LOVE’S FINAL THEATRE

Presenters:

Olinka Vištica

Museum of Broken Relationships Zagreb, Croatia

Museum of Broken Relationships installation 2006, Zagreb (Croatia)

exterior

Museum of Broken relationships installation 2006, Zagreb (Croatia)

interior

The bunny started it all...

A Cell Phone

July 12, 2003 - April 14, 2004

Zagreb, Croatia

It was 300 days too long. He gave me his cell

phone so I couldn’t call him any more.

A slice of watermelon or...

1986 - 2004

Skopje, Macedonia Passion, passion, love, dreams, friendship, support,

Damyan, love, love, real life.

Real life, less passion, less love, less friendship,

Less us, more I and I.

Two parallel worlds, two parallel paths.

Watermelon or just an illusion? Or both?

Parallel lines do not meet.

I’m fortunate to have Damyan and to enjoy real

watermelon in summer.

The illusion is gone.

Parallel lines do not meet.

Divorce Day Mad Dwarf

20 years

Ljubljana, Slovenia

The divorce day garden dwarf. He arrived in a

new car. Arrogant, shallow and heartless. The

dwarf was closing the gate that he had

destroyed himself some time ago. At that

moment it flew over to the windscreen of the

new car, rebounded and landed on the asphalt

surface. It was a long loop, drawing an arc of

time – and this short long arc defined the end of

love.

A Wedding Dress

1994 – 1997

Berlin, Germany

We married in Greece and in Japan when we were just over 20. I wore this

dress on August 20, 1994 in Kavala, Greece. We had 800 guests. A Greek

magazine reported on the wedding of 3 countries. One radio station even

had a special coverage.

Against our will, we became rather known there, which was followed by

many nosy questions from different people pointing their fingers at us.

Our goal was a happy home with many children.

But Mother Nature did not deliver – and couldn’t children wait until the end

of our studies?

It was very important to him, a very happy man from the beginning, to be a

young father. Finally, nothing was missing...

Slowly, the page turned. Impatience tipped the scales and brought a dark

gray sky over our initial happiness, built a thick white wall between our

fields of vision that stifled each feeling in its embryo.

On the other hand, some things became clear on his side that moved me to

separate and after a while to return to Germany, but not to my home town,

Stuttgart. Berlin won me over and I am finding more and more in this town

and in the people that love me.

I started to feel at home here and even have a family. It is the best

moment- to be an independent grown up offering a safe thread of life to a

small being, and thus not to be alone.

A postcard

Yerevan, Armenia

I am a 70-year-old woman from Yerevan, the

capital of Armenia. I visited Zagreb back in 1967.

The city is very close to my heart. When I found

out in a local newspaper that there exists the

Museum of Broken Relationships, I was sad and

happy at the same time.

This is a postcard that was inserted through the

slit of my door a long time ago by the son of our

neighbours. He had been in love with me for 3

years.

Following the old Armenian tradition, his parents

came to our home to ask for my hand. My

parents refused saying that their son did not

deserve me.

They left angry and very disappointed.

The same evening their son drove his car off a

cliff....

A heroin test 2010-2011

Rijeka, Croatia

“Once a drug addict, always a drug addict!”

That’s what my friends and family kept telling me.

“If I was a drug addict, that doesn’t mean I don’t

deserve a chance for a normal life,” he told me.

Handsome, intelligent, tender, caring… I fell in

love. I was there for him in the times of worst

crisis. I gave up everyone and everything. But it

was worth it! We made it! We live together, plan

business and investment in our future family… I

am so proud of us. Last night, though, I came

back from a lecture – and noticed nothing

unusual about him. But my female intuition… I

knew it… I bought the test I am sending you –

POSITIVE! God damned HEROIN! After six

month of abstinence – he relapsed! Once a drug

addict, always a drug addict!

3-volume Proust 1983 – 2011 London, UK These battered, sand-strewn volumes are emblematic of a long love relationship which has recently ended. Soon after I

married my wife, we go into an addictive Proust habit - I used

to read the novel out loud to he especially when we were on

holiday. The bulk of it was read during successive Summers

on the Isla de Tavira in the Algarve - we would walk out to an

isolated stretch of sand, build a shelter out of driftwood, bamboo and silk sarongs and lose ourselves in the hypnotic

prose with the dull roar of Atlantic breakers in the background. I still think it's the best way to enjoy Proust - to get inside the

head of the narrator and feel how his obsessions loop back

on themselves, and to get the hilarious, laugh-out-loud comedy of the book - though it's hardly a practical one, as you need the best part of a decade to get through it all! It

sounds like a weird, nerd thing to do but it happened

gradually, and some Summers it felt like we were in a sort of

menage a trois, with Proust as the funny, neurotic third party, brilliant at rhapsodising on the theme of love but never getting any of the sex. Perhaps it's symbolic that, unlike Proust, we

never got to the end -the last 200 or so pages are unread, in an envelope, detached from the final volume to save on

luggage.

POWER OF PERSONAL OBJECTS

STORYTELLING

PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION

COMMUNITY CURATING

CATHARTIC RITUAL

UNIVERSAL UNDERSTANDING AND COMPASSION

Kunsthaus Tacheles

Berlin, Germany City Museum

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Kunsthaus Tacheles

Berlin, Germany

Istinye Park Mall

Istanbul, Turkey

Root Division Gallery

San Francisco (CA), USA

Centro Cultural Borges

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Tristan Bates Theatre

London, UK

Singapore Fringe Festival

Esplanade Jendela Gallery

24 cities / 15 counties / 2006 - 2012 7 cities / 5 countries / 2012 - 2014

ON TOUR

Allure of Distance – Intimations of Proximity

Whims of Desire

Rage and Fury

Resonance of Grief

Sealed by History

Tides of Time

Paradox of Home

INTERACTIVITY

MULTIMEDIA

BRAND &

PRODUCT

DEVELOPMENT

PROFESSIONAL RECOGNITION

Presentation at the American Association

of Museums annual conference Houston

2011

Presentation at the Nederalandse

Museumvernegig (Annual Conference of

Dutch museumus) Maastricht 2012

Presentation at the MUCEM (Museum of

Medeiteranean Civilisations) Marseille

2013

European Museum Forum “Kenneth

Hudson” award for the most innovative

museum in Europe 2011

VISITORS’ IMPRESSIONS

Original, unique, emotional,

poignant….

never saw this anywhere else,

best museum ever, a must see

friendly staff, great atmosphere,

long working hours

original souvenirs, great brand

one of the reasons to visit

Zagreb…..

VISITOR’S IMPRESSIONS

FINANCING Public subsidies / own income ratio

Structure of public subsidies

MOBILITY

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION! www.brokenships.com

info@ brokenships.com

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION! www.brokenships.com

info@ brokenships.com