ALL ABOUT TITO 

Old Village Museum, Kumrovec, Croatia, 2012/2013

In collaboration with David Smithson With the participation of: Ahmed and Elmasa Kavgić, from Labin-Raša; Nadir and Fatima Dedić, Zagreb; Ivica Kukolja, Balija Mijo and Ljudevit Tršinski, from the town of Zabok; Vilim Broz, Mikša Ivan, Dario Raškaj, Danijel and Dado Vrudelja, from Kumrovec.

The project dealt with the ambivalence of the figure of Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980). While some dismiss him as a dictator, the number of his fans increased significantly over the last years, as the network of civil associations of the Tito Society spread throughout the region of former Yugoslavia. With the participation of several members of Tito organizations from three localities in Croatia, we modelled a series of Tito portraits and recorded several video interviews. The modelling workshop took place as an intervention into the museum space of the Tito’s birthplace. A year later, our sculptures were exhibited there as well, on the occasion of Tito’s birthday, when approx. 10.000 people came to the place to pay tribute. For that very day, one of the participants wrote a new Tito’s speech that he then publicly performed several times. On the day, all the participants were present in the exhibition interacting with the audiences. This presentation of the project was in fact more about the people who created it, and the people who visited it, than about Tito himself.

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Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. He was secretary-general (later president) of the Communist Party (League of Communists) of Yugoslavia (1939–80), supreme commander of the Yugoslav Partisans (1941–45) and the Yugoslav People’s Army (1945–80), and marshal (1943–80), premier (1945–53), and president (1953–80) of Yugoslavia. Tito was the chief architect of the “second Yugoslavia,” a socialist federation that lasted from World War II until 1991. He was the first communist leader in power to defy Soviet hegemony, a backer of independent roads to socialism (sometimes referred to as “national communism”), and a promoter of the policy of nonalignment between the two hostile blocs in the Cold War. (from Encyclopedia Britannica)

With the change of political systems in 1990s, and under the pressure of revisionists, the Croatian official politics and mainstream media pushed to redefine Tito as a controversial communist dictator, and to hold him responsible for the crimes of and after the World War II in the region. The presence of Tito has been partially banned in public space, his monuments mostly removed, the streets named after him mostly renamed. The Old Village Museum, a preserved 19th century village where Tito was born, formerly dedicated to his, childhood, his impoverished background as well as to his political work, has been transformed into an ethnographic open-air museum with a programming that neglects the fact that Tito was born there.

In the last decade, however, a network of civil associations of the Josip Broz Tito Society emerged all over Croatia, and in the former Yugoslavia region. They gather people who think of Tito as a great politician and a great man. Every year for Tito's birthday about ten thousand people come together in the village of his birth to pay tribute and celebrate. Nevertheless, there has been nothing to see related to Tito's life and accomplishments in the museum, except for a photo exhibition showing US president Nixon visiting the village, which should serve the needs of the increasing number of American tourists.

This project was an attempt to engage the community of Tito’s fans to reclaim the Old Village Museum as a historical and memorial site related to Josip Broz Tito. The participants of the project were members of the Tito organizations from Kumrovec, Zagreb, and two other small towns in Croatia. Our end goal was to create an exhibition to be shown in the museum premises during the month of May and thus also for Tito's birthday in 2013.

Our open-air 10-day sculpture workshop led by David Smithson took place in September 2012 and was an intervention in the museum space itself. The interaction with tourists was an important aspect to it, as we used the opportunity to explain what we were doing and why, in order to counteract the official museum narrative. Each participant modeled one head of Tito which corresponded to a particular period of his life, and was also related to particular historical moments and related political ideas: Tito as a hungry child, Tito imprisoned as a young revolutionary, Tito as a leader of non-aliened movement, etc. Besides learning modelling, the modelling workshop was also an opportunity to discuss details about Tito’s biography and accomplishment, and furthermore to exchange thoughts and ideas about society and politics in general.

Three schoolboys from the neighborhood were curious and wanted to join modelling workshop. As they approached us, hard to believe, they did not know anything about Tito. They modelled Tito as a child. Our video workshop was about collecting memories and statements about Tito, his life and work, as a video archive to accompany the modeled heads in the exhibition. Due to the lack of resources, I never finished editing these interviews. The material also includes statements by our two Roma participants, concentration camp survivors.

In May 2013 we set up our exhibition in one of the museum’s buildings, in the old 19th century school building. On May 25th, as buses with visitors started coming in the Old Village Museum, we were together with several participants in the exhibition talking with our audiences. The other participants soon joined. One participant read repeatedly a new Tito’s speech he wrote for the occasion. Some 2000 people visited our exhibition on that day.

 

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