| The PM
Galerie is located in the centre of Zagreb in the "Square for the Victims
of Fascism". In the 1990's, under Tudjman's Nationalist Right government,
the name of the square was changed to the "Square for Heroes",
then once Tudjman died and lost power, back again to the "Square for
the Victims of Fascism". On the anniversary of Tudjman's death, many
fascists gather with candles to protest the name of the square.
In contrast to the now familiar visual presence of big international companies in European city centres, Miklos Erhardt and I were struck by the persistence of so many local Croatian companies and factories which had existed from the years before the break up of Yugoslavia, many of which use only a simple graphic representation of the first letter of the name of the company as their logo. Despite the strong presence of local logos in the city centre, we soon found out that many of these companies were struggling to compete in the globalsed economy and facing closure or bankruptcy. In reference to both the above mentioned contestation of the naming of the square and also the possibility of maintaining lines of separation between a fixed local economy and a fluid global economy, we reproduced, cut out and painted enough letters, taken from different local logos, to spell the banal question/statement 'where do we end and they begin?' that questioned the possibility of maintaining separations of global and local, in Croatian and stuck them between each column around the outside of the building. The same text was painted in English, using different logos on the walls of the inner circular space. Exhibitions: Points of Departure, PM Galerie, Zagreb, 2003. More information at: www.bighope.hu/pointsofdeparture |