What Homes are Made Of: The Architecture of Displacement
A room-scale interactive VR experience constructed out of 110 million points, each reconstructing an everyday place such as an apartment, yet symbolically highlighting the relationship that exists between migration, place, and identity. The inspiration behind this work was influenced and directly amplified by the recent extended Melbourne lockdowns due to which the artist was not able to go home and see her family for almost three years. Once the viewer has the headset on, they find themselves seated in a Melbourne apartment where they can freely explore the apartment by either physically walking through it, or by teleporting. Soon after, although still located in the same apartment, the viewer will notice that they are not alone anymore and that a bridge between realities has been established. That is when sounds from the artist’s Croatian home appear, filling up the space with memories where her family welcomes the viewer into their home and asks them to join their Sunday lunch while her mother goes into detail describing the food she has prepared. The work constitutes a “sense of place” by mediating personal memories with present living conditions, creating an open site for multiple memories; a ground for remembrance through performing.
Lucija Ivšić aka ŽIVA (HR)
Emerging new media artist and researcher, composer, and experienced performer, Lucija is currently residing in Melbourne where she is undertaking her practice-based PhD at SensiLab, Monash University. Being a frontwoman of one of the most successful Croatian rock bands Punčke, she is no stranger to the art scene. At just 14 years old, Lucija formed Punčke, which over the course of a decade, became one of the most in-demand bands in the Balkans, releasing five critically acclaimed albums, being nominated for an MTV EMA Award in 2014, and playing over 400 shows worldwide. The new bilingual music project ŽIVA [zhiva] establishes her as an Australia-based artist firmly rooted in her Slavonian heritage. Residing at the crossroads of art, science, and technology, her installations and live performances blur the boundaries between physical and virtual realities, offering audiences new and immersive yet embodied experiences that explore a space’s capacity to engage on an emotional level. Lucija is also a founder of Cereal Booking, a music agency focused on supporting emerging artists, and holds a Master’s Degree in Geodesy and Geoinformatics from the University of Zagreb, where she specialized in remote sensing technology.
