12th Organ Vida festival – program announced
Titled “No Tears Left to Cry”, the 12th edition of Organ Vida is dedicated to exploring the various manifestations of feeling in contemporary society.
The Biennial Festival brings together contemporary artists working in the medium of photography and / or in its expanded form and opens on June 29th at 8 p.m. at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb with the main exhibition No Tears Left to Cry with works by ten finalists selected by an expert jury composed of: Agnieszka Roguski, curator and writer from Berlin, Antonio Cataldo, curator and writer from Oslo, Ivana Meštrov, curator from Zagreb, Jen Kratochvil, curator and critic from Prague and Vienna, and Lovro Japundžić, curator from Zagreb.
A solo exhibition of the artist Viviane Sassen Venus & Mercury will open at the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb on the same day as the leading festival exhibition, June 29th, at 8 p.m. The series of photographs, film, objects and collages Venus & Mercury was created as a result of six-month research conducted by the artist at the French Palace of Versailles. Sassen immersed into the palace archives and used artifacts, architecture, sculptural fragments and even Marie-Antoinette’s private correspondence to create a new work alluding to untold stories of Versailles. In making her own story, Sassen worked with a group of young women who grew up near the palace. At the same time, they appear and disappear as models in photographs that mix the ancient with the modern and the real with the fake.
On main opening night of Organ Vida, Norwegian duo SMERZ will perform their album Believer, which deliberately mixes contradictory emotions, from sadness to happiness, anxiety or appeasement, and offers us a singular and oblique relationship to the world. Inspired by the heavy bass of the club music of the 2000s, the emphasis is totally put on the performative and experimental dimensions of the music.
In addition to exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the 12th Organ Vida at the Miroslav Kraljević Gallery (GMK) presents a solo exhibition by French artist Thomas Cap De Ville INTERLOPE, which will open on June 30th and runs until July 15th. Since his adolescence, Thomas Cap De Ville has collected photographs, drawings and various objects which he has been organizing into a series of books called Psychospores. The codes of the generation of the 90s and early 2000s intertwine with intimate histories which involve emerging stories of friendship, sexuality, and vice.
Festival continues its long-term cooperation with the Kassel Photobook Festival and presents a shortlist of Kassel Dummy Award photo books at GMK.
Group exhibition Tender Points opens at Nova Gallery on July 1st and runs until July 16th and it features the works of four artists – Julie Faverau, Katarzyna Perlak, Margaret Haines and Fette Sans. They discuss uncertainty and insecurity, or rather affective disorientation as an essential feature of modernity, and critically look at different models of emotional togetherness, as well as opportunities to maintain and (re)construct intimacy.
In addition to exhibition program, this year’s festival will host an interactive installation at Richter Collection by Cleo Kempe Towers, also known as Emotional Labor Queen, Berlin-based artist and writer. Titled Prosperity, Luck, and Abundance – Yes to Claim is a workshop conceptualized as a guided path followed by the sound of positive affirmations.
The program is supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb – City Office for Culture, Zagreb Tourist Board, Mondriaan Fonds, Netherlands Embassy in Zagreb Media partners: Vizkultura, Kulturpunkt.hr, Grazia, Elle, R+
