SEASON OF LOVE AND SUCH THINGS
2023/2024 — Season 68
The New Post Office

Undecidable Question

Co-production: The New Post Office and Domino Cooperative (Zagreb)
Première: 11. 10. 2022
Cast
Credits
  • Concept and text: Goran Sergej Pristaš/CO2
  • Video: Hrvoslava Brkušić
  • Animation: Marko Tadić
  • Sound: Hrvoje Nikšić
  • Choreography: Nikolina Pristaš/CO2
  • Projection: Alan Vukelić
Description

Myth Interrupted by Goran Sergej Pristaš is a project proposition from 2006 that was published in the 100th issue of Maska journal. It suggests to reconstruct three mass gatherings from the ex-Yugoslavian period in Zagreb: Partisans entering Zagreb (1945), student demonstrations (1968) and the final farewell from Tito’s remains (1980).

“We haven't reenacted, reconstructed or institutionalised anything. We tried to expose ourselves to those watching and listening, to suspend the time flow of our own speech and say that we are interrupting it. By interrupting our own speech and myths, we have entered the zone of politics.” This is how the performative installation the Undecidable Question begins. It uses sound recordings of a documentary feature Oslobođenje Zagreba (The Liberation of Zagreb, 1945), of a spontaneous mass singing of the song Fala (Thank you) at the farewell from J. B. Tito's remains and of debates in the scope of the BADco. project Institucije treba graditi (Institutions Need to be Constructed, 2016). The text is inspired by Emily Dickinson's poem I Dwell in Possibility.

The installation reflects those spontaneous collectives whose functioning was entirely unpredictable. As we live in uncertain times ourselves, we, with the help of the spectators, try to activate the meaning of the community and the pronoun “we”.

In the media

The installation puts in the forefront the modern post-socialist humans who are always one step behind time, as they are constantly training in interpreting events of the past, reconstructing them and institutionalising them. At the same time, they are a step ahead of the present, because based on the past, they look into their possibility of presenting and creating a better and different world. On this crossroad, the human’s present is breaking and from it emerges Yugofuturism, which without being sentimental rehabilitates, yet interpretatively and reflexively looks into the future which can only be looked at from the point of view of the present.

Press downloads
Visit

6 people can visit the performance together at The New Post Office, the visit lasts 30 minutes. Reservations at: blagajna@mladinsko-gl.si.