The exhibition titled 8+8+8 / for the city organized by the Art&Culture Laboratory within the project May Day Incubator 2010 was opened on April 30th, 2010 in the Decumanus Gallery in Krk, and will be on view until May 7th 2010.
The exhibition presents: Domagoj Buljan, Igor Gržetić, Ivan Blažetić, Ksenija Jurišić, Lena Franolić, Marija Barkiđija, Marin Dlaka, Mario Depicolzuane, Neda Pavić, Tatjana Masterl, Tonči Žužić, Vedrana Stipić and Vedrana Valenčić.
The works that found their place in the Decumanus Gallery were submitted to the contest last year comprising two themes:
8+8+8: International Workers’ Day commemorating the general strike held in Chicago on First May 1886, when more than 200 people lost their lives. The strike was, as a reaction to repression, organized as a request for a eight-hour workday (8+8+8). As an international working class holiday First May is celebrated since 1889, while in Croatia it’s celebrated since 1890. In the last century this date established itself as anarchist and socialist, and the red flag was shown as an emblem of the blood spilled by the workers in quest for establishing their rights. What is our relationship to this event today and does it even exist? How do we understand workers rights today? What does the concept of work mean to us?
For the city: With the infiltration of (neo)liberal capitalism into our environment we are witnessing more frequent and obvious devastations of valuable urban environments. Formerly picturesque towns rich with atmosphere are today filled with fluorescent advertising billboards, and from the focus of religious centers important historical monuments are erased. The race after capital swallowed uniqueness, representing a kind of a paradox. Instead of using the authenticities that surround us to acquire the goods that are required by us all, something completely opposite happened. Uniformity consciously degraded the splendor and identity, and unsightly city-clones are slowly becoming reality! What to do? How to accomplish coexistence and a graceful harmony between the new and the old? Do you even consider it possible?
For the exhibition titled 8+8+8/ for the city sixteen works of thirteen artists were chosen. In order to answer the questions presented artists used video, installations, graphic design, digital photography and computer graphics, the unfairly neglected technique of photo-aquatint to a few sculpture experiments.
