For me, the issue of monumentality is related to an aphorism by Antoine Saint-Exupery that I like very much, where he says we do not ask to be eternal beings, we only ask that things do not lose all their meaning. In her book The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt writes about the necessity of world creation for the maintenance of stability and continuity in a world where individual mortality is to be transcended. What I understand by monumentality is this continuity of the human world, the collective capacity that is to transcend death. The question then becomes of how can one still maintain this kind of activity today? The very fact that one can pose this question shows how precarious the issue is in a world, which is constantly changing, in which the pressure of technological and economic change is so intense. It is obviously this intensity itself which makes the constitution of a human world extremely difficult; the maintenance of its stability, its identity, its physical presence even, becomes a difficult task before the escalation of technological and instrumental change. This is obvious not only in the field of architecture, but also for the whole question of national identity or for that matter other kinds
of identity.

(Kenneth Frampton, Interview with I. Bobbink & E. Monchen, Berlage Institute Papers, 1993)

Europe keeps redefining itself historically. The difference in this process now and before is that Europe does not any more go far to the East or to Africa, but it uses its own territory for redefining. Suddenly millions, who were European for centuries, are excluded from Europe. The are The Others now. Europe is reconstructing itself using the Eastern Europe for that. A new power discourse is being set up. On the one hand we have norms that are frequently western, but eastern countries have not yet been considered ready for such norms, because they had a difficult past and need help to become ready, compatible with the norm. The established power discourse is a necessary tool for the ones controlling resources, so that they could maintain control over them. I am often a part of that construction of Otherness. I have been The Other many times and I am frequently tired of it, I do not want to be The Other.

From an interview with Joanna Regulska, conducted by Igor Marković, Zarez, Zagreb, 1999

The dream of a completely fluid and passing world-space is maybe the last Utopian idea of the 20th century. It is a characteristic quality, supposedly inborn to the world of today, but if we look at that space more closely, it leaves a different impression.
One of the immediate results of global interconnecting and movement seems to be the proliferation of borders, security systems, checkpoints, physical and virtual demarcations. That phenomenon can be observed on the micro-level of our environment, as well as on the large scale of global flow. That means that borders are everywhere around us. They are at the same time conventional, geographic, abstract and real, usual and controversial. A general overview of this flow pattern (of people, commodities, ideas…) and limitations specific of particular areas, reveals the complexity of individual and collective identities, which are at the same time created and divided by the experience of crossing a border.

Multiplicity, Stefano Boeri, 2003

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The international Internet competition of the 38th Zagreb Salon with the topic: “Borders: the Other Side of Globalisation” is conceived as conceptual redefining of the Republic of Croatia’s border with the European Union.

Ideas and suggestions for redefining the border area are expected in the fields of architecture and city-planning, landscape architecture, graphic design, industrial design and all other disciplines rooted in the visual interpretation of reality. Particularities and/or differences in the economical, cultural, social and landscape context represent the basic conceptual frame for suggestions. All suggestions should anticipate the inclusion of Croatia into the European integration in the period from 2007 onwards.

The intervention space defines the border area with present and future members of the EU, Italy (border at sea), Slovenia (border at sea and on land) and Hungary (border on land).

As a world process, globalisation has a major influence on everything happening in local context. Globalisation processes can be visualised almost like a weather forecast, an inevitable process, new ecology. As farmers do not ask why it is going to rain tomorrow or why it is windy, so the local authorities (politicians, investors, “culture-people” and others) should not lose time specifying global influences, but use it to understand and manipulate them. For the architectural discourse, it is especially interesting to diagnose the influences of the global flow on local physical reality. The investigation in this segment leads us to the works of Saskia Sassen and her hypotheses “…that if we take globalisation and digitalisation seriously, then we shall soon realise that global flow influences the local physical environment, creating “interstitial” or “counter” spaces”. They are places where the global flow has partially, but evidently influenced the formation of a city’s physical environment. Further on, Sassen states that precisely at those spots and in those spaces, alternative projects can be conceived and visualised. Following Sassen, we can characterise alternative projects as the ones, which will not blindly and literally follow the globalisation processes, but form a certain opposition towards them. Such projects will accept the global, but will build the local as an alternative expression of the global. Strategies of such projects must engage a certain amount of imagination, true understanding of global processes and finally, a special visual culture. The border competition counts on such strategies in solving the task. The border itself is exactly that space “between”, that “different” space where the global and the local world overlap and touch each other.

Croatia is a transitional country and transition is its first and real ecology. But in the Croatian context, transition is not any more just a phenomenon where a single political party system and a controlled market are replaced by parliamentarian democracy and a free market. In spite of the specific Croatian experience full of crises (homeland war), controversies and stumbling over obstacles, this first transition phase is evidently reaching its end. However acceptable at the beginning of the 90-ies the motto: “Time is a luxury which East-European countries can not afford in transitional process” looked, today we speak about possibly positive characteristics of the “strategies of delay”. In the case of Croatia it would be hard to believe that those “strategies of delay” are conducted with complete awareness or strategically, because here everyone, it is at least declared to be so, hurries to Europe. But if we consider Slaven Letica, a former intellectual critic, who vested in governor Jelačić’s costume charges at Slovenian border, bringing apples and good news to Slovenian task forces, one asks himself whether even that “strategy of delay” is not partially deliberate, although completely cut off critical discourse. The question, who needs this peak in Žumberak hills and which conquering armies will watch each other from Sveta Gera once we are in EU is also interesting. It is, however, equally clear that for Letica and the HSP (Croatian Rights’ Party), but also for the Slovenian daily paper “Dnevnik”, the border represents a field for political and identification discussions. A border is an area that always generates tensions. The border contest should use this dynamic identification field to create new possible situations for border regions. It is interesting that even after abolishing the borders between European countries, border areas retain their special meanings, dynamics and contents. However, we must also note that the European region is getting more and more unified, that bureaucratic directives from Brussels have been taken seriously in the East, that European investors tend to unify European urban programmes. Europe is becoming an area with same hotels, same restaurants, a common infrastructure, an area abandoning its particularities. A border has always been a place of difference, a place where change is happening, a place of some other identities... Those identities should not vanish; moreover, the new Europe needs them desperately. The European expansion to the East has sense only in that context, as a social and cultural project. “New” European countries, which, however, have always been European, should not contribute to European culture only by their medieval monuments, but rather through relevant modern production. The role of architecture, city planning, landscape planning, graphic and industrial design and all other visual disciplines is of utmost importance for the European cultural exchange. In that context, strategies of delay can help Croatia to realise a different, less restricted level of urban environment, until it is integrated into the community. The border competition initiates a discussion about particularities of Croatian visual identity, as well as strategies for the development of urban environment in border areas. The time until the admittance into the Union should rather be comprehended as a chance for development of a specific concept, then as an obstacle for achievement of European “ideals”.

To end or begin the story about the Croatian territory visual redefinition contest, let us try to outline a story about children born in the 21st-century Croatia. When Croatia comes close to the EU, they will have finished the primary school, and when Croatia is really integrated, they will have to be completely ready for European exchange. They will all drive through Bregana and Šentilj at 75 mph without stopping and questions from customs officers, towards European destinations instead of ending their trip on the Triest-Graz line. The reason for the journey will not be shopping, but mostly business. Passing the former borders between European countries, they will ask themselves why their grand-grandfathers, grandfathers and fathers have fought wars and what is so essential and important for their Croatian identity. Pictures of Dubrovnik, Kaptol and Split, Kraš nougat sweets, Vegeta spice, Pliva aspirin and ties will be insufficient and maybe unimportant for their national identities. In their minds, they will carry images of the new Croatian reality, which will be different, special, specific and interesting to Europe, like Scandinavian industrial design, Italian fashion or German cars. Croatia of their youth will be a country, which they will remember not only for its preserved nature, but also a sensibly built environment, a communication means culture and a developed infrastructure. The 38th Zagreb Salon and the border competition announced as one of the Salon’s activities, maybe represent the first probe towards building up strategies which one day would make this story real. Suggestions for redefining the visual in border areas, as well as a discussion with leading Croatian politicians, theoreticians, curators, architects, planners and public interested in this topic, might constitute the initial elements for development strategies. There is not really much time for drawing up and then implementing those strategies if we like “stories for children”.

translated by: Andy Jelčić