e-migration

Personal experience of e-migration is of a huge importance for contemporary culture and politics in the Republic of Croatia. Question of diaspora1 on one hand is one of the most contingent questions of Croatian society: who were the emigrees of so called third wave, in the 1960s? What were their experiences of life in the socialist Yugoslavia and what made them leave? How did those e-migrees get along with the emigrees of the so called second wave, who came to Australia after WWII? How did Australia represent itself to attract new working force, what was the foundation of prosperity it promised and what were the images of that representation?
On the other hand, what does diaspora think about its influence on life in the republic of Croatia via its electoral apparatus?
These are some of the questions on which Anita Bacic, an Australian artist of Croatian origin who today lives between Bagkok and Tasmania, where she was born, and Sonja Leboš, a cultural anthropologist and curator, born in Zagreb where she lives and works, who, together with Darko Fritz, mentored Anita's research that took place in 2015 in the frame of a project by the partner organization grey) (area from Korčula. In that research Anita tackled the emigration from the once biggest village in Southeastern Europe, Blato on the island of Korčula. The results of the research are partly presented on Anita's blog.
In 2017 we conducted further research in Korčula, Zagreb, Sidney and Perth.
Idea for this project that we tentatively call e-migracija // e-migration // e-migración relies on the theoretical postulates of Arjuna Appadurai: today's global picture of the world is conditioned by mass media and mass migration. When migration is triggered by a horrid war and not "only" (sic!) by the economic reasons an emigree is  (in Agamben's terms) a disquieting element within the accepted order on the axis state-nation. In that sense, exactly that figure of an emigree, today more often a refugee, a seemingly marginal figure, becomes a central figure of history. This is also a neuralgic question of contemporary Croatian society, about the role of diaspora in the political determinants of the country, that in this project communicates with the individual destinies of economic migrants who, in manifold ways, made their existence aware of the political emigration after WWII. Those dynamics of living together of various forms of emigration waves were and remain very different. However, Appadurai indicates that emigration populations all over the world have a very strong influence on the countries they emigrated from.
Those theoretical starting points were important for the research and its themes: 1) what were the representation of Australia as a "destination" that was offered to the European economic migrants in the 1960s "destinacije"  (until the end of the 1970s Australia fought militant extreme right wing organizations in different ways); 2) how various groups of emigrees have been living together, and formats of "adaption" and acculturation; 3) forms of connection to the "old" world and the way of life there. Research is also instigated by the question why people emigrated to the far away continents from the Socialist Republic of Croatia in the 1960s, at the times that are often (or solely) interpreted as the epoch of economic development, progress and advanced forms of social order.
While rejecting the ethnic-psychological theses from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Ct about "passive" peoples or ethnic groups, with this research we would like to take on the materialist (and therefore also Marxist) analyzes of impossibilities of the socialist society in Yugoslavia to redistribute means of production so that all the members of that society could get their right to work, bread and decent living.
How was that right on work, bread and decent living "advertised" by the state that at the time, in the 1960s still maintained horrible racist laws according to which it oppressed the indigenous peoples of Australia? What were the jobs there for the immigrants of the so called third wave, and what kind of jobs they left behind (if they had a job) in the Socialist Republic of Croatia? What was the nominal difference in payment and what sort of quality of life it enabled in Australia, compared to the quality of life in, for example, capital of the Socialist Republic of Croatia – Zagreb? 
All those questions imply qualitative research, and their contextualization within the geopolitical image of the today's world, also from the position of total turn of the role of diaspora in Croatian society, from marginal mentioning in literature and film to its strong influence into social, cultural, and political events in Croatia and Southeastern Europe since the 1980s till today.
There have been numerous research and art projects that tackled the phenomenon of "Gastarbeit"2  (in Vienna there was a big exhibition titled "Gastarbajteri", which is the Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian version of the term, which means that it explicitly dealt with the emigration from the Slavic countries of Southeastern Europe), but there where few research projects about diaspora on other continents with starting points outside of conservative circles, and there are few art projects which tackled diaspora.
In the core of this artistic and curatorial research is a question of political, and therefore also economical representations of the conditions of work and production.
 

Here is the e-migration. Part 1