Almissa

2013

Error

A mis­take can be seen as a poten­tial for pro­gress due to the unspe­cified func­tions of the defect itself, and thus become the highest value in a work of art. In bio­logy, a DNA repro­duc­tion error causes a muta­tion, and some­times the muta­tion can have a pos­it­ive impact on the indi­vidu­al, becom­ing the main driver of evol­u­tion. Errors with a pos­it­ive effect are the motors of the devel­op­ment of sci­ence and art, and espe­cially in per­form­ing arts due to the nature of the art media, usu­ally occur­ring in front of a live audi­ence. People’s reac­tions, extern­al factors, acci­dents and mis­takes are threats, but also oppor­tun­it­ies for upgrad­ing the planned per­form­ance. The ‘mis­take-themed’ per­form­ances that took place in Mira­bela in 2013 have often dealt with the wrong topic, as many have con­sidered that giv­ing any theme to per­form­ances on Mira­bela was the first and basic error.

Ante Kuštre spent 20 minutes quietly look­ing into the eyes of the view­ers a few meters away – at least the audi­ence was exper­i­en­cing it – because both Ante and Kuštre are short-sighted. Invest­ig­at­ing the pos­sib­il­it­ies of non-verbal com­mu­nic­a­tion and ques­tion­ing one’s own abil­ity to con­vey an ima­gin­ary mes­sage, this long-last­ing per­form­ance ended with applause when one vis­it­or, irrit­ated to bore­dom, decided to end his agony.

Božid­ar Katić over-exposed his body to sun­light that day, and decided to present body art as a per­form­ance at Mira­bela. Using the pale skin’s reac­tion to strong sun­light as an art medi­um, the artist covered cer­tain parts of his body with plastic squares that blocked UV light, thus achiev­ing the effect of a chess­board, in which the red fields were actu­ally first-degree burns.

Gildo Bavčević wore an offi­cial police suit and played the Croa­tian nation­al anthem, which went in a hyp­not­ic loop at “…da svoj narod Hrvat ljubi/…that a Croat loves his people”. The artist took off his pants, put some lip­stick one and kissed a 100€ note. He then held the note against his chest until the anthem was over.

Milan Brkić apo­lo­gized to the organ­izers for not being able to com­plete his planned work. He said that he had the inten­tion to use ultra­sound to demol­ish the Omiš Moun­tains and the city itself, and asked the elec­tric­al engin­eer­ing stu­dents to pro­duce the fre­quency and find equip­ment for the pro­duc­tion of ava­lanche. Appar­ently, the stu­dents refused to hand over equip­ment to Brkić when he finally told them why he really needed the required frequency.

Vanja Pagar set up a map of Europe used in geo­graphy class upon the wall of the World War II bunker. He inter­vened in the map, adding twelve rocks com­posed in a cir­cu­lar form­a­tion, thus cre­at­ing an inter­pret­a­tion of the European flag. The per­form­ance con­sisted of the swinging of the stones, cre­at­ing ten­sion and warn­ing of the dangers threat­en­ing Croa­tia in the European nations’ community.

Zlatan Duman­ić gave an inspir­a­tion­al and exhaust­ive lec­ture in which he expressed obscure theses about real­ity, the nature of the uni­verse, and shared the truth about his own life and intim­ate memor­ies with the audi­ence. Although he suffered an injury in an acci­dent sev­er­al months before this per­form­ance (when he fell from a high wall while try­ing to impress the young­er mem­bers of the oppos­ite sex) that left him hardly mobile, dur­ing this per­form­ance he was fresh like a young man, which pro­voked rumors that the story of the injury was just decep­tion, just as that the pros­thes­is he had on his back in the past few months was only elab­or­ated pre­par­a­tion for this per­form­ance in Omiš.

Željko Marović poured flour, salt and sugar on three steps of the Mira­bela. It was impossible to bypass or skip the men­tioned steps, and vis­it­ors were forced to step on the install­a­tion in order to get in and out of the space.

Petar Grim­ani and Mar­i­jan Crtalić were in an por­trait-draw­ing duel. Although the emphas­is was on the artist­ic pro­cess and pro­duc­tion errors, and not the res­ult itself, as explained by Grim­ani, who con­versed with the audi­ence through­out the per­form­ance, the res­ult was more suc­cess­ful for Crtalić who had not drawn a por­trait for decades.

Antej Jel­en­ić per­formed the ritu­al of spir­itu­al cleans­ing of the space and vis­it­ors, by singing a secret sham­an­ic song with burn­ing sac­red plants. The per­form­ance was accom­pan­ied by a ses­sion of impro­visa­tion­al music, with the par­ti­cip­a­tion of some artists and the audi­ence. Music was played late into the night, until all the vis­it­ors left the event.