Almissa

2014

Identity

The descrip­tion or rep­res­ent­a­tion of indi­vidu­al and group iden­tity is the cent­ral task of psy­cho­lo­gists, soci­olo­gists and anthro­po­lo­gists and other dis­cip­lines that try to map or define “iden­tity”. How to describe the iden­tity of the other, how to encom­pass its idio­syn­crat­ic qual­it­ies, and group affil­i­ation or iden­ti­fic­a­tion, many of which are prone to change accord­ing to cir­cum­stances? The tra­di­tion­ally same group of artists on Mira­bela tried to answer these ques­tions, with the rein­force­ment from some nation­ally power­ful names and new local authors.

Boris Šitum per­formed an act­iv­ist cam­paign of pla­cing a Palestini­an flag on the Mira­bela fort­ress, as a sign of solid­ar­ity with chil­dren who were killed in the bomb­ing of a civil­ian hos­pit­al in Palestine in those days. Without dis­cuss­ing his­tor­ic­al or eth­ic­al inter­pret­a­tions, the artist wanted to express his sup­port for inno­cent vic­tims. The Croa­tian flag at Mira­bela is the sym­bol of us Croats—as the Omiš song claims—so this work has caused many con­tro­ver­sies in the pub­lic media space, because it emphas­izes the remov­al of the Croa­tian flag rather than the rais­ing of the Palestini­an. The Palestini­an flag was taken down in less than half an hour due to alleged viol­a­tions of the law, and Šitum was taken to the police station.

Željko Marović presen­ted a 3,500$ check that he inten­ded for fin­an­cial sup­port to the fest­iv­al. It is a pity that none of the banks would like to take over the check and pay off the funds.

Vanja Pagar signed with the organ­izers a con­tract on tak­ing over the con­ces­sion over the fest­iv­al, with the pos­sib­il­ity of open­ing branches and fran­chises. The offi­cial sign­ing of the con­tract was fol­lowed by the offi­cial pro­tocol, and the doc­u­ment was never used by the artist.

Milan Brkić wore a T‑shirt say­ing: FEAR OF KNOWLEDGE.

Zlatan Duman­ić invited the audi­ence to a table ten­nis match (red vs. Blue team), try­ing to show what really hap­pens while the Croa­tian people is dying out. The audi­ence took part in a game in which, alleg­or­ic­ally, the red Croats opposed the white Bur­gen­land Croats.

Božid­ar Katić suc­cess­fully deceived city shop-own­ers and cater­ers by pla­cing a rumor that the new legal pro­vi­sion ordered all tour­ism work­ers to dis­play tiles with their names, sur­names and per­son­al iden­ti­fic­a­tion num­bers that should be vis­ible dur­ing work­ing hours. People who were used to fre­quent changes in laws and the state laws’s aggres­sion believed these rumors and legit­im­ized them­selves to the envir­on­ment. There were sev­er­al people on the fort­ress that looked like Božid­ar Katić, wear­ing tags with his name.

Ante Kuštre explained his own iden­tity to the audi­ence for a long time: Ante and Kuštre—head, sky, divine, and that in front—Ante, neck, link, conjunction—and—, and the earth, body, ancestors—Kuštre. In addi­tion, he spoke of him­self as a brand, and presen­ted the audi­ence with a wide range of T‑shirts with his interventions.

Vedran Urličić retreated a few days before the per­form­ance, while someone was stick­ing obit­u­ar­ies to the city walls, car­ry­ing his name and pic­ture. On the per­form­ance eve, the artist appeared painted in black, and star­ted the per­form­ance by slowly mov­ing along with ambi­ent music in the back­ground. The audi­ence was asked to hit him with water bal­loons in order to wash the black paint from his skin.

Julia Tomaso­vić set up a bal­lot box with the ques­tion: “Will a ref­er­en­dum be held or not?” in Cyril­lic and Chinese. Voters decided that they did not want a referendum.

Mar­i­jan Crtalić, listen­ing to the music of Damir Avdić, gradu­ally drank faster and danced more fren­ziedly until he even­tu­ally fell exhausted. The artist stood up and tripped sev­er­al times, dan­cing to exhaustion.

As a typ­ic­al tour­ist, Sin­iša Lab­rović sat down at a table pre­pared for him at Mira­bela and ordered a glass of Coca-Cola and a glass of sea­wa­ter. In a last­ing per­form­ance, he poured liquids so that he would dip his right hand index fin­ger in Coca-Cola, suck­ling on it later. He per­formed the same pro­ced­ure with his left hand and a glass of sea. After more than half an hour, when he licked the last drop, the audi­ence asked for a replay.

Petar Grim­ani and Efra Avila per­formed a com­plex sham­an­ic spir­itu­al oper­a­tion that began with the open­ing speech by Avila, who, along with the sounds of the drums and Pan’s flute, centered the audi­ence’s energy. Efra explained that he was an Indi­an from Bolivia, but that he had been liv­ing in Croa­tia for a long time, and that he had four liters of Dal­ma­tian blood in his veins. He explained that in his nat­ive Bolivia there is one man from Brač — an island near Omiš, who bought half of Bolivia, which is why his Bolivia suf­fers. Explain­ing the eth­ic­al and moral prin­ciples and intro­du­cing the audi­ence into the beliefs of the Indi­ans, the artist took off his clothes, and Petar Grim­ani repeated Avil­a’s pro­ced­ure. Claim­ing that the man is “con­scious soil”, along with Grim­ani, he covered him­self with the mud that they made on the spot, out of the soil from the holy place and water from Cet­ina. After that, they tried to turn on a fire, but Vanja Pagar pre­ven­ted them, as the respons­ible hold­er of the fest­iv­al concession.

The even­ing was closed by Gildo Bavčević and Vinko Barić as an acous­tic punk duo – Agro Gen­tle­mans. Trans­form­ing the art-punk band Ilija and Zrno Žita (which was born at the 2010 fest­iv­al in the city square) into the acous­tic duo form­a­tion, they brought the audi­ence to deli­ri­um, and the sound from the high tower dom­in­at­ing the city res­on­ated to the island of Brač.