Scene
From October 1 to 3, Velika Gorica will once again become a meeting point for contemporary performance, visual art, theatre, dance and music with the fourth edition of Oglede Festival.
This year’s edition, titled “Uvijek (te) netko gleda” (“Someone Is Always Watching You”), explores identity as something fluid and constantly shaped by the gaze of others, digital environments and contemporary social conditions. The festival asks where the boundaries lie between private and public, observer and observed, visibility and surveillance.
The three-day programme spreads across several locations in Velika Gorica, bringing together performances, installations, exhibitions, workshops and live music. The festival opens on October 1 at the Interpretation Centre of the Turopolje Museum with Bazen u dvorištu, a dance performance by Škvadra and the Franjo Lučić Art School. The official opening and exhibition will follow at 7 PM, before a live set by tonota.
Among the artists featured in this year’s programme are Lina Kovačević, Tara Stanić, Žak Valenta, UO Poligon and Jasna Jasna Žmak, while the music programme includes live performances and DJ sets. Students of VERN will also present works developed around the festival’s central theme of “the gaze.”
Rather than keeping contemporary art within traditional gallery spaces, Oglede uses Velika Gorica itself as part of the festival landscape. The event has, since its first edition, connected contemporary artistic practices with the city’s public spaces, neighbourhoods, cultural heritage and everyday surroundings. Even its name refers to the Turopolje expression “ići u oglede” — traditionally meaning to go and observe the circumstances of a potential bride’s family — which the festival reinterprets as an invitation to look at the city and its identity from different perspectives.
Produced by Štoos Teatar and the Turopolje Museum, Oglede positions itself as a platform for contemporary performance and independent artistic practices, bringing experimental and interdisciplinary work closer to audiences outside Zagreb.
With its focus on observation, identity and the increasingly blurred line between being seen and watching others, this year’s Oglede offers three days of contemporary art that encourage the audience to question not only what they see, but also their own position within the act of looking.
