MATE UGRIN
time after work. As a video installation, Vacant
Vacant Hours
The short film Vacant Hours is a documentary
meditation about the flow of time, isolation, the
city. The protagonists are temporary migrant work-
ers of the 3rd May shipyard in Rijeka and we see
them during their free time spent mainly around
the singles hotel. Quiet and contemplative scenes
build a specific atmosphere manifested in light,
colours, slow movement, highlighting the sense
of loneliness and void. Video technology supports
the extended temporal dimension of the image as
a manner of fictionalising time, while simultane-
ously the stretched temporal dimension accen-
tuates the tension and potentiality of the scene.
What we see is time after work, i.e. the daily life
of workers arising from the background, focusing
on the vacant hours as a form of time at the end of
the day. The highlighted temporality of image and
the flow of time are treated as the central event.
We watch Vacant Hours as a tribute to work,
IGOR GRUBIĆ
How Steel Was Tempered
The experimental-animation film How Steel Was
Tempered by Igor Grubić (2018), like a double-ex-
posure image combining the past and the present,
represents a look back, on emptied and abandoned
factory plants. The central thread of the film is
based on a father-son relationship. The father takes
the son to the abandoned factory where he used
to work. Although the factory has been for a long
time only a crumbling image of the new system,
the space will briefly come to life in an image of
workers’ solidarity and inspire a small gesture of
defiance. This symbolical act grows into a moment
of catharsis re-establishing the father-son relation-
ship. The animation film How Steel Was Tempered,
evoking the heroic era not only in industry, but
also in cinema, introduced human and animal
characters into emptied and derelict structures,
accompanied by historical documentary images.
This is a dark and elegiac meditation,
a condensed version of the failure of
personal stories and individual desti-
nies in a collapse of communities and
collectivity – says Jasna Jakšić. Like
the scenes of disappearance, demol-
ished architecture or film burning
moments, Grubić’s animation film, a
layered visual orchestration combin-
ing different media and techniques
– drawing, photography and archival
found footage material, represents
fragments of space and events fading
and disappearing before our eyes. (B. B.)
inemaniac Misliti film
postponed work, uncertain work, work on hold,
Hours occupy the entire gallery space, focusing
the attention on the complex relations of the con-
temporary subject in mediatised space and time.*
In the close proximity of the Uljanik shipyard, a
wide emptied space, without the ships to block our
view, Mate Ugrin’s Vacant Hours is perceived in
an entirely new manner, imbuing the view with a
specificity of context and the location of screening.
A screening which might create a feeling of unease
or nostalgia as an homage to the uncertain fate of
Pula’s shipyards and shipbuilding. potted plants to be moved to new locations. The
(B.B.)
* Alison Butler: Deictic turn: space and location in
contemporary gallery film and video installation, Screen
51/4, Oxford University Press, 2010.
Mate Ugrin was born in 1986 in Pula. In 2012 he
graduated in film directing from the Academy of
Art in Belgrade. He holds a BA in film from the
HFBK Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg
and an MA in art and media from the UdK Uni-
versität der Künste Berlin. He has directed several
short films.
Igor Grubić has been active as a multimedia artist
since the early 1990s. His work encompasses ar-
tistic interventions in public space, photography
and film. Since 2000 he works as a producer and
author of documentary films, cover stories and
social engaged commercials. His works have been
presented in many international institutions and
at different events and film festivals and are part
of collections of Croatian and international mu-
seums (Manifesta, MoMA PS1 New York, TATE
Modern, MSU Zagreb, MSUB Beograd, Belvedere
21 Vienna). He has won several awards for his
work. The exhibition Traces of Disappearing at
the Croatian Pavilion represented Croatia at the
2019 Venice Biennale.
KATERINA DUDA
Currents
In an emptied office building the only thing left are Katerina Duda (1989) is a multimedia artist. She
the plants. In a large and once lavish space, the gar- graduated in animation and new media from
dener still maintains the plants specially designed the Academy of Fine Art and sociology from the
to fit the interior design, selects and prepares the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Za-
greb. In her work she often uses the media of social
plants, which used to dominate the imposing inte- practice, action and intervention in public space,
rior in the eighties, create a new temporality in the as well as documentary film and video. She has
building without people. Apart from the gardener, exhibited at solo and group exhibition both in
one firefighter is in charge of patrolling the vacant Croatia and internationally. Author of two doc-
building, touring and maintaining it for no one. umentary films, The Cutting (ŠDF Restart) and
Plants like dracaena, fig tree and philodendron used Currents (Restart). She lives and works in Zagreb.
to be an irreplaceable part of the so-
cialist modernist architecture in the
1970s and 1980s. Today these home
plants remain a powerful visual re-
minder of the paradigm. In Currents
the relocation of plants, the only re-
maining inhabitants of the building,
can be interpreted as part of a broader
context. A change of the current: as
one paradigm of perceiving space is
replaced with another, the concept of
the social state (and its firms) gradu-
ally disappears.
SCREENING PROGRAM FILMS
Series for Invisible
Cinema
Her deceit is the
sun, her truth
the sea
Curated by TANJA VRVILO Gustav Deutsch: Adria Urlaubsfilme 1954-68
(Die Schule des Sehens I) / Adria Holiday Films 1954-68
(Film–School of Seeing I) 1989., 37 min;
Series for invisible cinema, a long-term multime- silent, col + b/w
dia action for reflection on modes of transmis-
sion of images, knowledge and memory of the Adria  by Gustav Deutsch sheds light on the be-
film dispositif in the digital age, this year are ginnings of the artist’s phenomenology of the film
dedicated to the perturbations of appropriation, medium created using found footage, in this case,
displacement and curation of one of most inspired Austrian home and amateur films from the holi-
artist’s pedagogies, Chris Marker’s Owl Legacy, days at the Italian and Croatian coast of the Adri-
with 13 symposia under the sign of the totemic atic Sea. By analyzing and recomposing actions
and iconic owl – Athena noctua, associated with and reactions, focal points, and serial aspects,
Greek goddess of wisdom and war Athena and her Deutsch’s pedagogy reveals what people do with
Roman double Minerva. Marker’s TV symposium the camera and what the camera does with them
essays on what is left of (ancient) wisdom from in the specific social context of their first holiday
the forgotten archive of television were made in abroad and organizing leisure time. Recording a
the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall and banned shared experience becomes a school of viewing, an
by the Greek authorities before broadcasting; the evidence of active filmic and social ritual.
work was shown in its original form only once, in
1991 on ARTE and Channel 4. Filmed in five cities
over two years with 59 participants, it develops
a collective archeology of knowledge on the key
heritage of ancient Greece, as well as pre-digi-
tal television strategy, at the last minute of the
disintegration of political communities and the
cultural end of XXth century. Two decades later,
the radical art and theory The Otolith Group, in
collaboration with Marker, actualized the reme-
diation for the 13-channel video installation Inner
Time of Television, a monument to dead televi-
sion, at the First Athens Biennale of 2007, entitled The Otolith Group: Hydra Decapita, 2010., 31 min
Destroy Athens!, re-mapping Marker’s project of sound, colour
memorialization in the age of poststructuralism, Hydra Decapita, the first part of the mythical
postcolonialism and postmodernism for its first trilogy of film essays by London based The Oto-
presentation in Greece. Marker’s subtitle: 13 Greek lith Group by Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar
Words Deciphered By.... is staging a feast of in- give voices to the decapitated underwater world.
herited words Symposium, Olympics, Democra- A complex fantastic-political net of meanings
cy, Nostalgia, History, Mathematics, Logomachy, connect the historical atrocity from 1781, when
Music, Cosmogony, Mythology, Misogyny, Trage- the captain of the slave ship called Zong travel-
dy, Philosophy. We are expanding rhizomatic the- ling from Jamaica to Liverpool decided to throw
saurus of Athena noctua to the afterlife of cinema, all 133 saves overboard so that he could claim
in this program the liquid perception and oceanic insurance for the loss of cargo, and also  J.M.W.
feeling of Adria and Hydra, after the fourth and Turner’s painting of the same crime  The Slave
tenth symposium: Nostalgia or Impossible Re- Ship (and Ruskin’s analysis of the painting) with
turn and Mythology or Lies Like Truth, which link the conceptual Afro-futuristic music of the group
temporality of nostalgia, migrations, mutations Drexciya, by James Stinson and Gerald Donald
and life after the exodus, deciphered by Gustav (1992-2002), about the underwater kingdom of the
Deutsch and the Otolith group, with invisible children of murdered slaves.
symposiarch Chris Marker.
Films and photographs courtesy by LUX,
The Otolith Group, sixpackfilm
IMPRESSUM
EXHIBITION
Cinemaniac > Think film 2020
Vacant Hours – Mate Ugrin
In dialogue with Katerina Duda and Igor Grubić
30. 8. – 5. 9. 2020.
ECPD European Center for Peace and Development
Flavijevska 18, Pula
Curated by:
Branka Benčić
In collaboration with:
Marta Baradić, Sara Jakupec, Tanja Vrvilo
Exhibition set up:
Branka Benčić, Matija Debeljuh
Technical set-up:
Matija Debeljuh, Goran Šaponja
Organized by:
Apoteka – Space for Contemporary Art
Partners and friends:
Pulski filmski festival - Pula Film Festival
> pulafilmfestival.hr
Cinemaniac > Deliberations on Film: Perturbations is
organised in collaboration: Cinemaniac Deliberations on
Film / Kino umjetnika (Branka Benčić), Film protu Film
/ Film Mutations – Festival of Invisible Cinema (Tanja
Vrvilo), Kino Katarina (Marta Baradić), Kreativni sindikat /
Video forum (Igor Grubić, Sara Jakupec)
Cinemaniac
Think film
2020:
Va-
cant Hours
CINEMANIAC > THINK FILM is an ongoing exhi-
bition and research platform re-examining the
connections between film, moving images and
contemporary art, implemented since 2002 as a
side event at Pula Film festival. The project aris-
es in the interdisciplinary space of intersections
between contemporary audiovisual culture prac-
tices and art and is committed to a systematic
re-examination of tools and media thinking in
contemporary artistic and curatorial practices,
working with moving images, projector imag-
CATALOGUE
Publisher:
Apoteka – Space for Contemporary Art
Trgovačka 20, 52215 Vodnjan, Hrvatska
Texts:
Branka Benčić, Tanja Vrvilo
Photographs:
Courtesy of the artists
Translation:
Ivana Ostojčić
Proofreading:
Nevena Trgovčić
Design:
Oleg Morović
print:
MPS Pula
Number of copies:
50
Supported by:
Ministry of Culture Republic of Croatia; City of Pula;
Croatian Audiovisual Center; Region of Istria
> apotekapsu.hr
> cinemaniac-thinkfilm.com
that a search for a new space would be our only
change. The pandemic reality and the post-pan-
demic crisis followed and made it impossible to
travel and achieve international exchange of art-
ists, locked us up in our homes and caused mul-
Placing three artistic positions in a conjunction,
Vacant Hours seems like a common denominator
gathering three recent film/video works of exper-
imental-documentary kind which, framing space
and time, place and identity, reflect interrelations
ti-faceted uncertainty and insecurity. A search for and tensions between different spatial and tem-
a new space overlapped with a series of precarious poral dynamics between individuals and their
working conditions, from unstable funding, to surroundings. Today we can speak about the ‘doc-
the impossibility of planning, changes in dates umentary turn’ in contemporary artistic practices
etc. The feeling of instability and new question as a way for artists to establish a specific relation-
marks launched a reconsideration and redefini- ship with the reality, redefining visual language,
tion of the curatorial concept in new directions. aesthetics, experiment through portrayals of so-
An unfavourable and uncertain time inspired four cial reality and personal, individual stories. That
initiatives to connect and collaborate, to re-ex- way the documentary practice becomes a broad
amine formats, concepts and exhibition methods. and elastic category, a means of mediation with
Perturbations become the model of working and the reality. Aspects of such documentary practice
the model of thinking. Such conditions gave birth form the focus of interest of not only cinematic
to the proposal for Cinemaniac > Deliberations practices, but also contemporary artistic produc-
on Film 2020, the Perturbations programme as tion as a manner of interpreting the reality and
Pertu
an active, collective, changeable, flexible format, the world around us.*
without sharp edges and definitions.
The central place around which the constella-
tion of voices evolves is the screening of the film
Vacant Hours by Mate Ugrin, meant as the central
film/video installation expanding and reproduc-
ing the existing text, structuring dialogue around
artistic positions, the screenings of films by Igor
Grubić and Katerina Duda. That way the solo ex-
hibition takes part in creating a new open-end
situations, emerging as a new exhibition format, a
dialogue between artistic and curatorial gestures. Each film in its own way addresses forms of the
social notion of work, featuring scenes and sto-
ries of current or former workers or work spaces,
matters of collective memory and social and po-
es, their mutual relationship, the ways of their litical reality, exploring and reflecting different
exploration, contextualisation, presentation and positions and ways of structuring atmosphere,
reception, creating active interaction between the meaning and the experience of space. Abandoned
social and the cultural field. Focusing on the re- spaces of the past, vacant potential for the future
lations between the image and the world, artists’ and the void of dystopian non-places are spaces
moving images form a view on the current cine- of articulation of artistic imagination as an (im)
matic and artistic trends, new visual languages of possible perspective confronting chaos. Record-
contemporary art, opening views on the current ing the existing and keeping the traces of past
aesthetic and social phenomena. (hi)stories re-inscribed and dissolved in the new
A project for the pre-anniversary, 19th edition of context, refracting in a series of moments, both
the exhibition is being carried out in very much collective and individual, visible and invisible
urbations
altered, changeable, unstable circumstances. Af- histories engraved on the margins into the spaces
ter almost two decades of being in the unique of material and social exchange.
space which has influenced the rise of the very BRANKA BENČIĆ
idea of launching an exhibition in the context of
Pula Film Festival, the Cinemaniac exhibition re-
luctantly left the premises of MMC Luka and 30
Istarska Street near the Arena, the central festival
film venue. Still early in February we believed * Mark Nash: Experiments with truth, Fabric Workshop
and Museum, Philadelphia, 2004 (exhibition catalogue)