Undecidable Question

Myth Interrupted by Goran Sergej Pristaš is a project proposition from 2006 that was published in the 100th issue of Maska journal. It suggests to reconstruct three mass gatherings from the ex-Yugoslavian period in Zagreb: Partisans entering Zagreb (1945), student demonstrations (1968) and the final farewell from Tito’s remains (1980).

“We haven’t reenacted, reconstructed or institutionalised anything. We tried to expose ourselves to those watching and listening, to suspend the time flow of our own speech and say that we are interrupting it. By interrupting our own speech and myths, we have entered the zone of politics.” This is how the performative installation the Undecidable Question begins. It uses sound recordings of a documentary feature Oslobođenje Zagreba (The Liberation of Zagreb, 1945), of a spontaneous mass singing of the song Fala (Thank you) at the farewell from J. B. Tito’s remains and of debates in the scope of the BADco. project Institucije treba graditi (Institutions Need to be Constructed, 2016). The text is inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem I Dwell in Possibility.

The installation will reflect those spontaneous collectives whose functioning was entirely unpredictable. As we live in uncertain times ourselves, we will, with the help of the spectators, try to activate the meaning of the community and the pronoun “we”.