Presentation of Christoph Szalay’s publication: When I walk through the city, I see flags everywhere...

Artist Christoph Salazay has stayed in Zagreb on a residency from November 2018 to January 2019, within Pogon's exchange programme with Akademie Schloss Solitude. His stay in Zagreb has inspired him to write "When I walk through the city, I see flags everywhere, and I am always curious if they will speak to me or stay silent.", a publication in which Salazay, an outsider "looking in", reflects on questions of national myths, stories and histories in his own particular way. A replica of the Bašćanska Tablet, a replica of the Dove of Vučedol and a sea shell, all present on a shelf in the apartment he occupied during his residency, prompt questions on how we tell stories, who tells them and our need to, sometimes, tell them differently. The artist talk will be moderated by Bojan Krištofić.

"A story that collapses is a rupture, a rupture that makes you turn your head and eyes either to the past, in an almost delirious need for causality and continuation, or it can make you embrace its breakage. Reading the publication Lucid Garden on Iranian-born artist Mehran Atashi is revealing. There is a passage in the introduction where Atashi’s practice is described as steadily building a universe, a constellation that can’t be broken, because it already embodies its ruptures, and doesn’t aim to be finished. It’s a reference to fluidity, to a constant state of becoming rather than something firm and fixed. Of course, an artist’s practice is something very different than the telling of a nation. Nevertheless, I like to think that the strategies and tools could be applied beyond a single person’s creative process, even all the way into the realm of negotiating national identities."

— from the publication by Christoph Szalay

Christoph Szalay (Graz, Austria) is a writer, curator and commissioner for literature at Forum Stadtpark Graz. He studied German philology in Graz as well as Art in Context at UdK Berlin. He is currently fellow of Schloss Solitude (Visual Arts/Theory). And just recently he received the Alice Salomon Poetik Prize. Latest artistic projects include the installation "Heimat, steirischer herbst Volksfronten", 2018, "when we turned off the light [we didn't see nothing]", 89plus/Luma, Zürich, 2017, "SPACE=WOW (BUT I STILL MISS YOU, EARTH)", chapbook by Spacecraft Press, Calgary, 2017, performed as a music theater play in Minoriten Graz as well as at the music theater days Vienna 2017. Upcoming curatorial projects include a two weeks writing residency of Amalia Ulman (in cooperation with Grazer Kunstverein) as well as a commissioned work by Kameelah Janan Rasheed. www.toutlemondesaitque.com

Bojan Krištofić is a writer, art critic and designer. He holds MA in Visual Communications Design at School of Design, Faculty of Architecture (University of Zagreb, 2012.) and has been professionally active since 2010. As a critic and journalist in culture, he worked with numerous print, digital, radio and television media in Croatia and abroad, and as a designer and every-once-in-a-while curator he exhibited his works at several group exhibitions and has curated or co-curated three (so far). He is an author of two DIY books and in the fall of 2018 he published the poetry book "Macroorganisms" (Jesenski & Turk, Zagreb). He was a fellow in the field of international literature at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart and from the beginning of 2019 he also works as the program coordinator of Ateliers Žitnjak Gallery. He is also a member of the Croatian Design Association, AICA and Cinema club Zagreb.Project is conducted in partnership with the Akademie Schloss Solitude and Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb. Project is funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and the City of Zagreb.