Reactions on Janez Janša’s exhibition Life (Work in progress) on the ZOOM festival in Rijeka, Croatia

The opening of Janez Janša’s exhibition Life (Work in progress) took place at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMSU) Rijeka in the frame of the Zoom festival on Monday, August 30. There were between 20 and 150 guests at the opening. The media covered the whole event including the cutting of the Croatian flag.

The exhibition consists of fifty instructions related to various aspects of life – e.g. Remember your first kiss and find a person to share your experience with. Among them was the following controversial instruction: If you’re ashamed of your nation take the scissors and cut a piece of the flag. Most instructions were accompanied with necessary equipment – e.g. the scissors and the flag.

On Wednesday, September 1, an artist and Homeland war veteran from Rijeka started criminal proceedings against the author of the exhibition, Mr. Janez Janša, the festival and exhibition organizers, Drugo More, and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka (where the exhibition took pace). This was followed by media instigations that artists pushed things too far, in other words the whole exhibition was criminalised.

On Friday, September 3, two press conferences only 45 minutes apart took place. The first was organized by two Croatian Homeland war veterans associations and the second by the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) representatives in Rijeka. On both events the exhibition was fiercely attacked and there were even demands for the resignation of the Mayor of Rijeka. One of the HDZ representatives even waved around a piece of the flag that he took (at least that is what he says) from the museum. This in turn demonstrates a total disregard for ownership and lack of respect towards artwork.

At 3 pm the same day, police came to the museum to gather evidence – pieces of the flag and the instructions – but they also took part of the equipment accompanying another instruction – a pistol (not real, a theatre prop). At this point the police brought in Janez Janša and Davor Mišković for an interview and they released us at 7.30 pm. The media instigations continued, although not so fiercely (in spite of or because of the press conferences). The police had no court warrants; they told us they were following investigative procedure (whatever that means).

On Saturday, September 4, Drugo more held a press conference with prominent artists and theoreticians from Croatia and around the world (participants of the Performance Studies International Conference) that addressed the issue of the integrity of artwork. In the afternoon the Prime minister commented that something that promotes violence and destruction cannot be art, that the coat of arms and the flag have to be sacred and that she supports criminal persecution. The TV News reported that charges were pressed against Janša and Davor Mišković (which later turned out to be untrue, but it shows the direction the national television turns this story – towards criminalisation).

On Monday, September 6, we found out, from the media, that the prosecuting authorities are not satisfied with the investigation and are not bringing charges but have sent the case back to the police for further investigation.