Ivana Kiš & Mak Murtić: composer's notes

The composers of a very distinctive and authorial vocabulary and wide musical interests Ivana Kiš and Mak Murtić have shared their autopoetic composing notes in anticipation of performance of their own compositions on April 9th, in the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Ivana Kiš: Noćna vožnja

The piece has two parts:

1. Night ride

2. Pipes

Both are exploring heavy feeling of detachment which happens to human beings in cities.


1. Night ride

During daytime city life does not give the true picture of reality.  The business of the city gives the impression of vibrant life. The truth of the city life is revealed in the nighttime, when the city is naked, and deep feelings of loneliness are surfacing.

This part of the piece is also very personal. I don't have my city: the city of my birth I left many years ago. I was adopted by a few cities, but none turned to be my own. Through night ride I am trying to connect on a deeper level to the latest of my adoptive cities – Tel Aviv.



2. Pipes

Cities are full of pipes, hidden or not. Pipes is actually what makes a city. Pipes in the city do not connect to each other too often cause each of them has its own purpose. They run parallel to each other or go around each other and make big knots. It is very much what happens to people in the city.

Mak Murtić: Conversations in Shopping Mall

"Conversations in Shopping Mall" is a composition written for a percussionist duo, the multi-instrumentalists and electronic musicians Nicola Sinković and Filip Merčep.

The piece is conceived as a musical installation and a commentary on the relationship between contemporary commercial culture and functionality of the cultural centers of contemporary art, both of which stem at the same time period, i.e. the restoration period following World War II. The question is how people feel in a space and what is man’s natural environment, how does society, especially (but not exclusively) the urban society, replace natural and urban surfaces with their simulations or their effigies (simulations of simulations) in both such centers.

The composition uses three walk-in rooms where the ‘audience’ become passers-by, and choose on their own where to go and when. In each room there is a different but related sound concept, with real-time recordings, sound of space, acoustic percussion instruments, and electronic triggers and instruments. Musicians themselves are the agents in the narrative but they do not interfere with the audience in their understanding of space, natural and manufactured mental and urban spaces.

The piece was inspired by the relationship between the Museum of Contemporary Art and Zagreb Avenue Mall, and the interest of various observers of what is being exhibited at the shop-windows or the museum. Where and how the young generations see themselves in the space of the culture center and whether the center of culture, i.e. culture in the sense of civilization, has become for sale. Is the space intended for exhibition and cultural uplifting actually the same sales space, only with a subtler advertising? What are the similarities?