Traces of Disappearing (In Three Acts)
2006-2019
photographic essays
Presented on the occasion of Croatian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennial, 2019, curated by Katerina Gregos.
Traces of Disappearing (In Three Acts), 2006-2019, sits firmly in the humanist dimension of documentary photography, bridging poetics, politics, and social reality. It consists of three inter-related photo essays and an animated new short film. The work examines the post-war, transitional reality in Croatia, particularly the shift from socialism to capitalism, and how this has affected changes in habitation, the urban fabric, and public space. Wild House, the first chapter or ’Act’ examines changes in homes and living while the advent of privatization of property; Filigree Sidewalk (Act II) looks into traditional vocations such as local handcrafts, highlighting which professions survive and which do not in the new circumstances. Finally, Deconstruction of the Factory (Act III) presents a series of defunct factories, monumental reminders of the transition from industry to post-industry. The latter also becomes the setting for Grubić’s short film, How Steel was Tempered, which weaves together issues of worker history, family bonds, and generational shifts, suggesting also the importance of fruitful future relationships based on solidarity, shared social space, and creative, collaborative working.
ACT I – Wild House
A KIND OF COMMUNE – A shanty town, a ‘wild’ settlement located in a green area between the highway, the river and a supermarket complex. A commune of homeless people who have built their little houses in a clandestine manner. In their gardens, they grow vegetables and keep chickens. They occasionally beg in the nearby churches and receive handouts. The houses are made of a variety of recycled and found materials, as well as from things that others throw away. Such communities, squats, artistic communes, Roma settlements and permaculture holdings become places of residence for all those who, spontaneously or deliberately, organise their lives in unconventional ways, in the semi-wilderness of the suburbs, creating alternative areas, zones of freedom.
A PATH PAVED WITH CARPETS – A path paved with carpets leads to a house that stands out from its surroundings due to its characteristic aesthetics. Although at first glance the carpet-strewn path looks like a film set, there is actually a very practical reason for it. The owner covered it with carpets so that he would not slip on the pathways, which get muddy on rainy days. Like a “poor king” going to his shanty-town summer residence. Except, this owner – unlike kings – possesses neither house nor land. (A scene of magical realism, filled with a wealth of associations, an atmosphere full of symbols, metaphors, stories and myths. Forgotten ancient social rituals and creative work still exist here.)
COURTYARD – The house has been erected on concrete blocks at a height of 70 cm, to avoid getting flooded on rainy days when the water is high. It is surrounded by a tall wooden fence. In order to avoid having a muddy ground, the tenant paved the courtyard with brick and has tried to lay out its surface in the form of a mosaic. In a small vegetable garden he grows tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetables. The kitchen and dining area are outdoors, and friends often come by to play cards. They spend the evenings by the fire, recounting anecdotes from everyday life. Due to the difficult living conditions, the commune is bound together by a high level of social sensitivity and connectivity. Solidarity and empathy prevail. The ruling principle is a sustainability based more on an economy of caring, of giving, than on the exchange of goods. Some do not have anything, so it is those who do that give
WILD HOUSE – The ‘wild house’ looks as if it was constructed by an environmentally conscious and modernist architect who had decided to make a summer house out of cheap, recycled materials. At first glance, the wooden surfaces and colour combinations suggest a mini Zen centre for meditation. However, unlike in the quiet mountain glades where these kinds of places tend to be located, here there is a constant roar from the cars on the nearby motorway. But isn’t the point of meditation to be able to find focus and peace even in the noisiest, most chaotic environments? The essential need for order, structure and beauty, even in these utterly poor conditions, demonstrates the utopian aspiration of the human being for a better life, for a balance between the soul and the experience of the exterior world… (Image of a blue Madonna on a red door, as if showing the path to metaphysical hope.)
WOODEN SHOPPING CART – Making, putting together, building something from nothing, from old, discarded materials, and at the same time creating something completely new and original – a handmade product with character and soul. The commune is full of such enchantingly ingenious solutions. Everything here exudes a spark of spontaneous, practical, creative intelligence. It is the confirmation and victory of the freedom of the human imagination and its transformative power over imposed, ubiquitous, restrictive social norms. The imagination flourishes more creatively in poverty. It is precisely here within these conditions that the need for creativity arises and becomes urgent. (This wooden cart has a great practical value in poor living conditions. If somebody were to attribute critically significant meaning to this cart, interpreting it as an irony upon today’s superficial consumerist society, and if it were presented within a museum context, it would surely have immeasurably greater symbolic and ‘material’ value.)
BURNT HOUSE – A cloud of smoke covers the starry summer sky. The flames of a burning house illuminate the night. Hints of an outside threat to the ‘free’ zone unleash an avalanche of unrest, insecurity and anxiety in the community. As if in a state of war, a fear spreads: at any moment they could be thrown out of this ‘oasis’, along the border of which a complex of shopping malls had settled. Nobody tries to rescue the ‘house’ that was assembled, ad hoc, by a homeless person. Nobody responds to this act of arson. For everyone, except for this person, it had no right to exist. For no one, except for him, was it essential and necessary.
LAW ENFORCEMENT IN THE DEFENCE OF CAPITAL – In hot pursuit of the homeless, as if they were potentially dangerous, the police have apparently imposed law and order. Yet they were living harmless and peaceful lives, simply looking for a roof over their heads. The police, so-called ‘peace officers’, participate in the razing of houses, indifferent to the fate of their long-term inhabitants. Although they lived in shanty houses in a neglected, almost wild part of the city, these people are evicted and sent back to the street without being perceived as fellow residents of the city, people in need of help from civic institutions. For the system, this world of the poor is visually threatening to the enticing, ‘idyllic’ image of the shopping malls. And that is why it has to vanish.
SCATTERED THINGS – Since the plot on which the commune is located became a hindrance, an annoyance to capital, the ground is gradually cleared. The makeshift vegetable gardens are destroyed, the trees and shrubs are cut. As a result, the shanties in the neighbourhood where McDonald’s and the shopping mall now stand, look increasingly prominent. A blatant contrast between the two worlds, a profound dissonance in their symbolic meanings. The first photos were taken in the winter. In the spring, the little house was demolished, its remaining contents – a few clothes – scattered around it. In this violent eviction, the last items that connected the homeless person with his living space were thrown out of his house. A brutal scene in which one’s belongings are treated in the most ruthless and insensitive way.
DEMOLISHED CARAVAN – The storm, which inexorably persists and continues to beleaguer ordinary lives, seems to foreshadow the breakdown and ultimate end. Although disaster is near, the absurdity of human helplessness is best reflected in the ignorance of the facts that systematically lead us to the final disappearance, loss and tragedy. Powerless in the face of the machinery of the political system and big money, the intimate spaces of freedom disappear from the map of the city. In order to at least foster the idea and spirit of struggle and resistance, the image of suffering crosses into the sphere of art. That image is here to make us pause for a moment and contemplate where injustice comes from, who is to blame, and where our own responsibilities lie in the situation facing us.
RAZE TO THE GROUND – The camera moves slowly through the thick, dead silence after the catastrophe. Trampled and wounded by the bulldozers, nature breathes slowly and with difficulty. It still smoulders from the ground, from the excavators’ demolition campaign. The severity of hardship is emphasised by silence and fog, masking the contours and extent of the destruction. Numerous associations come to mind – thoughts of transience, persistence, authority, apocalypse, salvation, commitment, utopia, dystopia, hopelessness… On that misty winter morning, all the little houses were razed to the ground, except one.
FLOOD – At the end of winter, when the snow melts and the rivers rise, floods take place. It was a regular occurrence for him to wake up at night, surrounded by water that had quietly crept under his bed. Exposed completely, without the environment he could rely upon until recently. Bare. United in loss and lonely in victory. You must have strength to know how to cope with this solitude. What is the boundary we are willing to cross with perseverance and endurance? Where is it within the material, the physical and the spiritual? And will we be rewarded eventually? You have to act decisively, with no expectation of any return. Uninhibitedly, as if the reward were within our reach. But it will come, sometime. . . If it does at all.
SECLUDED HOUSE – The last house in the demolished settlement. The high wooden fence makes it look like a fortress gallantly standing up to the pressures from superior forces. It is not ready to surrender yet. Though resistance is seemingly pointless, here the rebellion of the individual rises above ordinary social processes of everyday life. His firm decision to persevere despite the difficulties, slowly through time, makes him a symbol of suffering, struggle, resilience and resistance – even when the rebellion ends, in either victory or defeat. He resembles a hero fighting for justice and universal values, ready to stay at the barricades, until his last breath. Almost like an epic work of art that keeps the spirit of rebellion alive.
NEON LANDSCAPE – At night, when the lights go out and everything goes quiet, the humming and the occasional crackling of electricity from the cathode neon tubes is barely audible from a distance. The neon advertising column is a visual and aural landmark on the horizon, like a kind of pop campanile. . . These colourful signs flickering against the dark blue ‘advertising’ sky seem to illuminate the path to a brighter and happier, spurious future.
ACT II – Filigree Sidewalk
DOORS – One of the most important parts of the former city centre was its commercial heart, an area where most of the productive activities of various craftsmen were carried out. Small shops, where artisans made and sold a variety of goods. For the doors of each of these small businesses, blacksmiths created a variety of designs in diverse colours, with different lattice patterns. Each of these doors had a certain specificity that made the store stand out among a multitude of others. The colourful closed doors intrigue us, as if beckoning us to imagine what kind of everyday story and what kind of ‘set design’ take place behind them.
BARBERSHOP – In the days before mobile phones, the Internet and social media, this place was, for men, the focal point for the exchange of local information. All sorts of stories could be heard here; who ‘fixed’ a job for whom, who was having an affair with whom and so on… Intriguing news was exchanged and jokes were made at the expense of others. It was the place where citizens of all strata and professions got their shave and haircut. This social aspect of connectedness and interaction among all members of the community was important. Today, these old barbershops have almost no business at all. Some of the old customers drop by, now and then, either out of nostalgia or habit.
TAILOR – A set of colourful unfinished suits have long been hanging on the wall of the tailor’s shop, like some outdated means of advertising the tailor’s skills and services. There was a time when clothes were specifically tailored here for each customer. It was creative work. It is fair to say that tailors at that time were true costume designers for the ‘stage of life’. Today, most of the tailoring has been reduced to repairing newer or mending older, torn clothes. The work that was once imaginative and creative has turned into a functional routine for earning one’s living.
CARPENTER – The words of the old carpenter come through the rings of smoke he blows from cigarette after cigarette, “Carpenters used to know how to cut shapes and make wonderful, useful but also decorative items out of a piece of wood. Back in the day, people ordered special woodwork for furniture and household purposes. Some customers attached importance to appearance as well; they wanted things not only to be usable but also eye-catching — a decoration for their home! They selected the motifs to be created and brought in pictures they had cut out from magazines… And this is where an artisan had to be an artist as well!” Today, most of these artisans-artists are on the verge of extinction, even if they have long mastered this old craft to perfection.
FURRIER – The old fur coat in the shop window resembles a Corto Maltese who looks as if he wandered into these regions in the period between the two Balkan Wars. The shop window, unkempt and untidy, with a note saying “all types of leather garments repaired” shows that there is no work here anymore. The heavy fur coat, of the kind that no one wears anymore, invokes the spirit of an era long-gone, when travellers wandered around the wild Balkan ravines…
FILIGREE – Unlike most filigree workers who make jewellery, this one is specialises in making sculptures. Because of all the skilfully crafted details, the sculptures seem at once fragile and robust. It is an example of what filigree workmanship looks like. It takes about three months of patient, detailed, fine work to make each of these sculptures. The modern world has no interest any longer in this type of ornament. For this filigree craftsman, it is no longer profitable. In a town where people lost interest in his sculptures, he was forced to abandon his craft and close his store, breaking a centuries-old family tradition
POLYESTER COMFORTERS – In these stores, comforters made of pure wool and cotton were crafted, with their upper layer made of silk. Since such products had a high price and did not find their way into the Western market, production became unprofitable. Manufacturers were forced to degrade the quality in order to be able to compete in the market, so now they make synthetic comforters. But even these polyester items are not lucrative because of cheap equivalents made in China. Today, the traditionally crafted comforters call for a specific customer, someone who has found a new aesthetic in the old.
ICON WORKSHOP – Squeezed into just fifteen square meters, the workshop is filled with densely stacked holy paintings and icons. The painter has to move through this micro-labyrinth on a daily basis; it requires great manoeuvring skills. When creating an icon, artistic freedom is reduced to a minimum because one has to follow a predefined form. However, the secret of icon painting, in addition to the author’s skills, also lies in the special relationship to the manufacturing process itself. The icon gets its spiritual aura first from the motif, which is most often a copy of a much more famous icon – usually combined with some religious story – and then from the author who creates it in deep devotion and as a kind of prayer. Holy paintings produced in that manner have an aura that copied, mass produced icons do not possess. While this master makes his paintings slowly, his business dealing with religious symbols is successful and eternal, despite the gradual demise of such small craft workshops.
THE DEFENCE AND THE LAST DAYS – After a long day at work, I sat down in the former old pastry shop. The red curtains were creating a constant play of light and colours on the wooden surface of the table. I gazed unfocusedly at the rays of light falling on the lacquered surface into hundreds of tiny red-gold balls, carrying me away to some nostalgic, almost kaleidoscopic memories. In my childhood, I was overtaken with joy as soon as I set my foot on its steps and proudly entered the fragrant world of sweets. The mosaic floor reminded me of the brilliantly designed sleeve of the album, “The Defense and the Last Days,” by the Yugoslav new wave band Idoli. I even thought, naively, that a mosaic floor was useful because its calming pattern reminded us of the harmony of spirit, though that sense of serenity in the pastry shop was probably due to the amount of sugar consumed… What snapped me back to reality was the fact that I was sitting in a café that had been recently redecorated as a ‘living room’ and the only thing left of the ‘old pastry shop’ was the floor pattern and the small step at the entrance
COLORFUL DANCING STRIPES – Despite the turbo-folk music blasting from this space into the street, I was hypnotically stopped by the colourful fabric strips that each moved in their own different rhythm. The rhythm was set by the draught from a breeze that softly cooled the space of the restaurant. With elegant movements, swaying and wobbling independently of the loud music, the fabric strips appeared to exist in their own world, in contrast to the turbo-folk music blaring from the interior. An odd combination between high and low culture… (In spite of the existence of quite a lot of clubs and cafés where turbo-folk music could be heard, there is censorship in the media, so such music is not broadcast on radio and television. At the same time, in clubs it almost subversively attracts a large audience of the younger generation.)
HAREM CAFÉ – Suffering the effects of private interests, neoliberal market speculation and gentrification, the identity of the city centre is subject to metamorphosis and destruction. Various property developers and investors lie in waiting like hyenas; they buy small stores and turn them into cafés, lounges, restaurants, clubs, and hostels. The narrow streets of the city centre, where the majority of commercial, social and cultural life once took place, have since changed from their original function and identity. Today, almost everything boils down to leisure, entertainment, consumption, comfort, pleasure, false exotica, glamorous lifestyles… In the old days, people’s creative and spiritual potential were concentrated on small crafts, which were both embraced by their communities and reflected in them. Today, these are in decline and the creative human spirit has been made passive and channelled into the service industries.
(NOT) FOR SALE – At twilight, I take my last photographs of the shuttered stores that feature “For sale or rent” signs on them. I observe the scene as the wind carries scraps of paper through the empty street, just as the power of capital carries and sweeps away the small craft workshops. A small act of resistance next to one of the stores: a sign proclaiming, “Not for sale”.
ACT III – Deconstruction of the Factory
SIREN ANNOUNCES A STRIKE – At precisely 10a.m., the loud, piercing sound of a siren marks the beginning of a strike. The machines stop. The workers gather. They make banners. They no longer believe in the false promises of politicians. Such nonsense! The workers raise their slogans high in the air. They all march together, perhaps for the last time. They carry a banner saying: SOLIDARITY IS OUR STRENGTH! How come the strike is taking place only now, after the formerly socially-owned property has been sold? Why did the workers keep quiet for so long? Why did they not take to the streets earlier? Why did the rest of society show so little solidarity with the workers? Have we become indifferent to other people’s misery and to social injustice?
HALTED WORK PROCESSES – To record faded remnants of the past, scars on the walls, to scratch the surface of suppressed memories. To edit and combine old images of workers and production with the current images of factory ruins that slowly became a universal place of oblivion. Scenes that sometimes look as if someone has just taken a short break from work and will be back any moment. The clock’s hands are still. Once the machines have gone silent, the wind can be heard blowing through the empty factory floors and rusty machines along with the flapping of birds’ wings, of shadows gliding across the walls. Shadows of male workers engaged in their laborious work by the hot steel furnaces, of female workers along the conveyor belts…workers fighting for their rights. Shadows of a former faith in the building of a better future for everyone. Shadows elusive to the eye of the camera.
RANSACKED CATHEDRALS – The factory spaces with their infinitely high ceilings and imposing arches look like old abandoned cathedrals. The gaps where machines used to be and the absence of workers create a disturbing, haunting atmosphere. The barren factory, its veil of promise and hope stripped away. Yellowed old photographs and newspaper clippings still hang in a museum-like manner on a crumbling wall. The photograph of a worker shovelling coal into the blast furnace hangs like an icon, elevated to a heroic level. The text alongside the photograph describes how this “shock-worker” – the socialist ideal of a super-productive worker – exceeded the production quota. The worker was the foundation of socialist society, and the collective labour put into building this socialist society had a high moral value. Monuments were erected in honour of the workers, who were appreciated and celebrated. Today they are no longer fundamental to society, but have been disempowered, discarded, invisible, phased-out, marginalised. What did the workers hope for during privatisation, which served only a few ‘chosen’ politicians who now stand in the first row at Masses and hold the Bible in one hand while receiving million-kuna* bribes with the other. Inextricably linked through their mutual interests, politics and the Church confirm the old adage: Money is our God! With this erosion of values, solidarity, workers’ rights and prosperity have been reduced to relics from some bygone era, collapsed utopian ideals. * Croatian currency
BROKEN WINDOWS INTO THE FUTURE – The sound of glass breaking and flying through the air is heard, like in a very slow motion film. In free fall, countless shards of broken glass simultaneously create high-pitched sounds whose distorted echo lingers in the empty factory spaces. Hitting the walls steeped in silence, the sounds bounce off like balls in a pinball machine. The cracking of glass under the photographer’s feet disrupts his quiet, hunter-like search for ‘prey’. The shards of glass reflect light like Morse signals, sending out a coded message that asks to be captured by the eye of the camera. Like pieces of a puzzle, they reflect fragments of a devastated reality. Is it possible to re-assemble into a mosaic the disrupted workers’ dream of a social utopia that a view through these windows once enabled?
DECONSTRUCTION OF THE FACTORY – In the transition process, workers’ rights and self-management were destroyed, and the worker became a cheap commodity. Then, the scavengers emerged from the underworld. Instead of the sounds of machines, the factory now echoes with the sounds of digging, banging, scraping, tearing, demolishing. Ditches are dug, copper components are removed, wires, cables and metal parts are extracted, machines are dismantled for their parts. Everything that can be taken out, torn out, sawn or excavated will be sold as scrap. With the cessation of production, another kind of work goes on here, with other kinds of workers: clandestine scrap merchants. The factory is like a tortured, dying animal. All that remains is exploited to the maximum. The scavengers remove its mechanical heart, the wires through which electric blood flowed. As in some stop-motion animation film, we are witness to the slow dematerialisation, the disappearance of the factory unfolding before our very eyes.
REFLECTIONS OF A SLEEPING WORKER – A worker in a blue overalls who has come to work a night shift wanders the empty factory floors. Frozen from shock, almost paralysed, he tries to comprehend the surreal scene before him, wondering whether he is in a bad dream, a delirium, or whether he teeters on the edge of a blurred, dystopian reality. He is overwhelmed by a feeling of powerlessness; emotions vivid on his angst-ridden face. As if he slowly comes to understand the reasons behind the havoc. Through a painful attempt at questioning his own role, he reflects on the imperfection of all efforts, on mistakes and failures. How could he have been so naive as to blindly believe in false promises? How could he have been so passive as to allow those few in power to do that to him? That image of the worker wandering the empty factory floors is constantly there; it returns and recurs…
SMOKE SCREEN (“ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR”) – They are sitting in a circle, taking a seat wherever they can. They take out food, sandwiches from bags and lunchboxes, and share it with one another. They eat quietly, absorbed in their own thoughts. Like on the set of a film in which they play the role of the workers, dressed in characteristic overalls, these ‘extras’ may be contemplating the fate of the closed-down factory and the thousands of unemployed workers, or maybe they are contemplating other existential issues; or perhaps their thoughts are rather trivial. What might these thoughts be? Is their contemplation based on some idealistic values that trigger action, or are they caught in a net of their own uncritical, romantic imaginations? After the break, the shooting continues. Filmmakers in the abandoned factory switch back on the smoke machines, as if alluding to the operation of the factory machines, simulating it in action. Slowly, the smoke screen appears. It covers the space, obscuring everything that the eye can see.
OLD FACTORY NEW CAPITAL – As a symbolic act of resistance, the devastated factory is occupied by cultural workers. They stretch cables, arrange chairs and tables. They organise creative workshops, various artistic events. The creative interaction temporarily revives the empty, desolate space. What can the artists learn from the workers, and what can the workers learn from the artists? Perhaps they can mirror each other in the process of creativity. Through this they can explore, tear down frameworks, get closer, get to know both themselves and others, break down prejudices, develop tolerance, empathy, and release fears. To redeem traumatic reality through art, dance, and poetry. To rediscover that worker in themselves once again. That one who was once enthusiastically building the idea of the happy collective, who was not a slave to the materialistic world. Fight back. Overcome weakness. Rise above greed and passivity. Fire up the large furnace in the defunct factory through a creative and symbolic act. Revive the factory with ideas, symbols and meanings. Rekindle the flame of a renewed humanism, dispelling the darkness of human alienation, the flame that rises as a landmark on the moral horizon. Solidarity and togetherness play an important role in this process. By assuming personal responsibility for social progress, the cultural workers, inspired by these ideas, can become a factor that contributes to social change.