Exploding Vasculature of The Subway Danseuse
(BDSM Aphrodite)
I finally finished my cinematic project, "Medusa Voyage". Its scenes, turned to GIFs, were presented at the Fu:bar 2021, and now the entire story is rounded and finalized. I couldn't stop adding new layers, but at one moment I needed to conclude the endeavor, because it would turn into infinity loop. I just love the editing process and all its precise, mathematical and technical minutiae engulfing me, while the ideas come as images, emotions, and reveries.
The cover is my collage "Nuclear Noon Metro".
Nuclear Nymphs – short experimental poetic movie
I weave a web of my own microcosmic narrative about fatal sirens, ondines, naiads, sea and water mythical creatures, such as their indirect foremother Tiamat, the dragon goddess of primordial chaos, but also vampires, succubi, and aliens. In this piece, I'm dealing with mythological creatures, a testament to my 25-year-long obsession with numerous facets of female archetypes and the ways in which my fluid and multi-layered identity draws from that rich and vast pool.
The turbulent, dark, and deep ocean is a metaphor for emotions, and the violent verbal images of seduction, castration, and destruction are sadomasochistic and fetishistic fantasies after the death of a relationship that was meaningful to me yet toxic, codependent and annihilatory, or after trauma, which triggered numerous questions, pain and confusion in me. I brew a magic potion that will cure my open, pulsating, and dripping wounds, and I nurture wings to rise from agony like a phoenix from the ashes or fight against despotic authority and the Name of the Father, in the shelter of wild nature and naked elements with which I am making love. I sexualize anger in order to create dramatic tension, and I process all motifs through the reconstruction of poetic language and playing with stylistic figures. I try to create a hypnotic, magical, and mystical atmosphere through linguistic acrobatics and ritualistically repetitive singing similar to a medieval liturgy, madrigal, or necromantic spell, to heal trauma and psychic lacerations and to be reborn, as if from salt foam. My poetry is "intricate, wordy and veiny, like a fountain or even volcano, baroquely encrusted with ornate and spasmodic associations and cross-references, with sprinkles of stream-of-consciousness-archipelago ambiance" (op. a.), like colloidal drops of mercury streaming out softly and liquidly in all directions, to form new vibrant and trembling constellations.
It is also significant that my father was a sailor and my name means "rock", and here my fictitious (anti)heroine acts as the ultimate siren who fights against what the Father psychoanalytically symbolizes, and in that battle, the primal, raw, antediluvian wildness of nature crushes and decomposes sailing ships as ornate sea phalluses to decaying ruins, and returns the ocean to its primordial fold. In a way, I touch on Electra's complex, but inversely: I long for the Father as a structuring monad that I never had, and all the characters of my story are contrary to his image and features of the soul. But trouble, sacrifice, and temptation occur when the symbolic paternal backbone is broken and the ocean of the Id goes wild.
The video was based on a song I wrote immediately in English, when I discovered the gorgeous, metamorphosing, and meandering possibilities of a language that is not my mother tongue and with which I can play endlessly, juggling derivatives, synonyms, and even words that I invented myself.
I interlaced the film with igniting sensuality, with a focus on oral fixation (biting and sucking/licking, i.e. schizoid vs. depressive position in the psychoanalytic theory of the formation of object relations), also referencing the sticky vs plastic libido.
Formally, I use glitch and short, stroboscopic, flashlight interpolations of illustrations to disintegrate fluidity of the image and therefore reflect the fractured, unstable, and unreliable nature of the digital world, but thematically, I dance and chant through the cracks to smooth the narrative and revamp my old shattered selves, like kintsugi.
Voices, voices, voices, voices...
Voices of lamias in my head
peaking violently dizzy hights,
vultures pecking my virgin flesh,
ultramarine corpse,
cerulean breaths,
saphire blood -
kitchen knife blade's
etching fatal canyons
in my delicate porcelain skin
I didn't deserve this, I yell,
kissing bijou Byzantine icons
turned upside-down
you push me down in the bushes
give me Antichrist babies
we dance as beautiful,
lonely satans,
angelic strippers of
tinsel nectarine
on Nembutal of burning hills.
My stilettos poke and pierce
your heavenly eyes
in Mephisto dance of
amethyst siren
flashing syrup of your
intestinal archypelago
entrancing, enchanting you,
bewitching your ouija
of, Sephiroth of misfits,
their slit wrists
and dirty punk faces
pressed against tempestuous silverscreens
of howling, horny desire
shimmering like disintegration
of morphine mistress in narcotic haze.
I dance for him in the shotgun,
in my wedding dress
lulling babies into
dark cliff of the night.
My ocean squamas
twinkle like razorblades
melting, shrieking
pale lunatics of lavender suicides
in the corner of the eye
Romeo is bleeding in a heart-shaped massacre,
stabbing him to death, oh, lilies
of my vanity!
...daughter dolorosa,
smudged scarlet lips...
Dancing on the graveyard of
venom hydra's kiss...
Zephyr is wild,
anacondas copulate
in feverish hemorrhage
of deep lunar cuts -
Lorelei bedevils doped-up sailors
in their troublesome loins
of vicious orchids.
Their leechy labia
flicker like pyromaniacs
in ecstasy of crimson crime.
Sanguine mermaids suck your
ardorous itch
of salacious maniac.
Nympho lymphosis
bites off your listless, dewy limbs
like a cannibal.
She screeches jelly blood,
puking and vomiting fountains
of bloody tentacles,
clairvoyant antennas of
violated violator,
and your chopped-off head is rolling
down the Neptune Avenue,
like carnal, fetal snowflake,
tumor of love,
desolate heresy of everything
I ever believed in,
blinding Sun of nuclear noon:
I killed it with my cold,
crucifix Moon
in obscene gemstone erotica.
I devour your cellophane heart,
that useless piece of
pulsating meat,
I surf on the swelling waves
of your wretched tar despair,
while your scandalous,
wild cat paws,
criminal and polluted as hell's
blaze grave
reach for my pure, bright face
lucid as a lighthouse
upon pitch-black blizzard cape...
Today
is the opening of the Transient Info Virtual Exhibition 2025 - Virtual
Pavilion at THE WRONG – International Digital Art Biennale. I am
thrilled and blissful to participate in it with my short experimental
glitch movie "Nuclear Nymphs"! Come in and immerse yourself in the experience
https://thewrong.org/TransientInfo
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1997. Student club of Philosophy Faculty, Zagreb, Croatia
2000. The Queens, TEST! festival of theatre, Zagreb, Croatia (with Ksenija Kordic)
Between horns, Gjuro 2 club, Zagreb, Croatia (with Ksenija Kordic)
2001. Gallery St. Quirinus, Sisak, Croatia
2003. A voice from the gothic well, Alternative institute, Mostar, Bosnia and
Herzegovina
2004. Gjuro 2 club, Zagreb, Croatia
2005. Marchioness of pain, KIC, Zagreb, Croatia
2006. Schizomania, Gallery Artenativa, Zagreb, Croatia
2011. Rubedo, NANO Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia
2013. Velvet Underground, Striegl Gallery, Sisak, Croatia
2015. Zagreb Book Festival, MUO Zagreb, Croatia
2016. Walpurgisnacht, Boonika Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia
2019. Borderline, Fotoklub Split, Split, Croatia
2019. Fatamorgana, Siva Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2000. Sisak youth salon, Sisak, Croatia
2001. Students from the class of prof. Sutej, Gallery Galzenica, Velika
Gorica, Croatia
2002. Second Sisak youth salon, Sisak, Croatia
2003. Sisak in Zagreb, Attack club, Zagreb, Croatia
Women, Attack club, Zagreb, Croatia
Third Sisak youth salon, Sisak, Croatia
2004. Sisak artistic circle, Gallery Striegl, Sisak, Croatia
Absolutely baroque, Horvat house, Varazdin, Croatia
Great culture fair, SC, Zagreb, Croatia
2005. FONA, international festival of new art, Hartera, Rijeka, Croatia
Eros and Pornos, Gallery Striegl, Sisak, Croatia
Print to Art, MMC Luka, Pula, Croatia
2006./2007. Selfportrait: a Show for Betlehem
– Betlehem, Palestina
– Santa Fe, Argentina
– Napoli, Italy
– SzczecinSzczecin, Poland
– Rosario, Argentina
2008. Kliker!, international festival of pop-poetry, SC, Zagreb, Croatia
2009. Violated violator, Generation x – female perspectives, Medika club, Zagreb, Croatia
2010. Zagreb Youth Salon, HDLU Zagreb, Croatia
2011. Forest Art Auction, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Photodistorzija, Zuccato Gallery, Porec, Croatia
New Year's Eve Great group exhibition of artists, Greta Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia
2012. NUS (Tampon Generation), Aquarium Bacvice, Split, Croatia
Antisalon, Medika Club, Zagreb, Croatia
2013. NUS 2 (Taboo), MKC Split, Croatia
Martyrs, Zadar, Croatia
Martyrs, Zagreb, Croatia
2014. 23rd Days of Croatian Cinematography, Kino SC, Zagreb, Croatia
Kastav Film Festival, Kastav, Croatia
Komikaze po Puli, Pula, Croatia
Ohoho Festival, AKC Medika, Zagreb, Croatia
Komikaze na-20 obljetnici akc pekarne Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia
VATRA.Toplina.Silina., Trenutak39, Zagreb, Croatia
Komikaze, Tolmin/Sotocje, Slovenia
Exquisite Corpses, Fort Turtian, Pula, Croatia
StripSalon, Novi Sad, Serbia (with Komikaze)
World animation festival, Kino Tuškanac, Zagreb, Croatia
3rd Croatian Triennale of Self-Portrait, PUO Samobor, Croatia
2015. Kastav Film Festival, Kastav, Croatia (with short experimental movie „Fever“)
„Crack Festival“, Forte Prenestino, Rome, Italy
Zadruga Praksa, Pula, Croatia
Femicomix, Kino Šiška – Mesto žensk, Ljubljana, Slovenia
47. Revue of Croatian Cinematography, City Library „Ivan Goran Kovacic“, Karlovac, Croatia
3rd Biennale of Painting, HDLU Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia
2016. Komikaze & OFICINA ARARA, Porto, Portugal
Komikaze - Femicomix, Le Garage L., Forcalquier, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France
Komikaze - Femicomix, AKC Nigdjezemska, Zadar, Croatia
Komikaze - Femicomix, Strip Festival AltCom, Folkets Park, Malmo, Sweden
Drunken Film Festival, Bradford, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Girona Film Festival, Girona, Spain
Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest, London, UK
12th Revue of one minute film, Kinodvorana Za-Te Plus, Zagreb
Night of video and performance, City Museum, Sisak
Pivilion: ~co-op~ , 25th Slavonian Biennale, Borders of visibility, Osijek, Croatia
2017. Paura Festival Internacional De Cine De Terror De Valencia, Valencia, Spain
Corvallis Queer Film Festival, Corvallis, Oregon, USA
AccessCode Film Festival, Bangalore, India
Komikaze Femicomix - Ratatata Fest, Macerata, Italy
Media Mediterranea 19: Digital Romance, Titov park, Pula, Croatia
DEEP TRASH IN THE UNDERWORLD, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. London, UK
Art Camp Empeduja, Antonio Lauer Beach, Rijeka, Croatia
MIRACLES, video art festival, Valkenburg, Netherlands
Day and night of video and performance, Sisak, Croatia
Lovepiece, Galerija Galženica, Velika Gorica, Croatia
2018. Pussy´s Smoke, Esseker Centar, Osijek, Croatia
MARATHONA GEOFILM, Cittadella, Padova, Italy
GIFEST#6, Subotica, Serbia
Komikaze, Design District, Old Military Hospital, Zagreb, Croatia
F12: Free art display | Duga Resa, Croatia
F12: Free art display | Karlovac, Croatia
F12: Free art display | Lovinac, Croatia
F12: Free art display | Zagreb, Croatia
"Inferno", FotoFilm Festival Tijuana, Mexico
Media Mediterranea 20 - Nature and Technology, SKUC, Titov park and MSUI Pula, Croatia
Poetry In Preparation (video poetry evening), Prozori Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia
Zeljezara Festival - Visual Poetry And Prose Mix, Striegl Gallery, Sisak, Croatia
50th Revue Of Croatian Cinematography, Tuskanac Cinema , Zagreb, Croatia (participating with two short experimental movies, "Leviathan Of Desire" and "Masquerade") - received special acknowledgement and certificate for the first one
2019. TeePublic Gallery Show, John Doe Gallery Brooklyn, New York, USA
Hystorical Madness: Performative Studies of a Case: Slet - Memory of a Space (group choreography), organized and curated by Kustoska platforma, KNAP Center, Zagreb, Croatia
Komikaze, Noise Mobility Festival, Munchen, Germany
LiftOff Sessions: Short Indie Movies Online Film Festival, June Edition
Hystorical Madness: Performative Studies of a Case: Performance Marathon, organized and curated by Kustoska platforma, KNAP Center, Zagreb, Croatia
Fu:Bar/expo, AKC Medika, Zagreb, Croatia
La Collezione XXX, Ospizio Giovani Artisti, Rome, Italy
Nudita, Ospizio Giovani Artisti, AMACI Contemporary Day and Rome Art Week, Rome, Italy
STIFF Film and gif festival, SKC Gallery Rijeka, Croatia
17th Festival of the First, Performance Art Multimedia Festival, KNAP, Zagreb, Croatia
Vite, Morte e Miracoli, Ospizio Giovani Artisti, Roma, Italy
Format C | #pivilion_dot_net, Scheier, Čakovec
Is there any art after internet?, HDLU Pula, Pula, Croatia
2020. Amore?, Ospizio Giovani Artisti, Rome, Italy
MystiCon Independent Film Festival, Roanoke, Virginia, USA
Deep Trash Turkish Delight, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, London, UK (postponed due to Covid)
14th Vox Feminae Festival, Zagreb, Croatia
Thessaloniki Queer Art Festival 2020, Thessaloniki, Greece
"Nesvrstani" Art Fair, Lauba, Zagreb, Croatia
Thessaloniki Queer Art Festival at Hosek Contemporary, Berlin, Germany
ALC Videoart Festival, Alicante, Spain
Inquiry Inc. 2020. #pivilion_dot_net, Booksa, Zagreb, Croatia
Inquiry Inc. 2020. #pivilion_dot_net The Wrong, Scheier Centre, Cakovec, Croatia
Night of the Sisak video art, Sisak, Croatia
Darkroom Film Festival, London, United Kingdom
Fu:bar/Expo, AKC Medika, Zagreb, Croatia
Miracle Film Festival, Sanibel, Florida, USA
Pop-up Exhibition, Striegl Gallery, Sisak, Croatia
2021. Horror Lust Film Festival
T-Short Animated Film Festival
Gutterbliss Temporary Testival, online movie festival
Thessaloniki queer film festival 2021, Thessaloniki, Greece
Di Letti e Castighi, OGA (S)exhibitions, Ospizio Giovani Artisti, Rome, Italy
Collaborations: „C Over?“, performance collaboration with Quizzical Körper, AKC Medika, Zagreb, Croatia
From 2012 I am the member of Croatian Association Of Visual Artists.
AWARDS
2000. Special award of the Sisak youth salon
2002. Main award of the Sisak youth salon (sharing with Zdenko Marenic)
2018. Special acknowledgement for my short experimental movie "Leviathan Of Desire" from 50th Revue Of Croatian Cinematography, Tuskanac Cinema , Zagreb, Croatia
2019. SM-Art, award for best short BDSM story, Booksa, Zagreb, Croatia
OTHER ACHIEVEMENTS
2006. Book of poetry "Cuts"
2007. Participation with four drawings in the Antology of croatian erotic drawing "Eros and Pornos" by
Djuro Vandjura
WEB – links to portfolios
http://www.saatchiart.com/petrabrnardic
http://petrabrnardic.blogspot.hr/
http://komikaze.hr/comic/petra-brnardic/33
http://petrabrnardicpandemonium.blogspot.hr/
https://www.behance.net/petrabrnardic
http://deliciousvolcanicvolpina777.tumblr.com/
https://petrabrnardic.wixsite.com/mysite
Filmography:
Nigredo (2005)
Red Room (2010)
Tempest (2011)
Bedazzled Castle (2013)
Fever (2015)
Virus (2016)
Glossolalia (2017)
Ghost Bride (2018)
Leviathan of Desire (2018)
Visitors (2018)
Satan´s Porcupine (2018)
Masquerade (2018)
Electric Labyrinth (2019)
Tarantula (2020)
Neon Viper (2020)
Bloodbath (2021)
Diamond Hurricane (2021)
PUBLICATIONS
2005. Vijenac, Magazine for culture, literature and poetry, Zagreb
2005. Poetry, Magazine for literature and poetry, Zagreb
2006. Rijeci, Magazine for poetry, Matica Hrvatska Sisak
2007. Anthology of croatian erotic drawing "Eros and Pornos", by Djuro Vandjura (participating with four drawings)
2008. Rijeci, Magazine for poetry, Matica Hrvatska Sisak - "Division of a Multi-Identity Subject" - essay about my poetry by filmmaker and poet Damir Radic
2015. Stigmart10 Videofocus- special edition (pages 146 – 171) http://issuu.com/themultipleexposureproject/docs/self_as_subject_-_the_multiple_expo
2015. Self-As-Subject: The Multiple Exposure Project Zine (pages 73-75) http://issuu.com/stigmart10review/docs/stigmart_videofocus_special_edition/146
2015. Rijeci, Magazine for poetry, Matica Hrvatska Sisak
2016. Crna mamba (Black Mamba), online illustrated poetry book: https://issuu.com/petrabrnardic/docs/petra_brnardic_crna_mamba
2016. Zarez - excerpts from my newest poetry
2017. Gestalten Magazine: https://dgvcms2011.gestalten.com/community/blackboard/blackboard-entry-petra-brnardic
2019. A5 Magazine, October Issue
2020. Anthology of new Croatian poetry, translated to mandarin, China
FEATURINGS AND COLLECTIONS:
2014. New Portraits: About a Face Collection, on behalf of chief curator Rebecca Wilson and the Saatchi Art curation team and thanks to Katherine Henning, Assistant Curator at Saatchi Art
2014. Fresh Perspectives - Collection, curator: Bridget Carron, from Los Angeles, USA, on behalf of Rebecca Wilson, Saatchi Gallery
2015. New Portraits - Collection, curator: Hayley Miner from Santa Monica, California, Saatchi Gallery, on behalf of Rebecca Wilson, Saatchi Gallery
2016. Special guest star:
My two illustrations, "Holy Smoke!" and "Lolita", were shown on a wall during DJ party in Avalon Hollywood, Los Angeles, USA