Interviewed in Zagreb on 4 January 2016
Dejan Kršić is a versatile cultural worker: designer, publicist, university professor, historian and a design critic, member of the curatorial collective whw… All of these activities are connected by Kršić’s intellectual curiosity, openness towards the acceptance of new aesthetics, but most of all by the stability of his engaged political position and the belief that cultural production and social reality are inseparably connected. We discussed certain aspects of his rich professional activity after the launch of his analytical and retrospective exhibition in Zagreb, Cetinje and Split, and before the publishing of the book Art Is Not a Mirror, It Is a Hammer, which he wrote with Marko Golub.
Maroje Mrduljaš — You studied art history and ethnography, and I remember you from the 1980s thanks to your articles on pop culture in Quorum that were exceptionally interesting because you dealt with it problematically, in a broader social context. This approach fit in with the time when one spoke more intensively about postmodernism in Zagreb, especially in cultural magazines that were both thematically and theoretically diverse, syncretic. Literature, theory, pop culture; it was all packed in one.
Dejan Kršić — At that time, the production of magazines here was extremely rich. Pitanja, Quorum, Republika, the Belgrade Delo, or Marksizam u svetu hugely affected my generation. All these magazines and newspapers, Polet and Studentski list, Start and later Mladina, profiled a specific audience. I think we miss that today; the availability of material on the Internet cannot compensate for some aspects of cultural reception.