Branka Cvjetičanin – artist, curator, and producer. She operates in the sphere of contemporary artistic and cultural practices, with a focus on interdisciplinary visual arts and visual anthropology, as well as engaged art practice in rural, sub-urban, post-war, transitional and/or socially endangered areas and communities.
In 1999, she initiated the Polygon OS platform supporting the idea of research-based art practice. Cvjeticanin is educated in the field of performing arts, site-specific theater direction and artistic production (MAPA Amsterdam, Oerol Festival, NL). She held research position and post-graduated at the Bauhaus Kollege Dessau – UN Urbanism (2005/06) and gained Women’s Studies Diploma – Solar plexus – Artistic research on the topic of class isolation and gender aspects of Architecture and Urbanism (2016/17). Recently, she participated in the creation and implementation of the Rijeka 2020 ECoC program as Chief Artistic Director of Flagship 27 Neighborhoods (2017/21)
Awarded with several art awards and scholarships, the most recent: Erhard Busek Award 2022 – UNIRI, Center for Advanced Studies SEE, Erste Foundation, City of Rijeka, and prestigious artist residency programs: Rijeka Kamov residency, Watermill, USA; CalArts, USA, Edinburgh Festival, GB; Montalvo Art Center, USA; Arts Link USA. She is a member of HZSUa – Croatian Association of Independent Artists, HS AICA, A.R.E.A. network.
Pozzo Franz collective, Krapan, 2020
Students, Universitat fur angewandte Kunst Wien, neighbourhood Fužine, 2019
Sun, performance, Branka Cvjetičanin, Lika, 2020
Nature Journaling, Lika, 2022
Selected works:
Recruitment Centres for the Artists
2011 – still on going, different localities, Polygon – Centre for Cultural Research and Project Development
Polygon Recruitment Centres for the Artists is the program emerged from artistic action and engaged artistic practice and was set up in the format of a micro-cultural strategy intended to solve the specific problems of the isolation of rural communities in Croatia. Through contemporary artistic and cultural practices and through an innovative, experimental approach, program aims to empower and provide support to the inhabitants of neglected areas. Recruiting Canters are being set up in rural, post-industrial areas and socially disadvantaged areas of Croatia, areas where there is no “contemporary art” living there. The aim and purpose of the program is to point out, through various actions and activities, the general neglect and abandonment of suburban and rural areas where there is a deeper problem of transition processes, economic, social and ecological endangerment of residents for which local and national government structures, in the absence of a narrative, vision and authority, lack adequate solutions and political interest.
Recruitment Centre for the Artists – Pozzo Franz
2011-2021, Krapan, Municipality of Raša, Istria region, Croatia, Polygon – Centre for Cultural Research and Project Development
The first in a series of recruitment centers was launched in 2011. in Krapan, Municipality of Raša. Each of the Recruitment Centre for the Artists is active until the visibility, acceptance and the creation of a new narrative of the locality had emerged. Krapan has no history of “former fishing village” or “ruins of the old town”, Krapan is unique. Part of Europe from the first moment, created due to the black “gold” fever, the original “failure” of the banker Rothschild, the source of energy used in different wars, on the border of different countries, as a center of new advanced technologies that established control over nature, control over man and human labor. In recent history, it become a refugee shelter and a blatant example of transitional theft, the collapse of the mono-economic industrial principle and numerous ideological and economic philosophical thoughts. Krapan, frozen in time, instead of “The mine is ours” today shouts “Sewage is ours”.
https://www.facebook.com/PozzoFranz/, https://pozzofranz.tumblr.com/
Recruitment Centre for the Artists – Lika
2018 – still on going, Lika region, Croatia
The Recruitment Centre for Artists – Lika is conceived as an artistic-research platform of an innovative-experimental character and takes place through several program lines. COLONY – an eco-social platform that uses the space of “objects without function”, producing educational content and artworks dedicated to non-human communities with the idea of preserving natural cultural heritage and rethinking it in the context of the future; MADE IN LIKA – memorabilia and emotional souvenirs are stories and objects that are created through meetings with the inhabitants of Lika, through which the community gathers within the storytelling sessions; ELSEWHERE SCHOOL – all programs of RCU Lika also have an educational character exploring the space of knowledge creation. We focus on non-human communities, get acquainted with basic traditional knowledge of construction, agricultural cultivation as well as agrarian cultural policies, while opening the question of depopulation of Croatian rural areas. The ultimate goal is to establish an Institute for the Study of the Future in the Lika region; LIKA INTERNATIONAL – In the context of international cultural cooperation, RCU-Lika is a member of the international network A.R.E.A. – Arts in Rural European Areas.
Beyond the Endless Border
2018 – still on going, Lika region, Croatia, Polygon – Centre for Cultural Research and Project Development
Beyond the Endless Border is an international artistic-research residency program intended exclusively for women, artists, activists, fighters, scientists and other strong women who take on the role of explorers of the “wilderness”, in this case social and natural wilderness of Lika region. Beyond the Endless Border program began in 2017 and, apart from the only such program in Croatia, represents the first and only platform for the development of artistic and research practice in the multimedia domain of the Polygon OS operating system.
The Polygon OS operating system was initiated in 2004 and as such is intended for artistic research works and is one of the first in the world whose primary purpose focuses on artistic research practice.
Rijeka 2020 – Flagship 27 Neighbourhoods
2017-2021, Rijeka, Primorje Gorski Kotar County, EU
The name of the program line – 27 neighbourhoods – symbolically refers to the 27 countries of the European Union that make up Croatia’s European neighbourhood. The European Capital of Culture project basically connects European citizens by presenting and introducing cultural differences. On this track, the program line of 27 neighbourhoods was designed, connecting neighbourhoods throughout the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County with neighbourhoods from the other 27 member states of the European Union, opening program collaboration which enabled exchange of experiences, customs and everyday life of the island, coast, hinterland, mountains, of the city of Rijeka and Europe.
https://rijeka2020.eu/program/27-susjedstava/, https://www.facebook.com/27susjedstava/
