I Didn’t Really Plan to Start a Festival

Before Visualia, I worked as a lighting designer for about ten years. After that, I studied audio engineering, did various things, and somehow kept coming back to light.

Around 2012, I started paying more attention to what was happening with new technologies, video mapping and light installations. There was very little of that in Croatia at the time, and I decided that we could try to make something of our own.

The first year, we made a very small and modest festival. We also tried to create our first mapping projection. We needed permission from the conservation authorities because, in the projection, we wanted to demolish parts of a building, open and close its windows and do similar things.

They asked us if we were actually going to demolish the building.

We didn’t.

It sounds funny today, but at the time people simply weren’t familiar with video mapping.

To our surprise, a lot of people came that first year. There was quite a crowd around the mapping projection in particular. And we made the entire festival with around €6,000 that we received from the Pula Tourist Board.

The Tourist Board recognised the potential of the festival and invited us to a meeting. Around the same time, we got the opportunity to use the huge cranes of Uljanik shipyard, so we agreed that in 2014 we would make a much bigger Visualia.

People often remember that second Visualia as if it was the first.

There were an incredible number of people in the city, and a really good kind of chaos developed. Before the festival, we told the police that we expected a large number of visitors and that some roads might need to be closed.

They basically told us: “People will come to look at the cranes, it’ll be fine.”

In the end, there was a traffic jam, people spilled out onto the streets, and the whole city was packed.

It was great.

In 2015, in the Amphitheater, we broke a Guinness World Record with people holding lights and together creating the words Pula + Istria. The following year, we started the European project Spectrum with partners from several European countries. And from then on, something new happened practically every year.

But what I particularly like about Visualia is that we can still call ourselves enthusiasts.

Or maybe enthusiasts. And lunatics?

We simply enjoy what we do.

Money is never a problem.

Well, money is always a problem.

Until the very last day, we often don’t know whether we’ll manage to build all the installations we have imagined, but somehow they always end up working. There are so few of us that everyone has to do several different jobs. Everyone ends up wearing a few different hats, and eventually it all turns into chaos.

And somehow, I actually prefer Visualia working that way rather than having everything completely structured and organised.

I think that is also why artists like coming to us. They hear that the festival is good, but even more importantly, that it has a good vibe. People hang out, have fun and relax. A lot of spontaneous networking happens between artists, festivals and people working in similar fields.

And Pula helps a lot with that. It’s a beautiful small city, full of historic locations, and the festival takes place in September, when you can still go to the sea and swim.

It’s not exactly the worst place to come and work on a festival.

Alongside the festival, Visualia Group was created, today known as Visualia Studio - our artistic collective through which we create video mapping, physical light installations, interactive works and other projects.

That is another part of the story that I personally really enjoy: travelling with our work to other festivals.

One important moment came in 2015, when our friend Katra, the director of the Svetlobna gverila festival in Ljubljana, started connecting us with other light festivals across Europe. Slowly, friendships and collaborations started to develop.

A few years later, we joined the International Light Festivals Organisation. We became increasingly active - from being a member and working within the organisation, to committees and the secretariat, and eventually to the role of president that I hold today, alongside Nikolina’s work within the organisation.

That collaboration between festivals and the people who create them is now one of my favourite parts of the whole story. And Nikolina’s.

And if I had to say what Visualia is today, I would say it is a light festival in a small, beautiful city with two thousand years of history, where we try to use the city in a slightly different way.

We particularly like interactive installations.

We don’t want people to simply come, look at something and leave.

We want them to become part of the work.

Maybe that is what Visualia has been doing from the very beginning.

Special thanks to Ivana, Mirna and Nicol. And to all the friends of the festivals, co-organisers, supporters, visitors and artists.

Thank you <3

Marko