05/08 2021
Media Mediterranea 23 Festival – Openning
Kristina Marić – Golden Watermelon 5.0 Award Winner
The 23rd edition of the Festival Media Mediterranea was officialy opened on Thursday, August 5, 2021 in Serbian Cultural Centre in Pula, with the group exhibition of the finalists for the Award for young artists ”Golden Watermelon” 5.0. The jury consisted of Oleg Šuran, Olga Majcen Linn, Hrvoje Hiršl i Anja Maleć decided on „Free Kicks“ by Kristine Marić as the winner of this year’s competition.
At the opening introduction, the director of the festival Marino Jurcan thanked all of the collaborators who contributed to the festival, which consists of three exhibitions in four locations in Pula. The competition and award Golden Watermelon, as Jurcan had noted, is one of the best achievements of both the Metamedia association and the Media Mediterranea festival, mainly because – in accordance with the aims of the association – it offers a platform for young new media artists to produce and present their work through the competition that is unique in this county. Their value attests to the fact that most of these artists were often finalists for the prestigious national award for young artists Radoslav Putar.
Jurcan’s introductory words were followed by a brief speech by Lena Radunić from the Administrative Department for Culture in Pula.
– It is my special honor to greet you in the name of both mayor Filip Zoričić, and Anja Ademi, head of the Administrative Department for Local Self-Government. My wish is to focus tonight on all of those who participated in the creation of this exhibition and to thank all of the young authors. I hope that, in the upcoming years, Pula will host many programs that are dedicated to affirming young artists and providing a space for them, especially that of media, in order to show to all of us their creative efforts.
Ivana Tkalčić, the author of the curatorial concept and theme of the “Staged Authenticity” festival, reminded the audience that the Golden Watermelon Award and Exhibition have been held for five years and is primarily intended for young artists aged 18 to 35 dealing with contemporary art, new media and interdisciplinary approach. art.
– ”This year we had a fairly large turnout from which we chose a shortlist of seven works on display, but one of the members of the jury consisting of Oleg Šuran, Olga Majcen Linn, Hrvoje Hiršl, and last year’s winner Anja Maleć will tell you about it. Among the artists exhibiting are: Domagoj Burilović, Valerija Djanješić, Teuta Gatolin, Kristina Marić, Toni Mijač, Mia Miletić and Dora Ramljak and Andrejs Poikāns. This year’s theme of the festival, as well as the Golden Watermelon Award, is “Staged Authenticity”. This term is primarily related to tourism, but we have not necessarily connected it only with it.
– The topic is how the local community and tourism professionals present to visitors, ie tourists, certain events, material culture and intangible customs in the form they think is most appropriate to present. We linked this to the phenomenon of fake news and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. You all know that this was the current moment in 2018 and 2019, where due to these processes we became more aware of the manipulations that are happening in the media, on social networks, and platforms. From that moment, ie the last two years, we have become more and more aware of these elements in our growing presence in the online, virtual sphere. What is interesting to us and what is important to us in this festival is to see what is authentic and what is staged – or what is real – because we know that certain information we receive through the media and social networks builds our thinking and thinking and affect our actions. The artists who exhibit at all the exhibitions of this festival articulate these elements well and offer their perspectives and visions of possible realizations of other futures”.
Jury member Hrvoje Hiršl spoke about the selection of the finalists of the competition:
– ”It was a great honor for me to judge this competition and exhibition with my colleagues. We were lucky that the response was great – as many as 25 artists submitted their works for selection. It was quite difficult to select and reduce the selection to five, so in the end, we chose seven works and we believe that this selection and interaction between the works resulted in an interesting exhibition that fit perfectly into the gallery space”.
Ivana Tkalčić presented the award to Kristina Marić, which officially opened the exhibition. The author thanked the organizers – the association Metamedij, the jury, and the curators
and added that she hopes everyone will enjoy the continuation of this festival.
– The work we see at the exhibition, “Free Kicks”, is a documentation of a performance I did at the Bačva Gallery in the HDLU House in Zagreb, which has a circular layout. The performance itself is a repeated hitting of the ball into the circular wall, which is located on all sides, and it was this specific architectural form of the gallery that was a very important factor in the entire performance. The whole performance started by placing the ball in the middle of the gallery circle and kicking the ball in all directions. As the diameter of the gallery is 36 meters, the performance lasted several hours, as long as I could physically endure the effort of repeatedly hitting the ball. The main motivation for the work was a feeling of frustration and to express that charge through the ball and punches in the gallery or in institutions in a broader sense. That moment of children’s play reminded me of a boy’s play. The staged authenticity in the performance is related to what later happened to the work itself. Authentic is certainly his own motivation that drew his motives from some negative charge, it is staged that, aesthetically speaking, the whole performance is set like a game, as a kind of gladiatorial struggle with himself. The work also gained weight after, when I had to paint the whole space due to stains on the wall due to the performance, which added an extra dimension to this anger towards the institutions, said Marić.
The festival continues on Friday, August 6 with an exhibition by Hrvoje Hirschl at 8 pm in the Temple of Augustus and an exhibition by guest authors: Alex Brajković, Tjaša Kalkan, Luka Kedžo, Luana Lojić, Niko Mihaljević and Lana Stojićević at 9 pm at the European Center for Peace and Development. The festival’s exhibitions can be viewed until August 9 from 10 am to 12 noon and from 7 pm to 10 pm, and on Monday evenings from 7 pm to 10 pm.
More information can be found on the official website and on the FB and Instagram profile of the association Metamedij.
Photos by Paolo VALENTI
