multimedia project (2 channel video 14’, 11 photographs, performance)

The 2-channel video installation East Side Story employs a specific media language to speak about a social problem of our time – the problem of violence and intolerance towards the other and different. The work juxtapose different media representations combining archival documentary footage from the violence on the streets of Zagreb and Belgrade during Gay Pride in 2001 and 2002 with live-action of a choreographed dance performance where language of movement mimics the violent actions taking place on locations where it really happened. In this way the artist achieves on one hand a dramatic effect and on the other a poetical reading of such an absurd brutality. “This was a way of suggesting the presence of a vivid, creative force very much alike the resistance movement that is trying to change the intolerant, conservative society into a better one” (I.G.)

Film

experimental documentary, 50’

“Monument” is a poetic-experimental documentary, structured as a series of nine meditative ‘portraits’ of the massive concrete memorials commissioned by the former Yugoslav state. These sentinel forms were originally built to honor the Second World War victims of fascism. During the Balkans war of the 1990s thousands of these monuments, perceived only as monoliths of abandoned Communist ideology, were destroyed on the territory of the ex- Yugoslav state.

The attempt to erase these structures was the starting point for this film, which focuses on the conditions and ‘life’ of a group of monuments. The artist emphasizes the unexpected fragility of these monumental structures filming them against the backdrop of seasonal change to metaphorically highlight the cyclic nature and the role it plays while witnessing a series of traumas and radical changes. As a poetic-experimental documentary, “Monument” creates an existential, or even spiritual, resonance with the political issues, questioning the purpose of monuments today.

Trailer:

multimedia project (2 photo serie, short film 17’ 30″)

Site specific/participative project was made in Kolubara (Serbia) during period 2004-2006. Project consist of 3 photo series and one film “Angels with Dirty Faces (turning point)”, 17.30 min,

Project in a poetic way present the miner’s protest in Kolubara as well as the civil protests in Belgrade that culminated in the burning of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia on 5 October 2000, led to the fall of Milosevic’s regime in Yugoslavia. The title of the work refers to the paradoxical situation in this region during the 1990’s: on one side there are hard-working and honest miners with clean hands and clear conscience who live on the verge of poverty, on the other side, dirty-handed politicians and the governing body who commit violence in their greed for power and dirty embezzlements, although they should stand as an example.

Film:

documentary/short film

14.30 min

Do animals born in captivity dream of freedom? Are they aware they are bred to be a product? These are some of the radical questions raised by Igor Grubic in his latest experimental film, part of the project Do Animals…? started in 2017 in the frame of RAVE- East Village Artist Residency. Shot at night inside a former slaughterhouse in the North East of Italy, Ingresso Animali Vivi (Live Animals Entrance) is a hybrid artwork between documentary and fiction in which the protagonist, the dog Bjork, is the only animal which came in and out alive from this spectral structure witness of horrors. The non-human point of view chosen by the artist intends to demonstrate the feeling of compassion and empathy between the pet and those animals instead destined from birth to become products for our tables whose ghosts hover in this “factory of death”. Through the insertion of animated flashes that interrupt the flow of this deadly path and an electronic and distressing sound, Grubic creates a horror film atmosphere aiming to stimulate the viewer’s conscience in the face of the evident failure of the anthropocene and the urgent need to reassess our speciesist position. ‘Ecology is the new class struggle’ (B. Latour).

animation, mixed technique,  12’40”

Croatian Pavilion, 58 Venice Biennial, 2019

Animated film combining animation techniques, film, and photography and was shoot in 9 abandoned famous Croatian factories.

A father takes his son to an abandoned factory where he once worked. The building has long been reduced to a crumbling symbol of the new system. Nonetheless, the space will briefly be brought to life by recorded scenes of workers solidarity, inspiring a small gesture of defiance. That symbolic act will turn into a moment of catharsis and re-establish the relationship between the father and son.

trailer

experimental short film (without sound)

10min

The film “Capitalism follows Socialism” deals with the Croatian reality in the 90-ties where the privatization robbery led the citizens to the edge of poverty.
To emphasize the dramatic reality of the action, this experimental documentary consists of photography series and critical comments without sound.

It poses the question of the responsibility for what is seen.

The stylistic approach refers to Cine-Tracts, realized in 1968 by the group of authors (Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard,
Alain Resnais..) with the intention of inspiring a civil activism.

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