"On the State of the Nation" project is the result of a year-long research on the topic of social distance, focusing on the presence and constructions of the image of the Others in the media, with a special emphasis on the local environment of Zagreb.

The project evolved in several phases: through research (a questionnaire), collaborations with experts from various social and humanistic sciences (anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and psychology), intervention in the mainstream media, and organizing workshops and round tables during the gallery exhibition.

By questioning various ways of treating those who are perceived as the Others in the local context, in terms of differing from the common matrix - be it in their sexual orientation, colour of their skin, or religion, Andreja Kulunčić has explored the new ways of increasing tolerance and, even more generally, of creating the possibilities for deconstructing the otherness in the Croatian society. On the one hand, the artist has collaborated with a number of individuals, organizations, and informal initiatives that may be characterized, on the basis of earlier research, as the Others with respect to the dominant social paradigm; on the other hand, she worked with those who are actively involved in increasing tolerance, as well as with the public media.

In cooperation with journalists and members of social minorities, a sort of virus news have been published in the Croatian media, forcing the dominant white, male, Catholic-Croatian citizen, precisely while he is reading his favourite sports news, to remember uneasily the existence of the Others: homosexuals, Chinese, or Roma, who likewise constitute the Croatian society and who share one and the same social and living space. Thus, the project has formulated a new model of promoting tolerance and more generally - a possibility of deconstructing the 'otherness' in the Croatian society.
Text by Ivana Bago & Antonija Majaca