Work description
PLAY is a sound installation that addresses the condition of the Old City of Dubrovnik, whose historical structure is gradually losing its living substance. Transformed into a tourist backdrop of apartments, souvenir shops, and restaurants, the old city increasingly functions as a closed system focused exclusively on tourism - a kind of “hotel” within the city walls.
Such an urban fabric, which is losing its permanent residents and functions aligned with their everyday needs, is inevitably facing decline. As life disappears, its sound identity disappears as well. Children’s play, as one of the strongest signs of a city’s vitality: children’s voices, laughter, shouting, running, jumping, and play, which once filled the streets, has now almost completely vanished.
With this installation, I reintroduce the sounds of children’s play into the public space of the city, into the places where it once took place. At a time when tourist activity fades and the city becomes quiet and empty, the sound intervention acts as a temporary reanimation: bringing back lost sonic memory and evoking a life that once existed.
By installing the work during January and February at ten locations within the old city, the space is activated through scattered sound traces that evoke the absent presence of children. In this way, a layered experience of the city is created, where the present silence overlaps with the echo of everyday life from the past.
Audio zapis
Fotogalerija
Author
Nenad Laktašić (b.1967, Zagreb) graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb. Works as sound installations artist, scenographer and animator on animated films.
Member of Croatian Association of Film Professionals HDFD. Lives and works in Zagreb.