“The Tolerance Pit”, community project
Permanent site-specific installation, Suncokret Center for Community Development, Gvozd, Croatia
The work was created during “KIDSART BRIDGES: Tolerance and Understanding In Our World”, project held by a non-profit arts advocacy organization Artoconecto, from Miami, FL.
This collaborative project involved Croatian and Serbian kids engaged in the process of digging a hole and creating the land art piece on the grounds of Suncokret. The kids were than instructed to go one by one and express their feelings and thoughts of the things that made them either angry or frustrated. The feelings would be kept in the hole. It was a symbolic gesture of tolerance. Photo documentation about the work, alongside the artwork of the participating artists, will be exhibited in US in December, during Art Basel Miami Beach 2011.
Participating kids:
Mateo Abramović, Ivan Posavec, Mateo Posavec, Stefan Vrga, Anamarija Petrović, Nicolina Komšić, Antonio Komšić, Kristina Šubić, Marko Džoja, Marin Blaževic, Goran Kulić.
Participating Volunteers:
Anja Blažević, Kristina Šubić, Branko Džakula
organization
“My peer artist Hrvoje and I didn’t know much about Gvozd except that the place was troubled during and after The Croatian War of Independence. From Suncokret organization we found out that “Gvozd Municipality is an extremely socially deprived municipality with very high unemployment rates. It was destroyed during the war (in physical, cultural and social terms) and is currently subject to the process of return of the population as well as resettling of refugees. Gvozd Municipality is separated and isolated from the wider community due to poor infrastructure. The lack of adequate interaction among individuals or various national/ethnic, religious, cultural and other groups was recognized. In addition to physical devastations, the community has been disintegrated, resulting in the separation of and tensions among young people”. Suncokret - Centre for Community Development, where the project took place is a non-governmental, non-profit organization founded as a response to the psychosocial needs of community in the after war period. “Suncokret aims to address negative psychological, social and cultural consequences of the social upheavals in the region, to improve the quality of life for all, but especially for deprived members of the society, to promote community rebuilding, and support development of a sustainable democratic civil society. Suncokret implements a broad range of programs and initiatives in the local community, a resettlement area, primarily for the youth and children."
On the day of our camp, we meet Alexandra Rangel, Executive Director of Artoconecto, in Zagreb and we drove together to Gvozd. We stopped to show Alexandra a few points of interest in Zagreb and later in Karlovac, town heavily destroyed by the war, a strategic point and front line where both sides exchanged fire for long periods of time. The town is still severely damaged by the war, and Alexandra stated that she ”was stunned to see houses, all over, still bearing the holes caused by the impact of shell fragments”.
From Karlovac we continued driving to more and more remote areas and finally came to Gvozd and Suncokret. We were greeted by volunteers and children eagerly waiting for the beginning of our camp.
Even though Hrvoje and I set all the details about our camp before, we took some quite time to find a spot for our work.
As we explained the children and volunteers what we were supposed to create it was a matter of minutes that they brought plenty of tools and started digging the pit.
They worked very hard and were so enthusiastic about the process, that it didn’t take more than two hours to finish the hole! On the other side, a group of volunteers were in charge of cutting pieces of wood that we later laid into the pit to keep the bottom dry during future rainfalls.
Watching children going to say their words of tolerance to the pit was moving, they all took it very seriously, their body language shown they all had some kind of relief and the experience was therapeutic.
Anita Sulimanovic
0 comments:
Post a Comment