As a part of the Copula#2 – Art projects in public space, organised by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, Kombinat realised a project called Waiting Room for Brightening that took place from April to September of 2014. The goal of the project was the revitalization of the passage between Mali Salon and Radio Rijeka – a public space that has no specific purpose beside (frequently) offering a place to hide from the rain. Since the city of Rijeka is characterized by an unfortunate amount of rain and generally problematic weather, we came to see the function of the place to hide from the rain as a potentially official purpose of the space in question. The basic idea then was to brighten the passage by applying the eternally nice weather on the walls and the ceiling. A playful and somewhat naively cheerful illustration of clouds as well as hyperbolised texts, ironic comments on Rijeka’s constant rain, engaging passers by primarily identifying the problem and understanding it.

The characters define the waiting as a game and remind that it doesn’t have to be a negative experience, but is rather a chance for the light-hearted tenderness of mild irony that can connect people, instead of the all-too-frequent sarcastic cynicism of a lonely individual. The point of the project was to brighten the space and to make the time spent waiting pleasurable, instead of merely waiting for (the pleasure of) the end of the rain. Since we wanted to make the accidental purpose of the space its official purpose of being a waiting room for brightening, the location was given its catalogue entry which further institutionalised it, making it a legitimate waiting room with double a existential meaning: both waiting as a time-bound act with a possibility of being a pleasurable experience, but also waiting for those long-awaited better times.