You Betrayed the Party Just When You Should Have Helped It*
Site-specific project about the women’s political prison camp on Goli Otok and Sveti Grgur islands
*The title is the words of the warden of Goli otok political camp Marija Zelić
In collaboration with Renata Jambrešić Kirin (anthropologist) and Dubravka Stijačić (psychotherapist)
Goli otok, Sveti Grgur, 2019 — 2022
Goli Otok and Sveti Grgur [Bare Island, Saint Gregory] are places that have lodged in the collective memory as sites of repressive de-Stalinisation. They were created in 1949 as a response of the Party to the Tito-Stalin schism, the intention being the re-education of recalcitrant members. Tito’s idea that the Cominformists had to be broken and not murdered opens up, apart from the regular methods of concentration camps, the introduction of a number of specific features of Goli Otok, particularly with respect to women. The violence, destructive and misogynistic bio-politics in the camp, which systematically attacked the reproductive health of the female prisoners, and at the same time factored out their sexual specificity, also turned the prisoners against each other, resulting in profound trauma and long years of silence from the women about their experience on Goli Otok. The patriarchal response of society to the trauma of women and the attitudes of the former prisoners themselves, who felt shame about what they went through, means, according to a number of female researchers, that women are still not equally represented in the public discourse about totalitarian violence in Yugoslavia.
The artistic production is focused on research into, devising and producing a project that takes up the issue of the women in captivity on Goli Otok and Sveti Grgur. The objective is to open up a new form of coming to terms with a space of de-humanisation, through research and the establishment of women’s memory of the traumatic past through a site-specific artistic intervention. The intervention consists of visual pointing of the most critical points of women’s memory / trauma on the island as a form of a lasting “monument”, and live performances at the intersection of spaces, movements, instrumental and vocal articulation.
Interventions as part of the project consisted of: (1) setting up a bilingual Croatian-English information board about the organization and history of the women’s political camp on both islands, (2) memorial points — recording the memories of female camp inmates about the trauma experienced during their stay in both locations, (3) living performance through the medium of contemporary dance, sound and voice as forensics of the Goli otok and Sveti Grgur islands experience and (4) artistic action of making sculptures in clay.
1. Installing an information board on the camp locations
“Alternating between island of Goli otok and the neighbouring island of Sveti Grgur from 1950 to 1956 here was a camp for political prisoners through which passed more than 850 women accused of having cominform connections. With an exceptionally cruel punishment system, in which the women inmates were forced to assume the role of torturer, the camp was a place of suffering and humiliation. The harassment and police surveillance of the accused women continued even after they had been let out of the camp,” is the inscription on the information board that was installed as part of the project in both localities, for the first time 64 years after the last female prisoners left the camp.
As Anca Verona Mihuleț, one of the curators of the project’s exhibition in Rijeka, explains in her text, names, only names… , putting up that board — a normative and responsible gesture in every democracy — gives these deserted islands an alternative existence. (…) The existence of the board represents the end of the state of emergency and the beginning of a new regime of meaning beyond the new politics.”
After the guerrilla artistic action of placing info-boards in hard-to-reach localities, the area, which has been marked for the first time, becomes visible to the general public thanks to an elaborate media strategy that is an integral part of the project. https://www.zene-arhipelag-goli.info/en/press-en/
2. Memorial points
In September 2020, with the help of sculptor Silvester Ninić, a testimony of former camp inmate Vera Winter was carved on Goli otok, written by her granddaughter Nina Winter: “We carried the stone from the sea to the top of the hill. When the pile at the top was big enough, they would carry the stones back to the sea.”
In June 2021, a testimony of Ženi Lebl was carved into the living stone on Sveti Grgur, written by the hand of her niece Ana Lebl: “On your hump, Sveti Grgur, the classic question ‘To be or not to be?’ If you beat — you will be. If you don’t beat, you will be beaten.”
Placing a board and writing a testimony on the stone rounded off the interventions at the site, which left, on the one hand, a strong and visible sign (info-board), and on the other — a hidden trace of a constant reminder of the prisoner’s torture (inscriptions of testimonies).
3. Live performance
Based on the testimonies of the convicts, the artist worked with the psychotherapist Dubravka Stijačić on short concepts for spatial research with other artistic media — for the forensics of the body, voice and sound. In the performances of contemporary dance dancer Zrinka Užbinec, instrumentalist Jasna Jovićević and vocalist Annette Giesriegl, the experience of female prisoners was transferred into a strong physical experience. The video-installation created on the materials recorded in the localities were presented at the exhibitions of the project. https://zene-arhipelag-goli.info/en/exhibitions/
4. Artistic action
The sculptures made by Andreja at the site of the women’s camp on Goli otok symbolically embody the memory of the violence committed there. Specific and very limited living conditions on the island changed women’s bodies, their physical and mental health, while they intervened in the structure of the island, took away from it and changed its composition. Female convicts turned uninhabited islands into temporary improvised living spaces. The action talks about the pointlessness of most of the forced labor during captivity, about the fragility of the body and the difficulty of surviving in the camp. On the other hand, the sculptures come out, i.e. they grow out of the stone, emphasizing the fact that working with stones shaped the prisoners and left traces on their bodies for the rest of their lives. Places were chosen for the action where traces of the work of female detainees can still be seen, thus building a new narrative on the axis body — transformation — survival — nurturing.
The project was exhibited as a solo show in the Historical and Maritime Museum of Istria in Pula (2021), in the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka (2022) and in the Museum Vargas in Manila in Philippines (2023).
Project realization: Author: Andreja Kulunčić, visual artist / In collaboration with: Renata Jambrešić Kirin, anthropologist, Dubravka Stijačić, psychotherapist / Performative parts of the project in collaboration with: Zrinka Užbinec, dance artist and choreographer, Jasna Jovićević, saxophonist and composer, Annette Giesriegl,vocalist and improviser / Photo: Darko Bavoljak, Ivo Martinović, Andreja Kulunčić / Video: Darko Bavoljak, Ivo Martinović / Video editing: Maida Srabović / Technical work on setting up the informative signs on the sites: Silvester Ninić, Darko Bavoljak, Ivo Martinović, Andreja Kulunčić / Informative Signs graphically designed by: Igor Kuduz / Carving the testimonies on the site: Silvester Ninić / Production: Association MAPA/Maja Marković, Andreja Kulunčić and Association Goli otok „Ante Zemljar“/Darko Bavoljak / 2019 – 2022
The project was supported by: Zaklada Kultura nova, EPK Rijeka2020, Grad Zagreb, Ministarstvo kulture i medija Republike Hrvatske and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.