Everyday Divergences
The project explores the creative strategies and forms of self-organization of the inhabitants of the largest building in Croatia — Mamutice, built in 1974 in Zagreb.
Gallery Emil Filla, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic, 2011
The Everyday Divergences is the first module of the Creative Strategies project (2010 — 2016), which explores the creative strategies and forms of self-organisation of the inhabitants of the biggest building in Croatia, Mammoth, as it is called, built in Zagreb in 1974. Five thousand five hundred people live in the building’s 1,200 flats. It is surrounded by a wide green belt, Travno Park, the area of which is related to the number of flats in the building. The city utility firm looks after the front part of the park, but it has never become somewhere people linger; the rear portion, however, not landscaped, fell to the self-organising competence of the tenants and is a lively place in which they stay.
Observing the building and the park as a structured community, in which everyone makes some kind of contribution, the artist explored, using the video-interview method, the forms of spatial and social interventions of the residents as forms of divergences from the everyday.
In the final phase of the project, the artist organized an prize-giving presentation of the activities of the tenants in Mamutica.
The residents themselves chose the three most interesting and most creative models for taking part in the community: collecting and maintaining a folk arts and ethnological collection; organising assistance for the older people in the neighbourhood; and a jointly built boules rink.
The exhibition in the Emil Filla gallery presented all segments of the project and invited the audience to participate.
