Launch of the book "JADRANKA’S FIRST LIFE" by Olja Savičević Ivančević, Božena Končić Badurina, and Jadranka Klekar

"JADRANKA'S FIRST LIFE"

OLJA SAVIČEVIĆ IVANČEVIĆ, BOŽENA KONČIĆ BADURINA, JADRANKA KLEKAR

Tuesday, May 6, 2025, at 7 PM

Laguna Hotel, Small salon (ground floor)

Kranjčevićeva 29

We are proud to present the second edition of the Trešnjevka Neighbourhood Museum book series, "Jadranka's First Life", which depicts the poetic life of Trešnjevka's women's and workers' rights activist Jadranka Klekar.  A series of drawings by the renowned Croatian artist Božena Končić Badurina is intertwined with a song cycle by Olja Savičević Ivančević, one of Croatia’s most important contemporary authors. This is her first work in this poetic form.

The book launch will take place in the authentic environment of the Laguna Hotel, where Jadranka Klekar started working in 1973, when the hotel opened, and led a strike in 2001.

The speakers will include the authors and the publication editor Marko Pogačar, and the  discussion will be moderated by Ana Kutleša, the book series editor and the co-editor of the book.

The book is designed by Hrvoje Živčić and Zoran Đukić, and translated into English by Andrea Jurjević (the long poem and texts accompanying drawings), and Dunja Bakić (Foreword).

"Jadranka's first life runs through the pages of this book. Addresses, spaces, dates, scenes unfold in drawings, mostly based on the photographs, and in the poem, based on the statements by Jadranka Klekar. At certain moments, it seems like the fragments could belong to another Jadranka, another worker. Through one life we see other lives, micro-histories of Trešnjevka’s micro-locations, typologies of working-class apartments in Nova Cesta, the chronology of the Laguna hotel. 

The hotel holds a particularly important place in Jadranka’s (first) life: in sharp contrast with the harshness of her apartments (rooms) without running water, it appears to be almost a utopian collective home. Laguna is the place where her struggle, which she has been engaged in throughout her life, became collective in 2001 when, joined by other workers, she called a strike, today practically forgotten. Jadranka’s first life thus represents a somewhat unconventional excerpt from history, which does not end with 1990s and the breakup of one state and the establishment of another, but rather meanders through a turbulent transitional period, and in between lines implies long processes, a perspective that is more complex, but also more complete than the simplified narratives of the disintegration.

Jadranka waged her Trešnjevka struggle on just a few streets, primarily in Nova Cesta, where we hosted the exhibition preceding this book, in the Nova BAZA gallery, in March 2023. Now Jadranka’s story lives on, sung and drawn by the voices and hands of the women who recognized in it the struggle of their mothers, sisters, girlfriends, as well as some new workers. This book is for all of them."

Ana Kutleša

The book is sold at the price of 10 EURO.

PUBLISHER: BLOK

EDITOR: Ana Kutleša

BOOK EDITORS: Ana Kutleša and Marko Pogačar

AUTHORS: Olja Savičević Ivančević, Božena Končić Badurina, Jadranka Klekar

TRANSLATION: Andrea Jurjević, Dunja Bakić (foreword)

PROOFREADING: Jana Pamuković

DESING AND LAYOUT: Živčić i Đukić

Financially suported by City Office for Culture and Civil Society of the City of Zagreb. BLOK’s annual program for 2025 is supported by the Kultura nova foundation.

Thank you: Laguna Hotel.