LIGNA: “A MEMORY WITHOUT A TIMETABLE”/RADIO BALLET (AUDIO PIECE FOR PARTICIPATIVE LISTENING)
LIGNA
"A MEMORY WITHOUT A TIMETABLE"
radio ballet (audio piece for participative listening)
Friday, October 17, 2025, at 7 p.m.
In front of the Zagreb Train Station entrance
We will gather at the Zagreb Train Station entrance at 7 p.m., and the planned end is at the Zagreb West Station, around 8.30 p.m.
Don’t forget to bring headphones!
Participation is free of charge and no registration is required.
TO BE ABLE TO PARTICIPATE, YOU NEED TO HAVE A SMARTPHONE AND HEADPHONES, AND DOWNLOAD THE APPLICATION FROM THE BLOK WEBSITE ON THE DAY OF THE PERFORMANCE, OR ON SITE.
After acclaimed projects ‘Mamutica Resounds’ and ‘The Trojan Collective’, dating back to 2006 and 2013 respectively, LIGNA is coming to Zagreb again! The third cooperation between this German audio performance trio and BLOK is also the first international production within the Live Heritage program of the Trešnjevka Neighborhood Museum. Our first Trešnjevka ‘foreigners’, Ole Frahm, Michael Hueners, and Torsten Michaelsen, stayed at the border – the northern Trešnjevka border that is next to the railroad. Not because of the ‘papers’, but rather the importance of this means of transport, which is both symbolically and physically connected with German cities.
More than a demarcation line, for Trešnjevka the railroad is an engine for the transformation of the former rural area into an urban industrial zone. Its development through the 19th and 20th centuries is inseparable from the history of industrial production and the work that fuels it, both in Trešnjevka and globally. Trains carried goods, but also workers migrating in different times and spaces.
Rail can also be the engine of progress, striving for general well-being and building of economic equality, the ultimate symbol of solidarity and collective effort, as some aspects of the railway history in socialist Yugoslavia show. Still, these railroads, which we were building and which were building us, carried people across the border to work.
Today’s labor migration no longer depends on trains without a timetable, and Croatia has recently become a country of immigration, not just emigration. Being determined by specificities of the contemporary context does not mean that the lives of contemporary foreign workers do not reflect historical experiences, as well. As we know, this is characterized by varying degrees of exploitation and often carries bitter markers.
LIGNA tackles this topic through a specific tragic event: a major railway accident of the Athens-Dortmund train, on August 30, 1974. Just before entering the Zagreb Train Station, probably due to the fatigue of the train drivers who did not brake on time, the train derailed, killing more than 150 people and injuring dozens. The victims were foreign workers (Gastarbeiter) from the Balkans returning to work. In Zagreb’s Mirogoj Cemetery, victims who couldn’t be identified were buried in a mass tomb. Vojin Bakić’s monument, erected at the site, whose reflecting surface is now blurred, and the structure supported by two improvised wedges, symbolizes fragility of the memory of this event. The radio ballet ‘A Memory Without a Timetable’, an audio piece that is listened to and performed in public space, is a performing, invisible monument near the site of the accident. It restores the voices of people who remember it and who are in some way linked to the tragedy, and subtly outlines everything that railway may imply in the past, present and future.
LIGNA is an art collective founded in 1997, and composed of the media and performance artists Ole Frahm, Michael Hueners, and Torsten Michaelsen. They explore social engagement of dispersed and temporary collectives through performances, urban interventions, and installations. They have performed in numerous German and European venues, such as HAU in Berlin, Kampnagel in Hamburg, Mousonturm in Frankfurt, Tanz im August in Berlin. In 2017, they received the Tabori prize. In Zagreb, in 2006, they designed the participative radio activist project, ‘Mamutica Resounds’ and in 2013, a radio ballet, ‘The Trojan Collective’, performed in the Cvjetni shopping center, both part of the UrbanFestival, organized by BLOK. The LIGNA members live in Hamburg and Frankfurt.
Expert Associates: Ratko Rakin (research), Ljubica Letinić/Transsonica Studio (voice and sound mastering), Vesna Vuković (translation)
Curated and produced by: Ana Kutleša and Maja Blažević, Rebekka Reiß (Assistant)
Protagonists: Marija Čolig, Nikolina Rajković, Radovan Rakin, Draga Todorović, Vera Vitas
Research Participants: Renata Veličan, Nikolina Rajković, Stipe Ćurković, Vanja Radovanović, Romana Pozniak, Bojan Mucko, Marijana Hameršak, Cyrille Cartier
Thank you to: Arsenic Oremović
Visual Design by: Nikola Križanac
The project is part of the Trešnjevka Neighborhood Museum – Living Heritage, financially supported by the City of Zagreb. BLOK’s annual program for 2025 is supported by the ‘Kultura Nova’ Foundation. The project is produced with the support of the Foundation for Arts Initiatives.
