Leo Katunarić Kadele, is a visual artist and author. Educated as a theater director (Drama Academy Zagreb Croatia), he develops polyphonic artistic practice by constantly expanding in the media and forms. It uses traditional forms of artistic performance, visual arts, digital music, 3d design, design of interactive projects on digital networks, texts with subsequent meaning writing, film and video, and to encourage the social circulation of new artistic constructs. He is the author of numerous contemporary art projects in Japan, China, India, Colombia, the United States, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Syria, and Croatia. He is the creator of both theater and multidisciplinary theater projects in which he regularly connects machine and human performance interfaces. He is also active as a scientist in the field of analysis of new dramaturgies of contemporary digital art performances (PhD 2022). He is the author of several published professional texts on theatrology and contemporary art in the digital age. He has participated and exhibited at professional conferences in Israel, China, Serbia, Austria, and Croatia. He is socially active as the founder and leader of festivals, institutions and platforms for the development of contemporary art (KantunArt, MaxArtFest, Zkm Zagreb). He collaborates as a curator, selector and artist with numerous international institutions, from the Iberoamericano Festival Bogota Colombia, Tokas Japan, National Museum Beijing China, Oldenburg University Germany ... In Zagreb, 2022, he published the book "Introduction to the Dramaturgy of Digital Art Performance".
ARTIST STATEMENT / GOOGLE TRANSLATE FROM CRO
I turn the calculation of all possible outcomes of the interweaving of live human performance with machine data performance into a work of art of my time. I am educated as a theater director, but I am also a scientist dedicated to unraveling the riddles of the new dramaturgies of our digital culture. My process and my result come from voluntarily staying in the hell of a space and pattern between wild shamanic ritual and cold scientific analytics. I'm actually in a constant process of negotiation. My performance is therefore a constant anxiety that produces high-energy impulses. Like powerful forces in the past, political or religious organizations, today's forces, organized into machine discourses, judge us according to our functionality in relation to their priorities. Their priority is the circulation of data, and art is only meta-data about the ways of performing that circulation. This meta-data, the performance of art, is our human chance to enter the heart of the machine and a chance to negotiate the future. I play the role of an actor patiently waiting to be invited to the castle to entertain the king, then utter words of rebellion when the party has already begun. I introduce myself as a techno social interface hacker and 3d digital content creator to merge with databases. I produce images and objects with human hands so that machines laugh at my attempts to fix my identities. But with this parody I reveal their faces and include them in my human rituals. I import machines and machine products. That's how I bypass facial recognition algorithms and avoid becoming an information point. My practice is polyphonic because I seek a rhythm of multiple vibrations, a new emotion, a shared screen of human and machine divinity. With the dramaturgy of absence, I create a temporary performance that is only an icon of the complex wonderful world of which it is a projection. If you were born into a social field constituted by fragmentation and constant change, if you were abused physically and politically, if you had to go to war and judge, and survived it all, then it is natural that you want to continue walking through hell. Uncovering the power structures that govern the performances of identity, now masquerading as machines, is the creation of the path we walk.
2022.
Croatia. Zagreb. ArtZg / Artupunktura: Data melancholy.
Croatia. Zagreb. Museum of the contemporary art / The arrival of an unstable god.
2021.
Croatia. Zagreb. Museum of the contemporary art: Machine loves you_give us your data
2020.
Germany, Oldenburg. Carl von Ossietzky University, BKGE. Facebook Immanuel Kant.
2019.
China, Xi’an Museum of Fine Arts. Touching the screen may create a life sequence inside.
2018.
China. Shenzhen. Dafen International Biennale.
Italy, Rome. Artrooms. Digital family.
Colombia, Bogota / Medellin and Croatia, Zagreb. Disappearing / Desaparecido / Killing the artist.
2017.
China, Beijing. 7th Beijing Biennial.
Croatia, Zagreb. Ht contemporary art award. Museum of the contemporary art.
2016.
Croatia, Zagreb. MaxArtFest: I am a spaceman, not a refugee!
Croatia, Vukovar. The re-death machines.
2015.
Croatia, Zagreb. Cyber Faust.
Croatia, Zagreb. The fall of the house of Sony.
2014.
Croatia, Zagreb. MaxArtFest. Hamlet is not dead! Post punk opera.
2013.
Japan. Tottori. Art Hospitale Project. Constructing a re-death machine.
Japan. Hiroshima. Cancellation project.
Croatia, Zagreb. Return of Europe.
2012.
Colombia, Bogota. Iberoamericano festival. Killing the artist.
Colombia. Bogota. “Minuto de Dios” Museum of Contemporary Art. One / Zero.
2011.
Croatia, Zagreb. MaxArtFest. Altar of illusions, data art / machine language translation.
2010.
India. New Delhi. Varanasi. Dharamshala. Hardwar. A map to lose yourself.
Syria. Damascus. AllArtNow Festival. Rooms of the strength 2.
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sarajevo. Mess Festival and IPC Gallery. Forbidden theater.
2009.
Japan. Tokyo. Tokyo Wonder Site. Power rooms.
Croatia, Zagreb. Mimara Museum and Music Biennale. Repentance.
2008.
Colombia, Bogota. Museum of Art / National University of Colombia. Art is War!
Croatia, Zagreb. MaxArtFest. An artist, not a criminal.
2007.
Croatia, Zagreb. VN Gallery. Excommunicated / Immanuel Kant Facebook.
Croatia, Zagreb. KC Peščenica and Knap. East equal West.
2006.
Italy. Rome. Gallery “Teatro India”. War Ballet.
Croatia, Rijeka. Safety Instructions.
2005.
Germany, Berlin. Machinehaus.
Japan, Kobe / Osaka. Hyogo International - Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art.
2000. – 2005.
Mexico, Mexico City / Guajanato. Guanajuato festival.
Colombia, Bogota. Iberoamericano festival. Desaparecido LeoK / Introduction.
Croatia, Zagreb. Museum of Modern Art. Other people's dreams.
USA, New York – USIA.