Broken Relationships

 

This conceptual piece of unusual name was constructed by Dražen Grubišić and I, on the ruins of our own romantic relationship, basing it on a very simple, and for us in that sensitive moment, obsessive premise. Do all traces of our relationships disappear forever once they are no longer rooted in the encounter and emotional involvement of their erstwhile protagonists? Beyond the rupture caused by the breakup, is there a safe place where the 21 grams of this fragile bridge built between two people go? 

 

During the lengthy process of separation, we rather quickly discovered the mnemonic potential hidden in the banal objects of everyday life. Just one glance at the object/memory trigger could almost fully take us back to the sensory aspect of the relationship that seemed irretrievably lost. On the one hand, we felt the need to rid ourselves of this emotional burden for good, while on the other not wanting to destroy it entirely, but on the contrary to safeguard it from oblivion. From the very outset, we turned our journey through the restless currents of breakup into a democratic process, leaving the interpretation of our concept to the audience or the aesthetics of chance.

 

Today, everyone has the opportunity to participate in the creation of a chameleonic collective work, by anonymously donating a symbolic object and story to the museum’s collection. A crumpled cinema ticket with a message. A wedding dress vacuum-packed in a pickle jar. An electric guitar. A Croatian Theatre Award. A German magician’s playing card... The relocation of personal objects and their anonymous intimate stories to a public archive displayed to the world has for many become a much-needed parting ritual and an opportunity for personal catharsis. The Museum of Broken Relationships has established itself as a stage for a solemn farewell ceremony, a refuge for a plethora of feelings that make us living human beings in a constant process of evolving regardless of our social or cultural belonging. In the words of Roland Barthes in the unforgettable A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments:

 

 

On the rubble of a relationship that no longer exists, a new relationship is established in the space of the museum – a bridge of empathy between the absent subjects of failed relationships and the observers present here and now. By leaving the private sphere, the artifacts become elements in a collective composition performed by love in different keys, at the ceremony of its own demise: from subdued sadness to bitter disappointment, from platonic longing to carnal ecstasy, from ironic detachment to the acceptance of the end and sublimation of loss. For the visitor, the composition of the museum’s exhibition becomes a journey across universal human conditions by means of objects and confessional prose of complete strangers. 

 

From the first exhibition in the shipping container, through more than sixty international exhibitions, to the establishment of the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb’s Upper Town, people have experienced and interpreted the concept of broken connections in a variety of ways. Thanks to this, the museum almost imperceptibly and intriguingly organically expanded its thematic, cultural and anthropological scope. It became a sanctuary for all the unfulfilled longings, temptations and losses with which we struggle on our own. By sharing your story with others, the burden of loss becomes lighter in the unexpected and magical relationship of compassion and recognition among complete strangers. Today the museum houses a hormone therapy kit containing a story about unfulfilled motherhood via artificial insemination. There is also a shellac record containing the voice of a young opera singer from Cologne whose vocal cords were shattered by shrapnel in the First World War.

 

In an inflatable balloon in the shape of a fish from Tokyo a daughter preserved the breath of her deceased parent, while a girl from Amsterdam donated music to the museum as a keepsake of Iran, the homeland she left with her family as a refugee. Although often imbued with painful personal experiences, local culture and history, the museum artefacts are full of universal meaning, life, longing and hope even when our world is collapsing and life unjustly takes away what we love most. They are a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit and the indestructible desire to build new bridges on the ruins of the old ones that connect us with others in spite of everything, yet again, evermore. 

 

The thought that the theme of “broken relationships” will come to life in the compositions and interpretations of a number of music and dance artists at this year’s Music Biennale Zagreb fills me with curiosity and joyful anticipation. What might a breakup sound like, that series of tones lost in orbit that no one lays claims to anymore? Isn’t music the art of time in which pause, interlude and release of tension are an integral part of the beauty of composition? Just as with relationships, in music performance, the strength and cathartic power of a piece is derived from the relationships between human beings who participate in it, both as recipients of stimuli and as transmitters of the experience. Acoustic stimuli are comparable to physical contact and touch in that they directly and immediately cause neural and physiological changes, sharpening all (not just auditory) of our senses and making us more present, more sensitised, more empathetic, more alive. 

 

Today, when we are witnessing the world becoming increasingly fragmented, virtualized and indifferent, I am glad that the Music Biennale Zagreb is directing another spotlight at our fault lines in search of what binds us, in the domain of the auditory and the audible, despite all our differences.