The sound performance „Alchemy of Crystals“ is based on piezoelectricity – the property of certain materials to generate electrical energy under mechanical stress, and vice versa. At the centre of the art work are Rochelle salt crystals, or potassium sodium tartrate, a material discovered in the 17th century in the French city of La Rochelle. This very material later became crucial to the discovery of piezoelectricity, demonstrated in 1880 by brothers Pierre and Jacques Curie.
Dožić has cultivated crystalline resonators which, in performance, become a kind of geological-chemical speakers. By constructing such speakers, he refers to the historical use of Rochelle salt in the production of commercial tweeters. Through their sonic interventions, Bojanić, Dožić, Giunio and Gladović breathe in life into inanimate crystals – they vibrate at the threshold of audibility.
By reinterpreting obsolete sound technologies, the performers search for poetics at the intersection of science and fiction, silence and sound, hauntology and media archaeology. Inspired by the role of piezoelectricity in the work of Marie and Pierre Curie, as well as their fascination with spiritualist sessions, we invite the audience to experience listening of the crystals in small groups. The crystals become channels of communication between sound technologies and the supernatural.
Performances: 25th and 26th October 2025, at 5pm, 7pm and 9pm. Each performance is limited to 10 visitors.
Project author: Tin Dožić
Sound collaborators and co-authors: Ivana Bojanić, Andro Giunio and Miodrag Gladović
Technical collaborator: Miodrag Gladović
Resonant box construction: Jakov Habjan
Curatorial support: Davorka Begović | KONTEJNER
The programme is co-financed by the City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.
Tin Dožić (HR)
Tin Dožić graduated in Psychology from the Faculty of Croatian Studies at the University of Zagreb and in New Media from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. His work Songs for the Anthropocene (Pjesme za antropocen) received the Golden Watermelon Award at the Media Mediterranea Festival in 2018. He was a finalist for the Radoslav Putar Award in 2019 and is an alumnus of the 2019/2020 WHW Academy. As a member of the collaborative team comprising Sven Sorić, Hrvoje Spudić, Sara Salamon, and himself, Dožić received the Young Artists Award at the 55th Zagreb Salon of Applied Arts and Design for the visual identity of the 30th Music Biennale Zagreb (MBZ). As one half of the artistic duo Dožić & Udovčić, he received the same award at the 58th Zagreb Salon of Applied Arts and Design for the project Forest Cabin (Šumska koliba).
Ivana Bojanić (HR)
Ivana Bojanić is a dance and vocal artist whose practice explores how affect, imagination, and relational conditions shape sensory experience and our relationship to reality through performance, voice, and materiality. She graduated in Contemporary Dance from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb and completed part of her studies at the University of the Arts Helsinki.She is the author of the works KHCOLD: prolonged longing (Galerija Močvara), HIHI (nominated for Best Choreography), and We Were Not Here (Nismo bile ovdje, co-created with Viktorija Bubalo). She has also performed in Urobor and Oh, Mary Shelley (for which she received a nomination for Best Performer, directed by Silvija Marchig), as well as O and DOWL by Sonja Pregrad, which received the 2021 Award for Best Collective Performance, among other productions. As a vocalist, she collaborates on the performance projects Anti-Ambient of Ceremonial Cigarettes and Singing Snake (Sometimes Staged) by Niko Mihaljević.
Andro Giunio (HR)
Andro Giunio is a graphic designer, artist, and Assistant Professor at the Department of Media Design, University North in Koprivnica. His artistic practice focuses on sound performance and experimental music, both independently and in collaboration with artists working in new media art, music, and contemporary dance.His work includes composing for the project Picture Made of Sound (Slika od zvuka) of the Croatian Radio Channel Three, and performances at festivals including Showroom of Contemporary Sound (Izlog suvremenog zvuka) at the Student Centre and Gibanja at KONTEJNER and the Zagreb Dance Centre (ZPC). He has presented multichannel sound compositions as part of the Neighbourhood Lens (Kvartovski objektiv) project at Gallery VN and within the residency programme of the Miroslav Kraljević Gallery. He collaborates with the performance collective BADco. and is the co-author of an expanded cinema audiovisual work produced by the 25 FPS Festival.
Miodrag Gladović (HR)
Miodrag Gladović is a multimedia artist, musician and composer. He graduated in Electroacoustics from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb. His work combines engineering knowledge, punk, contemporary artistic aesthetics and DIY ethics, which over the past two decades has established him as one of the most prominent figures in the Croatian contemporary art scene, both as a solo artist and as part of the artistic duo Lightune.G. Through numerous collaborations and innovative original projects in the field of sound art, Gladović has gained international recognition, creating significant installations and performances at the biennials in Kaunas and Wroclaw, at the Centre for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, and at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. His transdisciplinary projects and sound performances include works such as "Luminoakustika – Lighterature Reading", music-theatre works such as "Konačno mrtav", collaborations with the STICRI and Chimeres Orchestras, spatial resonant systems like "The Lymen Cycle", and various project works for the Music Salon, Kaunas and WRO Biennials, the Goethe Institute, and the Dubrovnik Summer Festival that have been regularly awarded and presented at international festivals and exhibitions. He received a special recognition at the 14th Venice Biennale of Architecture for the project "Intermundia", in collaboration with the author and curator Ana Dana Beroš. His innovations in sound and visual art have been acknowledged with numerous awards, including Third Prize at the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, the Audience Award at the T-HT exhibition at MSU, and Second Prize for the conceptual design of the Croatian Pavilion for the EXPO.
