Bojan Mrđenović - Budućnost
“I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame. What's left us then?“
James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922
Starting from the early eighties, some artists have begun a proper campaign of re-appropriation and relation of their surroundings through photography. It was more that the sole re-appropriation though, it was more a re-establishment of a relationship with the space. Seems strange, but a similar practice was in a way forgotten until that moment. Talking specifically about Italy, through a project like “Viaggio in Italia“ (A journey in Italy), Italian photographers like Luigi Ghirri, Olivo Barbieri, Gabriele Basilico, Mario Cresci and others, revealed how people had a profoundly mediated relationship with the reality around them, an opinion built by different types of media throughout the years. “Similar cases could be found as well in cinema or literature, while TV is all about faces. What lies around us is never represented“1.
The negation of the space that surrounds us leads to an incapacity of perceiving and slowly to a state of disattention and indifference. The Italian case is specific because of its deep roots in history and in the image of monumental representation of the territory through its landmarks. The changes and the everyday were rarely taken into consideration. In that case, photography played an important role, a role of rethinking the space and getting to know it as it was. It allowed a more direct relationship with the immediate surroundings but it gave access to the larger picture as well.
A similar situation could have been traced in Croatia through the past years too. Certain economic and political decisions are directly connected to the managing of space, therefore speculations, crisis and the perseverance of the transitional state of things have determined a slow disintegration of once unified and relatively well conceived territory. In his series “Budućnost“, photographer Bojan Mrđenović analyses the state in which buildings belonging to, once state-owned, trading company named "Budućnost" (Future), are now. Degraded and ruined, those buildings still stand as a reminiscence of the past and as a reminder of the consequences of bad socio-political decisions and behaviour. Their name stands still to underline an almost ironical statement.
Since the 18th century, we could testify an artistic obsession with ruins. In was a central theme in European art, in poetry, literature, architecture and design, like there was a growing cult of melancholy. The same fascination can be found in many artistic productions nowadays as well, but unlike Gordon Matta Clarck or Rachel Whiteread, Bojan Mrđenović doesn't interact with the ruin, he simply documents it without making any statement. But the artwork is a statement itself; a certain position is taken, for how much neutral and distanced. He is dealing with the present croatian reality in the manner of some New Topographics-inspired photography. Showing ruined and abandoned buildings of the former trading company in his case means documenting the state of things objectively that brings out the inner characteristic of the chosen medium, photography.
Bojan Mrđenović, b.1987 is a croatian photographer based in Zagreb. He studied at the Fine Art Academy in Zagreb and participated at numerous solo and group shows internationally.
All photos © Bojan Mrđenović
