Shadow Casters

Shadow Casters, known in Croatian as Bacači sjenki, is a non-profit organization and interdisciplinary artistic platform based in Zagreb, Croatia. Its work brings together performance, theatre, film, multimedia installation, education, research and socially engaged artistic practice, with a particular interest in the relationship between people and urban space. Rather than operating as a conventional commercial art brand, Shadow Casters functions as a collaborative production environment through which artists, cultural workers, researchers and local communities can examine how cities are experienced, remembered and contested. The organization was established in 2002 by artists Boris Bakal and Željko Serdarević, together with Katarina Pejović, Stanko Juzbašić, Vanja Žanko, Srećko Horvat, Sandra Uskoković, Leo Vukelić and other collaborators. Its beginnings can be traced to a project associated with Orchestra Stolpnik in Bologna in 2001. From its formation onward, Shadow Casters emphasized exchange between Croatian and international practitioners. Its projects have addressed intercultural dialogue, individual and collective identity, globalization and the social, political and cultural forces that shape everyday life. A recurring concern is the interaction between physical and imagined space. The city may appear as an archive, a stage, a maze, a building, a set of personal memories or a network of political histories. Some works take the form of performative urban journeys; others combine live action with film, delayed time, virtual environments, archival material or participatory research. This approach has allowed the organization to move between theatre, visual art, cinema, public-space intervention and educational work without treating those forms as separate disciplines. Among its best-known bodies of work is the Kafka-inspired Process_City trilogy, comprising Process_in_Progress, Ex-position and Vacation From History. Other major projects include Čovjek je Prostor: Vitić_pleše, which investigates the social and architectural life of a skyscraper; Re-collecting City/Re-collecting Time, an urban multimedia archive; the theatre trilogy On Togetherness; and History of Vacation, a multimedia installation. The organization has also developed projects connected with education, youth and public engagement, including Frooom and other collaborative platforms. During its first two decades, Shadow Casters involved more than 150 artists from over 50 countries. Projects were presented or developed in Zagreb and other Croatian cities, as well as in Bologna, Graz, Ljubljana, Pisa, Belgrade, Marseille, Leiden, Genoa, Podgorica and New York. Its international profile has been supported by partnerships with festivals, universities, cultural centers, independent organizations and media-art institutions. Shadow Casters has been a member of the Clubture Network since 2006. The organization’s work has received support from public cultural authorities, foundations, state agencies, sponsors and civil-society institutions, including bodies connected with the City of Zagreb and the Croatian Ministry of Culture. Its twentieth-anniversary retrospective, All in All 20, revisited key projects and ideas through a playful, interactive presentation in Zagreb. Shadow Casters is best understood as a Croatian-origin international platform for experimental, collaborative and socially attentive intermedia production.

Shadow Casters emerged from a wider European context of experimental performance and intermedia collaboration. Its initial project history reaches back to 2001, when work associated with Orchestra Stolpnik was developed in Bologna. The organization itself was founded in Zagreb in 2002 by Boris Bakal and Željko Serdarević with a broader circle of artists and cultural collaborators. From the outset, it was conceived not simply as a producing body but as a platform capable of connecting artistic disciplines, cities and communities. Its central method has been to treat urban space as both material and subject. Shadow Casters’ projects investigate how architecture, public places, buildings and streets carry personal memories and collective histories. They often combine live performance with film, archival research, installation, education and audience participation. This produces works in which the boundary between theatre and everyday life is deliberately unstable: spectators may become walkers, witnesses, researchers or participants, while familiar urban locations become stages for historical and political reflection. Intercultural exchange has remained another defining principle. The organization has created opportunities for Croatian artists to work with international partners and has hosted or involved practitioners from numerous countries. Its projects have been shown or developed through festivals, universities, independent art organizations, galleries and cultural institutions in Croatia and abroad. By the first twenty years of its activity, more than 150 artists from over 50 countries had participated in its productions and related activities. The Process_City cycle demonstrates the organization’s sustained engagement with literary and urban questions. Inspired by Kafka, the trilogy uses performance, film and theatrical space to explore processes of displacement, uncertainty, institutional power and historical memory. Other works broaden this inquiry. Čovjek je Prostor: Vitić_pleše focuses on the microcosm of a skyscraper and its changing layers of past, present and future. Re-collecting City/Re-collecting Time turns urban events and recollections into a multimedia archive. The On Togetherness trilogy examines forms of social relation and collective life, while History of Vacation uses multimedia installation to consider memory and the politics of retreat or interruption. Shadow Casters has also maintained an educational and community-facing dimension. Its activities have included programs intended to develop creative, critical and collaborative engagement, including Frooom and related initiatives. These activities complement the organization’s performance and installation work by treating artistic production as a means of learning, dialogue and civic investigation. Since 2006, Shadow Casters has been part of the Clubture Network, linking it to a broader Croatian independent cultural field. Its work has received support from Zagreb’s cultural authorities, Croatian ministries, foundations, civil-society funds, cultural agencies and private sponsors. Such support has enabled projects that are frequently experimental, research-intensive and dependent on cooperation across institutions. The organization marked its first two decades with All in All 20, a retrospective exhibition in Zagreb. Rather than presenting its history as a conventional chronological archive, the exhibition revisited key projects and concepts in an interactive and playful form. Across its history, Shadow Casters has therefore operated as both an arts collective and a production infrastructure: it develops works, creates conditions for collaboration and uses intermedia practice to ask how people inhabit, remember and politically interpret the spaces around them.

• 2022

  All in All 20 retrospective

  [1]Shadow Castersen.wikipedia.org

  A twentieth-anniversary retrospective in Zagreb presented key projects and ideas from the organization’s first two decades.

• 2006

  Joined the Clubture Network

  [1]Shadow Castersen.wikipedia.org

  Shadow Casters became a member of the Croatian independent cultural Clubture Network.

• 2002

  Shadow Casters founded in Zagreb

  [1]Shadow Castersen.wikipedia.org

  Boris Bakal, Željko Serdarević and a wider group of collaborators established Shadow Casters as a non-profit interdisciplinary artistic and production platform.

• 2001

  Early project associated with Orchestra Stolpnik

  [1]Shadow Castersen.wikipedia.org

  The project history that led toward Shadow Casters began in Bologna in association with Orchestra Stolpnik.

An independent, non-profit and internationally connected platform for interdisciplinary art that examines identity, urban space, memory, globalization and social relations through performance, film, multimedia and participatory practice.

• Performance and multimedia theatre trilogy

  Process_City

  A trilogy inspired by Franz Kafka that explores the relationship between live performance, cinematic space, virtual space and delayed time. The cycle consists of Process_in_Progress, Ex-position and Vacation From History. Across its parts, the work uses theatrical and filmic methods to examine uncertainty, identity, institutional structures, urban experience and the shifting boundary between real and mediated environments.

• Urban multimedia performance

  Čovjek je Prostor: Vitić_pleše

  A project focused on the microcosm of a skyscraper and the multiple temporalities embedded in its architecture. It treats the building as a living social and historical environment, using multimedia and performance to investigate its past, present and possible future while connecting individual experience with wider urban development.

• Multimedia urban archive

  Re-collecting City/Re-collecting Time

  An archive-oriented project that gathers and reinterprets urban events, memories and traces. The resulting multimedia material becomes a tool for studying the hypertextual character of space: cities are approached not as fixed settings, but as layered networks of stories, encounters, movements and historical meanings.

• Theatre trilogy

  On Togetherness

  A theatre trilogy concerned with forms of social relation and collective life. Its listed components are Explicit Contents, ®evolution: Master Class and Male/Female-Female/Male. The trilogy extends Shadow Casters’ interest in identity and social structures through performance-based investigations of how people assemble, cooperate, differ and negotiate shared spaces.

• Multimedia installation

  History of Vacation

  A multimedia installation that continues Shadow Casters’ engagement with memory, absence, historical interpretation and the politics of everyday experience. It uses installation-based presentation rather than a conventional stage format to create a reflective environment in which personal and collective histories can be reconsidered.

• Educational and creative platform

  Frooom

  An educational initiative associated with Shadow Casters’ broader commitment to creative learning and public participation. It reflects the organization’s practice of treating artistic activity as a means of developing critical awareness, collaboration and engagement with social and spatial questions.

1. 1Shadow Castersen.wikipedia.org
2. 2Shadow Casters official websitebacaci-sjenki.hr