INTERPRETATIONS

Željko Kipke’s six easy pieces

A repeated presentation of Željko Kipke’s six films shot in the first half of the 1980s, and only recently transferred to 16mm tape, is one of possible retrospective views on the so far unknown segment of the author’s formative period in the context of avant-garde. Eclectic and mannerist character of trans avant-garde is reflected in its referential quality, return to ritual sources and symbolism of the painting act connected to the primordial meaning.
The films were first screened in Super 8 format in the MM centre in Zagreb, in 1985, as part of Kipke’s exhibition ’Transparent space’. Film Black, blacker was screened without sound in Super 8 format, in Copenhagen, in 1996, as part of the program ’Croatian Moving Images — Multimedia Art’ (Kunstkorridoren NADADA).
Collective title Six easy peaces was chosen as the most appropriate for their unpretentious documentary recording of actions performed in more or less public places.
The fact that all of them, except Black, blacker, were shot without any additional editing interventions, only affirms their authenticity. The sequence of action was identical to the temporal sequence, that is to say, dynamics of the shot exchange. The result was directness and elementary simplicity, ’crudeness’ of the recording whose concept was also the context; and cameraman the participant.
The selection of six Kipke’s films was equally significant for establishing dialogue between the social context they were made in and the distance that was separating us from it, both on personal and the level of collective memory. Apart from documents about this particular period of the artist’s creation reconstructing the action, situations, works in process, performances, and installations exhibited both in public and private spaces, of which, in most cases, no material records were kept, these films are at the same time a valuable contribution revealing the author’s, very personal speech about his own work enriching it with authenticity of a metaphysical conceptual model of interpretation.

Jasna Galjer