Damir Očko’s film DICTA II (2018) is shown in Labin, Croatia, at the 3rd Industrial Art Biennial – Ride Into the Sun (October 10 – November 21, 2020). 

The exhibition, curated by an international team of curators (Gerald Matt – AT, Branka Benčić – HR, Christian Oxenius – DE/IT, Ksenija Orelj – HR, under the leadership of the president and artistic leader of Labin Art Express XXI: Dean Zahtila and Damir Stojnić – both HR), goes beyond the industrial topography of Istria and Rijeka and focuses on the specific context of the cities in which it takes place. In Labin, this context is shaped by the idea of an underground town, the possibility of a concrete utopia and deindustrialisation.

At the same time, the 3rd Industrial Art Biennial explores cinematography as a social and ideological apparatus and questions related to the relationship between power, politics and aesthetics.

In Očko’s own words, DICTA II is the film “about faux language in which all the words mean ‘stop’, relations between masculinity and violence, possibility of the controlled violence as a metaphor for the current state of democracy, limits and boundaries of ones political body.”

—

Image: video still from Damir Očko, DICTA II, 2018, 4k video transferred to full HD, duration: 10’20”