Z. Blace

Z. Blace at Telekommunist International, satellite event of Transmediale, Berlin, 26 Feb 2016. Photo: Alp Klanten.
Born	Čapljina, SFR Yugoslavia (today Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Lives in	not really fixed, but most often: Zagreb & Podaca, Croatia; Čapljina, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Berlin, Germany; Ghent and Brussels, Belgium

Željko Blaće, born 1976, Čapljina, Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, lives and works between Zagreb, Berlin, Brussels, Stuttgart, Ghent, Rijeka, Split and as well as his family residences in Čapljina and Podaca, but most often and reliably online as Z. Blace.

...(in+)consistently working (in-)between fields of contemporary culture and arts, digital technology and media, community sports and activism – by cross-pollinating queer/commoning perspectives and embodied experiences with thinking and doing methods across different networks and contexts...

Education

He studied at Fine Arts Academies in Zagreb (Croatia) and Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), also briefly with Keiko Sei & Vasulkas (FaVU, Brno/Czech Republic) and Nan Hoover (Summer Academy Salzburg, Austria).

Bio

Blace has been active in Croatia's new media culture scene since 1996, originally as web designer, artist and journalist - and soon also in roles of organizer, researcher and curator (with)in several media culture focused NGOs:

• LABinary (1999-2003), as co-editor of printed newsletter and organizer of events new.media.culture.week & ASU2 (with Joanna Richardson)
• radioActive (2000-2002), as web editor, journalist and co-organizer of workshops/productions
• Multimedia Institute (2000-2005), mostly as program/project coordinator in net.culture club MaMa and curator of exhibitions and events.

He was visiting artist/curator-in-residence at Thing.net (NYC), transmediale.de (Berlin) and UCSD.edu (San Diego) where he curated #1 exhibition of CalIT2 Gallery (2006).

As journalist and reporter he contributed to cultural programs of the national radio and TV (programs: Transfer and Triptih), occasionally publishing in IT magazines, more regularly in the cultural newspaper Zarez and on radioActive, Kulturpunkt, ZamirZine and linux.hr magazines and webportals. He advocated for non-profit net projects and worked on strengthening the impact of NGO sector on Croatian netspace (both in terms of infrastructure and legislation) in LastTuesday events and other initiatives.

He spent most of the 2007-2011 in the Netherlands as researcher in programs of Akademie JANvanEYCK.nl and phdArts.eu, as well as artist in residence at PartchingZone.nl and Roodkapje.nl in Rotterdam. He contributed to worksessions of ConstantVzw.org with f0.am, Beursschouwburg.be, and jointly with TeleKommunisten.net also at transmediale.de

Blace exhibited, presented and participated as visual and media artist/activist, as speaker/presenter at several international events (including Ars Electronica Festival, Net Congestion, Next 5 Minutes 4 (on editorial board), PingInProgress, NC48 - Graz, Money Nations II..). Since 2000 he works actively as a networker internationaly and has been (co-)organizing international events in Croatia: Art Servers Unlimited 2 (Labin, Sep 2001), new.media.culture.week Critical Upgrade! (Zagreb, May 2002) and tactical media events towards Next 5 Minutes 4 (Dubrovnik, May 2003; Vis, August 2003). He initiated Croatian media-art-hr and regional nettime-see mailing lists. In 2003 Blace established a.network, a co-ordination/production platform of regional media labs/centers, groups and individuals with mission to present new media culture and production in the South-East Europe.

in/on/around SPORT

As of 2005 Blace worked actively on #QueerSport, organizing and instigating sport and recreation activities, discursive community events, presents and published on LGBT/Queer realities in sport. In 2006 he co-founded qSPORT, a society for sport recreation of LGBTQs. Blace works across art/cultural and social/political axis of sport in collaborative projects under [1]. He instigated the sport-culture-activism initiatives qSPORT/QueerSport.info in Croatia and ccSPORT.link in Berlin/Germany. His engagements from 2014 to 2017 include: Pop-up Rainbow with ToolsForAction.net, Kickertables with TimeLab.org, Entorse.org & Recommerce/Bains.be. He did Queering Sports session at VanAbbemuseum.nl, wkv-stuttgart.de and camp/lab activities at Timelab in Ghent and PROGR in Bern.

Recorded

Interviews

• "Multimedia Institute (mi2): Zeljko Blace, Marcell Mars & Tomi Medak interviewed by Joanne Richardson", subsol, 2 Apr 2002; repr. in An@rchitexts: Voices from the Global Digital Resistance, ed. Joanne Richardson, New York: Autonomedia, 2005.
• Josephine Bosma, "Contesting/Contexting SPORT 2016: Interview with Zeljko Blace", Furtherfield, 31 Aug 2016.

Videos

Presentations, statements, interviews on activist, artistic and research work:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP8R7Lwze8s
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaRTqI093kg
• https://www.gridspinoza.net/resources/entrevista-zeljko
• 2019 http://creatingcommons.zhdk.ch/networking-institutions-interview-with-z-blace/
• 2020 https://dorftv.at/video/33557

Podcasts

• 2020 https://www.fro.at/amro20-queering-networks-live-art/

References

• Germany 2018-2019, Fellowship (Stipendium) web based media at Akademie Schloss Solitude

http://www.akademie-solitude.de/de/stipendium/stipendiaten/zeljko-blace~pe3843/

z.blace.name

Related

participated in: Art_Meets_Radical_Openness