8th FLOOR

The 8th Floor is a project about life, exploring of time, transience, presence and the everyday absence from one’s own life. Because of love, I decided to live in another country. However, time brought something completely different. Loneliness became my everyday life. Free time made me often look through the window emptily, searching for meaning in everything. As days went by, I was writing down my thoughts and noticed that things were changing in front of me; a new story every couple of hours. All those questions I had were performing in front of me. I waited for my life to happen, and it was happening, every day, but I wasn’t noticing it. I started watching and realizing how much was given to us but, due to the hurried life, we do not have time to notice time around us. This landscape is an abstraction of our lives, it is ours, but each frame represents the diversity of our age and time. Every day carries its own emotions and a different content and, still, we are in the same frame, in our life.

The project started in 2015 in Zagreb and is still in progress. Every photo is accompanied by a note from a personal diary.  

A hill, a dog, a house and a tree.

The hill is ME.
The dog is our DAY.
The house is YOU.
The tree will be the NIGHT.
The hill is crumbling, the dog picks up its peaces and the house is being built.
The tree can be heard, the tree is there.
It grows and covers the hill, it takes the dog and it covers the house.
I've got the chance to choose between the hill, the dog, the house and the tree.
I choose the TREE.
It's the only one that leads me. I see the darkness, peace and scent. I see you.
There is no house.
The tree is our only reflection.

Now if I had to choose, I would choose to free myself from myself. To make it happen, it would take a whole eternity.

I've gotten used to your presence. Your presence in your absence. I've gotten used to your disgusting emptiness of air, people and emotions. The emptiness of the hour because it swallows the time in which we aren't. We are, but we aren't. I've gotten used to the unrest, to the fog, to the thoughts in which you sign unconditional existence. I'm used to it. I only didn't use the fact that the habit is like a disease.

Two views, each inside the returning time. I would delete all the ire, all the thoughts, all the fear. I would be there. I've shared and I gave, without calculations. The time is carrying us.
Just hug me, somewhere far away. Far away from myself.

On the count of three let's close our eyes and tell each other what we think.
I'll start first! 1, 2, 3!
I see a giraffe, she sits at a table, smoking a cigarette and looking at the melting ice cubes in her scotch.
I enter and sit right next to her. I order a scotch. I never drink scotch, but the sound of those ice cubes draws me to just say "one scotch please"!
We're playing poker. I can hear the door opening as you're entering the bar. I take a cigarette, light it up, get up and slap you.
A slap which is not given out of anger but out of pleasure.
The snow is falling intensively.
I would slap you once again. I don't even have to count to three.
Now you! Open your eyes, then close them. 1, 2, 3...

The birds roar again like they are lions.
It's fine.
While they are roaring, everything is fine.
They're wearing their mane and they're my queens now. It's fine today.

We are free.

A sense of acceptance.
Sometimes you know it's just a thought. You can't really accept the reality.
This feeling is different. It's bringing me a deep breath and a look forward. New days, new us with the old burden. Sometimes I feel sorry. Sometimes not so much.
There you go, a new age.

Sometimes selfishness is good. I feel good about it. I realize that it's a collective state of mind. Selfishness is OK. Being selfish is equal to being present, to exist and to live. To live this life on earth, to have a job, to have energized vampires, a boss, to be a boss, to boss around yourself and others. Being selfish is OK. Being selfish means hurting others and yourself. Being selfish means success.
Let's live! Cheers!

My address is your address. I look at that street, I look at that number and all I can sense is a scent.
I'm standing, you're sitting.
Traffic lights are screaming.

When we were little we used to fly kites imagining how we will ride a real dragon. When he turned 20, on this day, a real dragon came to his floor. His floor was number 11. Instead of riding the dragon, he let it go and at the same time himself also. They both flew. The dragon flew up, he flew down. From that day onward I never looked down again. My brother, a field of dragons and some other, new world for him.

Apartment threshold, street, rain, black, blue, yellow and night.

Both there and here.

You, me, and taste. The taste is always individual.

Would you like to sit next to me?

Don't say hello.

A new day, me as a loser in my own life, a winner in other people's views.
Flamingos aren't colored in pink, it's just a trip.

Without words, feelings. Only this view. Nothin' scares me anymore.

As much as it's beautiful, love is painful.

If you have love you will feel the pain. If you don't have it you'll still feel the pain.
I feel it and I'm feeling it. It keeps changing intermittently.
I'm feeling it and I feel it.

In this beautiful ambience of my own sorrow, I will perform a special dance.
The rhythm dictates a beginning and an end. My end and your beginning.
I leave myself and spill myself all over this floor. I dance over myself. I leave all the love and all hope.
I collect my stuff or they collect me. I still don’t know the answer to that question.
I know that the rhythm can give meaning, even to my own stupidity.
I leave this space but without myself. Without you a long time ago.
You will never see me again. Maybe you will recognize me somewhere, by rhythm.
Rhythm is a tricky thing.

Accessibility inside inaccessibility