Kata Mijatović / Works2014 - 1997

Kata Mijatović is multimedia artist. She was born in 1956 in Branjina, Croatia. In 1981 shegraduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Osijek. From 1988-1991 she is member ofthe art group Swamp /Baranja. From 1991-1993 she studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti,Florence. In 1997 she graduated painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb. Since 2005she runs AŽ Gallery at Artistic organisation Žitnjak Ateliers, Zagreb. Since 2007 she is memberof the art group PLEH. She represent Croatia at 55th International Art Exhibition La Biennaledi Venezia/2013, with the project Between the Sky and the Earth /curated by BrankoFranceschi/. She lives and works in Zagreb.

The reconsideration of the complex relationship between the conscious and unconscious, be-tween the visible outside world and the invisible inner mental spaces is the main topic of KataMijatović,s artistic preocupation. The starting point always is the dichotomy between two psy-chic spaces, the conscious and unconscious, their interaction and the possibility or impossi-bility of their mutual communication. A particular segment within the framework of theseresearch consists of works / projects with dreams, where the dreams are a basic structuraltemplate and motivating content. Dealing with the dream phenomenon, these works prob-lematize the perception of reality in relations conscious-unconscious, and explore the functionof the unconscious in the construction of reality.

The Girls Choir/Dubrovnik, performance, The City is Dead, Long Live the City, urban festival,Dubrovnik /2014

Screaming of the young girls in the performance The Girls Choir/ Dubrovnik, is in function ofenergy cleaning and confirmation that city is alive: above all, screaming evokes 'awakening'.For those who are performing it, screaming is primary expression that occurs at the edges ofthe language and releases body's and mind's energy flow. In order to awake absolute attentionsimilar procedures were used by Zen teachers (for example punch with a stick suddenly andfor no reason during teaching). In similar way, screaming causes immediate and maximumattention, maximum vigilance and focus on here and now. Implemented in specific publicspace of the city, screaming is at the same time, a cry of rebellion, and of non consenting.

Resume, performace, Industrial Art Biennal, I.A.B., Labin, 2014

The performance is reinterpretation of Kata Mijatović’s dream from 1991 of bringing coal outof a mine as the resume’ abstract of her dealings with dreams.The account of the dream: I go down to the abandoned mine where a heap of coal and awheel-barrow waits for me. I load coal into the wheel-barrow and bring it out into daylight. Inperformance artist shift coal in a wheel-barrow from one to the other side of a stage. The sameaction is repeated in video projection. The soundtrack at the end of performance is True Faithby New Order.

Previus realization: Resume, MM Centre, 2007, Zagreb

To Be, video instalation, Gallery 60-90-60, Zagreb, 2013

The exhibition starts from assumption that the house/home, where we all live during our ex-istence, in fact, is life that is given to us, life in which we exist. In metaphysical sense, our lives(throught our bodies) function as 'houses' in which we have moved in, when we had been born,and we leave them when we die. The video installation To be consists of two conected rectan-gles. The rectangle of salt, set up on ground where are placed simplified models of blackhouses made of styrofoa, and projection of the same situation taken from above from bird'seye view, placed on the wall. Situation on the ground 'moves' in projection on the wall and inthat way emphasizes the view at the existence, the view at life which is basically the projectionof our existence, or what we can see from our homes/lives. The installation is accompaniedby the song Homeway, composed by noise-pop girl band Leave, which acted in early 90s inOsijek. Nostalgic song Homeway talks about home in war-time, from the perspective of 'leavingor staying', and brings an emotional breakthrough in cold black and white installation's con-struction.

Between the Sky and the Earth, multimedia installation, Museum of Contemprary Art of Republic Srpska, Banja Luka/2014

After representing Republic of Croatia at the 55th Venice Biennale, Kata Mijatović’s projectBetween the Sky and the Earth, are presented at the Art Pavilion in Zagreb/ 2014, and at theMuseum of Contemprary Art of Republic Srpska, Banja Luka/2014. Project and exhibition arecurated by Branko Franceschi.

Every civilisation from the beginning of times considered that dreams, as manifest form ofunconscious function of mind, were a phenomenon indicating that reality is not as real as wemay think. This is exactly what the famous saying by Zhuangzi, follower of Lao Tse from the6th century BC is about: “Am I a man who dreamt that he was a butterfly or am I a butterflydreaming about being a man?” Dreams indicate how problematic is the concept of perceptiveprojection of reality after which the reality is equated with its sensory perception. They alsocontribute to the argumentation adhering to the definition of reality as a mere projection ofour minds. In the civilisation of today perception of time and space have completely changed.We increasingly co-exist in virtual worlds that we produce using technology while forgettingthat already at our own, organic level we have the innate ability to create virtual worlds – thisis exactly what our unconscious does in our dreams. The phenomenon of dream problema-tises our perception and conception of reality and because of the aforementioned changes itis more important to become aware of it today than ever before./Branko Franceschi, from the exhibition catalogue/

Between the Sky and the Eart, multimedia installation, Art Pavilion in Zagreb/ 2014

The project Between the Sky and the Earth, presented at 55th Venice Biennale, is conceivedas an ambiental installation that brings together Dream Archive - an interactive web portal asa central work of the project, with artist's video works and documentation of performancesrealized during 20 years of her work on the theme of the complex relationship between theconscious and the unconscious, and, as well as, with site and context specific performanceand video Unconscious: Canal Grande.

Between the Sky and the Earth, exhibition wiev, Croatian Pavilion on 55th Venice Biennale, Sala Tiziano, Venice, 2013

Between the Sky and the Earth, exhibition wiev, Croatian Pavilion on 55th Venice Biennale, Sala Tiziano, Venice, 2013

Dream Archive /http://arhivsnova.hr/ is a domain where visitors can place/archive theirdreams. The project was realised as the central work of the exhibition Between Heaven andEarth, presented at 55 Biennale di Venezia /Croatian Pavillion /2013. So far, more than 2000dreams in different languages have been collected in the Dream Archive. The inclusion of a large number of participants create a global 'pool' of dreams; open a spaceto explore the phenomenon of dreams, and what it is that people dream about today. DreamArchive ask questions to which we still don't have the answers - why do people dream, andwhat is the function of the unconscious in the construction of reality. Despite all the paradoxesin wich we live, today's world is functioning increasingly as a multiplied, pre-agreed construc-tion of the conscious 'self'. This dominant model of experience of reality, and constructing thereality, is a ready-made blueprint that we are born into. Images of the world, which the con-scious self emits today with increasing speed, most often serve purely to maintain or add tothese constructions. Our understanding of the world basically do not include the knowledge and the power of thepsychological spacies behind the conscious self /among wich is particulary emphasized un-coscious/ nor its help in the personal discovery of the mystery of existence on a universallevel. Our civilization defines the psychic space of the unconscious solely as a space of su-pression. At the same time this 'internal' spaces, defines us as the human beings much morethan we are ready to acknowledge. We spend nearly half our lives asleep, in the unconscious,a fact which - for whatever reason - we refuse to address. And yet the systems of mass control,such as political and media manipulation, can only be avoided in sleep - sometimes we aretruly 'awakened' only in dreams.Thus the unconscious, primarily in our dreams, becomes oneof the last oases of the internal and private that can still offer some resistance to the 'agreed'picture of the world.

Dream Archive, interactive web portal, www.arhivsnova.hr , 2013

Video Unconscious: Canal Grande was commissioned and premiered within the Between theSky and the Earth project that represented Croatia at the 55th Venice Biennale. Video captureswhite gondola’s voyage through the canals of Venice at dawn. Artist is sleeping inside gondolacovered with white bed linen, gondolier is dressed in black. The video is continuation of the2010 performance Sleeping Between Sky and Earth, when artist slept one night in IvanKozaric’s 1965 Shape of Spaces sculpture installed on the terrace of the Museum of Con-temporary Art in Zagreb. The shape and white color of gondola resemble the form of the sculp-ture which itself evokes the form of the cradle. In both performances the emphasis is onsleeping that takes us into the unconscious state of mind which essentially defines us ashuman being. Water is sublimation of the unconscious, and Venice immersed in water be-comes the City of Unconscious. White gondola and sleeping artist contrasted with gondolierdressed in black represent the duality of black and white, day and night, conscious and un-conscious, often used in artist’s works. The video also refers to the symbolist paintings ofArnold Böcklin and others which often depict motive of voyage in the boat as a metaphor forthe transition into the worlds beyond.

Unconscious: Canal Grande, video, 45', 2013

Božena’s Dream / Wipers video is inspired by the text of the dream published in SelectedDreams - a collection of recorded dreams written by my friends and acquaintances, which Ihave been accumulating from 2001 onwards. The process of recalling of dreams in the videowas used both as the content and the structural framework, similarly as in the series of worksthat primarily dealt with the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious or thetranslation of the subconscious into the conscious. Božena’s Dream / Wipers is based on therecollection of the dream by the Croatian artist Božena Končić Badurina focused on the expe-rience of dying and thoughts of death. The video is recorded in a static frame from the insideof a car, focusing on the wipers removing the watercascading down the windshield. The textof Božena’s dream appears repeatedly only to disappear completely by the end of the video.Video footage functions as a membrane on which the text of the dream is written and thereforeit becomes essential to the meaning of the work.

Božena’s Dream / Wipers, 2011, video, 11’ 30’’, Galženica Gallery, Zagreb

Vlasta’s Dream / Crowd video is inspired by the text of the dream published in SelectedDreams - a collection of dream records written by my friends and acquaintances, which I havebeen accumulating from 2001 onwards. Video is based on the text of the dream by Croatianartist Vlasta Žanić. Similar to the video Božena’s Dream / Wipers, experience of dying andthoughts on death are the focal point of the dream. The background for Vlasta’s Dream /Crowd is an everyday scene on Ban Jelačić Square in Zagreb, taken from bird’s eye view andpresenting bustle of people, arrivals and departures of trams. Text of Vlasta’s dream appearsrepeatedly only to disappear completely by the end of the video. Video footage functions as amembrane on which the text of dream is written becoming therefore essential to the meaningof the work. The membrane looks as if permeable, so that the recorded reality absorbs the at-mosphere of a dream, the same way the dream, thanks to the video footage in the background,loses its personal, (private)reasons and takes on the characteristics of an enigmatic universalmessage.

Vlasta’s Dream / Crowd, 2011, video, 20’ 09’’, Galženica Gallery

Video is filmed in one of the pedestrian underpasses in Zagreb. The static camera capturespeople coming and going through the underpass. Eleven recollections of dreams by artist’sfriends are written over the video-recording, appearing and disappearing consecutively by theend of the video. Video footage functions as a membrane on which the text of dream is writtenand therefore it is essential to the meaning of the work. The membrane looks as if permeable,so that the recorded reality absorbs the atmosphere of a dream, the same way the dream,thanks to the video footage in the background, lose its personal and private reasons and takeon the characteristics of the enigmatic universal message.

Dreams from the Underpass, 2011, video, 22’, Galženica Gallery

This is a performed intervention on (in) the sculpture of the Croatian artist Ivan Kožarić Formof Space, displayed in the inner court of the MSU. The intervention consists of spending thenight inside the sculpture using the pillow, bed sheet and comforter. The work is accompaniedby six-hour long video documentation.The performance is inspired by Ivan Kožarić' definition of sculpture as a 'form of space' realizedthrough the relationship between two basic elements heaven and earth. To follow this defini-tion, spending the night inside the Kozaric sculpture (which does look like a elegant luxuriouscouch) goes beyond the physical dimension of the performance. It advances the idea of a priv-ileged stay in the immaterial, universal world of Kožarić' art, and in the art generally speaking.The choice of spending the night as the form of being within the 'form of space' is also moti-vated by my former projects dealing with dreams. They start with the idea (simply said), thatlife is but a dream between heaven and earth, while sleep, in the context of the work repre-sents a metaphor for our stay here on earth.

Sleeping between the Sky and the Earth, performance, 2010, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

The video presents panoramic view recorded in a static frame through the window during busdrive from Zagreb to Osijek. Camera records a winter landscape of the Slavonia’s flatlands ,nearby the city of Slavonski Brod. During the drive the words taken from the 2002 online workThe Dream Net (www.g-mk.hr/online/dreams) appear and disappear on the window glass.The Dream Net is an interconnected labyrinthlike structure made of 30 dreams I dreamt andwrote down from 1991 onwards. Hypertext marking the key words enable navigation by key-press through the net, linking one dream to the other. These words are: water, mother, to getdown, to solve a problem, coal, snow…. In The Drive the words appear and disappear on thesnowy bus window, as on a membrane between physical movements through the real space-time and parallel symbolic movements within psychological space of dreams.

The Drive, 2011, three channel video, 27’, The Look of Resistance Exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

Soaked in water and covered with the projection of video recording of the bus drive throughBaranja region, I brushed a part of the screening wall, followed by my recitation of the namesof the villages through which bus passes by. The performance is a dedication to Baranja’s re-mote villages that nowdays are slowly disappearing from the geographical map.

Bus Kneževo-Osijek, 2010, video-performance, Dopust Performance Festival, Zagreb

Video is filmed with digital camera during a bus ride through Baranja region. The recordingcaptures an unusual vista seen through the bus window in which the water is accumulatedbetween the glass panes up to half of its height. During the ride, the water level oscillates cre-ating a moveable line at the eye level that follows the landscape. The line is made apparentthanks to the agitation of the water caused by the bus movements. The recorded surreal waterfilter submerges the melancholy Baranja landscape into a vacillating aquatic space that recallsthe Sea of Pannonia, Baranja’s prehistoric predecessor.

Baranja by Bus, 2009, video, 12’

Several of my friends are standing in front of the static camera pronouncing my name in theform of beckoning: Kato! Video presents an unsuccessful attempt to communicate betweenthe ‘actual self’ and the ‘lost self’.

Kato!, 2010, video, 14’

Crying Out is a continuation of the series of works in which I set off the communication rela-tionship between the two opposed psychological spaces, the conscious, rational, outward di-rected, with the unconscious, irrational, inward directed. In a single-frame video recording Icry out myself, exclaiming my name in uneven time intervals and intonation, standing at theentrance of the dimmed, undescriptive room. I am referring to the life situations in which weremain trapped within the excessive rational constructs of ego, our constant hurriedness, andattachment to the visible realm. Simultaneously we are losing the connection with other psy-chological spaces which possess the essential knowledge about us and the world we exist in,and that are inaccessible to our conscious, logical, and rational selves.

Crying Out, 2010, video installation, Gliptoteka HAZU, Zagreb

Lack of Response, 2007, audio installation, Moria Gallery, Starigrad

The work consists of audio recording of me calling out my own name (Kata) in a different timeintervals, and with uneven intonation. The audio recording was installed inside the pool withancient stone mosaic in Moria Gallery Starigrad.

Graffito from Florence, 2009, performance-installation, Temple exhibition, Prsten Gallery, HDLU, Zagreb

During the entire duration of the exhibition, every day I would rewrite the sentence Il dio c’e /The God exists, in water using a paintbrush on the freestanding wall in the Gallery. The sen-tence remained visible on the wall for a certain interval of time, and then slowly evaporated.The work is interpretation by the graphite statement Il dio c’e written on the dwelling housefaçade in Florence, which I faced almost every day during my stay in the city between 1991and 1993. Water, here the material of the execution, in comparison with the air we breathesignifies the other state of consciousness, the one which cannot be lived in, but only visited,just like the sea depth is visited by divers. At the same time water appears wherever and when-ever there is a life. To write Il dio c’e everyday with water aims to confirm that statement every-day and at the same time, to stage its’ repeated disappearing.

Two Dreams, 2009, public space action, Performance Days, Osijek

Two young girls dressed in black and white T-shirts with inscriptions: Markita’s dream orSnježana’s dream, were handing out leaflets with dreams by Markita Franulić and SnježanaKlarić, at different public spaces in the city of Osijek. Texts of dreams are printed on A5 blackor white paper. Both dreams converse the experience of death in an unusually correspondingway as though they are surpassing dreamers’ personality and as though they are sending usthe announcement about what the death as mutual experience of all the living beings is ac-tually alike. By handing out the leaflets (which we usually connect with selling and buying ac-tivities, and which are usually handed out by young girls), the contrast between so-calledeverydays triviality of life and the deep and cognitive nocturne experience of dreaming is em-phasized.

Choir, 2009, performance, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

A group of about thirty girl students from The Fifth Grammar School of Zagreb performed singleten seconds long group screams at the various locations in the Museum of Contemporary Artin Zagreb, on the occasion of its opening. Screaming of young girls in the Choir performanceto me compares to a sudden breakthrough of the light crying out for awareness and focusingon here and now. I also consider it a scream of rebellion, nonconsent to conventions. Theteachers in Zen Buddhism use similar procedures to arise the absolute attention of their stu-dents and release the body and mind energy flows e.g. during teaching striking a student onhis back by a club suddenly and without any provocation. I also believe that the magical energyof woman’s scream created energetic initiation and purification of the newly opened MSU gal-leries.

Screaming, 2009, multimedia installation, PM Gallery, Zagreb

Six videos are projected on six LCD monitors deployed in the space. Each video presents adifferent group of pre-school children filmed in single, static frame. Children are standing nextto each other and screaming a few seconds without restraint. Volume of the sound is mollifiedto the level of murmur, but in irregular intervals the space is stirred by their loud joint screamplayed on the compact disc.The scream is a primary expression, a primordial fact, communication that goes on at theedges of language. If language belongs to the field of identification, for only within it the mean-ings are created, a scream then reflects a state beyond destiny and stereotypes. Childrenscreaming here signify an expression of existence before belonging, an uninhibited expressionof being, liberated from the established standards and determinations.

Luka and Matej from Branjin Vrh, 2009, video, 6

The video is recorded by a photographic camera, in a home video style. Two boys (my nephewsfrom Baranja region) are screaming in front of camera in their unrestrained childish exuber-ance. I consider these screams as a pure joy of being, completely opposite to the iconic 1895Scream by Edvard Munch’s, which is universally interpreted as reflection of human sufferingand anxiety. It is important to mention that boys were born after the last war in Croatia. Lukaand Matej are new humans who did not experience the war; they are looking to place them-selves. In their Biblical names, in their screaming - they are heralds of the new.

Visible / Invisible, 2007, video installation, Barrel Gallery, Zagreb

The dream about the boy with golden eyes is one of my dreams from 1991. In the video, thetext of this dream iteratively appears and disappears from the video recording of a Sundayride on the tram. The work creates relation between the two aspects of the world, two parallelrealities; one of them being everyday, banal, visible like tram ride, and the other, transcen-dental, invisible one, mediated by a dream. The tram ride footage functions as the backgroundof the text, but it also signifies human life unbroken and moving in time and space. Opposedto this are the circumstances from the dream, which I see as a glimpse into the otherworldli-ness, beyond the time and space.

Resume, 2007, performance, MM Centre, Zagreb

The performance is reinterpretation of my dream from 1991 of bringing coal out of a mine asthe resume’ abstract of my dealings with dreams. The account of the dream is: I go down tothe abandoned mine where a heap of coal and a wheel-barrow waits for me. I load coal intothe wheel-barrow and bring it out into daylight. In performance I shift coal in a wheel-barrowfrom one to the other side of a stage. The same action is repeated in video projection. Thesoundtrack at the end of performance is True Faith by New Order.

Marjan’s Dream, 2005, performance, Insert (Retrospective of Croatian Video Art), Museum of Contemporary, Art, Zagreb

As the performance begins I take off my shirt and soak it in a blue pot. I put the shirt backand climb the ladder leaning against the wall. While sitting on the ladder I listen to the audiorecording of the recollection of Marijan Crtalić’s dream, and then I climb down the ladder. Si-multaneously, video recording of me climbing up and down the ladder is projected over theladder and myself onto the wall. My goal was to create the inspiring environment for audienceto pay attention and listen the reading of the dream. For this purpose I created a scheme withladder, where the ladder suggests transcendental, mystical nature of a dream. Drenched shirtand ‘doubling’ the acts happening in the projection – procedures I also performed in perform-ances Markita’s Dream and Željko’s Dream - signify the attempt to communicate betweenconscious-self with unconscious-self, which is necessary to resolve a dream.

Markita’s Dream, 2004, performance, Studio of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

I take off my shirt and drench it in a blue pot, then I put on a wet shirt and write Markita Fran-ulić’s dream in water using a pintbrush on the wall. Previously recorded video of the sameperformance but with a dry shirt is simultaneously projected on the wall. The performanceends while I lean against the wall and listen to the audio recording of the dream, covered withmy own projected image. Like in other performances based on ‘doubling’ the projection, basicintention is to emphasize and make visible the dualities conscious/unconscious, dream/re-ality. In this respect, projection in performance signifies the unconscious and the dreamer,and the actual presence of the performer signifies the conscious awakened ‘me’.

Željko’s Dream, 2004, performance, Karas Gallery, Zagreb

I put on a wet shirt and write the dream by Željko Begić in water and a paintbrush on the wall.Previously recorded video of this same action with dry shirt is simultaneously projected on thewall. At the very end the lights go out. Sitting on a chair next to the wall I listen the audio record-ing of the dream with audience, in the total darkness.

Bread, Brickwork, 2005, installation, Gallery Križić-Roban, Zagreb

The installation is made of loafs of bread that are installed on the floor in a form of a low wall.Bread and water signify elementary human needs and points toward necessary reduction toessentials in the raging culture of consumerism that hypnotizes us with abundant supply ofgoods. The form of the wall, the barriers of bread, suggests the possibility of endless buildingup and in that sense the installation is unfinished. The wall is to hypothetically assume giganticproportions. In this hypothetical extention of the wall one can ‘hear’ its social component - the‘voice’ of the poor.

Selected Dreams - More Real Than Reality, 2004, installation, Karas Gallery, Zagreb

Drying racks loaded with wet laundry - sheets, pillow cases and similar, are installed betweentwo opposed mirrors at the ground floor of Karas Gallery. Two rows of chairs on which visitorscan sit and listen to the audio recordings of 23 dreams selected and recounted by my friendsand colleagues; are installed between two opposed mirrors on the gallery’s first floor.

Roberto’’s Message, 2003, performance, Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, Zagreb

Illuminated by the black light I write Roberto’s Message on the wall in water . After that I changethe sheets on the bed. I write Robert’s Message on the wall again, but this time in fluorescentpaint. I lie down on the bed and turn off the black light. In total darkness, together with theaudience, I listen to the old Napolitan song Cuore n’gano (Unfaithful Heart) by Roberto Cuciola.

Dream Net, 2001, on-line project, Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, Zagrebwww.g-mk.hr/on-line/dreams

The Dream Net is an interconnected labyrinthlike structure made of 30 dreams I have beendreaming and writing down from 1991 onwards. Photographs by Zoran Pavelić illustrate theaccounts of the dreams. Navigating through the dreams is possible by keypressing the hyper-text to access the other dream. The second method is to select a dream on the schematicmap of the project displayed online in the shape of the molecular structure. The Dream Netis realized with web designer Ivan Kraljević.

Selected Dreams, 2001, ink jet prints on photo paper

The Selected Dreams is a collage of dream accounts with photo portraits of the dreamers.The series marked the beginning of the Selected Dreams project that became the frameworkwithin which I have been collecting dreams of my friends and acquaintances since 2001.Some of the dreams from this series became in coming years the basic content and structurefor the diverse body of work executed in different medium. The series present dreams andphoto portraits by: Marijan Crtalić, Boris Cvijetanović, Markita Franulić, Ivan Kožarić, Ivan Kral-jević, Vlado Martek, Radmila Iva Janković, Ksenija Turčić, Vlasta Žanić, Daria Torre, BojanaŠvertasek, Branko Franceschi, Silvije Čolić, Silva Kalčić, Jadranka Mlinar, Ružica Zajec, MilošPavković, Božena Končić – Badurina, Duje Jurić, Frane Rogić, Ante Jerković, Sonja Briski –Uzelac i Željko Tomić.

Selected Dreams, 2002, intervention in public space, Urban Fest, Zagreb

The accounts from the Selected Dreams were printed in white letters on black A4 papers andplaced on the tram stops and shop windows across the city.

Visitation is realized in collaboration with Ivan Kraljević for the Temporary Accommodation ex-hibition at the Studio of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. Visitation is composedof 14 panoramic photographs of apartments belonging to various Croatian artists. Browsingand zooming enable visitors to detect a hidden object, an intimate detail of the apartment.15th image is dedicated to the poem about home, Winter Night, by the Austrian poet GeorgTrakl.

Visitation, 2002, interactive CD-rom

Forsythia, 2002, video 13’

Forsythia was recorded in the yard of the house on Njegoševa Street 11, in Zagreb, where Ilived for a short time. It presents my numerous attempts to break in (to run, to jump, to fly)into a big yellow bush of forsythia in fool bloom. Each of these entrances ended whit my tem-porary disappearance it the hearth of the bush, followed by repeated reappearance out of for-sythia, and in the new attempts to break in.

Movement, 2002, performance, Sisak

I sit at the table and watch the video projection of my performance titled I am not conscious.The situation on the stage is almost identical to the one being projected . The shift happensin the moment when, simultaneously in the projection and in real time, I turn on the cassetteplayer with the recording of Sarŕa, Sarŕa l’Aurora (Dawn Will Come) by Eros Ramazzotti. Be-cause of a few seconds long lapse, the two recordings clash thus creating a cacophony.

I’am not conscious, 2000, performance, Gallery SC Gallery, Zagreb

I enter the cage carrying a blue pot. I turn on the cassette player in the corner and sit at thetable. After the first notes of the song Sarŕa, Sarŕa l’Aurora (Dawn will come) by Eros Ramaz-zotti I put the blue pot over my head and continue listening to the song until its end.

The Dreams - 1991, 2001, ambiental installation, Art Gallery Slavonski Brod

In The Dreams – 1991 I have interpreted accounts of the dreams which I had noted during1991. Accounts of dreams written with black felt pen on transparent nylon are laid on concretefloor. White columns along the atrium were partially painted black.

Back from the unconsciousness, 1999, performance, Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, Zagreb

With the help of my partner Zoran Pavelić I bring a blue pot full of water in the room. We bothwear scuba diving suits. In the moment in which he leaves the room the soundtrack Don’t fearthe Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult starts. I throw water from the pot over everything in the room:drying rack with laundry, table, bed, pillow, mirror, clothes hanging on a peg, walls and floor.At the end, I throw the water over the floor towards the audience. What was left after the per-formance remained exhibited for few more days in the gallery.

Coal from the unconsciousness, 1999, installation, Gallery SC, Zagreb

The installation is composed of a metal cage with a heap of coal inside and overturned wheel-barrow on top of it. It is materialization of my dream about bringing coal out of a mine (seethe account of the dream in the description of Resume’).

RESUME /essay from the catalogue Parallel life/

In 1991 Kata Mijatović dreamt about descending into a coal mine. In the dream, shedecided to bring coal out, to the daylight. That year, and let’s not forget it is the yearof the beginning of the war, Kata dreamt many more dreams which she carefully notedand which have become, in the years that followed, an inexhaustible source of herwork as an artist.She named her performance in the Multimedia centre Resume thus marking it as partof the series of her dream-staging performances, but also as an event which wouldhelp to summarize and reflect upon her work. In the performance she returned to herfirst contact with the scene/object/sign/metaphor of the coal pyramid, which figuredas a trigger for a personal and artistic process that has been in progress since andwhose continuality and meaning is questioned through this act of repetition.This performance is simultaneously a revision of the author’s installation The coalfrom the unconscious, from 1999. In it, the pyramid is literally brought from a dreaminto the light, and locked in a cage in the front yard of the Studentski centar Gallery.It was her first dream-staging: and as if the primary - and private, instance of a dreamstaging wasn’t enough, like it demanded a new translation, a new transfer, the artistupgraded written words with an image, she “returned” them into the image, and bydoing so she captured the dreamt object/sign/metaphor in a cage, depriving it of thepossibility of a new transformation into the unarticulated and unconscious.In the her later works, the author didn’t deal with the materializations of actualdreams, but with the attempts to map relations and ways between the conscious andthe unconscious. A recurrent motif is water, a minimal material agent which symboli-cally performs the transfer and allows the unconsciousness to captivate tangible re-ality. The 1999 installation What is it like in the unconscious? the artist exhibitswater-wetted paintings made from cut pieces of clothing. In the performance Returnfrom the unconscious, with the assistance of Zoran Pavelić, the artist, dressed in adiving suit, with a touch of humor and grotesque, wets the space with water froma blue pot, another attribute of communication with the unconscious which, like somany other elements of her performances and installations, transfers and moves toher other works. Only a year after, in the performance I amnot conscious, at the samelocation in the yard of the Studentski centar Gallery where she had earlier performedCoal from the unconscious, she again placed a cage in which she locked herself thistime, covered her head with a blue pot, ritually listening to an Eros Ramazzoti song,Sarŕa, Sarŕa l’Aurora (Dawn will come).In the number of works that followed, Kata Mijatović questioned the possibility of trans-lation and orchestration of memory to the dream content. In 2001, she used the floorof the open atrium of the Art gallery in Slavonski Brod and put down plastic foils with

her dreams written on it. The work was the starting point for The Dream Net, her firstInternet project, produced by Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, in which she placed thosesame dreams in a virtual space and gave them a form of hipertext, a net where alldreams were intertwined and concept/sign from one dream become a guideline whichopened a gate to another dream. With the performance Selected Dreams in Močvara,2002, she started the long-term homonymous project in which she shifted attentionfrom hers to other people’s dreams. This usually took form of the performance, inwhich she listened, together with the audience, previously recorded dreams or shewrote them down with water on the wall. In 2005, this change of interest resulted inthe new Internet project The Dream Archive which invited all the users of the Internetto record and deposit their dreams in this virtual warehouse.By the artistic act of naming the work Resume and by using the elements from worksshe made in the last seven years, the author turns her own work into a content of theperformance. It was performed in the Multimedia Centre in which - unlike in galleriesor in open spaces - the performing space and the audience were separated, whichadded to the theatricality of the performance. The set is made out of the previouslymentioned coal pyramid, a cart, a shovel, and a projection of an identical set and anidentical event in the background which created an illusion of a multiple perspectivedistancing and scene multiplication. The artist entered the scene, and with completelyuniform movements accompanied by sharp and dull noises shoveled coal into a cart.When she filled the cart, she drove it to the opposite, left edge of the stage and shepoured coal onto the floor, returned and repeated the same action until the right sideof the stage was emptied, while on the left side emerged a coal pyramid, identical tothe one from the beginning of the performance. An identical procedure, on the sameset, and with a slight time delay, took place on a projection screen in the background.The humdrum action and sound produced by it is interrupted before the end of theperformance with music from the speakers: True Faith by New Order. Symmetrical dou-bling (left-right; reality-illusion) is easily perceived as a basic formal motif of the per-formance, creating the opposites that are so often seen in Kata Mijatović’ work. Butinstead of apparently solid structure and binary quality, it is possible to see this dou-bling only as a subset of a more general principle which seems to be crucial for KataMijatović’ entire work- repetition. In text-book conditions, “descending”, as Kata Mija-tović often calls this process, to the unconsciousness, as if it was the place “whereone can go to and come back with the material evidence for the unconsciousness”coincides with the Plato’s doctrine of remembering as a cognitive process. Accordingto Plato, the soul had been once placed into the Eternity where it possessed all theknowledge about the truth, and the fragments of this knowledge could still be reachedand conceived through a method of remembering. On the other hand, bothKierkegaard and Lacan question that possibility. Kierkegaard is under the influenceof Christian dogma of the original sin according to which it is impossible to conceivethe truth without the intervention from God. Lacan, in terms of his doctrine of the di-

vided subject denies the possibility of the return and establishes the repetition as aprinciple of self - actualization of the subject, claiming the impossibility of the true rep-etition and making it a part of a paradox that states that it is only possible to repeatthe impossibility of the repetition. In that way, every repetition consists of a shift, achange, a creation of a new content.In The Shift, performed in Zadar in 2002, the effect of this change (shift) is indicated:with a projection of previous performance I am not conscious the artist sit at a deskand watched a projection of her own work together with the audience, insisting on lis-tening a song by Ramazzotti anew. There, as in many other performances, the song isa mediator of a potential message from the unconscious and a catalyst of change. Inthis way in Resume a symbolically titled song True Faith touches a possible Sisyphusabsurdity of the act of perpetual transmitting/translating substance from one side toanother, one work to another, one dream to another, and also plays with a possibleabsurdity of pursuing art, or even absurdity of life itself. Even though the effect of music in Resume is not without ambiguity and though it flirtswith both possibility of catharsis and survival of the possibility of the absurd, it never-theless achieves its goal, whichever direction it leads. Resume reminds us that KataMijatović’s entire art could be understood as her Internet project “dream net”’ dou-ble- like in that virtual net, it s possible to float over Kata’s artistic world, drawing waterlines that cross, separate and clash given places of individual works, thus fragmentingand unifying her entire art production at the same time.In one of her interviews, Kata Mijatović told that, in spite of spending a significant partof day dreaming, people tend to ignore dreams in everyday life. She joked that peopleshould not, when they first meet, discuss where did they live and what did they do,but ask each other about their dreams.

And you? What did you dream about last night?

Ivana Bago

IVANA BAGO - art historian, writer and curator. She is the co-founder (with Antonia Ma-jaca) of DeLVe | Institute for Duration, Location and Variables, dedicated to researchand publishing in the field of contemporary art and theory. She is the author - in col-laboration with Antonia Majaca, the Kontejner collective and individually - of a seriesof curatorial, publishing, and research projects and writings (Removed from the Crowd,2009-; Moving Forwards, Counting Backwards, MUAC, Mexico City, 2012; Spaport Bi-ennial / Where Everything is Yet to Happen, Banja Luka, Zagreb, 2009-2011; The Or-ange Dog and Other Tales, 2009-, Stalking With Stories, Apexart, New York, 2007),focusing on the history of art and exhibition practices of the 1960s and 1970s, per-formance art, feminism, labor, collectivities, self-organization, as well as the contem-porary art and politics in the wake of the violent break-up of Yugoslavia.

CONSCIOUSNESS IN/ABOUT THE UNCONSCIOUS:what does Kata Mijatović dream about?

The awareness of the illusionary wholeness of the subject within itself and of the ar-chitectonics of the world is a chronic symptom of contemporaneity, paradoxically re-sisted by an attempt to form an identity by endlessly multiplying it. According to RenataSalecl, the roots of being traumatized by the authorities that are not up to their sym-bolic status are in collision with the mantra of the skillfully packaged demand for self-realization, as well with the cynical recognition that this demand is impossible. Thisanxiety has been deepened by the upsets of AIDS, the unsolved legacy of colonialismand totalitarianism, the globalization confusion, the promises of ecstatic cancellationof suffering in cyberspace, or the hope of annulment of consciousness by mutatinginto one’s own clone. The crisis schizophrenically culminated in wars, either in a directway, as is the case here, or indirectly, by aggressive waves of emigrants and refugeeswho threaten the Western “peace” to collapse. In Croatia, the war left physicallymaimed and mentally tortured individuals, both literally and metaphorically. As JuliaKristeva noted, commenting the Balkans situation in a conversation, they definitelyfeel that they cannot get the minimum that would allow them to continue living withoutbeing exposed to such mental and physical exhaustion as a consequence of socialand economic uncertainty. Although in the work of Kata Mijatović we immediately no-tice the very initiation neurosis of the urgency to balance one’s internal and externalbeings, one’s conscious and subconscious, or more precisely, unconscious, it is notpossible to read the questioning of the personal while neglecting the experience ofsuch social reality.

“I am made up of the matter of my dreams”, wrote Gaston Bachelard. Kata Mijatovićsays the same thing in her web-work Dream Net (www.miroslav-kraljevic.hr/dreams)(2001), in which she combines short descriptions of her dreams from 1991 with pho-tographs which her partner Zoran Pavelić has been taking during the last ten years.Plowed fields, an umbrella in an empty room, a tidy bed; these scenes are not devoidof a sense of rejection, a residue of nostalgia, and of melancholy, but only when theyslowly fade out from the screen into a blackness from which emerge words that de-scribe a dream, the story really becomes a web of fragments of the artist’s subjectivity.The title itself, which contains the word “web”, followed by the web design by Ivan Kral-jević - the work is initiated by a scheme resembling a molecular structure, circles num-bered 1 to 30, which is the number of the dreams, and of the lines connecting them- suggests a navigation without a definite beginning or end. Moreover, after a while,tracking the work becomes more conditioned by the internal logic of the work than wecould control and make our choices. We delve deeper and deeper into streams of sub-consciousness, and we don’t know if it is the artist’s or ours. When Rosalind E. Krausanalyzes the role and the meaning of the notion of web in art, she lucidly notes how

its nonlinear structure, from the structuralist viewpoint resembles a mythical one, or,if we talk about psychoanalysis, it resembles the structure of the subconscious. As wehave already said, Kata Mijatović appropriates both viewpoints, by choosing the titleof the work, and choosing her visual material - for instance, when she invokes thelegacy of romanticism using a version of a web, a window. The window - locus of thereconstitution of the being, according to Krauss - is closed in one of the dreams; acurtain is drawn over it. Contrary to this scene, in which the camera is characteristicallyaimed from the room to the window, in the second scene we see the artist standingin the open, and behind her, windows, both open and shut, filling half the cadre. Inone of the dreams, a window offers a dim view of the kitchen, and this scene is labeledby a text containing a maternal reference, which is not insignificant. Personal mythol-ogy and the subconscious intertwine.I sit in the kitchen, in the old house; mymama is here, standing by the stove and watch-ing through the window. It is dark outside; the sky is far away and full of stars. I ap-proach the window and I see two stars falling, I loudly say that now one should makea wish (I am sure that my wish will be fulfilled), and at the same moment I notice ahole opening in the sky, black on the dark blue background of the sky. In fear, it comesto my mind that one of the stars did it, but the scene slowly changes and I understandthat what I see is not night sky, but an improvised wooden façade, a screen with ahole in the middle.

When she speaks about the states of crisis and fragmentation - both of the artist andof the esthetic object - Julia Kristeva asserts that, to talk about artistic work as an ex-pression of these states, we must invoke the experience of psychoanalysis. Freud’sconception of the unconscious as our hell, Kristeva concludes, is crucial to the notionthat the crisis cannot be separated from the human being. Kata Mijatović locates herproject on the vague border between the conscious and the unconscious; as with aninverted glove, she plays with possibility to equate the illogicalities of dreams with theexperienced everyday life. And the everyday, narrated thorough a dream, is gloomyand uncertain, and contrary to dreams, it does not imply the relief of waking up. Itseems that the journey thorough the labyrinths of dreams is a frantic browsing thetangled areas of consciousness, as well as a comment of the nightmarish reality. Thisis precisely why Dream Net is not completely hermetic; a collective memory is woveninto it, in which everyone is invited to recognize one’s own levels of consciousness,conditioned psychologically and socially.

Kata Mijatović realized this purpose most transparently in her project Selected Dreams(2002), which she presented in three separated units. In Močvara club in Zagreb, shepresented a performance in which she was sitting on a ladder, inside a cage, and to-gether with the audience she was watching the projection of the texts and photographsfrom Selected Dreams. But, while she based the Dream Net exclusively on her own

dreams, now it is about recorded dreams and private photo-portraits of Ivan Kožarić,Marijan Crtalić, Ksenija Turčić, Vlasta Žanić…

I dreamt about meeting a painter, a friend of mine who had died not long before (Fruk). I met him on the beach from Fellini’s dolce vita. Surprised to see him, I greeted himcordially and asked him how it was over there. He answered it was fine. Somehow un-happy with the answer, I continued to ask: “Well, what do you do, do you paint?” Hesaid he did paint and that everything was somehow similar to “down there”. The onlydifference was that there were no systems of values. I explained this to myself, thenand many times after that - so, there is no good and bad, up and down, beautiful andugly, black and white, nor blue and red… etc./Vlasta Žanić/

The experience was deepened by Gershwin’s Summer Time, song by Ella Fitzgeraldand Janis Joplin. The second presentation of Selected Dreams, in Hannover, is a shiftfrom the Self to the Other. Lit by a spotlight, the artist was reading the dreams of herfriends, and the translator was sitting in the dark part of the stage, translating the textinto German. Again, Bachelard comes to mind - “Vision tells too many things at once.The being does not see itself. Maybe listens to itself.” Therefore, the dreams werespoken, and the music, which is for Kata Mijatović what is madeleine for Proust, wasreplaced by voices, thus multiplying their meaning and reception - through experienc-ing the two colors, the rhythm of the voices, intertwining the two languages that noteveryone in the audience understood, and, of course, thorough the presence of theauthor and the translator, acting either as catalysts or as hindrances for the reception.At the Urban festival in Zagreb last summer, Kata Mijatović was putting the prints ofSelected Dreams on tram stations and bookstore windows. On this occasion, she says,passers-by were taking the texts that had just been exhibited and leaving with them.This poses some new questions, which will, at the least, directly provoke suppositionsthat, when Kata Mijatović speaks about herself, she speaks about the Other, that is,that she never stops to contemplate the outside where she/Other resides. In this way,the perception of private and public work is being distorted; it is being reactivated alsoas a critical manifesto of reality, but always from a distance and only provisionally. Forexample, speaking about presenting Selected Dreams on the street, one could spec-ulate about whether the public really became sensible for art, or is it only consumerideology of accepting everything that is offered, and finally, is the artist herself inter-ested in these interpretations at all. Is she intrigued by how many people have read,let alone decided to keep a paper offering them a dream, and not an invitation to ademonstration or to join a yoga class? Kata Mijatović is interested in communication;she insists that one should consciously cooperate with the unconscious, because itnever lies. The Dream Net originated in cooperation with Miroslav Kraljević Gallery,based on K+Z installation (2001), presented in Galerija umjetnina in Slavonski Brod,where Zoran Pavelić had his exhibition simultaneously. The artist’s texts, handwritten

on a transparency, were laid out on the floor and on the walls, while the upper partsof columns in the backyard were painted white, and the lower, black, thus alluding tothe binarity of yin and yang, earth and sky, night and day, dream and wake. A happycoincidence - the best that happened, Kata Mijatović revealed in a conversation withŽeljko Jerman, was that rain began to sprinkle “my dreams” - was a sign that dreamingcould actually be a state of awareness, contrary to the desensitized state of wake. Inaccordance to the practice in the 90s, which largely leans on the feministart of SusanHiller, Annette Messager or Martha Rosler, but Kata Mijatović, disillusioned and re-jecting any political angle, is primarily oriented towards self-examination. Aware thatthe attempt was impossible, she searches for the primal fragments of the self, aimingto articulate at least a part of the truth about being in crisis. As we have alreadypointed out, works by Kata Mijatović are not deaf to the social context in which theyoriginate.In Temporary Accommodation (2002), a project that she realized with Zoran Pavelićfor the Museum of Contemporary Art, she touched the theme of war, perhaps in themost direct way, as well as refugees, and everyday life in which artists are marginalizedand deprived of possibilities to make a living by doing their work. However, the tenantstatus that she and her partner are bound to endure, or the experience of refugeestatus of their families, are themes that the artist presents from her peculiar poeticangle. In Forsythia video, realized in this occasion, she finds inspiration in the blueflower in the back garden of a rented apartment. We see her trying to enter, she startstoward it twenty-odd times, and every time she disappears in a dash of it. Did the at-tempt to enter/move into the apartment succeed, or her constant efforts and vanish-ings suggest that such a wish is only an illusion? At the same time, the web work Visit(www. katamijatovic. mi2.hr), offers to enter her and Pavelić’s home, and the homesof thirteen of their friends - Marija and Zlatko Kopljar, Tomislav Gotovac, Markita Fran-ulić and Boris Cvjetanović, Branka Stipančić and Mladen Stilinović, Marijan Molnar,etc. Among them is Georg Trakl, whose poetic greatness, which ended in a schizo-phrenic cocaine- induced dream at the onset of World War I, is a permanent inspira-tion for Kata Mijatović.

In the texts within the Dream Net, certain words are emphasized by color-coding - coal,narrow passage, feather, light, snow, dust, night - or, otherwise - I am lying, I am sitting,I am seeing. The artist systematizes, she makes a list of her personal vocabulary thatshe started in a series of earlier projects; among them was The Life of Trakl installation(1997). Presented in Zagreb Nova gallery, it was based on three elements forming atriangle - a black cardboard box on one wall, a white shirt on the other, and on thefloor, a circle of salt with a glass of water in the center. The materials used, as theartist herself says, are actually embodied words. As she describes, the black ink sheused to color the box means silence to her, a cessation of empty talk about war andpolitics. The salt and the glass of water symbolize desire, a thirst for silence that she

equals with poetry. Kata Mijatović argues that the conscious can approach the uncon-scious only in the language of poetry.When the night fell, Father became an old man; in the gloomy house, Mother’s facehardened, and the boy felt the damnation of a depraved family. Sometimes he wouldreminisce about his childhood, in which there were many illnesses, horrors and dark-ness, secret games in the starry garden, and feeding rats in the gloomy backyard. Theslim figure of his sister would get out of the blue mirror and he would collapse intothe darkness, as if he were dead. His mouth would pop like a red fruit, and the starswould shine over his silent sorrow. His dreams filled the ancient house of the ances-tors. At dusk, he would wander on a neglected graveyard, or watch the corpses in agloomy mortuary, green patches of decay on their beautiful hands. At the gates of aconvent, he asked for a piece of bread; a shadow of a sparrow appeared from thedarkness and startled him. When he was lying in his cold bed, he wept unutterabletears. But there were nobody to put a hand on his forehead.Trakl did not endure the damnation of the exiled form Eden, said Kata Mijatović, ex-plaining her exhibition entitled Preparations (1998) for Zagreb Museum of Contem-porary Art. With its six installations, it was a continuation of The Life of Trakl and ofearlier Desire (1996), presented in Dubrovnik Otok gallery. In this installation - it con-sisted of a large square, painted in black ink on a newspaper, and of a circle made ofsalt – the artist, annoyed with politics, had already stepped on the territory of silence,the only acceptable space of distance from direct, ineffective participation. In Prepa-rations, assembling the installations from the whiteness of feathers, canvas, salt,glass, and water, the artist suddenly puts the warmth of wood within the loud whisperof the embodied words, as a powerful counterpoint. In this way, the sober discretionof the materials is broken by a strong emotional incursion, a remembrance of child-hood, when “Grandpa was beautifully arranging chopped wood”.

In her projects before Dream Net and Written Dreams, Kata Mijatović also materializesher personal vocabulary, made from dreams/remembrances. Her installation Coalfrom the subconscious (1999), inspired by a dream from 1989, which consisted of acage and a heap of coal inside it, with a handcart in upside-down position on top of it,she presented in the open, near the Zagreb Student Center. The cage, which was tobe used again in performances I am not Conscious (2000) and Shift (2002), signifiesreality, or as the artist says, the consciousness. “I wanted it to look as I really de-scended to the mineshaft of the subconscious, dug out three tons of coal and put itin a cage - the conscious”, she writes. In this installation, and in the performances,Kata Mijatović also deals with oppositions of warm-cold and consciousness- subcon-sciousness. She impregnates the rationality of consciousness with love, a yearningfor home, which we recognize in her materials: flowers, wood, coal, fire. Freud is onthe scene.Das das Kind an seinem Bette steht, ihn an Arme fast, und ihm vorwurfsvoll zuraunt:Vater, siehst du denn nicht, dass ich verbrenne?

As a sequel to Coal from the subconscious, in ambient installation Back from the Un-conscious (1999) in Zagreb Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, the artist added new wordsma-terializations to the longing to dive into the unconscious: she put scissors into a bluepot and filled it with water, and she presented the fabric of her cut-out clothes, alsoinfused with water, as a series of canvases. As in the most of her other projects, thesense of hearing plays a part, too - the viewer hears water splashing. To further exam-ine the theme she treated in Coal from the subconscious, to open the door of the un-conscious, Kata Mijatović returns to SC and performs I am not conscious - in a closedcage, she sits at a table covered with a white tablecloth, with the blue pot, which shehad used before, on her head. Her persevering urge to understand, to hear and to feelis almost painful; in her performance Shift, presented in Zadar, he silently stands be-side the very same table and watches its video projection. Sara l’Aurora, a song byEros Ramazzotti, provides the sense of sweet and sour nostalgia - Morning will come/ there is a hope / everything will change / you only have to believe/.How it is in the Unconscious? (1999), a performance she presented with Zoran Pavelićin Zagreb Gradska Gallery is not based on a dream, but is inspired by remembrancesfrom childhood. But, do we manage to tell the one from the other?In the backyard of my grandmother’s house in Branjina, near the entrance gate, be-side the rusty wire fence, grass and weed on the other side, there was an old, narrowwell, covered with moss. It had no covering, and one would get water from it using atin bucket, hanging at the end of a long rope. The bucket rested on a brick surface,and the free end of the rope hung over the wire fence. You would drop the bucket inthe well using the rope. First you would hear a thump on the surface of the water,then a splash, and then you would slowly rotate the bucket until it was full. The handswould feel the weight and start pulling the rope, and the bucket would bump into theslippery, green walls of the well and spill over some water, making the moss wet. Onthe edge of the opening, from the inner side, a wild rose bush was growing betweenthe bricks, and its flowers were always wet. When the bucket or a human handtouched the flowers, you could see the white flowers and green serrated leaves movingin the dark water mirror. In summertime we often happened to draw buckets full ofwater with wild rose petals floating on its surface.

The awareness that we have lost the protection of childhood forever, reinforced by los-ing one’s home, amounts to cutting the umbilical cord connecting us with ourselves;a realization, as Boltanski says, that we all have a dead child lying inside us. WhenKata Mijatović for her performance installs a table with slices of bread, a glass and aplate, as well a bed, a mirror, and monochromatic canvases, she once again asks “whoam I?”, measuring the permeability of borders between remembrances and dreams.Their overlapping mutates into a hallucinatory performance, a theatre of the absurdthat, in real time and space, inarticulately mumbles not about remembering, but aboutexperiencing the experience of remembering. Dressed in diving suits, Kata Mijatović

and Zoran Pavelić spill water from big blue pots on everything that is presented, tryingto reestablish the broken circuit between the inside and the outside, between partsof consciousness and subconsciousness that might confirm the subject. As well as inher other works, the artist postpones the reconciliation of identity split. She is awareof the failure. Appearing in a diving suit, and inviting her partner to do the same, shein a comical way performs a ritual game without a solution, to the very exhaustion.Moreover, in the same way as in her other works - for instance, when she puts a poton her head, or sits anonymously among the viewers, looking at her own work, or whenshe, under a spotlight, reads other people’s dreams, presuming that the Hannoveraudience did not understand it - now she leads an intimate conversation with her ownpersonal past and the trauma of separation from innocence that she hopes to find inthe unconscious. Using the tactics of constant avoidance, Kata Mijatović nonviolentlyleads the viewer to do the same action. By letting go, we learn more about ourselvesthan the artist had ever told us about herself.

Ružica Šimunović

RUŽICA ŠIMUNOVIĆ - Art historian and ethnologist (Faculty of Humanities and SocialSciences of Zagreb); since 2002 creative producer of the Movement of the Pointbroadcast on HR 1 and since 2012 host at the Guest Editor broadcast on HR 2 of TheCroatian Radio. Author of the monograph Zoran Pavelić: Political Speech is Suprema-tism (published by PLEH, 2013). Winner of the AICA Croatia Award for art critique(2011).

CURRICULUM VITAE

Kata Mijatović is multimedia artist and her primary media are performance and video.She was born in 1956 in Branjina, Croatia. In 1981 she graduated from the Faculty of Law, Universityof Osijek, Croatia. From 1988-1991 she is member of the art group Swamp, in Baranja. From 1991-1993 she studied painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy. From 1993-1996 she studiedat the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia, from where she graduated in 1997, in the class of prof.Đuro Seder. Since 1999 she is member of the Croatian Association of Independent Artists (ZUH). From 2005-2009she was member of the Artistic Board of Baranja Art Colony (BUK). Since 2005 she runs AŽ Gallery, atŽitnjak Ateliers, Zagreb (www.a-z.hr). Since 2007 she is member of the art group PLEH. She lives and works in Zagreb.Address: Žitnjak 53, 10000 Zagreb, CroatiaE-mail: kmijatovic0@gmail.com

SELECTED INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS AND PROJECTS

2013 Between the Sky and the Earth, Sala Tiziano, Croatia Pavilion,55th Internatio nal Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, Venice

2012 Dream from the Underpass, Događanja Gallery, Zagreb 2011 Call to Action, with Zoran Pavelić, MSU DAN 2, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

The Look of Resistance, with Vlasta Žanić, Museum of Contemporary Art, ZagrebGreetings from Baranja, with Zoran Pavelić, Kooh-i-nor Gallery, Copenhagen

2010 The Calling, Glyptotheque of Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts/HAZU, ZagrebSleeping between the Sky and the Earth, performance, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

2009 Choir, performance, Museum of Contemporary Art, ZagrebTwo Dreams, performance, Days of Open Performance / Dopust, SplitScreaming, Ring Gallery, Croatian Association of Visual Artists/HDLU, Zagreb

2008 Luka and Matej from Branjin Vrh, Prozori Gallery, ZagrebVisible / Invisible, Mali Salon, Rijeka

2007 Echo with Zoran Pavelić, Gallery Moria, Stari Grad, Island HvarKunst ist ein deutsches Wort/Art is a German Word, with Zoran Pavelić, Landeshauptstadt, DüsseldorfVisible / Invisible, Barrel Gallery, Croatian Association of Visual Artists/HDLU, Zagreb

2006 Visitation, MMC Kuglana, KoprivnicaResume, performance, MMC, Zagreb

2005 Dream Archive, online project, Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, Zagreb 2004 Building, Križić-Roban Gallery, Zagreb

Markita’s Dream, performance, Studio of the Museum of Contemporary Art, ZagrebŽeljko’s Dream, performance, Karas Gallery, ZagrebSelected dreams - more real than reality, Karas Gallery, Zagreb

2003 Selected Dreams, Ghetto Gallery, SplitRobert’s Message, performance, Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, ZagrebForsythia, Matica Hrvatska Gallery, Križevci

2002 Temporary Accommodation, with Zoran Pavelić, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb Selected Dreams, performance, Club Močvara, Zagreb

2001 Dream net, online project, Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, Zagreb

Dreams - 1991, ( K+Z,), with Zoran Pavelić, Art Gallery, Slavonski BrodI am not Conscious, performance, SC Gallery, Zagreb

1999 Back from the Unconscious, performance, Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, ZagrebCoal from the Unconscious, SC Gallery, Zagreb How is it in the Unconscious?, Gradska Gallery, Zagreb

1998 Preparations, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb1997 Works on the Surface, PM Gallery, Croatian Association of Visual Artists/HDLU, Zagreb,

The Life of Traklo, Nova Gallery, Zagreb1996 The Craving, Island Gallery, Art Workshop Lazareti, Dubrovnik

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS AND PROJECTS

2013 All of me, Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, New YorkArtNight, Officina delle Zattere, Venecija

2012 Performance Art Festival, Osijek2011 Plexus, Galženica Gallery, Velika Gorica

Days of Open Performance/Dopust, Jedinstvo, ZagrebImage of Sound, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

2010 Nobody’s Safe, 50. Poreč Annual, Gallery Zuccato, PorečExtended/ Ex-pe-ze, Kulturamt, DüsseldorfPicture of the sound, MKC, Split PLEH in Sarajevo, Charlama Depot Gallery, SarajevoT-HT award@msu.hr, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

2009 Performance Arts Festival, Barutana, OsijekDays of Open Performance/Dopust, SplitPLEH in Subotica, dr Vinko Perčić Gallery, Subotica, SerbiaTemple, Ring Gallery, Croatian Association of Visual Artists/HDLU, Zagreb

2007 Baranja Art Colony 2005/6, Gallery Miroslav Kraljević, ZagrebArt as Life, XX Slavonia Biennial, Kazamat Gallery, Osijek

2006 Do you celebrate Christmas?, Prozori Gallery, Zagreb 2005 Action-Attraction, 40 Years of SC Gallery, Zagreb

Insert, Retrospective of Croatian Video Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb 2004 Homeless Ideas, Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, Zagreb

IV Days of Performance, Varaždin 2003 Urban Festival, Zagreb

Die kleine Spionin, Barrel Gallery, Croatian Association of Visual Artists/HDLU, Zagreb, Zagreb Stories, video, Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, ZagrebQuarantine, Art Workshops Lazareti, Dubrovnik

2002 Osijek Art Summer, Kazamat Gallery, OsijekZinnober 5, Studio 6ix PACK, Hannover Inter muros, Zadar Live II, International Art Project, Zadar

2001 Theatre and Myth, Gavella Theatre, ZagrebTransit, City Gallery, Lehrte, Germany

2000 Ambiance ‘90, Collegium Artisticum, Sarajevo, Bosnia and HerzegovinaAmbiance’ 90, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka

1998 Books and Society 22%, public space, Zagreb

Small Planet Earth, European Council, Strasbourg, FranceXVI Slavonia Biennial, Visual Arts Gallery, Osijek

1997 Kunst in der Stadt, Frankfurter hof, Mainz, Germany1996 International Triennial of Painting, Sofia, Bulgaria1995 International Art Workshop, Lamparna, Labin Art Express, Labin1994 Slavonian Artist, Pecs Gallery, Pecs, Hungary1990 Group Swamp, Gallery CM, STUC, Osijek

WORKS IN COLLECTIONS: Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, CroatiaMuseum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka, CroatiaFilip Trade Collection – Lauba House, Zagreb, Croatia