Vive le fromage au lait cru! / Group Photograph with Beba the Cow

Kristina Leko, 2003/05
12' DV
Single-channel video (unlimited edition)
No dialog, on-screen texts in Croatian, German or English (three versions)
Camera by Ana Hušman

Context

The documented happenings took place within the exhibition Cheese and Cream, organized by the non-profit organization BLOK - Local Base for Cultural Refreshment and HDLU - Croatian Association of Visual Artists, curators Vesna Vuković and Iva Radmila Janković. Cheese and Cream was a long-term research, documentary, and activist project that resulted in a series of artworks, artifacts, happenings, and actions in progress from 2002 to 2013, dedicated to supporting and protecting Zagreb's dairy women. From 2002 to 2004, the project was initiated and realized in cooperation with the non-profit organization BLOK - Local Base for Culture Refreshment, Zagreb.

Description

It is a video documentation of the two actions/happenings that both took place on December 7, 2003 at the HDLU - House of Croatian Artists in Zagreb. The video is divided into two chapters. The first chapter, Vive le fromage au lait cru!, documents the happening that took place inside the building. A situation common in an open marketplace was transferred to a gallery space - three dairywomen distributed cheese and cream free of charge to the gallery audience. The light and the setting transform the situation into a surreal one. The second chapter of the video, Group Photograph with Beba the Cow, documents the happening that took place on the same day outside the gallery, which is one of the main squares in the center of Zagreb. The happening consisted of the public posing for a group photo with the cow Beba who—one of over 5500 cows in the Zagreb County—attended the opening of the Cheese and Cream exhibition that day.

Display: The video can be shown together with other videos and artifacts from the Cheese and Cream project.

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