One of the biggest surprises in Zagreb this summer, Art Park, is wrapping up its first season with a symbolic participation in the Nuit Blanche event set up for this Saturday, October 1st. While a lot of summer events, venues and manifestations were known about beforehand, publicized and hyped, Art Park kind of just happened and took everything by storm.
A few street artists had gathered and started cleaning up an old abandoned park hidden in the city center that mostly high school kids used for smoking weed after school. Once the artists cleaned up all the weeds, literally and metaphorically, they found a nice green oasis hidden beneath it that they decorated with graffiti and street art pieces.
It soon became a place of cultural gatherings with film projections, concerts, exhibitions, workshops and other events, all the while letting different street artists paint on boards around the park. It was unpretentious, easy going and inclusive and had become popular among street art, skate and culture crowds, but soon turned into the most frequented venue in Zagreb. Everybody and their brother started showing up which, by the end of summer made it quite hard to hold cultural events.
With clubs opening around Zagreb for the new autumn/winter season, the park is back to its regular crowd, and they decided to send theirfirst summer of in two ways. The first one will happen on Thursday, September 29th, when all the art pieces made by street artists during the summer will be auctioned with all the profits going to a local animal shelter who is in dire need of a little financial injections to keep the animal there and not send them off to the pound, where they’ll have a few weeks before getting an injection themselves. The auction will take place throughout the afternoon and evening.
The other, more official send off to their first season will take place on Saturday, October 1st, when the park will became a site of a big light installation set up in congruence with the art pieces still left in the park. The installation and closing party will start at 8pm, but there’s going to be something going on throughout the day. The closing party will be an official part of the Nuit Blanche.
All events are free.