Purgatory

”REMAKE” – FESTIVAL OF CREATIVE INTERVENTIONS
Anything You Imagine Is Possible
The forest caught fire. Everyone started running from it, elephants, lions, giraffes, bears… Everyone, except a hummingbird. The small bird decided to do something. It took water into its small beak from a nearby stream and, drop by drop, began extinguishing the forest fire. ”Where are you going, you useless creature, what do you think you’re doing with that drop of water?” – asked the big bear. ”I’m doing what I can” – answered the hummingbird. The ”Remake” members, like the hummingbird, are doing everything they creatively can to wake up big animals

Text and photo: Dragana Barjaktarević

This November is defying winter, and this November’s ”Remake Festival” is defying worn out forms and ideas. The ”Remake” members don’t watch the world through imposed templates; they remake it, edge it, put it together in their visual key, giving it a new, useful essence – unexpected, therefore fun. A chandelier made of the washing machine drum, lamp of plastic bottle, flower pot of car tire, chair of a supermarket cart, couch of an old tub, dress of old newspapers, jewelry of computer parts or cutlery… Perhaps they do continue the work of Duchamp, Gaudi or Picasso, but in Serbia, where only 6-8 percent of waste is recycled, the ”Remake” members, drop by drop, like the hummingbird from the South-American parabola, do what they can to wake up the consumer population, offering imagination instead of suffocating the environment.

LITTLE BRAVE FESTIVAL

The first ”Remake” was held a year ago in the ”Parobrod” Cultural Institution. The little brave festival then traveled through other cities in Serbia and abroad. During that year, fed with excellent ideas, creative and necessary, it began walking and talking, it made friends and sponsors, gathered brilliant artists, local and foreign, expanded its activities. It is still developing, constantly remaking.
The second ”Remake” or the ”remake of the ‘Remake’”, was opened on October 31 in the ”Grad” Cultural Center, with rakia and greaves, good DJs and the ”Svetonazori” chorus, with local and foreign guests, people creative by vocation, as well as those creative by sensibility.
A sign that the festival is growing is also in the fact that this year it expanded to three locations – KC ”Grad”, ”Krug” club and Faculty of Media and Communication. Besides standard lectures and workshops, it is accompanied with an evening music program.
The program of this year’s festival was divided into three parts with a prefix ”Re”: ReSet, ReCreate and ReThink. All three signified by recycling – awareness, ideas and material. ReSet are lectures and workshops on ecology, environmental protection, sustainable and renewable sources of energy, healthy living, the subjects that have lately become so trendy that they lost their original meaning.
ReThink includes lectures, presentations and debates about film, music, architecture, design, multimedia art, scene arts and photography. It introduces the participants into the essence of remaking, either ideas or material. While ReThink contemplates, ReCreate acts. It is probably the most creative part of the festival, since artists and participants of workshops redesign together – use old things to make clothes, jewelry, furniture, artistic and other useful objects.

IMITATING NATURE

The colorful opening of the festival was followed by more serious topics. On the first floor of KC ”Grad”, tempestuous from worrying subjects and heavy traffic swinging the nearby Branko’s Bridge, lectures were held within ReSet and the list of devastating statistics expanded: almost two billion people on the planet don’t have a source of drinking water which satisfies the lowest standards; the needs of mankind for natural resources are about 50 percent above the level the planet can bear. If we continue with this way of life, by 2030 we will need two planets to satisfy our annual needs. So, there is nothing else to do but to imitate nature – begin recycling. What is circulation of matter if not remaking nature itself? Remake beginners were able to discover the way it’s done in the yard of KC ”Grad”. Savamala and participants of ”Remake” workshops were privileged by the Indian summer sun for four days. At the expense of climate changes, of course. Sparks were flashing, different tools clanking, drills buzzing, new forms being born, abstract or functional, drops for extinguishing the blazing fire.
Workshops are the basic expression of ”Remake”. This year, the participants were directed towards researching their creativity and recognizing new forms camouflaged into the learnt patterns by some of the greatest experts in reviving forgotten ideas and rejected objects: Mauro Masaroto from Rovinj, who resurrected ”Startas”, controversial Spanish designer Luis Eslava, who calls himself farmer of ideas, famous French designer Solenne Morigeaud, and local authors Ana Đorđević, Miloš Tomić, Ivan Paradinović and others. Creative and unique objects are created in the workshops at the expense of mass low quality production. They initiate the participants to stop being passive consumers, but authors of their own values, to have fun and continue applying the learnt techniques and skills.

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Do It Yourself
DIY (Do it yourself), is an expression that began being used in the 1950s, and referred to smaller works in the household. Then it spread onto any kind of manual manufacture and independent production – different handicrafts, models, samizdats, music… The most remarkable form of such activity is actually the foundation of the ”Remake Festival” – redesign and recycling.

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Recycled Fashion
Katarina Rašić (Belgrade, 1987) graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Painting. She has been member of the ULUS since 2012. She supports artistic recycling and the idea that creativity is the most efficient way to preserve the environment. She is recognizable for her recycled clothes made of newspaper, garbage bags, egg boxes, old music tapes, discs, wire, nylon… Her dresses are perhaps not functional, but they send an effective message.

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Star of the Festival
Mauro Masaroto, born in Rovinj, began his artistic path in Florence after enrolling at the Academy of Art and Design, Department of Illustration and Graphics. He worked for large advertising agencies, illustrations for magazines, design for popular brands… In 2006, he opened a multidisciplinary creative studio ”Sheriff & Cherry” in Rovinj. Two years later, he entered into a new project – reviving the forgotten sports brand ”Startas” of the Vukovar ”Borovo” factory. The redesigned textile sneakers became a great fashion hit shortly after.