366 Liberation Rituals
2008-2009
multimedia interventions in public space
(selection from 33 works)
The project ‘366 Liberation Rituals’ consist of lots of minimalistic micro-political interventions in public space realized by the artist on everyday basis actions during whole 2008 and partly 2009. The starting point for 366 liberation rituals is the 40th anniversary of 1968, but it refers also to the heritage of conceptual art practices of ex-YU region – in which, for example, the Group of Six Artists played a significant role – and to Jean Luc Godard political movies and conceptual strategies from late 60ties, early 70.
Every day over the course of one year, Grubić performed a series of rituals, micropolitical actions and interventions, marking the 40th anniversary of the revolutionary 1968. The work documented a combination of illegal actions, the immediacy of the encounters with the street, performativity, civil disobedience and poetic terrorism, producing tensions in the inert public field. With these “rituals”, the artist initiated a series of social corrections aimed at the irregularities in Croatia’s post-transition society. In some of the works, the color red serves as both a symbol and a recurring motif. It appears in various forms, from a red star adorning discarded Christmas trees to a red flag fluttering in his hand as he cycles by, or as the pioneers’ scarves on the busts of national heroes of the National Liberation War. Some ideas and methods explored in the 366 Rituals of Liberation, such as Small Citation Lessons, move from one piece to another, continue to live and grow, becoming the basis for some of Grubić’s future works and actions.