Getting rid of your own weight -My photography exhibition, Zagreb, April 2023

I sneak like a thief. Always in the early mornings, looking for the intimate light of the beginning of the day, still heavy from the long night. I walk in silence, avoiding the attention of prying eyes behind the fogged windows that often have traces of the owners' faces imprinted on them, like footprints in the snow. I enter cautiously, first looking towards the crumbling vaults, as if seeking permission from an invisible host. Shards of glass crackle under my feet as I explore dark corners forgotten by light and touch gray, dirty walls whose layers hide traces of internal history. I crouch under leaning logs, precariously climb fragile stairs, tap in fear on cracked floors persistently searching for ideal positions from which I can tell the story. Out of curiosity, in these huge spaces I often lower and raise my voice, and listen to how the broken corners transmit it irregularly, sometimes mysteriously swallowing it, and sometimes forcing it out through long-broken windows.

In those moldy tombs, once created to offer life's comfort and safety, I always instinctively breathe shallower, as if I'm afraid to inhale someone's part, a piece of unknown history with the taste of bitter dust. And yet, I regularly stop and imagine the people who once lived there, I give them names and roles, like a director in a family drama. I think about the color of the dressing gowns and slippers they used, about the morning hairstyles, about the tone of voice and the habits of touching each other, about the short sentences they told each other, about the small and big lies without which they would not have survived together.

As I stumble over the remnants of material from the collapsed ceilings, I think about the arrangement of the furniture, the color of the cabinets, the height and shape of the chandelier. I think about the sides of the world and about the lighting at different times of the day, I study how deep the sun's drawings reach through the broken windows, the shapes of which change with each branch moved by the wind. I go outside, jumping over rotting beams and moss-covered bricks, and explore the neglected terraces covered with broken tiles and wild creepers, looking for the place where the table was where they had breakfast and dinner in the summer. I imagine them adding salt and pepper to each other and thanking each other with barely visible nods, immersed in the silence of eternal repetition. And actually, somehow I imagine myself in such a life, on the same chair facing east.

I fantasize because I believe in parallel realities. I believe there are hundreds of lives in which we exist simultaneously. I believe that with every choice we make, we create new choices. I believe that this space in one of those other realities is completely different and completely alive. There, in the ruins and dust, I often see these comparative everyday things, dancing before my eyes, and I smile contentedly, because that way nothing ever really ends.

And then, in those dead, long-deserted rooms, I set scenes, stage the collision of the living and the inanimate. Warm skin in contact with rough, peeling brick, soft palms timidly feel the rusted bars, warm breath from the mouth collides with the cold, damp breath of the porous walls, tinged with the bitter smell of rotting leaves. So I set the stage so that the fictional show can begin.

I intervene by mixing the past with the present, inanimate with living, cold with warm. I try to reset myself by creating a distance, a new angle for observation, because human contact with the past is always learning from what was. And about what will be.

We carefully read the marks on the walls, like tired blind people we look for exits that once existed, we grope and study drawings and graffiti, we try to define ourselves, to get to know each other.

And actually, now I know, we try to learn something in vain by celebrating a personal delusion. In the short space of time we have, we comfort ourselves in the desire to color our personal existence with meaning.

I actually like ruins because they bring me closer to the lazy omnipotence of nature. In her disinterested swallowing of what man has laboriously created, there is the majesty of the greatest works of art, the cruel casualness of the creator. And observing that harmonious destruction of what we experience as harmony and order, it is hard not to enjoy its easy victory over our imperfection.

Ruins are the ironic smile of eternity that we so persistently try to conquer.

Within these ruins that nature is thoroughly reclaiming, human beings are strangers, mere reminders of another lost battle. We are a performance about the futility of the roles we give ourselves, about our own greatness and meaning, about the importance for the final picture. We are a fictional God who rides a Harley until he runs out of gas. We are ants who read their fate in a deadly shoe that accidentally missed by a centimeter. We are five minutes into a day that does not know our calculation of time.

I love ruins because the awareness of my own insignificance calms me down. I learn in them, dreaming of a relationship without limits while humbly kneeling before the utopia of creativity. I photograph creating an illusion, I record my trip trying to fool myself with the superficial beauty of creation.

In this blind escape from meaningless reality, I persistently flirt with my own subconscious, which never sleeps, and at the same time I realize that it is mocking me. Or am I mocking her, it's hard to know who the real me is.

And like that, awake dreaming, I console myself with pieces of reality, so I stand, crawl or crouch while I looking for purity of form in photographs, I looking for aesthetics in non-aesthetics, I looking for order in disorder, I looking for stillness in movement.

Actually, I'm looking for personal silence. I am looking for freedom from my own weight.

Oslobađanje od vlastite težine

Uvlačim se kradom, poput lopova. Uvijek u rana jutra, tražeći intimnu svjetlost početka dana, još tešku od dugačke noći. Hodam u tišini, izbjegavajući pažnju znatiželjnih očiju iza zamagljenih prozora koji često imaju utisnute tragove vlasničkih lica, poput otisaka u snijegu. Ulazim oprezno, prvo pogledavajući prema ruševnim svodovima, kao da tražim dozvolu od nevidljivog domaćina. Komadići stakla pucketaju mi pod nogama dok istražujem mračne kutove zaboravljene od svjetla i dodirujem sive, prljave zidove čiji slojevi kriju tragove interne povijesti. Saginjem se ispod nagnutih štokova, nesigurno penjem po lomljivim stepenicama, u strahu tapkam po ispucalim podovima uporno tražeći idealne pozicije iz kojih mogu ispričati priču. Iz znatiželje, u tim ogromnim prostorima često spuštam i dižem glas, pa slušam kako ga izlomljeni uglovi nepravilno prenose, nekad ga misteriozno gutajući, a nekad tjerajući van kroz davno razbijene prozore.

U tim pljesnivim grobnicama jednom stvorenim da nude životnu ugodu i sigurnost uvijek nagonski pliće dišem, kao da me je strah udahnuti nečiji dio, komadić nepoznate povijesti s okusom gorke prašine. A ipak, redovno zastajem i zamišljam ljude koji su nekada tu živjeli, dajem im imena i uloge, poput režisera u obiteljskoj drami. Razmišljam o boji kućnih ogrtača i papučama koje su koristili, o jutarnjim frizurama, o tonu glasa i navikama međusobnih dodira, o kratkim rečenicama koje su si upućivali, o malim i velikim lažima bez kojih ne bi skupa opstali.

Dok se spotičem po ostatcima šute s olinjalih stropova, razmišljam o razmještaju namještaja, boji ormarića, visini i obliku lustera. Razmišljam o stranama svijeta i o osvjetljenju u različita doba dana, proučavam koliko kroz slomljene prozore duboko dopiru sunčevi crteži čiji oblici se mijenjaju sa svakom od vjetra pomaknutom granom. Izlazim van preskačući trule grede i mahovinom obraslu ciglu pa istražujem zapuštene terase prekrivene skršenim crijepom i divljim puzavcima, tražeći mjesto gdje je bio stol na kojem su u ljeto doručkovali i večerali. Zamišljam ih kako si dodaju sol i papar te si zahvaljuju jedva vidljivim kimanjem, uronjeni u šutnju vječnog ponavljanja. A ustvari, nekako zamišljam sebe u takvom životu, na istoj stolici okrenutoj prema istoku.

Maštam jer vjerujem u paralelne stvarnosti. Vjerujem da postoje stotine života u kojima postojimo istovremeno. Vjerujem da svakim izborom koji napravimo stvaramo nove izbore. Vjerujem da je taj prostor u jednoj od onih drugih stvarnosti sasvim drugačiji i potpuno živ. Tamo, u razvalinama i prašini, često vidim te usporedne svakodnevnice, plešu pred mojim očima, a ja se smiješim zadovoljan, jer na taj način nikada ništa zapravo ne završava.

I tada u tim mrtvim, odavno opustjelim sobama postavljam scene, uprizorujem sudar živog i neživog. Topla koža u dodiru s hrapavom, oljuštenom ciglom, meki dlanovi bojažljivo opipavaju zahrđale rešetke, topli dah iz usta sudara se s hladnim, vlažnim dahom poroznih zidova, obojanim u gorkom mirisu trulog lišća. Pa postavljam pozornicu da izmišljena predstava može započeti.

Interveniram miješajući prošlost sa sadašnjošću, neživo sa živim, hladno s toplim. Pokušavam se resetirati stvarajući odmak, novi kut za promatranje jer kontakt čovjeka s prošlošću je uvijek učenje iz onoga što je bilo. I o onome što će biti.

Pažljivo čitamo iz tragova po zidovima, kao umorni slijepci tražimo izlaze koji su nekada postojali, pipkajući proučavamo crteže i grafite, pokušavamo se definirati, spoznati.

A ustvari, sada znam, uzalud pokušavamo nešto naučiti slaveći osobnu deluziju. U tom kratkom vremenskom prostoru koji imamo, utješno si lažemo u želji da osobno postojanje obojamo smislom.

Zapravo volim ruševine jer se u njima približavam lijenoj svemogućnosti prirode. U njenom nezainteresiranom gutanju onoga što je čovjek s mukom stvorio, postoji veličanstvenost najvećih umjetničkih djela, okrutna ležernost stvaratelja. I promatrajući taj skladni rasap onoga što doživljavamo harmonijom i redom, teško je ne uživati u njezinoj lagodnoj pobjedi nad našom nesavršenošću.

Ruševine su ironični smiješak vječnosti koju tako uporno pokušavamo pokoriti.

Unutar tih razvalina koje priroda temeljito vraća sebi, ljudska bića su stranci, obični podsjetnici na još jednu izgubljenu bitku. Mi smo performans o uzaludnosti uloga koje si dajemo, o vlastitoj veličini i značenju, o bitnosti za konačnu sliku. Mi smo izmaštani Bog koji jaše harleya dok mu ne nestane benzina. Mi smo mravi koji vlastitu sudbinu očitavaju u smrtonosnoj cipeli koja je za centimetar slučajno promašila. Mi smo pet minuta u danu koji ne zna za naše računanje vremena.

Volim ruševine jer me smiruje svjesnost o vlastitoj nebitnosti. U njima učim, sanjareći o odnosu bez granica dok ponizno klečim pred utopijom kreativnosti. Fotografiram stvarajući iluziju, bilježim svoj izlet pokušavajući se zavarati površnom ljepotom stvorenog.

Pri tom slijepom bijegu od besmislene realnosti, uporno koketiram s vlastitom podsviješću koja nikad ne spava, te pritom shvaćam da mi se ruga. Ili se ja rugam njoj, teško je znati tko je pravi Ja.

I takav, budan sanjajući, tješim se komadićima stvarnosti, pa stojim, puzim ili čučim dok u fotografijama tražim čistoću forme, tražim estetiku u neestetici, tražim red u neredu, tražim mirovanje u pokretu.

A ustvari tražim osobnu tišinu. Tražim oslobođenje od vlastite težine.