Radical Transformation of Space

author Ivan Marušić Klif
interviewed by Željko Luketić
 

In the preface to the first major work set up by Ivan Marušić Klif in Rijeka in 2016, Sabina Solomon, a curator for the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, talks about the artist urging the machine to produce a bunch of sense that both he and the machine can regulate as abstractions, audio and visual, and formulate their relationship to reality. This relationship, as is usual with Klif, is also a stylistic designation, and most often comes intuitively and in the full spirit of the experiment. From the 1990s, when he appeared on the visual and all similar art scenes, to the present day, winning an important award at the Prague Quadrennial, Ivan Marušić Klif has almost become synonymous with some new terms, technologies and approaches to audio-visual expression. He himself will mention in this interview the issue with the terminology of that art form which, with equal fervour, blends space and light, image and sound, the analogue and the digital. Citing all of his collaborations and authorial works is a serious research task because the number of productions and works in which Klif has been credited is immense. We talked about all this in his studio, which, for the occasion, was, in the words of the author himself, completely atypically systematized and tidy. The machines took a well-earned rest on that day. 

 

Oris: At the 14th Prague Quadrennial, the world's largest event dedicated to scenography and stage space, you presented yourself with an exhibition and installation titled Sliding into the Unknown. The work won the Excellence in Performance Design Award, along with five other authors. The curators were Marko Golub and Maša Milovac, the exhibition was produced by the Croatian Designers' Association and organized by the Croatian Designers' Association and the Ministry of Culture. 

 

Ivan Marušić Klif: Working with Maša Milovac, Marko Golub, Igor Ružić and other collaborators and co-authors was a pleasure. We seriously got into the subject and it was a challenge to set everything in such a short time. I had not exhibited in a group exhibition for a long time and I was surprised by this variety. It was not until I returned to Zagreb that the word of the award came. It was such a joy because I don't really have many awards. That, I must say, means a lot to me. It boosts my self-confidence.