Gallery

82/5.
Paris, 1982,
acrylic on canvas,
120 x90 cm
By the end of my academic studies, family ties had loosened.
Love problems, new friendships. Our paths went in different directions.
The most important friendships were now in Istria; a companionship
with organ builder Patrick Collon, and with singer of early music Andrea
von Ramm. In her Grožnjan house Andrea held courses in medieval
theatre, with a colourful international cast drawn from her students at
the Schola Cantorum in Basel. There was a lot of criticising, cooking,
drinking, creating, socialising, fun and discussions of the sort I had
never experienced or could ever have imagined before.
In June 1975 the group was working on a project based on a medieval
mystery play. At the end of the performance it was planned to burn the
director of the play, Andrea, as a witch. For the local politicians who
supervised all the activities, this was too much. The Seventies were
the years of renewed ideological orthodoxy, and they banned the show.
Andrea von Ram was expelled both from Grožnjan and the country.
17
I hoped other Grožnjan artists would support in opposing the
ban against Andrea but they were too much annoyed by the nonconventional
behaviour of her group. Something broke within me;
against the surroundings, regime, community and family.
But summer continued, artists, musicians, models. In our
neighbourhood we became an inseparable socializing faction:
Boris Horvat, Jani and Meta Seljak, Marina Abramović, Neša Paripović.
By the end of September there was no difference between day and
night anymore.
...But in November I went to do army service in Prokuplje in southern
Serbia.