Nikola Bojić

Profile

Nikola Bojić looks into the modes of spatial production across multiple scales and thematic registers.

Engaged with the political, social and technological mechanisms running behind various spatial phenomena, his works range from public art, landscape and media interventions to critical design practice and experimental publications. Nikola often blends academic research and design speculation in order to set ground for new methodological insights that further evolve, mutate and transgress boundaries of different disciplines and media.

In collaboration with landscape architect Alan Waxman, Nikola realized Sinking Gardens in Hangzhou, China. The project is a floating topography on the site where a brand new, engineered wetland park replaced historic gardens and villages. By engaging the members of evicted communities, this public art collaboration dug into a memory of natural and social landscape erased during the massive urban transformations of the city. Later on, design and research methods developed within this project were adopted and used in a radically different spatial setting: Felton Street, Cambridge, MA. Situated between Harvard and MIT, Felton Street is the site where all wireless signals cease to exist. The project looked to scan, model and fabricate the site-specific data gap in order to speculate with the future of total disconnection in the heart of the hyper-connected urban realm. The project is exhibited in the museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Croatia, and is part of Speculative, a Croatian presentation on the XXI Triennale di Milano (National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci, Milan, Italy). In 2015, together with a designer Damir Prizmić, Nikola initiated an ongoing research and exhibition series called Objects of Dangerous Intentions (HDD Gallery, Zagreb). Dealing with a thick emotional and political interspace between bodies, objects and spaces, the curatorial concept of the exhibition taps into the different modes of production, linking the early 20th century industrial era with the production dynamics of cognitive capitalism. Nikola is an author of the artist book Excavations and an invited guest editor of the thematic issue of Život umjetnosti, a magazine for contemporary visual arts (96th issue, From Territory to Specific Site, 2015). Both publications tend to explore the spatial dimensions of reading/writing and experiment with the traditional media of book.

Along with his research and design projects, Nikola also works on diverse urban and cultural development initiatives as an international expert in public space or artistic director managing large scale cultural projects such as the candidacy of the City of Pula for European Capital of Culture 2020 (finalist city candidate, Pula+2020 – Demilitarization). Currently, Nikola is a research fellow at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb (ART NET project) and a doctoral candidate at the University of Split. His research focuses on Henri Lefebvre and models of spatial production in Yugoslavia in 60s and 70s. Nikola holds a Master degree in Art History and Museology from University of Zagreb and a Master in Design Studies from Harvard University, Graduate School of Design.