about
shop (coming soon)
S O U N D A R T
twelve dead birds
two seconds
happy place
metanoia
soundentity
grundstimmung
meandrophone
sounds in disappearance
interieur
remix mangelos
E X H I B I T I O N S
22.15
transsiberian railway
L U M I N O A C O U S T I C S
lighterature reading
route 666
luminophone
B O O K S
mirila
maybe this is my city
I N S T A L A T I O N S
sky_zadar_8/8/2014
how to explain fat to dead beuys
manulera
tie2tie
mirila
disection
future divercities
here, where we are no more
kino pobjeda
fragile
soma/tess
positive feedback of an acoustic signal
between silences
on silence
from agora to syntagma
circleing for flute and other stuff
6666 weeks later
azot after bogdanović
azot after wain
richter’s view
lightune.g
sinelinea
sound & light design
graphic & web design
facebook
instagram
vimeo
you tube
soundcloud
bandcamp
photographs: Anders Weberg, Interieur installation in Stian Gallery, 2011
INTERIEUR
Intuitive Composition for Three Electric Circuits
P R E F A C E: B O J A N G A G I Ć
My grandfather Petar Gagić was one of the commanders on the border between the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Italy before World War II. He was stationed with his family in Biograd na Moru, near Zadar. At the beginning of the war, after the capitulation of the Kingdom, he ends up in Italian captivity in the Zadar Officer's Prison.
During the occupation and his time in prison, my grandmother Milica Gagić works as a teacher and raises their two children on her own.
After Italy's fall, my grandfather escapes from prison and obtains temporary asylum in Switzerland. As he was a military person, he doesn't want to participate in the continuation of the war on either side, and he tries to get papers to go to America, where my grandmother's relatives live. However, they refuse to provide him with a guarantee letter. The only remaining option was emigration to Australia. During his asylum and after arriving in Sydney, he exchanges letters with my grandmother, who in the meantime manages to secure a somewhat decent life for herself and the children in Dalmatia and chooses not to join him in Australia and start a new life.
In a very short period, their letter exchange stops and turns into complete silence that lasts for almost sixty years. My grandmother lives with my aunt in Zadar, on Luigi Rugi Street No. 5, she retires, loses her vision due to cataracts, and my aunt teaches at an economic school in Borik and takes care of her. My father lives with my mother and me in Zagreb. Every trace of my grandfather is lost.
The story of my grandfather was rarely mentioned in the family. From my childhood, I only remember sometimes daydreaming that he would return one day and bring me a kangaroo.
At the end of 2001, my grandfather contacts us through the Red Cross tracing service, and shortly after that, we receive a letter written in Cyrillic and English, in which he describes the events until his arrival in Australia, but he doesn't talk about anything later. Along with the letter, he sends a photo taken before World War II. Communication is mainly established through my mother, who remains emotionally untouched by the whole story. Through occasional phone conversations, she manages to find out some details from his life, such as working in a toy factory, living alone (we assume he remarried and his wife passed away), and being in a nursing home.
In mid-2002, my father passes away, and shortly after that, my grandfather and grandmother also pass away. The story comes to an end.
ptotograph: Unknown author, Milica and Petar Gagić, somewhere in Lika, 1935 photograph: Unknown author, Predrag and Jasminka Gagić, Biogradn/m, 1946
"Interieur" is born as an attempt to search for things that have remained untouched in these sixty years, belonging to a clearly defined physical space - the history of my grandmother and grandfather.
A few years later, while setting up video equipment for the Zadar Youth Salon on the peninsula, the projectors occasionally went off due to power network instability. While looking for the reason and a solution to this problem, the basic concept of the work was created.
The alternating current circuit in Zadar was installed in 1932 (the city first received electricity in 1875 from the ship Miramare).
I record the first electrical circuit in my grandmother's apartment. The second electrical circuit was filmed in the Citadel building (prison). My friend Damir record the third electrical circuit while he was in Sydney, in the building where my grandfather lived.
The recording technique is fundamentally very simple: any electrical device connected to electricity amplifies the basic frequency of 50Hz by creating a circular mass.
These three electrical circuits have an unchanging sound value over time. Each of them (although they sound almost the same) is a separate narrative instrument. The narrator/author, by modulating these frequency sequences, creates an intuitive composition of memories.
year: 2011
medium: live set / installation
live set curator: Max Hitchings
installation curator: Anders Weberg
first live set performance: Cafe Oto
irst installation: Stian Gallery
copyright: all rights reserved, Bojan Gagić, 2024.