PLEASANT CONVERSATIONS – SERIES OF YOUNG VIDEO ARTISTS: JOSIP HORVAT (CRO) AND MARTIN MRZLJAK (CRO)
21/9/2013 at 21:00 @ MM Centre
Duration: 90 min / Free entrance
MM CENTRE PROGRAM
Works:
Josip Horvat
Husta (extracts)
Kad narastem… (extracts)
Portreti (extracts)
Posljednja Huldra na ledu
Martin Mrzljak
Dance to…
Crveno i zeleno
Josip Horvat and Martin Mrzljak are video artists of the youngest generation. What these artists have in common is that they reflect on the spectacle and refer to it in their themes; the question of gender and identity in Horvat, and questioning of the mass media and privacy in Mrzljak:
…I decided to leave the surface and to spend some years in the mine with all the coalminers. Three months after I came in the mine tunnels, there was an earthquake and I was stuck between five walls. I had no choice, I started to eat stones, to squeeze the milky juices from root plants, imagining that the Sun never existed. When I was attacked by the army of underground rabbits, a fairy came to me. She had a leopard-patterned hairstyle and a yellow dress. I saw yellow and I thought that this was it, she is my savior, that she has been sent by St Nicholas, and that she is covered all in gold, but she just hit me with the scissors on my head and knocked me down. Finally I woke up in my forest, somewhere by a wonderful cold spring that was disappearing under an old oak in the ground and was forming a huge underground lake. And there he was! I thought that it was a satyr, so smelly, hairy, strong, and quiet, but no it was Pan himself – he was touching my fin. He turned me into a mermaid and gave me the lake. I sing for him often.
Josip Horvat
…I decided to leave the surface and to spend some years in the mine with all the coalminers. Three months after I came in the mine tunnels, there was an earthquake and I was stuck between five walls. I had no choice, I started to eat stones, to squeeze the milky juices from root plants, imagining that the Sun never existed. When I was attacked by the army of underground rabbits, a fairy came to me. She had a leopard-patterned hairstyle and a yellow dress. I saw yellow and I thought that this was it, she is my saviour, that she has been sent by St Nicholas, and that she is covered all in gold, but she just hit me with the scissors on my head and knocked me down. Finally I woke up in my forest, somewhere by a wonderful cold spring that was disappearing under an old oak in the ground and was forming a huge underground lake. And there he was! I thought that it was a satyr, so smelly, hairy, strong, and quiet, but no it was Pan himself – he was touching my fin. He turned me into a mermaid and gave me the lake. I sing for him often.
Josip Horvat
…Then I placed a disco ball in the room, with live news projected on it from a digital LCD projector. Then it was definitely clear to me that I was interested in the media and the methods and forms of serving different types of information, entertainment, i.e. the politics of informative entertainment. We live in a time in which the media has become global, more powerful than ever, time in which the media is becoming a powerful tool in the hands of politics and business, and mixing politics and fun sometimes takes on cruel and monstrous forms. Where are the limits of informing, and where of manipulation, where are the limits between informing and entertainment? Or does it all become a vague spleen that surrounds us, that oppresses and guides us at the same time? Furthermore, I brainstormed various variations and possibilities that associated me with entertainment, spectacle, accumulation of the surplus of attention in information and orchestration of general attention and technology that, through its development, enabled that form of mediation among people, states, nations and continents. Of all the listed elements I was most attracted by fireworks and I started researching about the gunpowder and its applications through history and I discovered that the dividing line between use and abuse is truly unrecognizable and that the only difference comes down to context and methodology, while technology and the way it works in the field are almost identical…
Martin Mrzljak
