gildo-bavcevic-portfolio-blog

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CAN DO MORE! MUST DO MORE! 

Several performative interventions at various abandoned locations in Maribor (MTT-Maribor Textile industry, underpass near the bus station, former factory Boris Kidrič, planned cultural centre MAKS or space of former TAM). Those locations are witnesses of the collapsed economy and have as such become a scenography of planned interventions. With absurd acts Gildo Bavčević, on one hand, exposes abandoned spaces, on the other hand, the inability of society to correctly approach the solving of economic, social or ecological issues.

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Meadov From a Dream / video performace / 2018

The performance Meadow from the dream problematizes the theme of society's attitude towards strategies for solving the problem of waste disposal, and in the wider sense, the awareness of people towards the natural environment and ecology. While the song is performed, on the face of each child the white protective mask is placed to suggest a real risk of inhaling poisons from this no man’s land that, instead of a meadow from the dream, shows a devastated gloomy landscape full of plastic bags and seagulls. The performance was carried out at the Split landfill dumps, Karpovac, which in the last ten years represents a great environmental threat due to unplanned and non-selective accumulation of the waste that also exceeds its capacities. Over the past year, and after many years of ignoring the problem, with the growing pressure of the broad public, the sanation finally started, which caused the release of gases and unpleasant smells that were spread by winds throughout the city. Due to a lack of funds and technical difficulties in making it better, the rehabilitation ended up with covering the dump with sand and just masking the problem itself. Video performance Meadow from the dream was produced in cooperation with the choir of the elementary music school Josip Hatze from Split as a part of the hybrid documentary film The Bay by author Bruno Pavid, in the production of the Kazimir association 2018.

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White Balance / series of video performances / 2015-2018

At the moment I am working on the artwork cycle called ‘’White Balance’’ with focus on social, political, ecological problems and transition in public spaces issues. My solo video performance ’’Plastic Man Machine’’ won the first price at the 39th Split Salon exhibition of contemporary art (Splitski Salon).

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Coins / multimedia artwork series / 2011-2015

In the multimedia artwork cycle called “Coins”, I analysed various aspects of consumerism and consumerist society, the crisis in the world, the problem of resource allocation and goods of human nature. They are many but worth a little, almost nothing. Small coins as money have almost no value, and with this they share the destiny of a growing number of the population. In this context money is used as both conceptual content and material medium through performance, installation, video and sound.

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Solidarity Network / Documentary / 30min. /2013

Solidarity Network documentary is a compilation of direct actions and protests against the repressive apparatus of transitional elites in the city (and surrounding areas) of Split, Croatia. This film is a result of the long term collection of recordings and materials together with people driven by their wish to raise awareness and bring light in the darkness of post-privatization processes in Croatia. With documentary film (30 minutes long) “Solidarity Network”, I won the first price on 46th Croatian film festival (Revija hrvatskog filmskog stvaralaštva).

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PLASTIC MAN MACHINE 2015

On the stone that springs out of water surface surrounded by high rocks, Gildo hits his head mechanically on it, while simultaneously disrupts the sounds of nature, but also accentuates them. The moves he does are uniform as well as the rhythm which they produce and author hence becomes the certain machine, the robot that does exclusively one activity. Although he is naked, Gildo protects his head with the plastic helmet that is nowadays used for work protection, wherewith he is unmistakably placing the activity in present time, the present that makes the obedient machines from men, and it also wants to do with nature. This author's performance isn't only the warning to the people about the place and in which environment they live, but it is primary a certain homage to nature or the warning that we should certainly fear the modern courses of civilization. This artist's act is basically a ritual, totemic bowing down and rudimental ceremony, the kind the people conducted when they were symbiosis with nature, which is increasingly rare in the world of today.

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SOLIDARITY NETWORK_ documentary 30min.

Documentary video Solidarity Network (resistance to the culture of capital), originated during my Master studies of Media art on the departement of Film, Media art and Animation on the Arts Academy Split. During that time I actively participated in the actions of Solidarity Network, unformal civil initiative which gathers and shows solidarity in the first place with the threatened workers of the devastated firms, mostly in the bankruptcy processes, or former and current employees of those firms. Jadrankamen, Uzor, Dalmacijavino, Monter, Adriakem, Kamensko and others are all part of the devastated firms which share similar experiences with more than 20 000 other firms in the state. By noting the actions, exhibitions, round tables, lectures and similar and actively contributing as a part of the Solidarity network, I note, collect and choose the frame that becomes an example and a confirmation of the criminal and corruptive processes which unprocessed keep surviving inside the state system. A new type of fight and resistance towards this severely disrupted operation of the system is based on an idea of solidarity amongst citizens outside of the institution frameworks and on an easier possibility of networking and exchange of information and ideas considering the time we live in. Possibility of documenting and sharing through the alternative media becomes a strategy for mobilizing the public and appeal to the wider sense of the social responsibility and by that alone, a strong weapon of resistance. The Solidarity network keeps pursuing those attitudes and ideas.

[gildo-bavcevic-portfolio-blog]

COINS

When we coined money to help us facilitate trading and compensation for work, we had no idea that one day money is going to rule the world. Over time we have become like a small change in the hands of the powerful people. Thrown into a well to bring happiness to someone else. Devalued, disenfranchised, only when many, we are worth something. Preassure of banks to growing indebtedness in mindless fight for increasing profits, it creates a huge difference between a small number of very rich and powerful, compared to far more numerous general population that is becoming poor increasingly. They are many but worth a little, almost nothing. Small coins as money have almost no value, and with this they share the destiny of a growing number of the population. Hardly impoverished and abandoned below the social minimum, at the mercy of huge amounts of capital that flows to a small number of individuals, the elite.Equate all that impoverished population with the smallest unit of currency becomes logical and clear paradigm. Cycle of media works entitled COINS methodically shapes such views using coins as a symbol, questioning that symbol, its significance, distribution and power.

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SOLIDARITY NETWORK_ text:Miha Colner

The Solidarity Network documentary is a compilation of direct actions and protests against the repressive apparatus of transitional elites in the city (and surrounding areas) of Split, Croatia. Together with his colleagues and adherents Bavcevic has organised or participated in number of engaged artistic projects with the intention of pointing out the maladministration, abuse of power and stealth that affected majority of the local population in the past twenty five years. Over that period the power has been distributed among the likeminded conformists whose sole purpose was to transfer the public property into their private ownership. Hiding behind the nationalist and patriotic rhetoric of the new elite, a mixture of opportunistic businessmen and unscrupulous local government officials have intentionally ruined local industry in order to privatise it. The process is very well known and widespread in transitional societies. In order to buy these companies they have to lower their prices. First step is the take-over, than violation of workers’ rights, insolvency and eventual closure of (sometimes) successful companies that are deeply rooted in local area. Furthermore, the new businessmen would than often market or simply sell these properties to investors, without being concerned for the “collateral damage” – unemployed and impoverished population without any prospects. The idea of “common good” is thus replaced by a very short-term private profits of privileged individuals. 

To break the silence, hopelessness and powerlessness of ordinary people who were unprepared for such exploitation a new type of struggle and resistance towards the repressive activities of the power structures were organised by local artists and activists. Based on the idea of solidarity among citizens outside the institutional framework they created a platform for networking and exchange of information and ideas regarding the crucial issues of local economy and governing. Documenting and sharing information through alternative media became a strategy for mobilising wider public and making an appeal to the wider idea of social responsibility which have a potential to become a weapon of resistance.

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COINS_text: Mladen Lučić

Gildo Bavčević is already known to the Croatian artistic public because with his socially engaged performances and video work he is placed in the true focus of artistic, but also social happenstances. I wouldn't call Bavčević an activist, albeit he will claim he is also that, because in his work and behavior one can't find a minimal dose of aggression that is immanent to the activists, yet I would view him as the engaged artist who calls for reflection by his artworks, instead of calling for the direct rebellion and revolution. The subject he is primary interesting is the phenomenon of money, as a source and cause of the majority of evil and injustices which abound in our world. The interest to the global problem, of course, perceived from the Croatian discourse, is what also differentiate him from the regular domestic activists, because his story rises above local and engulfs the issues that completely belong to the today's grim global reality

Performance ''Fall oh force and injustice'' is conducted with the tone of the known revolutionary reveille related to the antifascist struggle and socialistic revolution during the World War 2. Except for that impressionable revolutionary song, that is calling for a then sought of fall of imperialism, the visual component of the performance (Bavčević with the megaphone, that transmitting aforementioned song, tied across the torso, with the raised hands, is marching through city streets and from the clenched fists he is gradually sliding out the coins) is association to the known photography of the folk hero Stjepan Filipović, hanged by the German army on the 22.05.1942. in Valjevo. Famous photography was shot the moment before Filipović's execution, when he, already with the noose around his neck, with the raised hands and clenched fists shouts in honor to communism and Party, by also calling on the insurgency. That photography has a special significance not only because for its strong message and remembrance of the fights against fascism it was placed in the entrance of United Nations in New York, but also because perhaps the greatest Croatian sculptor, Vojin Bakić, has modeled one of its most significant and important monuments by that photograph. That monument in Valjevo was during the last two decades damaged on more occasions, and the bust of Filipović in the same town was demolished in 1991. The same year, in the Filipović's birth town, Opuzen, his sculpture (work of Miro Vuco and Stjepan Gračan) was mined. By his performance, Gildo, among other things, is speaking out about these vandalisms from our recent past, when the monuments were demolished in the name of ideology and politics, and the blinded perpetrators usually didn't know why and to whom they were destroying them. The destruction of monuments is the extreme act of barbarism because nowadays we rightfully and with disgust judge the Taliban and ISIL, we don't see, or don't want to see, what happening, and what happened, in our own yard. Idolatry was cursed by Jehovah itself on the Holy mountain of Sinai and is it ideologically-political or solely material provenance is completely irrelevant. Gildo Bavčević is speaking about it in this, balanced to meticulousness and multi-layered, performance, but the performance only begins with the authors walk, transmittal of music and release of coins. Namely, that money released on street would be collected gradually by random passers-by that were there at the time of performance. By crouching and taking the coins from the streets they reveal their miserably material state and also bow down to the money as only recognized authority because of which they will erase their pride and minimum of self-respect. I would return once again to Stjepan Filipović. The legend says that during his captivity the certain German mayor named Paul questioned him why he became the communist, on which Filipović answered that he would have become one also if were setting up the lightning rods on chimneys for 10 dinars daily, as he was doing. Therefore, the money is the mover of everything. The ideology isn’t there because of the idea, but because of the money that is promised to its followers, that was and continued to be the characteristic of all world revolutions. Gildo is aware that fact and that is why his artistic language is, different from the expression by action and agitation. Although we are inclined to call this term the actual artistic language, I think that the direct agitation by default doesn't belong to the domain of art, because artistic discourse was to upgrade, warn ad comment, and that's just what Gildo Bavčević is doing with his artistic manifestations.

The artist is dedicating to the theme of money the whole series of performances and videos such as the travelling performance Profit versus wellbeing, where he, with the hood covering his head, is gradually destroying the coin to un-recognizability with a sledgehammer, reducing it to the amorphous piece of metal by which he clearly leaves the message what money truly is. By performing this performance in various countries he was always using the domestic coin, and this performance represents a certain work-in-progress since Gildo wants to use it still as a sort of warning and the personal showdown with monetary politics. This series of performances in which the author problematizes money, or it's social, economic, and political dictate, is not only impressive for its clear message that is disseminated by artist, but also for its strength of implementation. Gildo takes in the wholesome of himself in every performance and suggestively witnesses that he completely stands behind the great symbolically-metaphorically designed narrative connotation.

It is similar with the interactiveness since Gildo doesn't agitate and doesn't look for the participation of others, he henceforth simply forces the people with this suggestive performance to join him, often and unconsciously, and thus become an integral part of the artistic act.

Mladen Lučić