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DOOMSDAY MACHINE, 2019.

wall drawing, UV light,

variable dimensions,

 

Oscillations, group exibition,

installation view,

Museum of fine arts Split, Croatia

August 6 - September 1, 2019.

curator: Branko Franceschi

objekt 0.jpeg

In recent years, the Town of Omis became a nation al phenomenon tor two reasons: kilometers long traffic jams that cause transportation gridlock in the heart of the tourist season and the famous tunnel that leads to nowhere, specifically the hole, worth 280 million kuna, in the mountain range directly above the canyon of the River Cetina. The tunnel allegedly represents only a segment of the future bypass that is supposed to alleviate traffic congestion in Omiš and unblock the flow of traffic on the Adriatic coastal road. However, what if traffic jams are actually designed only to justify the construction of the "Tunnel to nowhere" to the public? And what if the tunnel does not lead to nowhere but to the end of the world?

For years in the 1950s, unusual machine sounds were allegedly heard coming from Dinara mountain range in Omis. In those years, at the height of the Cold War, an Operational Command Centre VPO (Object182 in Žrnovnica) was built only eighteen kilometers from Omiš, where an entire Yugoslav Command VPO could be transported within 20 minutes in case of an imminent threat of war, Information from radar and reconnaissance stations were coming into the object and they monitored the overall situation in the zone of responsibility of the military naval region, both at sea and in the air. It was therefore not surprising that urban legend claimed the Yugoslav Party was building a self-sufficient city in the Omis mountain range where Comrade Tito would move in case of an atomic war, together with the Central Committee secretaries and generals. This location was allegedly selected because of geographic Convenience of the area which also made possible the construction of the potentially most powerful hydroelectric power plant, HE Zakučac in Omis. I his power plant was primarily envisioned to supply that underground object, as well as to activate the giant Tesla oscillator that was situated at its center.

The construction project was initiated several months after the ship "Srbija" arrived to Yugoslavia in 1951, bringing crates of Tesla’s packed and sealed property from America. I he crates were turned over to the Belgrade municipality of Zvezdara where they were supposedly forgotten until the opening of the Nikola Tesla Museum.

One day in 1898, while Nikola Tesla was developing the electro-mechanical oscillator, he noticed that through the steel structure the vibrations were spreading throughout Manhattan in all directions.

Buildings started to sway, windows were shaking, and crowds of people escaped to the street in extreme panic. Tesla produced an earthquake having chanced upon the resonance of the building and the sandy soil with the assistance of a small table oscillator. He claimed that an oscillator that is strong-enough could split the Earth in halt-like a boy splitting an apple. However, since this was just another in a series Ff insane statements by Tesla, it did not provoke too much interest from American intelligence services and the design of the giant oscillator, encrypted in personal letters found its home in the Zvezdara warehouse.

 

Not a lot of time went by before SFRY started building this megalomaniacal project in Omiš that was supposed to ensure Yugoslavia’s eternal future. However, the construction of the complex was very slow for two reasons-the first was that the underground city was constantly being expanded because the Party was trying to incorporate many inventions that we today know were pseudo-scientific and which they thought would secure a healthy and long life of Party leaders, and the second was that the process of construction was supposed to be invisible to enemies, foreign and domestic. Activation of the object was postponed by the transition period, and only the recent construction of the "Tunnel to nowhere" enabled the continuation of works and the imminent completion of this doomsday machine.

foto: Robert Matić

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