Since 2017, Davor Konjikušić and Nika Petković have been working on an extensive artistic research project using Slana bay on the island of Pag as its starting point. This is the venue of the first concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia (ndh), which existed from June to August 1941. Memorials dedicated to its victims have been systematically and violently destroyed. Moving into this wide open space, “Slana – Radical Landscape” encompasses film, photography and interdisciplinary research in the form of the 3D reconstruction of the former concentration camp. Since the Venetian times, the landscape of Slana has undergone brutal human interventions: from extraction and excessive grazing to establishment of the concentration camp and the more recent tourist exploitation.
The central part of the exhibition is the film Uvala (Cove), whose reductionist approach reveals an unbreakable connection between the landscape and the historic context that has been erased from it. Using methods of “landscape filming”, Davor Konjikušić and Nika Petrović question the process of (historical) eradication and negation of the location of the crime that took place in the summer of 1941 and left its mark in this rugged landscape.
The project encompasses interdisciplinary research conducted in close cooperation with Goran Andlar, assistant professor from the Faculty of Agronomy in Zagreb, with the support of assistant professor Hrvoje Tomić from the Faculty of Geodesy in Zagreb and the architect Juraj Božić.
This extensive research of the locality included field research, but also scientific methods of charting, mapping, and analysing the landscape, as well as the historical archives, which served as the basis for the 3D rendering of the camp.
The artistic project “Slana – Radical Landscape” was supported by the Serb National Council, which uses cultural cooperation to encourage artistic projects and research that develop engaged approach to history and the culture of memory, connected with the heritage of antifascism, perishing and genocide of the minority population, and the universal human experience created during traumatic times or their subsequent denial.
Damir Gamulin is the author of the exhibition and of the graphic design of the publication, which contains archive material related to the camp’s history, as well as texts by Goran Andlar, Davor Konjikušić, Pavle Levi, Nika Petrović, Aneta Vladimirov, and Ante Zemljar.
You can download the catalogue exhibition edited by Aneta Vladimirov.
The work consists of a film, photographs, as well as research published in the form of a 3D reconstruction of the former concentration camp. The research began back in 2016, with the intention of exploring all the specificities of this landscape, while at the same time, through artistic work and research, attempting to affect the possibility of its commemo- ration as a site of trauma and memory in a location that constitutes a unique geographical and landscape unit, within a wider context of the Mediterranean. The authors’ intention was to transform the entire space of Slana into a site of commemoration and remembrance in a way that would respond to the constant attempts of historical erasure.
The Cove is a film shot in the locale of Slana Bay, which was the site of the first concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia. Located on the island of Pag, in the Barbat area, since antiquity until the present day, this space has been marked by the activity of nature and human beings, who ultimately shaped the radical landscape of Slana – through logging, excessive grazing, the construction of the concentration camp and, more recently, exploitation for tourism. By connecting the landscape with its historical context, we highlight a complete contingency upon the effect of human beings. Simultaneously, the film examines the procedures of (historical) erasure and negation of a site of crime, which eternally inscribed itself into the rocky landscape in the summer of 1941. By traveling towards the past from today’s perspective, we urge for a perceptive commemoration and the re-examination of the political framework of the representation in which the absence of human life in fact signifies its enduring presence, while the empty space alludes to a site of crime.
Erased from the picture – Pavle Levi
The chronology which the authors of the film The Cove establish – from the contemporary moment towards past time, from 2021 to 1941 – introduces the stylistic figure of “hysteron proteron,” a procedure that reverses the conventional sequence of events, in this work realized as the crucial political framework for observing a particular location. What at first glance appears to be an “empty” space, is, as the film progresses, increasingly explicitly revealed as nothing short of the scene of a crime. In other words, it is as if, during the film – by means of a linear chronology – the viewer returns to the past, or, the time of the crime. However, at the end of the journey – which is key – this linear time flow is revealed as the means of a politically far more emancipated approach to time. This approach is based on a temporal “short circuit” or a superimposition: on the realization that the crime (from the past) is in fact always present (in the current moment), but has been suppressed, “erased from the picture.” It is precisely this erasure that is the result and the symptom of today’s dominant – and problematic – ideological paradigm.
EXHIBITION SLANA - RADICAL LANDSCAPE
Authors: Davor Konjikušić, Nika Petković and Goran Andlar
Curator: Ana Dević – WHW
Orthophoto rendering and 3D modeling: Hrvoje Tomić
3D reconstruction: Juraj Božić
Set Up Design: Damir Gamulin
Production: Marija Crnogorac, Aneta Vladimirov - SNV Jasna Givens
Print: Fini Print
MOVIE THE COVE
Year of production: 2021
Duration: 18`
Directors: Davor Konjikušić, Nika Petković
Screenwriters: Davor Konjikušić, Nika Petković
Camera: Davor Konjikušić
Sound: Davor Zanoški
Editing: Hrvoslava Brkušić
Music: Hrvoje Radnić
Producers: Davor Konjikušić, Nika Petković
Production: Kolektor - Centar za vizualne umjetnosti , SNV - Srpsko Narodno Vijeće