From Jasenovac it was less than 100km to Podgaric Monument. The monument was located on the hill of a smallest farmer village, and due to a thunder storm upon our arrival we had to wait until evening under the hill before setting up our camp. The location was nearly perfect. An impressive statue with an entrance  looking like a proscenium stage, an abandoned parking lot for us to stay in peace and a beautiful view over the village of Podgaric. The only downsides were that the next shop was far away, there were no reception for the internet and we had no shadow for three days. That was the minimum stay in order to get somekind of a night performance with a projection together.

On our first day we had to drive to a town to have get some interwebbing done. Heidi also needed to see a doctor as she had fallen a little bit ill. Andi downloaded material for the projection mapping and Heidi used google translator to make invitations for Podgaric performance in case some of the locals would be curious and brave enough to climb the hill to see our magical projector at work. A friendly guy from a computer shop, the only person we met who knew English, was kind enough to proof read and amend the text. We were back by 2pm, but the sun was burning the hill so efficiently that a quiet siesta was needed. Around 6 pm we walked around the village trying to reach the locals to hand the invitation. We had ten of them to distribute, as there were only about 15 houses nearby and half of them seemed empty. We managed to give away five invites: We met two men but neither of them wanted to talk to us; One happy woman who seemed impressed but whos husband ran inside as soon as we arrived; One woman couldn´t read, and a few invitations was left in post boxes. Beautifully bonkers attempt to introduce projection mapping for locals of the most rural parts of Europe without one single common word to say…apart from dobradan.

Podgaric seemed to have a very interesting history not only due to all three wars during one decade, but there was also a carefully fenced artificial lake right in the middle of the village. The lake belonged to “Vila Garic”, a small closed holiday destination which was on sale but impossible to reach as the fences around the lake warned about surveillance and dogs. During the night time Vila Garic was lit with bright lights going all the way across the lake and music was playing, but it seemed to have no people inside apart from 1 or 2 men. We were very curious to know the story of this awkward relationship between the village and the villa: The whole energy of the place seemed challenging, and even an old man we tried to talk to whilst handing our invites got angry and waved towards the villa.

One evening a young man in his 30´s drove to the monument. We were lucky to realise he was speaking English, and confirmed our suspicion about the difficulties. He didn´t know much about the details and so he gave us a number of his friend who would be able to explain us the whole history. Certainly our plan is to call him, for the sake of some serious fieldwork around our locations…

The rehearsal that night was short, as we realised that our battery was emptied by our little fridge and therefore couldn´t provide electricity for the projector for more than 5 minutes.

We could only do short bursts when Lufkas engine was running, but this wasn´t the greatest way to perform neither. Andi took a quick snapshot of our stage in order to create the whole mapping during the next day.

The following day was even hotter, temperature staying around 35C. Fridge was off and food rotting for the sake of art. We talked through the effects and actions during the day and started the practical parts after 5pm when temperature was starting to become almost bearable. The whole part of mapping on the computer, movement and interaction was made in 3 hours. Everything had to be ready by 10pm, and fixing the mapping to the monument and movement to the mapping had to be done in 10minutes without an additional rehearsal. As we knew from our previous performances, recording night performances with our gadgets is not an easy task at all, we prepared 3 cameras for recording. We double checked everything before starting the projector to make sure to be as quick as possible.

Due to lack of electricity there was no room for mistakes.

The performance was perfect.

Happily applauding Andi turned off the projector quickly because Lufkas engine, which was running to power the projector, was starting to get hot. (Lufka is not happy about running without moving). After this successful run we realised, that none of our cameras had captured usable image.

It must be said, that a slight disappointment arose.

After three days of work under the burning sun we were left with literally nothing.

There we were, sitting in an abandoned parking lot under the stars with only one candle giving us some light to stare at the darkness of our camera monitors. Lufka was hot, electricity out and both of us tired as hell. We new the only option would be to wait another 1,5hours for Lufka to cool down in order to be able perform again after midnight. Not one of the greatest moments of our artistic careers, but it makes a good, educational story in the long run. We ended up spending some quiet hours over chess and chocolate.

The second run wasn´t as good as the first one, a little bit tired and Heidi was feeling the gravel asphalt digging into her already sore feet. But it got done, it´s on the film and morale of this story is clear as mud. We will laugh about it…next week.

We will share some of the footage soon and hope to find some video editing wizard to work with us for the final version for InDifferentLight Project.