I have revisited my 2022 Brutalism Glitch series in a new, animated form, presenting 13 short clips, each approximately five seconds long, highlighting 13 of my favorite socialist brutalist buildings. The medium is digital video, combining photographic manipulation and animation to create a layered, dynamic aesthetic. Each clip was created from original photographs, which I first manipulated using a standard text-editing program. The images were then animated and composited using CapCut and the Kling AI program, transforming static architecture into moving, glitching forms. The glitch—originally a technical error—becomes a deliberate artistic language.
The glitch functions as more than a visual effect; it is a symbol of biographical rupture, migration, and inner fracture. The distortions evoke the static of memory, the pause of identity, and the sense of being caught between worlds. My fascination with brutalist architecture stems from childhood experiences in a smaller Croatian town in ex-Yugoslavia. I grew up in a prefab apartment building surrounded by rising concrete structures, a setting that once felt boundless, protective, and maternal. The war shattered that innocence, leaving a persistent sense of disorientation and a “paused” life. Migration further intensified this rupture, and the glitch has become a poetic metaphor for inner fractures that remain.
In these animations, the distortions move and shift, transforming the buildings into sites of memory, process, and unresolved tension. Each clip becomes a fragment of autobiography, reflecting landscapes of loss, belonging, and impermanence. The series negotiates failure as an aesthetic resource, error as a productive principle, and the banal as a site of truth. Through this interplay of architecture, digital aesthetics, and personal history, the works embrace imperfection as a form of resistance and affirmation. I would ideally show the works in a continuous loop on a CRT TV. For this submission, I have attached them as five files due to different formats. Headphones should also be provided, as the videos include an important audio component.
Autumn 2025