After reviewing the PUF program, the members of the jury – Tanja Vrvilo, Nataša Govedić, and
Luka Mihovilović – decided to give the DROP award (a hint of refreshment) to three
performances. The reason for this is the conscious nurturing of several “sprouts,” embryos, seeds,
artistic initiatives, or impulses of authorial originality presented at PUF, where we see both
inherent value and great potential for further development. It is especially important in the
independent scene to work on the continuity and enhancement of the initial impulse, which is
why we emphasize that we view the DROP award as “developmental” and binding for the artist.
The first DROP award goes to Vasja Šumonja and Luna Vojnović for the performative concept of
the exhibition “Sisi, Come Back!” or the photographic evaluation of a cats’ resistance to all forms
of political pressures, cruelty, and heartlessness. The presence of an animal in a cultural space
brings with it the dignity of defiance and independence, captured through the language of
photography. Sisi is the nickname of the famous Austro-Hungarian queen, but also the name of
the cat in the photographs, while the series of epithets accompanying the cat portraits (“stubborn,
self-willed, graceful, intelligent”) establishes the value of a cat’s life as a sovereign artistic
subject. The nurturing of the tradition of PUF’s permanent “animal program” is certainly
something we would love to see at the upcoming festival selections.
The second DROP award goes to the Spanish artist Macarena Recuerda for “The Watching
Machine”, the electric theater that evokes optical illusions and the dream sensorium of theatrical
attractions of the early cinema by Segundo de Chomón, or more revealing, by the overlooked
filmmaker and actress Julienne Mathieu, his partner. The trick-lights of “The Watching Machine”
are its microphone eyes and mouth along with the eyes and mouth of the performer, but in the
mirrored levitation of the machine vision, they are both one or several anyway. However, this is
not yet machinima; it’s still machianima! The research principle of overturned spectacle becomes
a performative routine of capturing friendly reflections akin to post-happening activities,
specifically, the organization of observation is instructive, while the mirrored projection of the
machine’s microphone light for the audience is astonishing. Expanding the reflections from the
observational techniques of the modernity in the 19th-century to contemporary détournement
practices to displace the functions of machines and bodies, Macarena Recuerda reminds us that
machines for images are ours before being technical: because the wind is high, because the sky is
blue.
The third DROP award goes to the artists Branko Gulin, as well as Marjan Sinošić and Debora
Trusgnach from The Town Workshop for the visual-performative installation “The Ghosts of
Nature Strike Back!”, where the empty spaces left by hundred-year-old trees cut down on Pula’s
Giardini promenade are countered by three totems, each bearing its own wounds and invoking the
great symbolic tree of life, in which humans, animals, and trees are permanently and inextricably
connected. The ethics of care for trees as full-fledged citizens of the city of Pula, and the
aesthetics of a ritualistic warning of the ecological and societal “zero value” of trees, as well as
the need for maximum protection of the biosphere we inhabit, seem to be a lasting priority of this
festival and an excellent guide for further exploration within PUF.
The WIND award for research achievements goes to the performance “REDACTED” by Igor
Zenzerović, who strategically used the aegis of the professional title and name of Siniša Labrović
to “hijack” audience from the famous performer and expose them to a deliberately chaotic car
ride. Zenzerović personally leads his audience through the present-day Pula’s streets, as well as
through civic paranoia and pseudo-indoctrinations of various conspiracy theories, opening up the
issue of migrants in our collective “trunk.” Zenzerović’s performative “burst of rage” or the
explosive dimension of commentary on the warlike and exploitative side of our reality is
executed in a way that raises participants’ awareness of the lack of care for “one’s own steering
wheel”, deliberately contrasted with the false concern of the driver (the central narrative figure in
the performance) for global conflict hotspots. The short ride reveals many dimensions of our
micro-psychotic behaviors, as well as the constant social microaggressions, precisely locating
them in the supposed “normalcy” of our everyday life.
The CLOUD award for comprehensive stage conception goes to the performance “The Island!”
by the Czech group Burkicom and the choreographer Jana Burkiewiczová. It is a critique of the
escapist aspect of daydreaming about escaping to an utopian island, particularly focusing on the
critique of colonial conquest of constantly new exotic locations for the exploitation of their
economic resources and human capital. With a virtuously elaborated stage space and masterfully
designed choreography, the performance raises the question of whether we are capable of
breaking our millennial greed for ever-new acquisitions of “paradises” and building instead new
models of social care for the hells we leave behind. Both in terms of dance, direction,
scenography, and costume design, this is a carefully thought-out and elaborated theatrical work
that never moralizes or lectures, yet strikes at every point of our society’s hypocrisy and the
chronic lack of environmental responsibility. It is not just an ecological reveille, but also a
complex theatrical study of man as a predatory animal, cruel both to his own kind and all other
species. At the same time, it is a Brechtian performance that calls for awakening from various
kinds of political hypnosis, where capital always takes precedence over man.
The LIGHTING award was not given this year.
