Works

K2 / 1997

Performance 15′ / VHS video 4′ 49″ / Digital Beta video 7′ 35″

On the table in the center of the gallery there are seven sheets of paper, on each one is written one word from the phrase, “I AM THE ARTIST WHO WANTS TO CHANGE THE WORLD.” I raise, one by one, each sheet above my head, show it to the audience and then tear it up. When the last notion is shown and the last sheet of paper torn up, I take a bat from under the table and start to powerfully hit the gallery walls. After two or three minutes the audience is also equipped with small hammers and joins me in the demolition of the gallery.

K1 / 1997

Performance 15′ / Digital beta 3′ 13”

During this performance, the audience was kept waiting for the performer in a darkened auditorium. A deaf and blind woman was guided to the spot lit platform. Once she was in position at the lectern, she put on surgical gloves and performed in sign language the text that she had been taught. At a certain point, she indicated she would repeat the text: at this precise moment, two consecutive light flashes were fired behind her, temporarily blinding the audience. The woman then repeated her speech. When it was concluded, she took off the gloves, left them on the platform and departed from the hall aided by the attendant. In the lobby, a copy of the text that has just been performed lay there. It was available to the audience, but it is unlikely that many of those present would have understood it, since it was in Braille.

Love shot / 1996

Performance / Mini DV video / 3′ 24″

Zlatko Kopljar engraved the word for love in Croatian, English and Latin onto a bullet. He drove to a wooded hill near Zagreb where the audience and his gun awaited him. The artist loaded the gun and fired it blindly into the night. His hope was that the bullet of love would land in fertile soil and sprout, eventually.

Shame / 1996

Installation / cigarette paper

By choosing Passatacqua’s steps in front of the Jesuit Church of St. Ignatius in Dubrovnik as the site and reference for his spatial intervention, Kopljar opted for a very demanding and scenically baroque site. Using wide bands of cigarette paper he covers the steps steeped foot steps in a sheet of whiteness with all the associations this invokes; from

DSASFSI,UE? / 1994

Dove sarrei arrivato se fossi stato inteligente, Ubi Ego? / performance / 30′

Where would I have got to if I had been intelligent? Where am I?

The war in Croatia had just started. Remembering Joseph Beuys’ performance of 1970–72, entitled: Dove sarei arrivato se fossi stato intelligente? the artist Zlatko Kopljar posed himself that same question. During this performance the audience found him sitting at a hospital table writing down messages on a notepad with carbon paper beneath the pages.