stopala prikazuje manjima nego što poštovanje zakonitosti perspektive zahtijeva, Floričić ostaje dosljedan realnom stanju pa ih ostavlja golemima. Simptomatična je ta njegova ustrajnost u propitkivanju perspektive, specifično slikarskog načina uređenja svijeta, matematizacije i podčinjenosti pogledu, što je u očitoj suprotnosti s neobjašnjivom tjeskobom Floričićevih zasićenih aranžmana. U liku Floričića samog, mrtvac ispred nas uskrsne, oživi, ali ne kao biblijska figura Krista. Flori-

čićevi videoradovi u pravilu proizlaze iz pokreta, minimalne motoričke jedinice koja se kroz hipnotičko ponavljanje mijenja u tjeskobnu mehanizaciju. Iako su radovi prožeti britkim humorom, i dalje ostaju ovijeni tjeskobom neizbježnosti. Čini se da se cjelokupan Floričićev rad giba oko složenosti koncepata ponavljanja i dvojnika. Tako se začas nađemo na terenu u koji Freud smješta das Unheimliche, osjećaj nelagode koji se pojavi pri susretu s bliskim i stranim istodobno. Das Unheimliche je osjećaj koji nastane kada ono najintimnije, vlastito i najbliskije nastupi kao prijeteće i strano, kao vlastita suprotnost.

Pojavi se onda kada se otkrije ono što bi zauvijek trebalo ostati skriveno, u trenutku kada iznenada ugledamo “nešto, što nije pozitivan bitak, a nije ni jednostavno ništa, već neki paradoks negativnosti bivanja”.1 Freudove primjere das Unheimlichea Dolar je sistematizirao u nekoliko kategorija, među kojima su najizrazitije dvije koje predstavljaju središnju os Floričićevih radova. Das Unheimliche se ponajprije smješta na granicu živog i mrtvog, prema Dolarovu tumačenju nastupa onda kada “mrtvi mehanizam prisvaja živo i postaje automatizam”.2 Nije li to središnja odlika Floričićeva videa? Automatizacijom pokreta umjetnikovo tijelo gubi svaku organsku spontanost kao poveznicu sa životom, biva podvrgnuto nesmiljenoj nužnosti ponavljanja formuliranoj u Freudovu nagonu smrti.

Prije spomenuti video Bez naziva 02/05 oživljava upravo tu dimenziju automatizma kada život ustrajava s one strane granice živog i mrtvog, u mehaničkim pokretima stopala mrtvoga ležećeg tijela. Čitav niz radova autor gradi na toj osnovi. Triptih Bez naziva 03/04 prikazuje par koji stoji na brdu kao iznimno kratku sekvencu koja se ubrzano i neprestano ponavlja. U videu prevladava snažan i naglašen zvuk vjetra koji bi, sudeći po njegovoj snazi, trebao otpuhnuti par na brdu, no prizor ga pokazuje stoički uspravnog, dok odjeća lagano treperi... Ovakva je proturječnost zbunjujuća jer pokazuje gibanje koje to nije, predstavlja neku vrstu oksimorona3 — statično gibanje koje pobuđuje nelagodu zbog dojma umrtvljenosti. Čini se kao da je par slijepljen pa ga vjetar ne može uistinu oživjeti.

Ali mrtvo nije samo mrtvo, u jednostavnoj binarnosti živog i mrtvog pojavljuje se nekakav ostatak koji se, prema Dolarovim riječima, utjelovljuje upravo u tom automatizmu pokreta, stopalima koja mehanički trepere, odjeći koja nervozno leprša. Sličan automatizam pojavljuje se i na metanivou produkcije radova, vidljiv u naslovima koji najavljuju odmak od bilo kakve dramaturgije, ekspresivnosti ili literarne asocijativnosti. Naslovi radova po inerciji kliznu u svojevrstan matematički niz (06-00, 09-02, 01-05, 03-05, 02-05, 02-13…), bilježe slijed i takoreći označuju se sami od sebe.

Sljedeća kategorija koja označuje das Unheimliche, a koja isto tako bitno opredeljuje djelo Alena Floričića, figura je dvojnika. U literaturi poznat kao pokretač radnje koji ostvaruje subjektove najskrivenije želje, a ujedno na njega djeluje pogubno, dvojnik predstavlja raskol i nemogućnost “biti jedno sa sobom”.4 Prema Lacanu, naš se ego oblikuje kada u zrcalnoj slici prepozna svoju cjelovitost. Istodobno, to prepoznavanje podrazumijeva rascijep. Kada udvostručimo, tada zauvijek izgubimo našu jednostrukost koju smo uživali prije nego što smo postali Ja. Udvajanje u zrcalnoj slici ujedno nas rastavlja od prvotnog jedinstva. Doduše, u ogledalu smo se prepoznali kao dovršena cjelina, premda po cijenu izgubljenog objekta a, onoga našeg dijela koji nema zrcalni odraz. Zrcalni stadij nam tako otvara Imaginarno, nama blisku svakidašnjicu, ali pod uvjetom lišavanja objekta a. S dvojnikom se stvar još više zapliće — u njemu ima nečega 1 Mladen Dolar, “Strah hodi po Evropi”, u: Strel sredi koncerta, Cankarjeva založba, Ljubljana, 2012., str. 17.

2 Ibid., str. 19.

3 Budući da ujedinjuju nepomirljive suprotnosti, nerijetko se za opis Floričićevih radova nude oksimoroni.

Time zazivaju proturječja koja fatalno određuju njegov rad. Tako i kustos Predrag Lucić Floričićevu praksu označuje kao “ekspresivni

minimalizam”, oksimoron koji cilja na dubok unutarnji konflikt koji postaje spiritus movens radova.

4 Dolar, op. cit., str. 34.

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drugog. On nije običan zrcalni odraz, dvojnik je zrcalna slika subjekta koji sadrži objekt a, komadić izgubljenog bitka “uživanja neposrednog samobitka”.5 Floričićevi radovi pokazuju kako se u figuri dvojnika Imaginarno preklapa s Realnim, što je uzrok tjeskobe koja ne proizlazi zbog straha od gubitka, već suprotno, zbog straha od prevelike blizine. Ako je jedina realnost dostupna subjektu imaginarna, tada je jedini uvjet za nju gubitak objekta a. Tjeskoba je strah pred gubitkom gubitka od gubitka — distance “koja omogućuje siguran odnos do uspostavljene realnosti”.6 Nelagoda koju uzrokuju Floričićevi radovi nastupa zbog proboja Realnog u zaklon našeg Imaginarnog. Tada zrcalna slika zadobiva izgubljeni bitak i time vlastitu egzistenciju, dvojnik se osamostaljuje od subjekta. Floričić svoje radove često gradi na tom elementu: u videu Bez naziva 05/00 umjetnik je osuđen na kafkijanski pothvat — u sablasnoj koreografiji s dvojnikom uzlijeće i slijeće kao ptica, neusklađeno skače, suprotstavlja mu se i natječe se s njim. Isti je slučaj i s mnogo humornijim radom Bez naziva 01/05 u kojem umjetnik, u zagrljaju sa svojim dvojnikom, usklađeno ponavlja isti skok ulijevo te se zbog neumorna ponavljanja videa uvijek iznova nađe na početku. I upravo ponavljanjem, karakterističnim za velik dio Floričićevih videa, dvojnik uvodi nagon smrti: kao zaštitu pred realnom smrću inaugurira dimenziju Realnog.7 To što se u Floričićevu videu pojavljuje kao ponavljanje istog, opetovano vraćanje na isto mjesto, predstavlja Realno u njegovoj neuhvatljivosti u simboličkom.8 U tom smislu umjetnička praksa Alena Floričića radikalno preispituje prosvjetiteljski projekt, posebno pojam subjekta, spone prirode i kulture. Automatone iz njegovih videa mogli bismo iščitati direktnije, kao eksplicitno ironiziranje prosvjetiteljske vjere u napredak kroz “očišćenu”, racionaliziranu znanost i poimanje prirode kao mehanizma.

Floričićev komentar modernog pozitivizma proizlazi iz odluke da dopusti progovoriti onom čime se uobičajeno ne da ovladati, a to čini ne priklanjajući se opskurnim teorijama ili romantiziranju. Das Unheimliche ne izvire iz arhaičnih dubina, već je, kao i subjekt, proizvod modernog doba koje istodobno rasvjetljuje i prazni kategoriju svetog — nekoć legitimirajućeg načela društvenog ustroja. Iako je potekao iz modernog doba, opire se objašnjenjima pomoću njegova pojmovnika. Pukotine prosvjetiteljskog projekta postaju bjelodane u trenucima provala Realnog koje su subjektu nepodnošljive, u času otkrivanja das Unheimliche kao nečega što ne možemo otkriti.

Vladimir Vidmar

5 Ibid., str. 35.

6 Ibid., str. 36.

7 Ibid., str. 37.

8 Dok u Lacanovoj shemi triju registara simboličkog

pokriva područje označitelja (jezika kao znakovnog sustava u najširem smislu, koji uključuje i umjetnost), realno je neuhvatljiv registar koji se

opire logici označavanja i simbolizaciji, što Lacan povezuje s pojavama kao što su smrt, seksualnost, tjeskoba i prisila ponavljanja. Zbog

opiranja simbolizaciji, realno je povezano s traumatičnim, a iskusiti ga se može kroz traumatične raspukline u poretku simbolnog.

The dark core of modernity

The sketchy title of the co-exhibitor project Video 1998 — 2017 in many ways summarises the work of Alen Floričić. First and foremost it alludes to a piece of work which intentionally and completely renounces narrativity and dramaturgical structures. It confronts us with a final condensing minimal situation, which, nevertheless, does not act like a literary figure but insists on an anxious triviality, which gradually grows in intensity. Floričić’s works contain minimal narrativity, they are intentionally shown in their bareness, a raw state and formal sternness. In this way, they are engraved in our experience and produce a feeling of confinement, discomfort and anxiety. Perhaps, for this reason, the first thesis about Floričić’s work could speak in favour of existentialism. The darkened interiors in which repeating acts occur already point to that, whilst their obsessive sounds, which unrestrictedly flow into a cacophony, increasingly disturb the spectator. In place of events, we have repetitions, in place of music or speech, just bare unarticulated sound. As though the author deliberately renounces meaning and in a manner which Camus presents thought to the spectator that the meaning, besides that which we allocate sense ourselves, doesn’t actually exist and that it remains for us to persist on the absurd as in the video Untitled 06/00 in which we follow a man’s torso and muscular arms as they attempt again and again to get out of the water and climb up onto a quayside. In the loop of the short video we watch the uninterrupted impact with the dockside, the repeated attempts and a sense of helplessness on the way to reaching the goal. Here we are faced with a modern Sisyphus who carries out his exhausting task deprived of the aura of romantic pathos and heroism, denying the spectator the catharsis upon meeting an inevitable reality.

Conceptually Floričić’s artistic practice moves between two extremities: the (artist’s) body and the medium of artistic mediation. In this dichotomy the artist’s work and body are stretched since Floričić is the main and on the whole the only protagonist of his videos, in the tension between everyday life and art which tries to conceive it. It would be wrong to interpret this kind of thematization in the way of the neo-avant-garde strategies of blurring borders, the transition and fusion of art with everyday life. Quite the opposite, here it concerns the persistence of radical heterogeneity, their mutual irreducibility. In a clear and direct way, Floričić’s body becomes a laboratory for the exploration of those reciprocal tensions. The body is distorted, mechanised, subjected to contorted and schizophrenic repetitive movements, but not resorting in flesh as in body art practices. Whilst body art insists on the direct interventions in the body as an organic whole, in order to re-examine the boundaries of his expressivity-endurance and the shifting of social boundaries of his comprehension, Floričić symptomatically acts on his mediation.

Interventions in the body do not flow on the body itself, but on its image, recordings, a secondary appearance. They do not focus on the physical endurance of the present artist, but on the ways of mediating his body, on what happens to the body, as the image and likeness of the immediate certainty of life, during mediation. Emphasising the facts that immediacy as such is an impossibility, enters Floričić’s system of deliberating man’s condition, where art as a process of mediation appears crucial for its understanding. Since the original accord and coincidence does not exist, it follows that our experience is also mediated, secondarily and phenomenally, and that man as a being is

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1 Mladen Dolar, “Strah hodi po Evropi”, in: Strel sredi koncerta, Cankarjeva založba, Ljubljana, 2012, p. 17.

2 Ibidem, p. 19.

primarily ejected from the natural order. Due to this Floričić in the immediacy of life does not find consolation, but, on the contrary, by condensing the deliberation of the mediation of sense, he re-examines art as one of the privileged ways of consideration.

This is what makes Floričić’s work existentialist, not trying to flatter nor satisfy, it shows affinity with radical reductionism like a visual supplement to the precise dissection of the mechanisms of art. Therefore, frequent historic-artistic references are not surprising.

The video Untitled 02/13 confronts us with a dramatic Baconesque distortion of a man’s face; the film was created with a fisheye lens, an ultra-wide lens achieves a hemispheric image, it shows the face of a man which in a vertical path rises and falls like the moon.

The slowed down film turns speech into a threatening noise, therein preventing any understanding and flow of communication, which belongs equally to the symptoms of existentialism. A more obvious example is the visual invocation of Parmigianino’s selfportrait in a convex mirror, pictured on a concave background. Along the same line is the video Untitled 02/05 which from an atypical perspective shows a half-naked figure of a man lying on his back: we watch him from an unusual low camera angle from his feet upwards. Although he is completely calm, his feet somehow unnaturally twitch and shake, almost fluttering. The whole figure moves and pyramidically shifts from the large lower plane, and the more it rises towards the top, the faster it shrinks and disappears. The viewer’s perspective is located right at the artist’s bare feet, which we observe en face in a moment confronting the artist’s intimate body parts. Every keen art historian, as well as many art lovers, will recognise Mantegna’s Lamentation of Christ from 1480, a cult example of this kind of dramatic perspective shortening. Unlike Mantegna who adjusts the geometry with a visual effect so Christ’s feet appear smaller rather than respecting the legitimacy of the requirements of the perspective, Floričić remains consistent with the actual state, and so leaves them immense. His persistence in the questioning of the perspective is symptomatic, specific of the painter’s method of organising the world, the mathematization and subordination of the view, which is in obvious contradiction with the inexplicable anxiety of Floričić’s satiated arrangements. In the likeness of Floričić himself, the dead body in front of us is resurrected, revived, but not like the biblical figure of Christ. Floričić’s video works typically result from movement, of a minimal motor unit that through hypnotic repetition changes into physical mechanisation. Although the works are imbued with a keen sense of humour, they still remain wrapped in the anxiety of inevitability. It seems that Floričić’s entire work shifts around the complexity of the concept of repetition and a double. So, momentarily we find ourselves in a field in which Freud places das Unheimliche, a feeling of discomfort which appears upon an encounter with the near and far simultaneously. Das Unheimliche is the feeling, which emerges when the most intimate, most personal appears as threatening and strange, like one’s own antithesis. It appears when something is revealed which should be hidden forever, in a moment when unexpectedly we see “something, which isn’t a positive entity, yet isn’t simply nothing, but some paradox of the negativity of being”.1 Dolar systemised Freud’s examples of das Unheimliche in several categories, amongst which the most distinct are two that represent the axis of Floričić’s works. Das Unheimliche places itself principally on the border of the living and the dead, according to Dolar’s interpretation it then appears when “a dead mechanism comes alive and becomes automatism”.2 Is this not the central feature of Floričić’s videos? With the automation of movement, the artist’s body loses any organic spontaneity as a link to life, being subject to a relentless necessity of repetition formulated in Freud’s death drive. The previously mentioned video Untitled 02/05 in fact revives that dimension of automatism when life endures from that side of the border

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 03/04, 2004.

of the living and the dead, in the mechanical movements of the feet of the recumbent dead body. The author builds a whole series of works on that basis. The triptych Untitled 03/04 shows a couple who are standing on a hill as an extremely short sequence which is rapidly and constantly repeated. The strong and pronounced sound of the wind which, judging by its power, should blow the couple off the hill, dominates in the video, however, the scene shows them stoically upright, whilst their clothes lightly flap about... This kind of contradiction is confusing because it shows motion which is not there, it represents some kind of oxymoron3 — a static motion which arouses discomfort due to the impression of deadness. It seems as though the couple are glued together so that the wind cannot truly revive them. However dead is not just dead, in the simple binary of the living and the dead there appears some kind of remainder which, according to Dolar’s words, is embodied in that automatism of movement, with feet which mechanically twitch, clothes that nervously flutter. A similar automatism also appears in the metalevel of the production of the works, visible in the titles that announce a departure from any kind of dramaturgy, expressiveness or literary associativity. The titles of the works by inertia slide into some kind of mathematical series (06-00, 09-02, 01-05, 03-05, 02-05, 02-13…), they mark a sequence and so to speak signify themselves automatically.

The next category which das Unheimliche denotes, and which likewise also importantly defines the work of Alen Floričić, is the figure of the double. In literature known as the initiator of the act who realises the subject’s most hidden desires, and at the same 3 Being that they merge irreconcilable antitheses, oxymorons are often provided for the description of Floričić’s works. Thereby they

invoke contradictions that fatally determine his work.

In this way curator Predrag Lucić also labels Floričić’s practice as “expressive mini-

malism”, an oxymoron which aims at the deep internal conflict which becomes the spiritus movens of the works.

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/00, 2000.

4 Dolar, op. cit.,p. 34.

5 Ibidem, p. 35.

6 Ibidem, p. 36.

time acts on him perilously, the double represents separation and the impossibility “to be at one with oneself”.4 According to Lacan, our ego is formed when it recognises its integrity in a mirror image. Simultaneously, that recognition implies division. When we multiply, then we forever lose our unity that we enjoyed before we became “I”.

The duplication in the mirror image at the same time separates us from the initial oneness. Admittedly, in the mirror we are recognised as a complete whole, although at the cost of the lost object a, that part of us which has no mirror reflection. The mirror phase thus opens the Imaginary to us, the near everyday life to us, however under the condition of the deprivation of object a. For the double the matter is even more entangled — there is something else in him.

He is not an ordinary mirror reflection, the double is a mirror image of the subject which consists of object a, a parcel of a lost being of “the enjoyment of an immediate self-being”.5 Floričić’s works show how in the figure of the double the Imaginary overlaps with the Real, which is the cause of anxiety that does not arise due to the fear of loss, but the opposite, due to the fear of an excessive closeness. If the only reality available to the subject is imaginary, then the only condition for it is the loss of object a. Anxiety is the fear before the loss of the loss of loss — of the distance “which enables the sure relationship to the established reality”.6 The discomfort which Floričić’s works cause appears due to the breakthrough of the Real into the shelter of our Imaginary. Then the mirror image gains the lost being and thereby its own existence, the double becomes independent of the subject. With his works Floričić often builds on that element: in the video Untitled 05/00 the artist is sentenced to a Kafkaesque task — in a spooky choreography with the double he takes off and lands like a bird, uncoordinatedly he jumps, he stands up to him and competes with him. It is the same case with the very humorous work Untitled 01/05 in which the artist, embraced with his own double, harmoniously repeats the same jump

to the left and due to the tireless repetition of the video is always found at the beginning.

And it is with the repetition, characteristic for the great part in Floričić’s videos, the double introduces the death drive: as protection before the real death he inaugurates the dimension of the Real.7 What appears in Floričić’s video as the repetition of the same, the repeatedly returning to the same place, represents the Real in his elusiveness in the Symbolic.8 In this sense, the artistic practice of Alen Floričić radically re-examines the Enlightenment project, particularly the concept of the subject, the links of nature and culture. We could more directly read the automatons from his videos, as an explicit ironising of the Enlightenment belief in progress through “purification”, the rationalised science and the perception of nature as a mechanism. Floričić’s comment of modern positivism arises from his decision that allows that which is usually not mastered to speak, and it does that without adhering to obscure theories or romanticising. Das Unheimliche does not rise from the archaic depths, but is, as well as the subject, a product of the Modern Age which simultaneously illuminates and clears the category of the sacred — the once legitimising principle of the social system. Although it originated from the Modern Age, it resists the explanations with the aid of its glossary. The cracks of the Enlightenment project become evident in the moments of the bursts of the Real, which to the subject are unbearable, in the moment of uncovering das Unheimliche as something which we cannot reveal.

Vladimir Vidmar

7 Ibidem, p. 37.

8 Whilst in Lacan’s scheme of three registers of the symbolic it covers the area of the signifier (language as

a sign system in the widest sense, which also includes art), it is a real elusive register that resists logic and symbolisation, which Lacan con-

nects to phenomena such as death, sexuality, anxiety and forced repetitions. Due to the resistance of symbolisation, the real is connect-

ed to the traumatic, and it can be experienced through traumatic cracks in the order of the symbolic.

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/16, 2016.

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Suvremenost i lom

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Videoradovi Alena Floričića Videoradove Alena Floričića prepoznajemo kao mjesta koja reflektiraju niz egzistencijalnih pozicija i situacija iz svakodnevnog života. Prisutan na umjetničkoj sceni od kraja devedesetih godina, Floričić upućuje na praksu bavljenja videom u procesu ubrzanih i sve kompleksnijih transformacija i inovacija u umjetnosti i društvu te njima povezanih medijskih, tehnoloških i estetskih praksi.

Videoradovi Alena Floričića ukazuju na posljedice tehničkog razvoja i aspekte rada sa (pokretnim) slikama koje omogućavaju njihovu manipulaciju, mijenjanje i preoblikovanje. U povijesnom kontekstu, odnos umjetnosti, tehnologije i identiteta nije niti u jednom drugom mediju istraživan s takvom dosljednošću i kontinuitetom, kao u videu.

U svojim radovima umjetnik, gotovo redovito, u središte zanimanja smješta vlastiti lik kako bi progovorio o apsurdima, uzaludnostima, tjeskobama s kojima se suočavamo, u repetitivnim, naizgled jednostavnim radnjama, kako bi kroz humor i ironiju reflektirao kompleksne relacije pojedinca i društva, pokušavajući naznačiti otpor prema svakodnevnim rutinama. Video je postao lingua franca — tvrdi Nicolas Bourriaud — univerzalan, globalni, zajednički jezik i razumljivo općeprihvaćeno mjesto kojim umjetnici različitih nacionalnosti, podrijetla ili društvenog, ekonomskog i kulturnog konteksta komuniciraju na globalnoj umjetničkoj sceni, iskazujući kulturne razlike upisane u kontekst jedinstvene tehnologije prikazivanja.1 Umjetnička praksa Alena Floričića od kraja devedesetih godina mapira područje kritičkog i transformacijskog potencijala svakodnevice koju preobražava u vizualni jezik.

“Ono što me zanima jest kako jezikom umjetnosti postići vezu sa svijetom u kojemu ne vrijede poznata pravila. Da bi se to postiglo, umjetničko djelo se koristi prepoznatljivim sredstvima svakidašnjeg diskursa, ali na neočekivan, neuobičajen, izvrnut način”, ističe Floričić. Njegovi radovi oneobičavaju poznate i prepoznatljive situacije. Iako fragmentarno strukturirani, u njima prepoznajemo situacije u kojima se pojedinac nalazi dok uspostavlja neuobičajene odnose kako bi iščašio standardnu percepciju, stvarajući tako tektonski “poremećaj stvarnog koji omogućuje prodor u onostrano”, nastavlja Floričić.

Radovi Alena Floričića dosljedno i kontinuirano problematiziraju ono što je već niz godina konstanta opusa ovog umjetnika — propitivanje autoreferencijalnih strategija u kojima kao osnovni (najčešće i jedini) motiv rada u središte prizora pozicionira vlastito tijelo, odnosno vlastiti lik, uz ispitivanje modela i politika reprezentacije tijela, referirajući se na strategije performansa ili body arta, a sve u okviru istraživanja tehničkih mogućnosti digitalne manipulacije slike. Zanimanje umjetnika usmjereno je na društvene aspekte i apsurde svakodnevice u radovima koji se formiraju na tragu različitih referenci. Analitičnost i tautologija ističu se kao neka od obilježja Floričićeve umjetničke produkcije, a upravo svojstva videoslike postaju vodećim odrednicama, gotovo matricama za preispitivanje i demistifikaciju samoga medija, kao i upoznavanje samoga sebe.

Floričićeve videovinjete strukturirane su kao loop, kombiniraju tehnike digitalne animacije i montaže s live-action snimanjem pokretnih ili statičnih slika, kamerom ili fotoaparatom. U postizanju elemenata neobičnog, kod sintetičkih se slika ističu moguć-

1 Nicolas Bourriaud: The Radicant, Sternberg Press, Berlin / New York, 2009.

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nosti manipulacije figurativnog realizma fotografije radi izražavanja opipljive stvarnosti, koja ostaje temeljna potreba. Podsjećajući na “trikove” Georgesa Mélièsa, “gegove”, pantomimu i slapstick nijemog filma ili pak nešto prije razlaganje pokreta u kronofotografiji, radovi Alena Floričića na neobičan se način približavaju arheologiji medija, vremenu kada su se slike počele pokretati.

Tako u jednoj od ranijih videoinstalacija (2006.) umjetnik pozicionira vlastito tijelo kao referencu na kompoziciju poznate renesansne slike koja impostacijom ležeće figure i deformacijama prednjeg plana, uz perspektivna skraćenja, podsjeća na Mantegnino Oplakivanje Krista (1480), a drugi rad, u obliku kontinuirane dvostruke projekcije (dvije projekcije koje, postavljene jedna pored druge, tvore friz — tanku neprekinutu traku s figurama), u sjećanje priziva Muybridgeove kronofotografije (1885.). Autor ritmički orkestrira vizualnost montažnim postupcima, bliskim “vizualnom mucanju” Renea Clairea (Međučin, 1924.), a u ornamentalnim videovinjetama, titravim prizorima i lomovima slike pronalazimo karakteristike koje podsjećaju na početke filmske slike, na vrijeme kada su se slike počele pokretati, uspostavljajući uz podršku novih tehničkih mogućnosti digitalne tehnologije vezu s poviješću pomoću medija.

Fotografije i prizori pokreta, one koje je krajem 19. stoljeća postigao Muybridge, kao i one ritmički orkestrirane vizualnosti s početaka 20. stoljeća, evoluirale su u iluziju mehanički proizvedenog pokreta na kojem se temelji kinematografija. Mehanicistička estetika kronofotografije “hvatala” je ono što je izgledalo kao diskretna sekvenca pokreta i pretvarala je u kontinuiranu radnju, a kinematografska je dekompozicija jedina mogla sintetizirati dinamičnu plastičnost modernizma. Tehnika i manipulacija kod kronofotografije, u montažnim postupcima i začudnim rješenjima avangardnog filma te u suvremenoj kompjutorskoj animaciji imaju isto polazište i isti cilj — dati statičnom predlošku vremensku dimenziju koja se manifestira u pokretu. Vrijeme koje nastaje u tom vremenskoprostornom pastišu vrijeme je simulacije, hibridno vrijeme.

Floričićeve su videominijature poput ornamenta, prizoru/slici koja vibrira i nemiru tijela pokret je virtualno nadomješten, oživljen medijsko-tehničkim manipuliranjem, te predstavlja rezultat medijalnog manipuliranja u kojem se raspoznaje njegov artificijalni i konstruirani karakter. Figurativni pokret koji se uobičajeno prikazuje pokretnim slikama, implodira na mjestu jedinstvene slikovne jedinice pa se vremenski kontinuitet ruši. Važna je upotreba loopa koji narušava tradicionalni slijed početka, sredine i kraja te potencira nestabilnost medija i nesigurnost subjekta.

Jedan je od Floričićevih zaokreta serija projekcija iz Muzeja suvremene umjetnosti Istre (2013.), u kojoj su dosadašnji humor, ironiju i geg zamijenili ozbiljnost i osjećaj uznemirenosti, što radove iz područja bezbrižnosti besmisla prenosi u perspektivu zrelijeg i zabrinutog promatranja zastrašujuće i agresivne svakodnevne društvene i medijske okoline. Na formalnoj razini nije se puno toga promijenilo. Riječ je o jednostavnim frontalnim impostacijama protagonista u sjedećem položaju koji komunicira nerazumljivim govorom i izlomljenim pokretima djelomično nepomičnog tijela. Pet projekcija s diskretnim razlikama ponavlja pet jednakih prizora snimljenih statičnom kamerom iz fiksne pozicije te se doimaju poput slika “produljenog trajanja” Billa Viole ili Garyja Hilla.

Nizovi repetitivnih radnji odvijaju se unutar jednostavne geometrije kadra, na bijeloj pozadini poput zida galerije, bolnice ili ćelije. Audiovizualni zapis potencira repetitivnost radnje, a naglašeni karakter zvuka postaje iritantan. U projekcijama kroz montažu i rezove autor ukazuje na kakofoniju glasova i informacija, logoreju besmisla i nemogućnost tijela u medijatiziranom prostoru. Ove videovinjete strukturirane su kao loop, kombiniraju tehnike digitalne animacije i montaže, a umjetnički postupak ogoljava osnovne for-

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 04/00, 2000.

mativne elemente djela koji redukcijom i nedostatkom naracije postaju vidljivi kao elementaran sadržaj prizora. U njima Alen Floričić sažima iskustva nekih prethodnih radova, uobičajeno naslovljenih Bez naziva — od rane dijaprojekcije (slideshowa) do niza video loopova realiziranih u posljednjih deset godina.

Prostor u radovima Alena Floričića U videoprodukciji Alena Floričića javljaju se mahom dva modela reprezentacije prostora — pejzaž, kojim uspostavlja odnos čovjeka i prirode, te bespredmetni prostor, crni background.

U većini Floričićevih radova dokinute su naznake predmetnog svijeta. Prostor realnosti koji prepoznajemo nestao je, a situacije nisu sugerirane prostornim kontekstom, već isključivo pokretom i gestom. U njima Floričić donosi sasvim drukčiji poredak i drukčije iskustvo. Svijet koji prikazuje lišen je koordinata realnosti koje predstavljaju prepoznatljivi prizori određenoga prirodnog ambijenta poput krajolika, livade, planine ili šume. Prizor ne predstavlja konkretno mjesto, već plohu kao pozadinu, neutralan prostor bez granica, a prostornost se daje tek naslutiti ili zamisliti. To je svijet decentriranog subjekta, jednostavan i jasan, čistih linija, minimalističkog izraza. Ljudski lik, umjetnik sam, prikazan je kao znak na bespredmetnoj bijeloj plohi, smješten bez uporišta u tlu, u okviru pravokutnog izreza kadra na apstraktnom polju svijeta slike.

Permutacije slike formiraju se kao niz repetitivnih jednoličnih radnji protagonista, koje se uz minimalne transformacije zbivaju unutar jednostavne geometrije kadra. Kamera je fiksirana stvarajući perspektivu u kojoj je čovjek, izdvojen iz okoliša, izvan konteksta stvarnosti, predstavljen kao grafički znak na bespredmetnoj podlozi u hibridnom vre-

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menu. Dokinute su naznake predmetnog svijeta kako bi se izolirala, uokvirila i naglasila apsurdna repetitivnost radnje.

Upravo upotreba bespredmentnoga crnog backgrounda — plohe kadra u radovima Bez naziva predstavlja gubitak “središta” kao gubitak uporišta — optičkog, simboličkog ili fizičkog, materijalnog, a manifestira se kao simbolički gubitak tla pod nogama.

Razorena je iluzija dubine koja jamči stabilnost i integritet slike i subjekta, a naglašena plošnost i fragmentarnost, čime detalj, fragment dobiva značajke simbola ili znaka. Uz reorganizaciju osjećaja vremena i prostora, manipulaciju i multiplikaciju, koje su posljedica krize reprezentacije, autor ukazuje na poziciju decentriranog subjekta, kao i na fragmentarni karakter njegova identiteta.

Tijelo postaje ubrzano i multiplicirano, prikazano je kao konstantno vibriranje stroja. Mogućnosti digitalne tehnologije i postprodukcije slike jednostavnu radnju čine mehaničkom i artificijelnom. Lomovi slike i jezik prepariranog pokreta uz skokove, prekide i trzaje u montaži označavaju lomove društvenog tijela, naglašavajući besmisao kao egzistencijalno utemeljenu kategoriju.

Videoradovi Alena Floričića preispituju strategije performansa, autoreferencijalnosti, ponavljanja, konstrukcije i digitalne manipulacije slike, upozoravajući na nestabilan okoliš u koji smo uronjeni. U ponavljanim prizorima i lomovima slike, u scratch zvuku reflektiraju se napetosti, prekidi, rezovi, pukotine društvene svakodnevice.

Riječima Georgesa Pereca “... nejasno osjećamo pukotine, zjevove, točke trenja; katkad imamo neodređen dojam da prostor na mjestima zapinje, puca ili da se sudara...”2 Upravo se u tim mjestima — rupama, procijepima, zjevovima formira značenje koje je katkad nemoguće verbalno artikulirati.

Suvremenost i lom — na kojima se gradi (ili razlaže) misao o kolažu i montaži, postupku i tvorevini, predstavljaju subverzivnu fantaziju i nove formalne mogućnosti radikalne subjektivnosti. Predstavljaju procijep u tkivu stvarnosti, kao subverziju modela racionalne konstrukcije značenja, kaleidoskop psiholoških elemenata koji je operativan na metonimijskom načelu.3 Branka Benčić

2 Georges Perec: Vrste prostora, Meandar, Zagreb, 2005.

3 Brandon Taylor: Collage — The Making of Modern Art, Thames and Hudson, 2004.

Contemporaneity and fracture

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Video works by Alen Floričić Alen Floričić’s video works are recognized as places that reflect a range of existential positions and situations from everyday life. Present on the art scene since the late nineties, Floričić indicates the practice of dealing with video in the process of accelerating and increasingly complex transformations and innovations in the arts and society, and their associated media, technology and aesthetic practice.

Alen Floričić’s video works denote the consequences of technical development and working aspects of the (moving) images that allow their manipulation, modification and transformation. Within the historical context, the relationship between art, technology and identity has not been investigated with such consistency and continuity in any other medium, as it has been done with video.

In his works, the artist almost always places at the center of interest his own character, voicing out absurdities, futilities, anxieties we face, in repetitive, seemingly simple actions; in order to reflect the complex relations of the individual and society through the humor and irony, trying to designate resistance to daily routines. Video has become the new lingua franca — argues Nicolas Bourriaud — a universal, global, common language and comprehensible generally accepted place by which artists of different nationalities, origin or social, economic and cultural context communicate at the global art scene, showing cultural differences inscribed in the context of the unique display technology.1 Since the end of the nineties, Alen Floričić’s artistic practice has been mapping the area of critical and transformational potential of everyday life that he transforms into a visual language. “What interests me is how to achieve, by the means of the art language, a connection with the world in which known rules are not valid. In order to achieve this, work of art uses distinctive means of everyday discourse, but it uses them in unexpected, unusual, chaotic way.” — emphasizes Alen Floričić.

His works are not accustomed to known and recognizable situations. We recognize situations in which an individual is located, while establishes unusual relationships in order to twist a common perception, as “a real tectonic shift of the real that allows penetration into the ulteriority”, continues Floričić.

Alen Floričić’s works coherently and continuously issue with what has already been a constant in this artist’s opus — questioning the self-referential strategies in which basic (and only) motive of work positions at the center of the scene his own body, respectively his own character. In doing so, Floričić questions representational models and the politics of representation of the body, referring to the strategy of performance or body art, staying in the context of researching technical possibilities of digital image manipulation. The artist’s interest is focused on social aspects and absurdities of everyday life, in works that are formed in the wake of various references. Analyses and tautology stand out as some of the characteristics of artistic production, while precisely the properties of the video image become leading guidelines, almost matrices for review, and the demystification of the media itself as well as getting to know one’s self.

1 Nicolas Bourriaud: The Radicant, Sternberg Press, Berlin/NY, 2009.

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Floričić’s video vignettes are structured as a loop, they combine techniques of digital animation and assembly, with live-action shooting, moving or still images, by a video camera or a camera. In achieving the elements of unusual, synthetic images are noted for their ability to manipulate the figurative realism of photography in order to express a tangible reality, which remains a fundamental need. Recalling the “tricks” of Georges Méliès, “gags” and mime of silent film, or somewhat earlier chronophotography, Alen Floričić’s works are approaching in an intriguing way the archeology of the media, the times when pictures started to move.

Thus, in one of the earlier video installations (2006), the artist positions his own body as a reference to the composition of the great Renaissance painting, that with its recumbent figure, and with its foreground’s deformations due to the perspective foreshortening, reminds us of Mantegna’s Lamentation of Christ (1480) whereas the other work, in the form of a continuous double projection (two projections that placed next to each other form a frieze — a thin unremitting strip with figures) recalls Muybridge’s chronophotography (1885). The author rhythmically orchestrates the visual by using the montage that comes close to the “visual stuttering” of Rene Clair (Entr’acte, 1924) while in the ornamental video vignettes, within their flickering scenes and image cuts, we may find features reminiscent of the beginning of film-making images at a time when the pictures started to move, by establishing a link with history through the media, with the support of new technical possibilities of digital technology.

Photographs and scenes of the movement, those achieved by Muybridge at the end of the 19th century, as well as rhythmically orchestrated visuals fro the beginning of the 20th century, evolved into the illusion of mechanically produced movement on which the cinematography is based. The mechanistic aesthetics of chronophotography “captured” what looked like a discrete sequence of movements, and turned it into a continuous action, while cinematographic decomposition was the only one able to synthesize the dynamic plasticity of modernism.

The technique and manipulation, within the chronophotography, the editing procedures and startling solutions of the avant-garde film, and in modern computer animation, have the same starting point and the same goal, to give a static template a temporal dimension, which manifests itself in motion. The time that arise at that timespace pastiche, is the time of simulation, a hybrid time.

Floričić’s video miniatures are like ornaments, the movement is virtually replaced to a vibrating scene/picture and to an unrest body, revived by technical manipulation recognizes its artificial and constructed character. Figurative movement normally displayed by moving images, implodes at the site of a unique imaging unit, and the temporal continuity crashes. The use of loop is particularly important, as it undermines the traditional sequence of the beginning, middle and end, as well as it emphasizes the instability of the media and the uncertainty of the entity.

One of Floričić’s turns is presented by a series of projections from the Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria (2013), in which the former humor, irony and gag are replaced by the seriousness and sense of anxiety, which transfers the works from the field of careless nonsense towards the perspective of a more mature and concerned observation of intimidating and aggressive everyday social and media environment. At the formal level, not much has changed. Floričić places a protagonist in a simple frontal posture, in a sitting position that communicates unintelligible speech and broken movements of a partially motionless body. Five projections with discrete differences, repeat five identical scenes recorded with a static camera from fixed position and seem

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 03/05, 2005.

like pictures of “prolonged duration” of Bill Viola and Gary Hill. Sequences of repetitive actions take place within the simple geometry of the frame, on a white background, such as a wall in galleries, hospitals or cells. Audio visual record emphasizes repetitiveness of the action, while accented character of the sound becomes irritating. In projections, due to the editing and cuts, the author draws attention to the cacophony of voices and information, the logorrhea of meaninglessness and the inability of the body in a mediatized space. These video vignettes are structured as a loop, they combine the techniques of digital animation and assembly, and the artistic process exposes the basic formative elements of the work that by the reduction and by the lack of narrative become visible as the elemental content of the scene.

Within them, Alen Floričić sums up the experience of some previous works, usually addressed Untitled — from early dia projection (slideshow) to a series of video loops realized within the last ten years.

The space in Alen Floričić’s works In Alen Floričić’s video production occur mainly two models of representation of space — a landscape, which establishes the relationship between man and nature, and meaningless space, a black background.

In most Floričić’s works, the indications of the objective world have been abolished. The space of reality which we recognize is gone, and the situations are not suggested by a spatial context, but only by movement and gesture. Floričić brings within them a completely different order and a different experience. The world he displays is devoid of the coordinates of reality shown as recognizable scenes of a certain natural environ-

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 04/02, 2002.

ment, such as landscape, meadows, mountains and forests. The scene does not represent a specific place, but surface as a background, a neutral space without borders and spaciousness gives only a hint or imagine of itself. It is a world of decentred subject, simple and clear, with clean lines and a minimalist expression. The human figure, the artist himself, is shown as a sign on the white objectless surface, placed without an anchor located in the ground, within a rectangular frame cut in the abstract field of the world of the picture.

Permutations of images are formed as a series of repetitive monotonous actions of the protagonists, which with minimal transformation taking place within the simple geometry of the frame. The camera is fixed, creating a perspective in which a person, isolated from the environment, outside the context of reality, is presented as a graphic sign on the objectless ground in the hybrid time. The signs of the objective world have been abolished in order to emphasize the repetitiveness of the action.

Precisely the use of the objectless black background — a surface of the frames in the work Untitled represents the loss of the “center” as the loss of strongholds — optical, symbolic or physical, material, and is manifested as a symbolic loss of ground underfoot. The illusion of depth has been destroyed, which guarantees the stability and integrity of the image and the subject, emphasizing this way the flatness and fragmentation, thereby a detail, a fragment gets features of symbol or of a sign. As a consequence of the crisis of representation, reorganization of the sense of time and space, through manipulating and multiplying, points out the position of decentred subject and the fragmentary nature of his identity.

The body becomes accelerated and multiplied, and is shown as a constant vibration of the machine. Possibilities of the digital technology and post-production of the images, simple action make mechanical and artificial. Fractured frames and language

of movement shown through jumps, breaks and jolts in the editing, indicate fractures of the social body, highlighting the absurdity as an existentially based category.

Alen Floričić’s video works question the strategy of a performance, self-reference, repetition, construction and digital image manipulation, pointing to the unstable environment in which we are immersed. Repeated scenes, broken frames, and scratching sound reflect tensions, breaks, cuts, and cracks of social everyday life.

Saying it with George Perec’s words “... we vaguely feel the cracks, yawns, points of friction; sometimes we have a vague impression that the space in places stucks, brakes or crashes... ”2 Exactly in these places — holes, crevices, yawns, gets formed the meaning that sometimes is impossible to verbally articulate.

Modernity and fracture — on which to build (or break down) the idea of collage and montage, process and creation, represent a subversive fantasy and new formal possibilities of radical subjectivity. They represent a gap in the tissue of reality, as a subversion of the model of rational construction of the meaning, a kaleidoscope of psychological elements which is operational on the metonymic principle.3 Branka Benčić

2 Georges Perec: Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (Vrste prostora), Meandar, Zagreb, 2005.

3 Brandon Taylor: Collage — The Making of Modern Art, Thames and Hudson, 2004.

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/13, 2013.

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Razgovor s Alenom Floričićem

U sklopu izložbi Alena Floričića u riječkom MMSU i Studio Tommaseo u Trstu održali su se razgovori s umjetnikom. Skica razgovora predstavlja i ovaj intervju kojeg smo za objavu proširili i revidirali u listopadu 2016. Razgovor vodila Sabina Salamon.

SS: U većini slučajeva video nosi naraciju, barem linearnu strukturu od početka do kraja; kad ga odgleda, gledatelj je svjestan te strukture, razmišlja o početku i kraju, a često se prosudba kvalitete rada temelji na tom odnosu. Ti nikada ne govoriš (u par slučajeva mumljaš ili stenješ). Koristiš jednostavnu formu one shot videa, svedenog na jedan lik, tebe samog. Karakteristični su ritam ponavljanja, vibriranje elektronske slike, izostanak riječi. Ono što se događa nije nikada neposredno opisano, jasno izrečeno, nego prisutno u osjećaju.

AF: Moji video radovi nemaju radnje ni fabule u klasičnom smislu. Riječ je često o banalnim, naoko poznatim situacijama uhvaćenim u cirkularni vremenski čvor tako da postaju mali umjetni zatvoreni sistemi koji pomalo podsjećaju na insekte probodene iglom koji i dalje bezuspješno i besmisleno zuje i mašu krilima. S obzirom da tu ipak postoji ‘glavni lik’, kao i mizanscena i određena scenografska definiranost kadra, pojedini video može sugerirati određena značenja i aspekte kao što su — socijalni aspekt, položaj umjetnika, otuđenost i uzaludnost nastojanja itd. Meni je kao autoru namjera da takve asocijativne aspekte snažne bliskosti sa situacijom, koristim naprosto kao izvor energije i u konačnici kao apstraktno ritmičko izražajno sredstvo. U konačnici, svi su ovi radovi u neku ruku apstraktni, neovisno o korištenom motivu. Iz istog razloga ovi radovi nemaju ni naslove. Ne želim uporabom riječi pretjerano naglašavati određeni semantički smjer čitanja.

SS: Baš zato što je postala fraza da je slikastvo stari medij, a video noviji, sviđa mi se razmišljati kako je tvoj video bliži slikarstvu-slici, nego pokretnom, filmičnom trajanju.

Oni koji mrze video mogli bi na tvom radu učiti kako ga zavoljeti: kadrovi su slikarski (kompozicija), statični, samo je minimalni pokret prisutan kod svih radova.

AF: Kad je prisutan pokret same figure on je čvrsto definiran unutar kadra i u neku ruku poništen manipulativnim postupcima kao što su ponavljanje, umnožavanje i slično.

Kao vizualni umjetnik, odgojen dobrim dijelom na slikarstvu i kiparstvu, video sam smatrao njihovim prirodnim razvojem, a ne suprotnošću. Manipulirajući sliku i zvuk tijekom postprodukcije, radim isto što bih radio slikajući, samo drugim sredstvima. I tu, kao u slikarstvu, koristim metodu pokušaja i pogreški, intuitivni pristup. metodu slučaja i takve stvari. Naravno, to mogu zato što video medij ne koristim filmski već likovno. To mi daje slobodu u pristupu koji filmski projekti po definiciji nemaju.

SS: Znači li to da bi tvoje radove gledali kao performanse, kad postprodukcijskim tehnikama ne bi osujetio njihovu realnost?

AF: U neku ruku, osnova svih mojih video radova su neka vrsta malih intimnih performansa koji daju stvarni, realni građevni materijal za postprodukcijsko manipuliranje.

Ipak, neovisno o vrlo realnoj polaznoj točki, koja se gotovo može namirisati u svojoj prizemnoj ogoljelosti, u konačnici, svi su ovi radovi u neku ruku apstraktni, neovisno o korištenom motivu. Njihova tema je njihova apstraktna ritmička forma. Iako naoko bliski i prepoznatljivi, moji su video radovi ustvari izrazito artificijelni. To je ponekad više, a ponekad manje primjetno u krajnjem rezultatu. Uvijek mi je želja krenuti od banalne situacije, te montažnim manipulacijama slike i zvuka doći do vrlo artificijelnog krajnjeg rezultata koji, međutim i dalje čuva bliskost i prepoznatljivost osnovnog snimka. U toj dualnosti leži osnovna bit mojih radova.

SS: Kod tebe se nigdje ne čuje ni riječi, ono što se ponegdje pojavljuje kao govor, to zapravo nije. Umjesto riječi, zvuk je u prvom planu.

AF: Uloga zvuka slična je ulozi i uporabi slike, s tim da on dodatno podcrtava pomaknutost frekvencije sadržaja video slike s obzirom na realnost.

Riječi, s druge strane, predstavljaju sasvim drukčiji komunikativni kod. Ne samo da ih ne koristim u samim radovima, već izbjegavam i naslovljivanje radova. Općenito imam velik problem sa verbalizacijom svojih radova. Sumnjam da su riječi u mogućnosti prenijeti suštinu i dubinu situacije koja, s druge strane, može relativno nepatvoreno egzistirati u slici (i zvuku).

SS: Vratimo li se na loop, koliko je repeticija/ ponavljanje potencijalni element tjeskobe, a koliko humora?

AF: Tjeskoba i humor su samo dvije strane iste medalje. I jedno i drugo je posljedica manipulacije stvarnim vremenom i prostorom prvotne slike. Na taj se način postiže da prizor u isto vrijeme doživljavamo kao jako poznat i jako stran, a to onda nadalje stvara napetost koja je temeljna karakteristika mojih radova.

SS: Osim tebe kao motiva rada, postoji i dvojnik. Ponekad su u problematičnom odnosu kompeticije, a ponekad su u harmoniji. Jel dvojnik jedna od tema kojom se baviš? Otkud motiv dvojnika?

AF: Kao prvo, volio bih pokušati razjasniti jednu stvar. Često me pitaju kako to da sam sam najčešći protagonist svojih radova. Međutim, tu nije riječ o protagonistu u pravom smislu riječi. To bi, naime, značilo da postoji nekakva dramatska radnja koje u mojim radovima naprosto nema. Jednostavno, riječ je o (ljudskoj) figuri. A ja sam sebi najbliža, najdostupnija i najpodatnija figura. Uzevši u obzir moj način rada koji podrazumijeva minimalnu pripremu u smislu nekakvog sinopsisa i slično, te s obzirom na medij maksimalno moguću dozu slobode, slučaja i improvizacije, nije neobično što se u pravilu odlučujem koristiti sebe samog kao figuru. S druge strane, činjenica da se gotovo u svim radovima nalazim moj lik, zna otvarati određene značenjske aspekte koji, premda ne određuju djelo, znaju biti vrlo zanimljivi i davati dinamiku radovima.

Takozvani dvojnik, ili bolje reći umnožena figura (budući nije uvijek riječ o samo dvije figure), tek je jedan od produkata postprodukcijske manipulacije slikom i zvukom.

SS: Što tebi znači prostor u kojem izlažeš video?

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AF: Već smo govorili o vremenu mojih video radova. Takvo vrijeme nije određeno dramaturškim točkama, već je riječ o situaciji koja je rastegnuta u beskonačnost, između ostalog i metodom loopa, koji ovdje nije tek način da se omogući galerijsko trajanje videa, već neizmjerno važno izražajno sredstvo. Na taj način, vrijeme videa postaje istovjetno vremenu prostora u kojemu se video projicira. Zbog toga je ovdje uvijek riječ o instalaciji ili ambijentu kao formi koja nužno uključuje i konkretni prostor. Bez materijalizacije u konkretnom prostoru, ovi video radovi ne bi ni postojali kao umjetnička djela, već samo kao kratki nerazumljivi klipovi. Tek im prostor daje završnu dimenziju i dovršava ih. Zbog toga njihova kinematografska prezentacija kod koje ljudi mirno sjede i gledaju projekciju (kao u kinu) ovdje nema smisla i uništava bit djela. Kao vizualnom umjetniku bilo mi je interesantno iskoristiti medij videa i pokretnih slika upravo na takav način koji će izbjegavati ulazak u specifično filmsko područje.

SS: Jako davno, jedan me je kolega pitao da mu objasnim što je to tako super u tvojim radovima. Zatekao me s tim pitanjem i nisam mu dala zadovoljavajući odgovor. Ono što mi se danas čini kao mogući odgovor tada nisam znala artikulirati, a to je da tvoji radovi komuniciraju s našim nesvjesnim, s materijalom s one strane svijesnog. Zbog toga o njima nije potrebno znati ništa. Irelevatno je znamo li išta o temi, mjestu i vremenu, postupku, bilo čemu što je potrebno za dešifriranje velike većine radova u suvremenoj produkciji.

AF: Točno. O mojim radovima nije potrebno unaprijed ništa znati. Njihov doživljaj nije uvjetovan nikakvim spoznajno — teoretskim aparatom za dešifriranje. Ona su smještena u prostor svačijeg vizualnog i emotivnog iskustva i usmjerena su ka onim slojevima svijesti u kojima egzistira iracionalni nagovještaj mogućnosti oslobađanja od egzistencijalne stiske koja nam je svima zajednička.

In conversation with Alen Floričić

In the context of Alen Floričić’s exhibitions at the MMSU from Rijeka and Triestine Studio Tommaseo, conversations with the artist were held. As an outline of those talks, we introduce this interview, expanded and revised in October 2016 for publishing purposes. Interview by Sabina Salamon.

SS: In most cases, video bears narration, at least some linear structure from start until the end. When the viewer ends seeing it, he is aware of its structure, he’s thinking about its beginning and ending. The judgment of the quality of the work is often based on this relationship. You never speak (in few cases you mumble and moan). You use a simple form of one shot video, reduced to one subject, yourself. What characterizes it all are: repetition rate, vibrating electronic images, the lack of words. What is happening is never directly described, explicitly stated, but it is present in feel.

AF: My video works have no action nor the plot in the classic sense. They often consists of banal, seemingly familiar situations caught in a circular time node so that they become a little artificial enclosed systems that in some way resemble insects pierced with a needle that are still humming and waving wings. Given that there still exists something like a “main character”, as well as certain scenographic definition of frame, individual video may suggest certain meanings and aspects such as — social aspect, the position of the artist in society, alienation and futility of efforts and so on. It was my intent, as author, to use such associative aspects of possible intensive familiarity with the situation, simply as a source of energy, and ultimately as abstract rhythmic means of expression. Ultimately, all of these works are in some ways essentially abstract, whatever the motive. For the same reason these works have no titles. I do not want to emphasize certain semantic direction with use of.

SS: Exactly because it has become a quote, that painting is an old media and that the video is newer; I like to think that your video is closer to a painting-picture, rather than a moving filmic duration. Those who hate video could learn through your work how to start to love it: frames are pictorial (composition), static, only a slight movement is present in all the works.

AF: Even when the movement of the figure itself is present, it is strictly defined within the frame and to some extent canceled by manipulative procedures such as repetition, duplication and so on. As a visual artist, raised mainly on painting and sculpture, I’ve considered video medium their natural development, not the opposite. By manipulating the image and sound during the post-production, I work the same way as I would do in painting, only by other means. Here also, as in painting, I use the metod of trial and error, intuitive approach, principle of chance etc. Of course, I can do it because I don’t use video media in a traditional way. It gives me the freedom of approach that normal film or video projects by definition don’t have.

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SS: Does it mean that your works should be seen as performances, if you wouldn’t didn’t compromise their reality during post-production processes?

AF: In a way, the basis of all my video works are a kind of small intimate performances that give actual, real raw material for post-production manipulation.

However, regardless the very real starting point, which one can almost smell in its nakedness, in the end, all of these works are in some ways abstract, whatever the motive. Their theme is their abstract rhythmic form. Although seemingly close and recognizable, my video works are in fact deeply artificial. It is sometimes more and sometimes less noticeable in the final result. It is allways my desire to start from the banal situations, and, through manipulation of image and sound, to get to the very artificial end product which, however, still has the familiarity of the basic recording. In this duality lies the basic essence of my work.

SS: There is no word to be heard, what sometimes appears as speech, actually it is not.

Instead of words, the sound is in the foreground.

AF: The role of the sound is similar to the role and use of the image, except that it underlines furthermore the shift of the frequency content of the video image in reference to reality. Words, however, are quite different communicative code. Not only I do not use them in the actual works, but I avoid the naming of works. In general, I have a great issue with the verbalization of my works. I doubt that the words are able to convey the essence and depth of the situation that, on the other hand, can exist relatively unadulterated in the image (and sound).

SS: Let’s get back to the loop, how much are the repetitions potential element of anxiety, and how much are they part of humor?

AF: Anxiety and humor are just two sides of the same coin. Both, one and the other are the result of manipulation of real time and space of the original image. In this way it is possible that it looks in same time familiar and strange, which leads to an tension which is a fundamental characteristic of my work.

SS: Beside yourself as the motive of your work, there is your counterpart as well. Sometimes they strive in baffling competition, sometimes they coexist in harmony. Is your double one of the subjects you deal with? Where does this motive come from?

AF: First of all, I will try to clarify one thing. I am often asked about the fact that I’m the most common protagonist of my works.

However, there is not a protagonist in the true sense of the word. It would meant the existence of some kind of dramatic action that in my video works simply doesn’t exists. What do exists in them are simply (human) figures. And I am closest, most easily accessible figure to myself. Considering my way of working that involves minimal preparation in terms of a synopsis etc., and the maximum possible (given the media) dose of freedom, use of chance and improvisation, it is not unusual that I normally decide to use myself as a figure. On the other hand, the fact that I am in almost all of my works, often open certain semantic aspects which, although they do not determine the work as it is, can be very interesting and give the work certain dynamics.

The so-called double, or rather multiplied figure (considering that often there are not just two figures) is just one of the products of manipulation of images and sounds in the process of post production.

SS: What does the exhibiting space that displays your video, mean to you?

AF: We have already spoken about the time of my video works. It is not about time that is defined with dramaturgical points, but about situations stretched to infinity with various metods as the method of circular loop, that is meant here as an immensely important means of expression. As a consequence, video time gradually becomes the same as the time of the space in which the video is projected. Here we come to the point in which we must consider that my video pieces necessary needs real space to complete themselves. That’s why my pieces are essentially installations or ambients. Without materialization in specific spaces, these video works would not exist as works of art, just as short and incomprehensible clips. Real space gives them final dimension and completes them. Therefore, their cinematografic-like presentation in which people sit still and watch the projection (as in cinema) does not make sense here and in fact destroys the very essence of the work of art. I found it interesting to take advantage of the medium of video and moving images specifcally as an visual artist and to entering more specific specific film area.

SS: A long time ago I was asked by a colleague to explain what is so great about your work. I was overtaken by his question and did not give him a satisfying answer. What today seems like a possible answer I did not know how to articulate then, and that is that your work communicate with our unconscious, with the material beyond the conscious.

This is why it is not necessary to know anything about them. It is irrelevant to know anything about the subject, place and time, or the process, anything that is needed to decrypt the vast majority of works in contemporary production.

AF: Exactly. There is no need to know anything about my work in advance. Their experience is not conditioned by any cognitive — theoretical apparatus for decrypting. They are located in the space of everyone’s visual and emotional experience and they are directed towards those layers of consciousness in which the possibility of taking irrational hint of existential distress which we all share, exists.

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POSTAV IZLOŽBE EXHIBITION SET-UP

7. Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/04, 2004.

1. Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/99, 1999.

8. Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/05, 2005.

2. Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/98, 1998.

9. Bez naziva / Untitled No. 03/05, 2005.

3. Bez naziva / Untitled No. 05/00, 2000.

10. Bez naziva / Untitled No. 02/13, 2013.

4. Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/13, 2013.

11. Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/06, 2006.

5. Bez naziva / Untitled No. 03/04, 2004.

12. Bez naziva / Untitled No. 09/02, 2002.

6. Bez naziva / Untitled No. 04/02, 2002.

13. Bez naziva / Untitled No. 02/05, 2005.

3 1

2

4

5 6 7 8

9 13

12

11

10

98

99

Videografija 1998—2016 Videography

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/98, 1998, video, 3'30", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/99, 1999, video, 3', loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/00, 2000, video, 3', loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 02/00, 2000, video, 2'20", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 03/00, 2000, video, 2'20", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 04/00, 2000, video, 13', loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 05/00, 2000, video, 3'30", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 06/00, 2000, video, 40", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/01, 2001, video, 2'45", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/02, 2002, video, 2'10", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 02/02, 2002, video, 3', loop

100

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 03/02, 2002, video 3'30", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 04/02, 2002, video instalacija / video installation, 4 videa / 4 videos, svaki / each: 30", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 05/02, 2002, video 30", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 06/02, 2002, video, 30", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 07/02, 2002, video instalacija / video installation, 6 videa / videos, svaki / each 30", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 08/02, 2002, video instalacija / video installation, 6 videa / videos, svaki / each 30", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 09/02, 2002, video, 40", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 10/02, 2002, video, 3'20", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/04, 2004, video, 1'40", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 02/04, 2004, video, 30", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 03/04, 2004, trokanalna video instalacija / 3 channel video installation, svaki / each: 1'53", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/05, 2005, video, 45", loop

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Bez naziva / Untitled No. 02/05, 2005, video, 3', loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 03/05, 2005, video, 4'10", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/06, 2006, video, 5'20", loop

Bez naziva/ Untitled No. 01/07, 2007, video, 2'20", loop

Bez naziva/ Untitled No. 02/07, 2007, video, 5', loop

Bez naziva/ Untitled No. 01/09, 2009, video, 5'20", loop

Bez naziva/ Untitled No. 01/10, 2010, video, 1'45", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/13, 2013, 4 kanalna video instalacija / 4 channel video installation / 1: 1'30", loop / 2: 1'05", loop / 3: 2'10", loop / 4: 1'55", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 02/13, 2013, video, 3', loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 03/13, 2013, video, 20", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 01/16, 2016, video, 4'50", loop

Bez naziva / Untitled No. 02/16, 2016, video, 25", loop

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Alen Floričić

Rođen 1968. u Puli. Diplomirao Likovnu kulturu, smjer kiparstvo na Pedagoškom fakultetu u Rijeci. Završio dvogodišnji postdiplomski studij Videa i Novih medija na Akademiji za likovnu umjetnost i oblikovanje u Ljubljani. Od 1997. radi u Školi primijenjenih umjetnosti i dizajna u Puli kao profesor stručne grupe predmeta. Od 2008. do 2012. radio je kao vanjski suradnik-asistent na kolegiju Novi mediji na Akademiji primijenjenih umjetnosti u Rijeci. Izlagao je na velikom broju izložbi, između kojih: Ispričati priču i Here tomorrow, MSU, Zagreb (2001. i 2002.); New video, New Europe, The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2004.); 3 Croatian artists at P.S.1, P.S.1 MoMA, New York (2005.), 51. Biennale di Venezia, Hrvatski paviljon (2005.). Živi i radi u Labinu i Puli.

Born in 1968 in Pula, Croatia. Graduated from the Department of Sculpture at the Faculty of Philosophy in Rijeka. He has completed a postgraduate study in Video and New Media at the Academy of Visual Arts and Design in Ljubljana. Works as a professor at the School for Applied Arts and Design in Pula: from 2007 to 2012 he has worked as assistant professor at the Course of New Media at the Accademy for Applied Arts in Rijeka; his works were exhibited in numerous individual and group exhibitions in Croatia and internationally, among which at the Centre for Contemporary Art P.S.1 in New York, The Renaissance Society in Chicago, Kunsthalle Bethanien in Berlin and elswhere. He was among artists that represented Croatia at the 51st Biennale of Contemporary Art in Venice. He lives and works in Labin and Pula, Croatia.

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Samostalne izložbe

104 2016.

2015.

2014.

2013.

2012.

2010.

2009.

2008.

2007.

2006.

2005.

2003.

2002.

2001.

2000.

1999.

1997.

1995.

1989.

Trst, Studio Tommaseo, Trieste Contemporanea Ljubljana, Galerija ŠKUC Rovinj, Galerija Sv. Toma Rijeka, Muzej moderne i suvremene umjetnosti Osijek, Galerija Waldinger Pula, MSUI Zagreb, Galerija Academia moderna Slavonski Brod, Galerija umjetnina (s T. Dabo i T. Brajnovićem) Rijeka, Galerija Juraj Klović (s O. Mohorovićem) Trbovlje, DDT Umag, Galerija Dante Marino Cettina Rovinjsko selo, Studio Golo brdo Rovinj, Zavičajni muzej Labin, Gradska galerija Split, Galerija Ghetto New York, P.S.1 (s K. Kožulom i T. Buntakom) Pula, Galerija ANEX Zagreb, Muzej suvremene umjetnosti Šikuti, Šikuti Machine Rovinj, Crkva Sv. Tome Labin, Galerija Downtown Novigrad, Galerija Rigo Split, Galerija umjetnina Koper, Galerija Skica Rovinj, Galerija Zavičajnog muzeja Zagreb, Galerija Miroslav Kraljević Rijeka, Galerija Juraj Klović Rijeka, Mali salon Rijeka, Galerija Juraj Klović Pula, Galerija Diana Labin, Galerija Narodnog muzeja Rijeka, Mali Salon Labin, Galerija Narodnog muzeja Poreč, Galerija Narodnog sveučilišta Pazin, Galerija Spomen doma Pula, GalerijaVincent iz Kastva Labin, Galerija Narodnog muzeja

Skupne izložbe (izbor) 2017.

2016.

2015.

2014.

2013.

2012.

Beograd, Galerija Podroom, Kulturni centar Beograd — Tihi krik: Cijelu priču mogu ti tek šapnuti na uho Udine, Palazzo Morpurgo — La fine del Nuovo Rijeka, Muzej moderne i suvremene umjetnosti — Iz trbuha diva Rovinj, Zavičajni muzej — Rovinjska likovna kolonija Poreč, Istarska sabornica — Annale Novi Sad — Dunavski dijalozi 2014 Zagreb, Muzej suvremene umjetnosti — T-HT nagrada@MSU.HR Beograd, Etnografski muzej / Rovinj, Zavičajni muzej — Istra — Beograd Zagreb, Galerija Karas — Clueless — Geometrije nesporazuma Premantura, Atelier Iwan Saiko — Europske integracije Rijeka, MMSU — Dinamički prostor Rijeke Pula, MSUI — Kriza2 — Apatija Zagreb, Galerija Klovićevi dvori — Kriza2 — Apatija Zagreb, Galerija Prozori — Rječnik svakodnevnih interakcija Split, MKC — Dimenzije humora Pula, Galerija Anex — Tu smo 3 Rijeka, MMSU — Upali svjetlo, mrak je Novi Sad, Muzej savremene umetnosti Vojvodine — Pad

2011.

2010.

2009.

2008.

2007.

2006.

2005.

Zagreb, Galerija Klovićevi dvori — Dimenzije humora Pula, MSUI — Izložba fundusa/ Noć muzeja 2013 Poreč, Istarska sabornica — Annale — Nismo sretni Beograd, Galerija 73 — Pad Osijek, Galerija Kazamat — Dimenzije humora Rijeka, Muzej moderne i suvremene umjetnosti — Unutarnje uho Pula, MSUI — Moderna(Post)Moderna Ljubljana, Galerija ŠKUC — Digital transpositions Pécs, Kozelites Gallery — Transformations Torino, Ex Manifatture Tabbachi — Clueless: Geometry of Misunderstanding Mardin — AbbraKadabra — 1. Mardin Biennale Pula, MSUI — Tu smo 2 Pula, HDLU Istre — Multimeridijan ‘10 / Znakovi uzaludnosti Labin, KUC Lamparna — Transart festival Zagreb, Dom HDLU — Media-scape Zagreb 2010 — The Year we Make Contact Torino, Velan Centro d’arte contemporanea — Video Dia Loghi Nova Gorica — Pixelpoint festival: Triple Conjunction: Magic, Myths and Mutations Beograd, Galerija Remont — Novi istarski video Pula, HDLU Istre/MSUI — Kriza Poreč, Istarska sabornica — Annale — U slavu Baroka Berlin, Content Art Space — Borders Ljubljana, Gallery Alkatraz — Oko svijeta umjetnosti u 4.380 dana Istanbul, Apartment Project — Tri videa iz Hrvatske (X-OP events / 11. International Istanbul biennale popratni programi) Split, Galerija umjetnina — Moderna(Post)Moderna Pula, Muzej suvremene umjetnosti Istre — Tu smo Ljubljana, Mestna galerija — MOVE! Osijek, Galerija Waldinger — Re/Constructions Zagreb, Galerija Karas — Mapiranje grada Butrio, SPAC — Permeabilità Zagreb, Galerija ULUPUH — Fashionable discourse (2) / Concept Store Regensburg, Povijesni Muzej Regensburg — Donumenta ‘08 Pula Galerija Anex — Mapiranje grada Zagreb, Dom HDLU — 42. Zagrebački salon Pula, Galerija MMC Luka — U Susret Muzeju Suvremene Umjetnosti Istre New Delhi, Lalit Kala Akademy — Contemporary Croatian Art Zagreb, Paviljon 19 Zagrebačkog Velesajma — Izložba odabranih radova na Natječaju T-HT I MSU Bar, Hamam — Polis Jadran Europa festival (Skrivena Istra) New York, Gallery MC — Hop Scotch Dubrovnik, Umjetnička galerija — Hrvatska na 51. Biennalu u Veneciji Rijeka, Muzej moderne i suvremene umjetnosti — INSERT — Retrospektiva hrvatske video umjetnosti Zagreb, Galerija Karas — Sobe / Stanze Piran, Tartinijeva kuća — Put u nepoznato Beč, Viennafair — Međunarodni sajam suvremene umjetnosti New York, The Kitchen — New Video, New Europe Vukovar, Dvorac Eltz — 1. Vukovarski Salon Rovinj, Zavičajni muzej — Rovinjska likovna kolonija Courances, Chateau de Courances — Courances, les petits bateaux 2006 Torino, Centre Culturel Français — Video Dia Loghi 5 Zagreb, Galerija Prozori — Do you celebrate Christmas?

Bologna, Arte Fiera (Galerija ŠKUC, Ljubljana) Pula, Prostori javnih skloništa — Put u nepoznato Graz, Schloss Seggau — Hey Europe!

Venezia, Museo Fortuny — 51. Biennale di Venezia, Hrvatski paviljon Zagreb, Dom HDLU — 39. zagrebački salon Pula, Galerija Amfiteatar — Granice i rubovi Savičenta, Gradska loža — Šetimana performansa Zagreb, Paviljon 19 Zagrebačkog velesajma — INSERT Osijek, Galerija Kazamat — Multimeridijan 04 Pula, MMC Luka — Pomodni razgovori Split, Kupalište Bačvice — 34. Splitski salon

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2004.

2003.

2002.

2001.

2000.

1999.

1998.

1997.

1996.

1995.

1994.

1993.

1992.

1991.

Zagreb, Galerija proširenih medija — Žmirkanje Chicago, The Rennaisance society — New video, New Europe Ljubljana, Galerija ZDSLU — Sobe/Stanze Genova, Museo Raccolte Frugone — Gemine Muse Ljubljana, Galerija ŠKUC — On sale Zagreb, Gliptoteka HAZU/ Rijeka, Galerija Kortil — Novi fragmenti 2 Strasbourg, Le-Maillon — La Nuit art video Beograd, Muzej suvremene umetnosti — Poslednja istočnoevropska izložba Lowell, MA, Evos Arts — FRAG Pula, MMC Luka — Bodily functions Ljubljana, Galerija Kapelica / Labin, Gradska galerija — Fade in Fade out Zagreb, Gliptoteka HAZU — 9. Triennale hrvatskog kiparstva Osijek, Galerija Kazamat — Nova istarska umjetnost Milano, Cascina Roma — Sobe/Stanze Zagreb, Galerija Miroslav Kraljević — Minuta šutnje Ljubljana, Galerija ŠKUC — Twinklings Milano, O’Artoteca — The promised land Berlin, Kunsthalle Bethanien — September horse Zagreb, Gliptoteka HAZU/ Muzej suvremene umjetnosti — Here tomorrow Zagreb, Zagrebački velesajam — 26. Salon mladih Pula, Galerija Luka — Redukcije Skopje, New media space — Sculpture time Zagreb, Muzej suvremene umjetnosti — Ispričati priču — Hrvatska umjetnost 90-ih Labin, Gradska galerija — Poslije LA Tolmezzo, Palazzo Frisacco — Moltitudini Zagreb, Dom hrvatskih umjetnika — Zagrebački salon Boston, Mobius Gallery — Taking liberty / Osvajanje slobode Bruxelles — Balkan art generator Sarajevo, Collegium Artisticum — Socijalno nevidljivi Krapina, Galerija grada Krapine — 2. Zagorski likovni salon Ljubljana, Galerija ŠKUC — Mala zemlja za veliki odmor Beograd, Centre for Contemporary Arts — Balkan Video Federation Vevey — ARGOS PROJECT 2000 Rovinj, Zavičajni muzej — Rovinjska likovna kolonija Split, Rijeka, Pula — Biennale malog formata Zagreb, Dom hrvatskih umjetnika — Triennale hrvatskog crteža Pula, Novigrad, Poreč, Labin — Osvajanje slobode / Taking liberty Pula, Rijeka, Zagreb — Iskorak 99.

Pula, Galerija Vincent iz Kastva Rovinj, Galerija zavičajnog muzeja Labin, Galerija Narodnog muzeja Poreč, Istarska sabornica — Godišnja izložba HDLU Istre Rijeka, Galerija Kortil / Pula, Galerija Vincent iz Kastva — Godišnja izložba HDLU Rijeka Karlovac, Gradski muzej / Slavonski brod, Galerija umjetnina — 1. hrvatski triennale akvarela Zagreb, Dom hrv.umjetnika / Galerija Matice hrvatske / Klub Gjuro 2 — 25.Salon mladih Pula, Galerija Vincent iz Kastva — Godišnja izložba HDLU Istre Rijeka, Galerija Juraj Klović / Labin, Galerija Alvona — Kandidati Zagreb, Koncertna dvorana Vatroslav Lisinski — Experientia docet Rijeka, Galerija Kortil / Split, Umjetnički paviljon — Godišnja izložba HDLU Istre Rijeka, Galerija grada Rijeke — Godišnja izložba HDLU Rijeke Zagreb, Galerija Grade — Memento 95.

Labin, Galerija Narodnog muzeja / Pula, Galerija Vincent iz Kastva, Rijeka, Galerija Grada Rijeke — Donacije za Muzej Grada Iloka u progonstvu Split, Samostan Gospe od Zdravlja — Bienalle malog formata Zagreb, Galerija Arteria — Suvremeni riječki umjetnici Pula, Galerija Vincent iz Kastva — Memento 95.

Split, Samostan Gospe od Zdravlja — IV Salon sakralne umjetnosti Zagreb, Umjetnički paviljon/ Kabinet grafike HAZU — 14. zagrebačka izložba crteža Split, Umjetnički salon — Bienalle malog formata Rijeka, Moderna galerija — 16. Bienalle mladih

Video projekcije i prezentacije 2013.

2012.

2009.

2008.

2007.

2006.

2005.

2004.

2003.

2002.

Rijeka, Klub KUNS Essen, Contemporary Art Ruhr / Berlin, Collegium Hungaricum — Kroatien kreativ 2013.

Marseille — Strategies of self-representation Trbovlje, DDT — Speculum Artium Pula, Pula Film Festival — Filmska ulica New York, Gallery MC — Locating Identity Ljubljana, Kiberpipa — Video Match ‘08 Istanbul, Kartal Bülent Ecevit Kültür Merkezi — VİDEOİST 2010 Split, Festival Novog filma — Recentni hrvatski video New York, Museum of the Moving Image — Up close and personal Novigrad — Mediascape ‘07 London, Caffe Gallery — Croatia Calling Austin, Arthouse at the Jones Center / New York, The Kitchen — New Video, New Europe Novigrad — Mediascape Torino, Centre Culturel Français — Video Dia Loghi 5 Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum / Grand Forks, North Dakota Museum of Art — New Video, New Europe Torino, Videodialoghi / Pula, Metamedia Club — New Croatian video 2000—2005 Zagreb, Muzej suvremene umjetnosti — Video pilot — Autoreferencijalnost Taipei, National Palace Museum — PALMARES FAIMP 2004 St. Louis, Contemporary Art Museum / London, Tate Modern — New Video, New Europe Prishtina, Centre for Contemporary Arts — 3. International Festival of Video Art Edinburgh, New Media Scotland / Lancaster, Lancaster Film and New Media Festival / Aix-enProvence, Arborescence 03 — Frame by Frame, Retrospektiva hrvatskog jednokanalnog videa Budapest, Trafo Gallery / Rijeka, Muzej moderne i suvremene umjetnosti / Zadar, Intermuros project / Gdansk, Aznia Center for Contemporary Art / Split, Festival novog filma i videa — Frame by Frame Zagreb, Kinoteka — 11. dani hrvatskog filma Lowell, Evos Arts — FRAG Graz, Rotor / Ljubljana, Moderna galerija / Zagreb, Net culture club Mama / Sarajevo, so.ba café — SCCA / Beograd, SKC / Sofia, XXL Gallery / Istanbul, Apartment project / Beirut, Espace SD / Cairo, Townhouse Gallery / Vienna, Secession — Utopia travel project

Nagrade 2017.

2015.

2010.

2007.

2006.

2005.

2002.

1998.

1997.

1995.

1994.

1991.

Rijeka, Nagrada Ivo Kalina za najbolju izložbu 2015.—2016.

Rovinj, Rovinjska likovna kolonija — 2. nagrada Pula, Muzej suvremene umjetnosti Istre, Tu smo 2 — 2. Nagrada Zagreb, 42. Zagrebački salon — 2. Nagrada Rovinj, Rovinjska likovna kolonija — 1. Nagrada Zavičajnog muzeja Rovinj Zagreb, 39. Zagrebački salon — 2. Nagrada Labin, Labinski uzlet likovnosti — Godišnja nagrada Zagreb, 25. Salon mladih — Grand prix Volosko, Međunarodni Ex Tempore — 3. Nagrada Volosko, Međunarodni Ex Tempore — 1. Nagrada Opatija, Međunarodni Ex Tempore — Otkupna nagrada Rijeka, Moderna galerija — Biennale mladih — Nagrada Riviera

Radovi u fundusima · · · · · · · · ·

Muzej suvremene umjetnosti, Zagreb Muzej moderne i suvremene umjetnosti, Rijeka Galerija umjetnina, Split Umjetnička galerija, Dubrovnik Zavičajni muzej, Rovinj Fundus umjetnina Grada Pule Fundus umjetnina Grada Labina Fundus umjetnina Grada Opatije Privatne zbirke

107

Solo exhibitions

108 2016

2015 2014 2013 2012 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005

2003

2002

2001 2000 1999 1997

1995

1989

Trieste, Studio Tommaseo, Trieste Contemporanea Ljubljana, Gallery ŠKUC Rovinj, Gallery Sv. Toma Rijeka, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Osijek, Gallery Waldinger Pula, Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria Zagreb, Gallery Academia Moderna Art Gallery of Slavonski Brod (with T. Dabo i T. Brajnović) Rijeka, Gallery Juraj Klović (with O. Mohorović) Trbovlje, DDT Umag, Gallery Dante Marino Cettina Rovinjsko selo, Studio Golo brdo Rovinj, City Museum Labin, City Gallery Split, Gallery Ghetto New York, P.S.1 (with K. Kožul and T. Buntak) Pula, Gallery ANEX Zagreb, Museum of Contemporary Art Šikuti, Šikuti Machine Rovinj, Gallery Sv. Toma Labin, Gallery Downtown Novigrad, Gallery Rigo Split, Art Gallery Koper, Gallery Skica Rovinj, City Museum Gallery Zagreb, Gallery Miroslav Kraljević Rijeka, Gallery Juraj Klović Rijeka, Mali Salon Rijeka, Gallery Juraj Klović Pula, Gallery Diana Labin, City Museum Gallery Rijeka, Mali Salon Labin, City Museum Gallery Poreč, City Gallery Pazin, Memorial Centre Gallery Pula, Gallery Vincent iz Kastva Labin, City Museum Gallery

Selected group exhibitions 2017 2016 2015

2014

2013

2012

Beograd, Galerija Podroom, KC Beograd — Silent Scream: The whole story I could only whisper in your ear Udine, Palazzo Morpurgo — The End of the New Rijeka, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art — From the Giant’s belly Rovinj, City Museum — Rovinj Collony Poreč, The museum of the Poreč territory — 55. Annale — Re/Construction Novi Sad — Danube dialogues 2014 Zagreb, Museum of Contemporary Art — T-HT nagrada@MSU.HR Beograd, Etnographic Museum — Istria — Belgrade Rovinj, City Museum — Istria — Belgrade Zagreb, Gallery Karas — Clueless / Geometry of Misunderstanding Premantura, Atelier Iwan Saiko — European integrations Rijeka, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art — Dynamic Space of Rijeka Pula, Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria — Crisis 2 / Apathy Zagreb, Gallery Klovićevi dvori — Crisis 2 / Apathy Zagreb, Gallery Prozori — Dictionary of daily interactions Split, MKC — Dimensions of humor Pula, Gallery Anex — We are here 3 Rijeka, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art — Upali svjetlo, mrak je

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

Novi Sad, Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina — Downfall Zagreb, Gallery Klovićevi dvori — Dimensions of humor Pula, Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria — Museum Night 2013 Poreč, The museum of the Poreč territory — 51. Annale — We are not happy Beograd, Gallery 73 — Downfall Osijek, Gallery Kazamat — Dimensions of humor Rijeka, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art — Internal Ear (from the MMSU collection) Pula, Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria — Moderna(Post)Moderna Ljubljana, Gallery ŠKUC — Digital transpositions Pécs, Kozelites Gallery — Transformations Torino, Ex Manifatture Tabbachi — Clueless: Geometry of Misunderstanding Mardin, AbbraKadabra — 1. Mardin Biennale Pula, Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria — We are Here 2 Pula, HDLU Istra — Multimeridijan ‘10 — Znakovi uzaludnosti Labin, KUC Lamparna — Transart festival Zagreb, Home of Croatian Artists — Media-scape Zagreb 2010 — The Year we Make Contact Torino, Velan Centro d’arte contemporanea — Video Dia Loghi 2010 Nova Gorica — Pixelpoint festival Beograd, Gallery Remont — New Istrian Video Pula, HDLU Istra / Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria — Crisis Poreč, The museum of the Poreč territory — 49. Annale — Tribute to Baroque Berlin, Content Art Space — Borders Ljubljana, Gallery Alkatraz — Around the World of Art in 4.380 days Istanbul — Apartment Project, 3 Croatian videos (X-OP events / 11th International Istanbul biennale, side events) Split, Art Gallery — Moderna(Post)Moderna Pula, Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria — We are here Ljubljana, City Gallery — MOVE! Osijek, Gallery Waldinger — Re/Constructions Zagreb, Gallery Karas — Mapping the City Butrio, SPAC — Permeabilità Zagreb, Gallery ULUPUH — Fashionable discourse (2) / Concept Store Regensburg, Historical Museum Regensburg — Donumenta ‘08 Pula Gallery Anex — Mapping the City Zagreb, Home of Croatian Artists — 42. Zagreb Salon Pula, Gallery MMC Luka — Future Museum of Contemporary Art in Istria Bar, Hamam — Polis Adria Europe festival New Delhi, Lalit Kala Akademy — Contemporary Croatian Art Zagreb, Pavillion 19 at Zagreb Fair — T-HT&MSU Award Exhibition New York, Gallery MC — Hop Scotch Dubrovnik, Art Gallery, Croatia Pavillion on 51. Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art Rijeka, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art — INSERT — A retrospective exhibition of Croatian video art Zagreb, Gallery Karas — Rooms Piran, Tartini house — A journey into the unknown Vienna, Viennafair — Gallery ŠKUC pavillion New York, The Kitchen — New Video, New Europe Vukovar, Eltz Castle — 1. Vukovar Salon Rovinj, City Museum — Rovinj Art Colony Courances, Chateau de Courances — Courances, les petits bateaux 2006 Torino, Centre Culturel Français — Video Dia Loghi 5 Zagreb, Gallery Prozori — Do you celebrate Christmas?

Bologna, Arte Fier — ŠKUC Galery pavillion Pula, HDLU Istra — A journey into the unknown Graz, Schloss Seggau — Hey Europe!

Zagreb, Home of Croatian Artists — 39. Zagreb salon Pula, Gallery Amfiteatar — Borders and Edges Venezia, Museo Fortuny — 51. Biennale di Venezia, Croatian pavilion Savičenta — Performance week Zagreb, Pavillion 19 at Zagreb Fair — INSERT — A retrospective of Croatian video art Split, City Aquarium Bačvice — 34. Split Salon

109

110 2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994 1993 1992 1991

Osijek, Gallery Kazamat — Multimeridijan 04 Pula, Gallery MMC Luka — Fashionable discourse Chicago, The Renaissance Society — New Video, New Europe Zagreb, Gallery PM — Twinklings Ljubljana, Gallery ZDSLU — Rooms Pula, HDLU Istra — Multimeridian ‘04 Chelm, Chelm Muzeum — Istrian Blue Genova, Museo Raccolte Frugone — Gemine Muse Ljubljana, Gallery ŠKUC — On Sale Strasbourg, Le-Maillon — La Nuit Art Video Beograd, Museum of Contemporary Art — The Last East European Show Zagreb, The Croatian Academy Glyptotheque / Rijeka, Gallery Kortil — New fragments 2 Lowell, Evos Arts — FRAG Pula, Gallery MMC Luka — Bodily Functions Pula, Gallery Anex, VIDEO PUZZLE — A Retrospective of Experimental Film and Video in Croatia Ljubljana, Gallery Kapelica — Fade In Fade Out Labin, City Gallery — Fade In Fade Out Zagreb, The Croatian Academy Glyptotheque — 9. Triennale of Croatian Sculpture Osijek, Kazamat Gallery — New Istrian Art Milano, Cascina Roma — Rooms Zagreb, Gallery Miroslav Kraljević — The minute of silence Ljubljana, Gallery ŠKUC — Twinklings Milano, O’Artoteca — The Promised Land Berlin, Kunsthalle Bethanien — September Horse Zagreb, Museum of Contemporary Art — Here Tomorrow Zagreb, Zagreb Fair — 26. Salon of Youth Pula, HDLU Istre — Reductions Skopje, New media space — Sculpture Time Zagreb, Museum of Contemporary Art — To Tell a Story — Art in Croatia in the 1990s Zagreb, HDLU — Zagreb Salon Tolmezzo, Palazzo Frisacco — Moltitudini Boston, Mobius Gallery — Taking Liberty Bruxelles, Cultural Center De Zeyp — Balkan Art Generator Sarajevo, Collegium Artisticum — Socially Invisible Krapina, Gallery of the City of Krapina — 2. Zagorje Art Salon Ljubljana, Gallery ŠKUC — Little Country for a Big Vacation Beograd, Contemporary Art Centre — Balkan Video Federation Vevey — ARGOS PROJECT 2000 Split, Rijeka, Pula — Biennale of Small Format Zagreb, Home of Croatian Artists — Croatian Triennale of Drawing Pula, Novigrad, Poreč, Labin — Osvajanje slobode / Taking liberty Pula, Rijeka, Zagreb — Breakthrough 99.

Pula, Gallery Vincent iz Kastva / Rovinj, City Museum Gallery / Labin, City Museum Gallery / Poreč, Assembly Hall — Anual exhibition of HDLU Istra Rijeka, Gallery Kortil / Pula, Gallery Vincent iz Kastva — Annual exhibition of HDLU Rijeka Karlovac, City Museum/ Slavonski brod, Art Gallery — 1. Croatian Triennale of Watercolour Zagreb, Home of Croatian Artists / Matica Hrvatska Gallery / Klub Gjuro 2 — 25. Salon of Youth Pula, Gallery Vincent iz Kastva — Annual exhibition of HDLU Istra Rijeka, Galerija Juraj Klović / Labin, Gallery Alvona — Candidates Zagreb, Concert Hall Vatroslav Lisinski — EXPERIENCIA DOCET Rijeka, Gallery Kortil / Split, Art Gallery — Annual exhibition of HDLU Istra Rijeka, Gallery of the City of Rijeka — Annual exhibition of HDLU Rijeka Zagreb, Gallery Gradec — Memento 95.

Labin, City Museum Gallery / Pula, Gallery Vincent iz Kastva / Rijeka, Gallery of the City of Rijeka — Donations for Museum of Ilok Split, Monastery of Our Lady of Health — Bienalle of Small Format Zagreb, Gallery Arteria — Contemporary artists from Rijeka Pula, Gallery Vincent iz Kastva — Memento 95.

Split, Monastery of Our Lady of Health — IV Salon of Sacral Art Zagreb, Art Pavillion/ Cabinet of Graphics of HAZU — 14. Zagreb Exhibition of Drawing Split, Art Salon — Bienalle of Small Format Rijeka, Modern Gallery — 16. Bienalle of Youth

Video projections and presentations 2013 2012 2009 2008

2007

2006

2005 2004

2003 2002

Rijeka, Klub KUNS Essen, Contemporary Art Ruhr / Berlin, Collegium Hungaricum — Kroatien Kreativ 2013.

Marseille — Strategies of self-representation Trbovlje, DDT — Speculum Artium Pula, Pula Film Festival — Film Street New York, Gallery MC — Locating Identity Ljubljana, Kiberpipa — Video Match ‘08 Istanbul, Kartal Bülent Ecevit Kültür Merkezi — VİDEOİST 2010 Split, Festival Novog filma — Recent Croatian Video New York, Museum of the Moving Image — Up close and Personal Novigrad — Mediascape ‘07 London, Caffe Gallery — Croatia Calling Austin, Arthouse at the Jones Center / New York, The Kitchen — New Video, New Europe Novigrad — Mediascape Torino, Centre Culturel Français — Video Dia Loghi 5 Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum / Grand Forks, North Dakota Museum of Art — New Video, New Europe Torino, Videodialoghi / Pula, Metamedia Club — New Croatian video 2000—2005 Zagreb, Museum of Contemporary Art — Video pilot — Autoreferenciality Taipei, National Palace Museum — PALMARES FAIMP 2004 St. Louis, Contemporary Art Museum / London, Tate Modern — New Video, New Europe Prishtina, Centre for Contemporary Arts — 3. International Festival of Video Art Edinburgh, New Media Scotland / Lancaster, Lancaster Film and New Media Festival/ Aix-en-Provence, Arborescence 03 — Frame by Frame, Retrospective of Croatian One-Channel video Budapest, Trafo Gallery / Rijeka, Museum of Modern Art / Zadar, Intermuros project / Gdansk, Aznia Center for Contemporary Art / Split, Festival of New Film and Video — Frame by Frame, Retrospective of Croatian One-Channel video Zagreb, Kinoteka — 11th Days of Croatian Cinema Lowell, Evos Arts — FRAG Graz, Rotor / Ljubljana, Modern Gallery / Zagreb, Net culture club Mama / Sarajevo, so.ba café — SCCA / Beograd, SKC / Sofia, XXL Gallery / Istanbul, Apartment project / Beirut, Espace SD/ Cairo, Townhouse Gallery / Vienna, Secession — Utopia travel project

Awards 2017 2015 2010 2007 2006 2005 2002 1998 1997 1995 1994 1991

Rijeka, Ivo Kalina Award for the best exhibition 2015—2016 Rovinj, Rovinj Art Colony — 2. Award Pula, Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria, We are Here — 2. Award Zagreb, 42. Zagreb Salon — 2. Award Rovinj, Rovinj Art Colony — 1. Award Zagreb, 39. Zagreb Salon — 2. Award Labin, Labin Art Exhibition — Annual Award Zagreb, 25. Salon of Youth — Grand prix Volosko, International Ex Tempore — 3. Award Volosko, International Ex Tempore — 1. Award Opatija, International Ex Tempore — Purchase prize Rijeka, Modern Gallery — Biennale of Youth — Riviera prize

Works in collections · · · · · · ·

Zagreb, Museum of Contemporary Art Rijeka, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Split, Art Gallery Dubrovnik, Art Gallery Rovinj, City Museum Art Collection of City of Pula, Labin and Opatija Private collections

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