Installations and performance as a form of confrontation with a place of dehumanisation and the establishment of women’s memory, created through the research of the fates of women imprisoned on the islands of Goli Otok and Sveti Grgur.
The islands of Goli Otok and Sveti Grgur are places of repressive de-Stalinisation in the collective memory. They wereestablished as a response of the Party to the Tito-Stalin schism with the intention of “re-educating” unfit members.
Apart from the established concentration camp methods, Tito’s idea that Informbiro supporters should be broken rather than killed introduces us to a series of Goli Otok peculiarities, especially with regard to women.
Therefore, Andreja Kulunčić’s artistic production is focused on the research, planning and making of a project which deals with the fate of the women interned on the islands of Goli Otok and Sveti Grgur from 1949 to 1956. The intention is to open a new form of confrontation with the place of dehumanisation by the research and establishing of the women’s memory of the traumatic past via a site-specific artistic intervention. Collaborators in the project are Dubravka Stijačić(HR) and Renata Jambrešić Kirin (HR), and co-authors of the performance are Zrinka Užbinec (HR), Jasna Jovićević(RS) and Annette Giesriegl (AT).
The intervention consists of two parts – a visual punctuation of 12 to 15 points of the women’s memory/trauma on the island – a permanent “monument”, and a live performance at the junction of space, of movement, of instrumental and vocal articulation.