A new Performance Night is coming!
27. 6. 2025.
Performance Night 27. 6. will animate the whole of Zagreb; focusing on the construction site as a liminal place of transformation and the immediate reality of the city, six artists — Arijana Lekić-Fridrih, Siniša Labrović, Karlo Štefanek, Emil Matešić, Robert Franciszty and Katrin K. Radovani — will encompass city squares, green areas and streets with their performances.
Schedule:
From 5:08 to 8:38 p.m.: A monument to the pigeon, Siniša Labrović at Cvjetni trg
At 11 am: Fragments, Arijana Lekić-Fridrih at the foot of the stairs at the end of Splavnica leading to the Dolac market
At 4 p.m.: Spit on Your Own Reflection, Robert Franciszty at Ban Josip Jelačić Square
At 6 pm: A Song to the Spirits of Trees, Katrin K. Radovani in Ribnjak Park
From 9 to 11 p.m.: Until death do us part , Emil Matešić in the park on November 5th
More about the performances:
Siniša Labrović
Monument to the pigeon
Flower Square
from 5:08 to 8:38 p.m.
Sometimes the most obvious things are the least visible. For example, we take pigeons landing on the heads of our monuments as a misfortune.
And these pigeons are, in fact, the vanguard of some future events. The commemorated greats of the past, whom we demolish as true villains, pigeons most often shit on the very first day their monuments were erected. They saw through their misdeeds from the beginning. And since we see that history has not come to an end, but is accelerating madly, it is high time that we, the living, who are being sacrificed by the new greats, replace the kitsch symbolism and hollow ethics of the dove of peace with an olive branch in its beak with the active ethics and digestive symbolism of the dove that sits on the head of a great man and shits. With the performance “Monument to a Dove,” I want to erect a monument to such a dove. It is true and beautiful to see it sitting on the head of Franjo Tuđman. But that is a belated gesture. The dove for whom I am erecting a monument is the one that is currently sitting and shitting on the heads of Trump and Putin, Qi Jinping and Ursula von den Leyen. Or a dove even closer to my heart – the one that shits on Plenkovic and Milanovic. If we sat on their heads and shitted on them right now, maybe only then would that dove of peace have a minimal chance.
Arijana Lekić-Fridrih
Debris
at the foot of the stairs at the end of Splavnica that lead to the Dolac market
at 11:00 a.m.
The performance “Debris” explores the emotional and social wounds that women carry throughout their lives, symbolized by inscriptions with painful and limiting messages written on the performer’s body. In a minimalist space, the focus is solely on her body and facial expression, through which a deep inner struggle is revealed.
The performer begins an attempt to remove the inscription using various objects that carry strong symbolism: a dishcloth, holy water, soap, glass, a rough pebble and delicate flower petals; medical alcohol. Each object represents a different aspect of the attempt to heal and free oneself from social pressures and inner wounds.
The movements are gentle and hopeful at first, but as the performance progresses, they become rougher and more exhausted. The inscriptions smear, fade, but never completely disappear, visually and emotionally emphasizing the impossibility of completely erasing deep-seated emotional scars. At the end of the performance, the performer reaches for a knife and tries to scratch the messages with the knife, but they do not disappear.
The performance ends in silence and serenity, while the performer, surrounded by traces of her attempts, remains with indelible inscriptions on her skin – a permanent reminder of the struggle, but also of the power of survival and resilience.
The soundscape of the performance is sound and instructions for evacuation
Robert Franciszty
Spit on your own reflection
Ban Josip Jelačić Square
at 4:00 PM
The performance (living sculpture) Spitting into One’s Own Reflection questions the relationship and attitude of politically obedient, eligible citizens towards others – precarious workers (today mostly – “foreign workers”), activists and artists.
Katrin K. Radovani
A song to the tree spirits
Pond
at 6:00 PM
The ambient installation spreads around an urban tree, imitating branches and invoking forgotten narratives of the forest like ghosts. During the performance, performers and audience sing fragments of folk songs about trees together. The soundtrack consists of recorded micro-sounds of urban trees. The recording, performance and installation merge the human, the plant and the urban into a common song and build a space of community in the ruins.
Emil Matesic
Until death do us part
November 5th Park
from 9:00 PM – 11:00 PM
‘Until Death Do Us Part’ is an ambient installation inspired by contemporary echoes of the works and ideology embedded in the foundations of the Independent State of Croatia from the time of World War II.
The revisionism of the political mechanism of deprivation of life and consequently the number of victims of the Jasenovac concentration camps, and the never-recognized genocide against Croatian and Bosnian Serbs, tells the state-building myth of racial laws as a necessary concession for you and me, Croats, in order to obtain our own State. The collateral victims are those others, Jews, Roma and especially Serbs.
The installation shows the near future, a utopian situation with a touch of the surreal in which significant funds have been allocated to finally determine the number of victims using various forensic techniques and available materials, and to close the chapter that burdens the Croatian people.
Of course, given the current political situation in Gaza and the genocide being carried out, the installation’s shape is reminiscent of the Gaza territory.
I am not guilty, but I am responsible, and I do not run away from it, because death was at the foundation of every state then, and it is here today. If we take any European country, or our beautiful country, or today’s Ukraine and Gaza, the currency that the State uses is human life. The only question is how many and whose life, ours or theirs.
The installation is utopian, depicting an unattainable event with a touch of the surreal.
The only sustainable law on which statehood rests is actually the biological one. It is a cyclical path that leads to the place of departure, because unresolved deaths in the foundations of the state are constantly resurrected and seek their peace.
It is shown that in their circular motion the sun and moon cannot hide, but the truth still can.
