Re: <nettime> emergency situation about our cultural center mama in zagr

As a clarification, this was Marcell's email from a couple of days ago, sent to the internal list of the Digital Cultures Research Lab at the Leuphana University, where Marcell is doing his PhD. Felix was CC-ed on it, so he forwarded it to the nettime list. Thanks Felix!

Now in our fourth day of being cut off from the power grid and told that we better get out peacefully in a matter of twelve hours or face serious shit, thanks to our neighbor we have a modest access to electricity, heating and internet. That means that we're able to hold the space, though not do any public programming. However, we can't afford to lose possession of the space. It's only the city of Zagreb that can formally evict us. But this guy who claims that he has our space under lease being a guy with a shady history, there are risks involved. So, we're at the moment not looking for public support, but are trying to negotiate a de-escalation among various parties involved. We're also keeping 24/7 shifts. The convivial spirit of occupation has been a defining moment of these last couple of days.

We're also pursuing a couple of avenues of action that might lead to a positive interim solution before the space is returned to the Serbian minority organisations, but we haven't gotten very far with that. Should a major turn of events make international support meaningful, we'll let you know. In the meanwhile, thanks to everyone who has written back and offered their support.

Tom

On Sat, Nov 4, 2017 at 9:26 AM, Marcell Mars aka Nenad Romic <ki.ber@kom.uni.st> wrote:

dear colleagues,

some of you might heard from me or tomi about a decade long struggle
with our cultural centre in zagreb. it is hard to make it short but
the story involves promises from the state (and city of zagreb) to
give back real estate to serbian minority (taken back in the days
after world war 2 by the communists).

the decision by new croatian goverment at the beginning of ninties to
give back the real estate to its original owners was primarily based
on anti-communism and the huge desire to reward catholic church for
its support for the new croatian independence. as you could imagine
the real estate which was supposed to be given to serbians was the
last one on the list (with a tendency to wipe it out completely). the
promises were usually given under the flag "that's what europe wants
from us".

a serbian minority organization being promised to get it back soon
(that's back in 1999) gave it to us to form a new cultural center
mama. we had a contract with them for years. and we are still in a
partnership with them about the whole damn thing...

early on, after we renovated and few days before official opening, a
guy known to be a part of mafia circles in croatia, at the time
involved with gambling and casinos (and through that into real
estate), came to us and said that was his property and we better go
out. that's how we realized it is not owned by the ones we signed the
contract with (making our contract much much weaker than we thought),
but they truly believed it would happen soon because of the promises
by the croatian state, that the space is not owned by that guy
(whatever he claims) but his claims are not fully without any ground.
also that the space would through years to come switch the legal
status from the city to the state back and forth because of the given
promises which no one wants to fulfill.

occasionally, for years that mafia guy would threaten us asking us to
get the fuck out of the space. during the same time we started to pay
the bills for electricity and water for which the main switches are in
his part of the building. we became the part of negotiations in
between that guy who claims more than just our 200 square meters and
serbian minority waiting to get back substantial amounts of now super
expensive real estate in the center of zagreb.

the whole story involves our public struggle against the corrupted
major (still in power after 18 years) who, needless to say, is a best
buddy with our mafia guy. and that struggle in some weird way
protected us because the story in media would likely unfold against
the corruption and real estate mafia in the city and into our favor.
but i'll skip this part of already too long email.

just today the situation escalated by that guy switching us of the
grid (electricity + water) and we have to organize quickly to
physically protect the space because our only rights come from running
a cultural center for almost 20 years there. i bought a ticket and
flying to zagreb early morning tomorrow. i hope you understand the
emergency of situation and also hope you understand in which way our
cultural center is our life project. you know tomi and myself but
there are many more and all of us will be there.

i'll let you know how the situation progress and i hope you will
understand my absence from dcrl this week. hopefully next week i am
back... there is some possibility i will have to stay for the next
week too.. i don't know.. i'll let you know as i get to know more...

best
marcell

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