Franklin Furnace Archive

Through email correspondence with Franklin Furnace, Marina Abramovic shared her thoughts on Gotovac and his significance as an artist and filmmaker: "Hearing of Tomislav's passing made me very sad. It's a great loss for the international art community, and I feel it much more as I always saw him as guide, a huge inspiration that pushed me to experiment in my own research and art work. He was a great artist, an innovative filmmaker and a charismatic performer, way ahead of his time. I learned so much from his courage and physicality, from his restless need to search for a new language and expression. My own work would not be the same without the path started by Tomislav. Losing him we truly lost a master of our time. My condolences and thoughts go to his family and friends in this difficult moment."

Senior Archivist at Franklin Furnace Michael Katchen remembers a dinner party in his home at which Gotovac performed I Am My Own Dog , during his residency with Franklin Furnace in 1994: “The staff of Franklin Furnace would socialize all the time with Tomislav. So I wanted to make a dinner for him. [...] It could have been his birthday, because there are two little cakes in one of the pictures [I took]. So we were all eating, we knew he wanted to do this performance and I had said okay. He prearranged everything while I was cooking dinner all day. It was a really well planned out performance. Obviously it wasn’t exactly choreographed; he improvised a lot. He got up at the dinner table and took off his clothes and just started performing. He stood up and crawled around on all fours, walking himself [with a dog leash]. That’s what the title was: I Am My Own Dog . A lot is up to interpretation: [the concept of] control over yourself, this whole thing about Tito, and Tito’s control over t...

The President of the Croatian Association of Artists wrote a short piece that pays tribute to Tomislav Gotovac's work, and his significance to Croatian art and film. Take a look !

The poster for Gotovac's Point Blank exhibit show photographs of his performances in 1994. On the back, the artist's words reveal a reverence for narrative film and an insightful perspective on his work and life as an artist and filmmaker. Tomislav Gotovac, artist and filmmaker, died at 63 on June 25, 2010. In January of 1994, he presented an installation and performance work, Point Blank , at Franklin Furnace as part of a residency in New York funded by ArtsLink. During his time in New York, he made a vivid impression on Franklin Furnace staff and his audience. Though little recognized outside his native Croatia, Gotovac was an important performance artist and filmmaker, particularly significant to Eastern Europe’s avant-garde. He was best known for his politically charged work, much of which addressed his experience of oppression in Tito’s Communist Yugoslavia. In 1996 he worked on his only collaboration, with Aleksandar Battista Ilic and Ivana Keser, on a performance piece...

Brent Burket, who attended Dread Scott's "Money to Burn" performance on Wall Street two weeks ago , wrote a very articulate post (with some great photographs) on his blog Heart as Arena. Take a look, and thanks to Brent for letting us share this! http://heartasarena.blogspot.com/2010/06/love-that-burns.html