Luana Lojić / Lecture performance

On Thursday, February 2, 2023, at 6 p.m., Luana Lojić will hold a performance-lecture at the Rijeka Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Luana Lojić’s performance-lecture results from her research as an artist in residence at Kamov. During her stay, the artist was exploring the ties between the Rječina River and the city, focusing on the river as a natural resource and its (non)presence in the life of the Rijeka people. Lojić gathered information and impressions about the Rječina River during field visits, researching the history of interventions on the riverbed and source, in her conversations with activists of the citizens’ initiative “Save Ričina”.

In the lecture, Lojić will combine storytelling on the topic of the Rječina with a screening of visual materials. She focuses on the different roles and perceptions of the Rječina, along with its geomorphological properties and the ways these properties are altered and manipulated by man (for example, the redirection of the river’s flow, construction of the dam, and formation of the artificial lake).

Having noticed that her attention during the research shifted depending on the language she used or the  atmosphere of places she was visiting, she decided to translate the methodology of “guided attention” into her work and apply it in the lecture.

From the artist’s statement:
The research entitled “amalgamations (Others)” focuses on water sources in Croatia. On this occasion, as part of the Kamov art residency program, I am getting to know the Rječina, its bed, soil, stones, sand, alder trees, source, drystone walls, concrete, history and the stories it tells to people close to her. Exploited as energy source, as part of Rijeka’ water supply system since 1915, and as the Hydroelectric Power Plant Rijeka since 1968, the Rječina seems to  transform from a freshwater stream into a hydro energy generating product. I want to examine the awkward sense of alienation between the Rječina and the City, using the etymology of the Croatian words voda (water), verb voditi (guide) and vodljiva (conductive). If I try to describe this experience through language, I come up with the following words: promenade, resource. My work explores how information flows through the matter, measuring the relationships between the geosphere and the homosphere, putting organic and numerical values into a relationship using heat, mobile phone, soil, and water.

Luana Lojić was born in 1991 in Pula. She graduated in 2016 from the Department of New Media, Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts. She is a member of the art collective Ljubavnice (Mistresses), whose practice focuses on an interdisciplinary integration of science and art, and informal art collective M28. Lojić is interested in applied cosmophilia and digital nomadism. From poetry for stones to live installations, videos, film, voiceover and live art that thematize the relationship of man with the systems, perceptions and materialities that surround him, Lojić seeks to understand the natural processes outside and within the concept of the senses. As part the above said collective, and in continuous collaborations with scientists and experts, she explores the possibilities of entwining different poetics and examines hybrid media solutions.

Photo: Sara Salamon