Pešča

The part of Stara Peščenica that I considered my own was located within the boundaries of the trapezoid that encloses some of Zagreb’s main traffic arteries (Heinzelova, Branimirova, Donje Svetice and Vukovarska streets). The area was once known for the extremely busy railway corridor, the former East Station, and the long-haul transport company Zagrebački transporti. For the industry. Traces of all of this remain, but this is currently a waiting area that, until it discovers its new face, lives the life of the periphery in the immediate vicinity of the centre of Zagreb.

The view through my bedroom window has been changing. In the beginning, the East Station was speckled with wagons, and those were the first to disappear. After that, the derelict building with a new East Station sign was demolished. The Roma man who had been squatting in it was thus left without the solid walls of a home. He didn’t change location, but simply moved to the caravans located under the overpass. I was most disturbed when the rails disappeared, because, going on daily walks and research expeditions, I considered this wasteland to be my intimate space, the transformation of which I could not affect. With each intervention, I felt as if someone had entered my room and tidied it up without permission. Moved the pencil that was on the table to the drawer.

In the summer, when the grass at the East Station would grow past my waist, my refuge for escaping people and walking my dog ​​was the former Croatia Bus parking lot, adjacent to Heinzelova Street near the intersection with Vukovarska Avenue. A huge abandoned wasteland that I named the Peščenica Botanical Garden since it was entirely taken over by vegetation. Tall trees and bushes pushed their way through the asphalt, obscuring the city, which was on Pešča often, especially in times of fog, present in sound only.

I never found out what sweet potatoes were doing at the East Station, or where the boats that were parked in the yards sailed off to, and I never bothered to, because it only made the space of imagination and humour that much wider. I started taking notes during my walks with my dog ​​Argus. Spontaneously. I never felt the need to photograph people. Not because it made me uncomfortable, but because they are already so deeply woven into the fabric of Pešča.

I don't even know why I like Pešča. Maybe it’s because I feel like an explorer, a child who wanders around places that they shouldn’t, or I’m amused by the little impertinences of its inhabitants. I spent my formative years on the streets of Pešča and it painted a part of my character. Scenes without romance, but indescribably romantic in my eyes. So much so that I can imagine the neighbourhood as a person. Pešča is a woman who goes to a chamber music concert in green lace stockings. While everyone else at the cocktail party is eating, she is dancing. No one knows if she is homeless or simply eccentric.

DISPLACEMENT Planinska 7 (finished in 2021)

For 15 years, I lived in a rented apartment in Pešča, a neighborhood in Zagreb. After buying my own place I left the building which had become very precious to me. I moved in as a freshman student, and over time I became a part of a new community, perhaps even a new family. What began as common human interaction to ease the feeling of isolation, since I’ve been working from home for some years now, became a long-term process of befriending individuals of various lifestyles, religious beliefs and political ideologies. My story of living in the building is an eclectic collage of spontaneous events, interiors, and idiosyncratic individuals, between which developed an unexpected closeness. These photographs and texts are a tiny segment of a grander, intimate production of communal living that included laughter, tears, exhaustion, forgiveness, trust, support, embracing differences, creating a feeling of home and lessons needed (and learned) for personal growth. They are an attempt to portray all the wonderful living colors of Planinska 7.  

Petra Slobodnjak

From txt - A Return to Humanity with Petra Slobodnjak’s Directed Theatre

For 15 full years Petra lived at the same address, in the same building, from the very first moment she came to Zagreb from her hometown of Bjelovar, until she moved away to her own apartment. These 15 years spent at the same location were formative for her in many ways. During this time, to lessen the feeling of isolation, Petra encouraged interaction between the building’s tenants, which grew into a process of creating an active coexistence, and even friendships, among people of different social backgrounds, entirely distinct habits, and life dynamics.

Planinska 7 is therefore, more than anything else, a long-term, surprisingly successful social experiment in which Petra Slobodnjak played a double role: that of initiator and participant. Photographs of daily life of the Planinska 7 neighbours come across as scenes from a play or television show about a family whose members are exceptionally close but nurture slightly strange habits. Even situations that at first glance appear to be ordinary, upon further inspection reveal details which leave the viewer with several questions. It is important to note that Planinska 7 is not staged photography, even though one might think so. Petra Slobodnjak photographed what was happening in front of her (and with her). The accompanying texts, short stories, were added to the photographs, which Petra conveys with skillful narration, further bringing to life the characters from the photographs through lively, witty and funny accounts. Not only does she provide insightful details of the (co)existence of the tenants, she also subtly uses personal stories to present an account of our time in a local and global context, defying it at the same time.

If we take everything into consideration, we are left asking ourselves: what exactly is Petra Slobodnjak’s work? Is it a series of photographs made during the years she spent at Planinska 7? Or is the work life itself, encouraged by Petra, in which she was invested for years as an active participant, before becoming a chronicler? If the answer is the latter, is this art a conscious and directed action, or is it more akin to a snowball that slowly and uncontrollably transforms into an avalanche? And if so, how do we know when the work is completed? How would the tenants of Planinska 7 act if Petra wasn’t there to encourage them in their collective actions? How do they act now that Petra is no longer with them? Displacement / Planinska 7 is a shining example of how we shape our environment through our actions. Even after inertia sets in, the action continues, the movement Petra initiated can no longer be stopped. Under different conditions and with different actors, it continues.

Iva Prosoli

As part of the project, public lectures were held in the living room of the author and her husband, named PUP 7 (Presentations at Planinska 7), and a self-published book was also released.

Sale

I sometimes escape the city's commotion by retreating into its forgotten and hidden areas. In them, I began noticing furniture pieces from someone’s living room, a bar, a hotel foyer, grandma’s room, or a hallway, evicted from their “original environment” into an open space under the skies. I intuitively began photographing discarded parts of other people’s life inventories. The project initially was exclusively photographic, but since I am also a graphic designer, I decided to breathe a sort of new life into this discarded furniture, at least in a visual way, by utilising the same methodology and medium used by chain stores inviting us to purchase. The carefully planned scenography in furniture and home accessory catalogues sells not only merchandise but also lifestyles and comfort to fill both our spatial and emotional voids. The items I photographed have an opposite process because their functional story has ended. At the time, the internet portals were reporting about inadequate disposal of bulky communal waste in Zagreb, so I quoted some of them. My furniture pieces do not have people’s names. Instead, they are named after the locations at which they were found. I photographed some of them multiple times throughout the year and called it the Four Seasons collection, just like a symphony. All of this is part of an artist’s book that I designed, which is an integral part of the concept and essential to its understanding.