ZAGREB / URBAN FESTIVAL / 26 - 31 AUGUST

 

Social Fiction was invited to come to Zagreb (Croatia) to present the Generative Psychogeography project during the Urban Festival. The headquarters was 'net culture club' MaMa.

The aim of this festival to introduce both to the public the concept 'art on the streets', as well as to develop & show the different creative approaches of using the city as a medium for experimentation.

On Monday Wilfried Hou je Bek did a presentation in which he explained the cultural history behind the terms 'generative' (game of Life, complexity) and 'Psychogeography' (situationists, surrealism, Baudelaire, De Quincey, the flaneur). Also the Hot Summer, some recent explorations on 'hive minds', peripatetics & of course an invitation to join the project in general & the experiment we would do next day in general, where discussed.

The audience (some 40/50 people) seemed interested but later wrongly accused Wilfried of having a Scottish accent (??).

 

 

The experiment the day after was somewhat of a disaster. 3 People showed up but not on time. Apart they went out on an algorithm & afterwards they reported that they experienced the power of this method of walking. But still too bad that this session as a complete experiment failed to take place. Afterwards it seemed much smarter to have done the walk with al the people present the day before. Well try to remember that for the next time. In the mean while we hope that somebody present will take up the challenge of organising one.

A strange question that was asked several time later that week was curious indeed. People assumed that there was something special with the algorithms going on. "So why" they asked "second left and not right?". This is curious because the exact definition of the formulas you walk to are irrelevant. One might use every one you can think of, actually people are encouraged to come up with other ideas. That is the whole point of doing the Hot Summer . It reminded us somewhat of the story giving about Tolstoj. One of his readers ask him what he 'tried to say' with a certain character in War & Peace. Tolstoj responded that he needed a young man with certain abilities to make something in the plot happens. So when he didn't need the character any more he let him die in the war. However 200 paged later he found out that he needed him after all & suddenly (for the reader) the dead hero turned out to be only seriously wounded.

People assume to much.

The festival itself had an interesting program, artistically but also when placed in the Croatian situation. That is best explained by the street performance Paul Couillard & Ed Johnson (frpm toronto) did on Thursday.

 

We at Social Fiction are cynics but this one inspired us a lot. It's got to do with the surroundings probably. On the main square they built a wall of sugar cubes, stared at it for 15 minutes, then lay down and starting licking the wall for another 45 minutes ( as you can see above). Do this in Holland (and probably everywhere else in the western world) & people would say that it's just 2 crazy guys licking sugar cubes. In the Zagreb situation however, where every thing happening on the street, no matter how small, should be reported to the police first, art on the street is not a situation as given as it is elsewhere. So people walked by, curiously checked out what was going on, then there faces turned to amazement & suddenly when the bomb felt & they realized what was being communicated they were shocked: these guys were gay. Know that the first gay parade was held for the first year recently & (a part of) the public started throwing stones at it. Especially when Ed's tongue started to bleed, that was a very strong image.

 

There were more artists. Jody Zellen from LA, who presented a web project There was the Nettle project of Urtica who did some nasty but smooth hack TV commercials & there was the soundmap project of Apsolutno plus 2 other projects on Saturday, but we had already left by then.

 

The Urban Festival organisation in typical situations.

 

The festival it self is divided into 3 shifts. This was the second, the third will take place in September 2002.

Zagreb itself is a relaxed town divided into 2 distinct spheres which make it interestinf for the psychogeographer. There is the upper town which is the oldest & laid out generic over the hill side. The other part is the product of 19 century planning on a flat strict grid, think Baron Haussmann. When passing from one zone into the other, the difference between it cannot be missed by any tourist but at the same time the 2 parts are not in contrast with each other.

This is the architectural trophy of Zagreb. It's from the 70ties but echoes Russian formalism of the 1920ties. This is the backside, the front side contains 2 wings from which these grow out.

 

The one single best thing Croatian society has come up with socially is their approach to health care for the elder. While in the rest of Europe they are taken care of with special housing, Zagreb has taken that they should be kept busy. Therefore the only older people you see in the street are always carrying large heavy objects on their back.

 

Of course some graffiti & urban art should be included. It seems that the graffiti scene is really active, but that the quality is not always good. There are a lot of ugly throw ups but there are also very well detailed pieces done with great mastery over the spraycan. This last segment is not shown here. For this you should check out the Zagren Hall of Fame, of which there are at least 2 it seemed.