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Office for Photography announces the second issue of FOTOTXT!

The Office for Photography has published the second issue of our Magazine FOTOTXT, dedicated to the topic The Archive as a method, the artist as the archivist. The new issue builds on the exhibition of artist Sandro Đukić’s, titled The Archive as a construct of memory, which the Zagreb audience had a chance to see in the art gallery Spot in October 2019. FOTOTXT’s second issue introduces the works of four artists – Sandro Đukić, Peggy Buth, Ivan Petrović and Božena Končić Badurina – on more than sixty pages and aims to answer questions such as: What is an archive? What is its purpose in today’s social and artistic context? What are the consequences of artistic pieces that are based on archive materials? As stated in the leader “the archive takes up a very special place” in the perception of reality shaped by communication media; “it is the connection that allows the presumption that something like history could even have happened.”

The magazine launch will be held on Tuesday, the 3rd of March in the art gallery Spot at 7pm, where the artists Božena Končić Badurina and Sandro Đukić, as well as the researcher Darko Šimičić, from the Tomislav Gotovac Institute, and Lana Lovrenčić from the Office of Photography will talk about the new issue.

 

 

The extensive interview with artist Sandro Đukić following in the wake of his exhibition holds many revelations about the types of memories and the way people remember, while simultaneously addressing questions such as the truthfulness and reliability of archive materials in cases when they are the result of an individual’s reconstructed memory. The interview with the Berlin based artist Peggy Buth about her exhibition Vom nutzen der Angst. The politics of selection, which was held at the Camera Austrija in Graz, reveals to the reader her rich, artistic practices in which she – by primarily combining photography and video materials –  creates an image of a world, whose values have long been twisted and demolished. The second issue of Fototxt also introduces us to the visual essay of Božena Končić Badurina, who through an almost scientific process creates neutral drawings that capture the details of the fleeting mundane, creating an inventory of a residential building in the process. Just as her previous site-specific works, this one too is the result of previous research in archives and the documentation of the experiences the inhabitants and various users of the building’s premises shared with her. Apart from his active work at the Centre for Photography (CEF), which he cofounded with the photographer Mihail Vasiljević in Beograd back in 2011, photographer, archivist and artist Ivan Petrović also flexes his artistic prowess in the theoretical and analytical field. Because of that the new issue features his conversation with curator Miho Colner.

 

 

The second issue of FOTOTXT was published as a Office for Photography bilingual edition (Croatian/English). The publishing was funded through our own funds. The magazine can be bought at the Office of Photography (at Čanićeva Street nr. 6) for 20,00 kn (3€). (If you are  unable to visit us in person, please feel free to contact us via E-mail at info@officeforphotography.com)

 

 

The third issue of Fototxt, currently in the works, will be dedicated in its entirety to the avant-garde exhibition Phony Smile. Language of photographic interpretation and aesthetic speculation, which the Office of Photography is preparing will be shown in the Arton Foundation in April 2020. With this exhibition the Office of Photography will contribute in the program to commemorate Croatia’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

 

This post is also available in: Croatian