Urboglyphs – Multiplying the City: “Starting the Conversation” – Sunday, April 14, 2024 – Prince Zdeslav Park

SUNDAY April 14, 2024, FROM 10 AM TO 12 PM

PRINCE ZDESLAV PARK

“STARTING THE CONVERSATION”

PERFORMANCE, DISCUSSION, AND WORKSHOP ON THE MEANING OF COEXISTENCE, RESPONSIBILITY, AND SOLITUDE

DISCUSSION INITIATED BY: PETRA SLOBODNJAK, PAVLE PERKOVIĆ, LEO VUKELIĆ & BORIS BAKAL

On Sunday, April 14, in Prince Zdeslav Park, in the triangle of Zvonimirova, Šubićeva, and Derenčinova streets, as part of the multi-month program “Urboglyphs – Multiplying the City,” we are setting up the audio installation “Starting the Conversation” by Shadow Casters and collaborators. This time, we will gather in the morning, from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM (or longer if necessary), and the discussion on conversation, solitude, and coexistence will be initiated by intermedia artist Petra Slobodnjak, psychotherapist and writer Pavle Perković, visual artist Leo Vukelić, and intermedia artist, theater, and film director Boris Bakal. Citizens and guests are welcome to join the conversation.

This audio installation will enable participants, both invited and incidental, to use it to engage in a conversation and get acquainted with the dynamics of conversation, solitude in conversation, listening, and paying attention to what is spoken, in an extremely hostile space for conversation, an almost non-place, in the triangle of three constantly and multiply active traffic roads. In times of overall loudness, this action aims to highlight the paradox: we need conversation more than ever, yet we have fewer opportunities and conditions to converse.

Thus, this time, as many times before, we will inscribe another layer of urboglyphs into the urban matrix of the city of Zagreb.

Petra Slobodnjak is an independent artist in the field of graphic design and photography. She graduated from the Faculty of Graphic Arts in Zagreb and has held several solo and twenty group exhibitions. She is a member of the Croatian Freelance Artists Association (HZSU), the Croatian Association of Artists of Applied Arts – ULUPUH (in the Multimedia and Intermedia Section and the Photography Section), and the Croatian Designers Association (HDD). She is the recipient of the Croatian Photographic Association’s award for the best young author (2008). She currently lives and works in Zagreb.

Pavle Perković completed studies in philosophy and religious sciences, a one-year education in Peace Studies, and attended many peace, film, and drama workshops. He also completed a four-year education to become a gestalt psychotherapist. In recent years, he has been working in a student counseling center as a counselor and provides individual psychotherapy to clients. He emphasizes demystifying psychotherapy and views it as an opportunity for growth and development.

Leo Vukelić is a master of arts. After primary and secondary school, he studied electrical engineering and enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1996. He graduated in free arts in 2004, and the same year, he co-founded the art organization Tigar Teatar with two colleagues and began intensively working in theater for children and youth. To date, he has held 25 solo and over 50 group exhibitions at home and abroad. Since his theatrical beginnings, he has realized over 100 professional projects as an artist on almost all Croatian stages, in roles including set designer, costume designer, performer, text author, director, lighting and visual identity designer. He has received several professional awards. Since 2023, he has been employed as an assistant professor of art at the Academy of Arts and Culture in Osijek.

Boris Bakal is a director, actor, and intermedia artist who has been creating theatrical and film projects, performances, and multimedia installations for over forty years. His works have been presented or produced by festivals and events in more than twenty countries worldwide. As a guest lecturer, he has spoken at numerous universities, symposiums, conferences, and forums. Since 2001, he has been leading Shadow Casters, an international artistic platform that has received numerous awards and recognitions both in Croatia and abroad.

“Urboglyphs – Multiplying the City” is a multi-month urban program by Shadow Casters that continues our twenty-two-year practice of engaging with the city, its material and immaterial heritage, reading spaces, and educating citizens about the resourcefulness of shared spaces. It continues our thinking about the city, architecture, and art in the context of contemporary cultures “by other means” and invites collaboration, interaction, agreement, and consent to an “open field of differences” as a necessary prerequisite for active artistic creation. At the core of this thinking is the idea of necessary interdisciplinary and multimedia practice and cooperation with (potential) users-co-authors of this practice.

“Urboglyphs: Multiplying the City” continues on Monday and Tuesday, April 15 and 16, at Krešimir Square with “open offices” through which Bacači Sjenki contemplate the city and coexistence “by other means,” primarily through conversation and observation, constant dialogue with all those who purposefully or aimlessly use and conquer that shared street or square space. Shadow Casters learn about the city through daily life and permanent conversation with citizens, with whom they exchange ideas and record stories. Citizens become acquainted with the practice and theory and projects of Bacači Sjenki, and the “open office” becomes an embassy and celebration of creative coexistence.

The action “Starting the Conversation” is also a small homage to an attempt at conversation in the vicinity: “Conversation under the Walnut Tree” was an artistic event held from May 3 to 7, 1975, in the yard of the nearby Sila factory, at the corner of Martićeva and Šubićeva streets, organized by members of the Biafra art group. In addition to group members and supporters (Stjepan Gračan, Miro Vuco, Zlatko Kauzlarić-Atač, Ivan Lesiak, Rudolf Labaš, and Ratko Petrić), art historians Tonko Maroević, Zdenko Rus, and Tomislav Lalin also participated in the conversation

urboglyphs [Lat. urbs = city] + [Gr. glyphē = engraving] are symbolic and spatial accumulations of signs and meanings created by multilayered inscription of various events in the same place, through which we then read the urban collective memory of the city, reconstructing the intangible cultural and political heritage of urban spaces.

About Shadow Casters

Project support: City of Zagreb – Office for Culture and Civil Society

Support for Shadow Casters: National Foundation for Civil Society Development, Kultura Nova Foundation, Croatian Audiovisual Centre