SPEAKER SYSTEM

Square of the Victims of Fascism, Zagreb, 1994

In cooperation with the Student Health Care Center, Headquarters of the Croatian Democratic Union, a clothing store nearby, and the Croatian Association of Visual Artists

The project Speaker System included a series of interrelated installations (photos, especially designed cardboard boxes, flyers) and actions (distribution of flyers, radio program) placed on different location on the Square of the Victims of Fascism in Zagreb. The project had an activist aspect to it, as it promoted the idea of European identity being threatened by US-American and Japanese media industry.

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A series of modular cardboard boxes, which were for this very purpose designed replicas of Sony packaging boxes, were manufactured for the project and placed on three locations: in the gallery space, in the headquarters of the then governing party and in a window of a clothing store. The modified design of the Sony cardboard box encompassed a text added to the box, specifically, a Wim Wenders quote from 1993, in which the director states that the European identity had been threatened by the expansion of the American film and the Japanese electronic industries. This very text was the focal point of the project. I personally distributed the flyers with the same text to the Student Health Care Center and the CDU – Croatian Democratic Union headquarters as well as read that text on the national radio program. If the European cinema disappears, Europe will disappear too, it will become part of the Third World, said Wenders.

The other focus and motiv of the project was the Sony logo. Back in the early 1990s, I used to photograph the Sony logo wherever I traveled. Back then, I felt that logo was one of the most prominent common elements of cityscapes across European countries I had visited. I also photographed the Sony logo in Zagreb, as soon as the first unofficial Sony retailer appeared in the city center. That shop was owned by the family of Dr. Franjo Tuđman, the first president of the independent Croatia in the 1990s, the head of the then governing party. The store with its three-dimensional Sony logo was located around 200 hundred meters from the gallery space and my installation as well as from the CDU party headquarters. I photographically multiplied that logo for the installation on the façade of the Home of the Croatian Artists Association. I also installed a series of photographs of the Sony logo onto the façade of the CDU headquarters. However, my critique was not understood since nobody reacted.

For me, Speaker System represented the possibility of critically reflecting on power structures, and on activist engagement (distributing flyers) through communication with incidental passersby in public space. The project was produced within the exhibition Keep that Frequency Clear at the Croatian Association of Visual Artists and was awarded the Zagreb Salon Award in 1994.