◎-◎
| Obitelj i Obrazovanje
| multimedia reactions to educational discriminations
| exhibition and Public Houses booklet
30.10. – 9.11.2014. | Mali salon | every day from 10 to 20 h, except Monday
Exhibition opening & Club Hang Out| Thursday, 30.10. | 20 h | Mali salon |
Presentation of Public Houses booklet| Friday, 7.11. | 20 h | Mali salon |
About ◎-◎:
Last year, Croatian everyday life was attacked by systematic socio-political events. These events, on both a symbolic and a real level, created a divide in the vision of our collective identity. The attempt to introduce Health Education into schools, a program with declaratively only benign intentions, has been met with a host of reactions: from accusations of sexualising children and pedophilia to a badly diplomatically covered up homophobia. The latter, few months later, resulted in the founding of In the name of the family, an association that collected749.316 signatures from the 12th to the 26th of that year, enough for a referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage as the union between a man and a woman. The purpose of the referendum was fulfilled on the 1st of December – with a turnout of 37,90%. It was named a festival of democracy.
Project O-O is a different kind of a festival. It is a reaction of another group of students and citizens and artists, who felt the need to creatively and critically respond to this type of politics: the type that by using public space meddles with private affairs. Two strongly ideologically opposed sides have drawn out a clear identity divide onto the surface, making visible some unflattering facts: the lack of tolerance, the impossibility of communication, a paranoid fear of the unknown, and an evidently irreconcilable understanding of the role of family and education. This project is therefore dedicated not to choosing the right path and speaking the truth, but to giving an insight into the contradictions of the collective identity which is manifested in various ways in the structure of our everyday life.
The questions of family and education are questions that deserve multiple points of view. The artworks with which we present ourselves are diverse and intermedial, representing the multiplicity of views against the troublesomely unanimous visions.
Beside artworks, the project also features a culture study analysis of the situation, which digs into the deeply opposed positions to find the pointers towards the common public and private crisis of identity. Family and education, as we already said, are deep and deeply private questions. We bring those various questions into the public from a different point of view. Our houses became a public question last year. Such public house invites you in and opens its doors for you with this project because it appears that openness was last on the list after the tumult of last year’s events. One year later, we invite you to our public houses, hoping it’s not too late. Serious questions require time to be thought through. This is how they were – raised.
Artists:
Anja Sušanj
Liberta Mišan i Sara Salamon
Marko-Luka Zubčić i Damjan Šporčić
Rudi Kancijanić
Mario Pucić
Sandra Sterle
Vanja Tataj
Nika Rukavina
Tamara Mikler
Lea Jurin
Igor Bele
The project was realised in collaboration with the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, and supported by the Student Culture Center of the University in Rijeka, the Office for Culture of Primorsko-goranska County and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka.
