At the 6th edition of the V-F-X Ljubljana festival, the audiovisual performance Propulzor – A Score for the Ship Galeb will be showcased, drawing on the history of the Galeb–renowned as the “ship of peace” and the “ship of friendship”–within the framework of Yugoslav politics and the Non-Aligned Movement.
6. Festival of experimental audiovisual practices / 12.–17. 5. 2026
Full festival programme: https://www.vfx-ljubljana.si/
The clang of rivets being driven into sections intertwines with the thud of a dozen hammers striking the steel hull. In the ship’s stern, four workers are repairing the shaft where a new propeller will be installed in a month. Shipfitters are rushing to install pipes and metalwork, while, inside the ship, carpenters are finishing the wooden components fitted in ascetically cramped and very modest rooms. Painters test the first coatings and search for the right shade for the vessel that was originally meant to bear the name Mornar (Sailor). They call out to one another, discuss things and drink wine during breaks, while the workers from Monfalcone, Italy, are still grappling with the language, but they have already mastered the technical terms and are managing pretty well in their work environment. The ship they are working on is no stranger to them – it was they who built its two “sisters” fifteen years earlier. Such scenes likely took place in the Uljanik shipyard in the early 1950s when the deafening noise from the dry dock filled the streets of the old town and, with that cacophony of sounds, betrayed the fact that another city was growing in Pula. In the dry docks of this city-within-a-city – Uljanik, extensive works on the training ship Galeb, later remembered as a “ship of peace” and a “ship of friendship” in the context of Yugoslavia’s Non-Aligned Movement, were nearing completion. As the story goes, it was precisely Uljanik’s workers who named it Galeb, while the Western coast of the Island was named Molo Galeb after it. From Uljanik’s dry docks, steel leviathans were launched, but, at the same time, the shipyard also created strong symbols. The ontology of steel, however, is not a stable category, unlike shipbuilding, which shapes and defines the propulsiveness of this hard material.
In our search for the sounds and images inscribed into the history of this ship, we not only discovered an array of crackles, crunching sounds, noises, reverberations and vibrations that can be perceived by carefully listening on the deck, but also realized that, in visualizing its past, one encounters far more than “picture-perfect postcards”. Designed and built during the Fascist era to meet the needs of a colonial economy, RAMB III was the third of four sister ships that had to ply the waters between Italy and its occupied African territories. The sound of commands, the tone of racism, the cries of punishment, belittlement and humiliation – una nave che scende nel mare, è un altro elemento che aumenta l’efficienza bellica della Nazione – and, ultimately, the belligerent roar of a poisoned nation would draw this cargo ship into their maelstrom. That is why the sound and silence of its – literal and metaphorical – ruptures were important to us. And there was no shortage of them, quite the contrary. How else can we interpret the real Odyssey that began in the Libyan city of Benghazi, when RAMB III lost its bow and had to navigate backwards, a ritroso, stern-first, all the way to Trieste? What did its sailors hear as they passed through the Strait of Otranto, and what kind of cry was emitted by the then-mutilated and wounded macchina bellica navale, a war machine and a ship of fools that embarked on a practically impossible adventure? What did the bombs from US planes that hit it just before the end of the war in the port of Rijeka and sank it to a depth of 22 meters sound like? Was the last thought of the crew members killed on the ship, then already named Kiebitz and repurposed as a minelayer, one about the “weird” sound of the bombs mentioned in some reports? Sound, tone, vibration and noise are not secondary in the life of this or any ship, as they are also one of the faces of rupture, caesura, interruption and bursts at sea, an environment that is unnatural and often hostile to humans.
Moving images demand sound. However, that sound is not underwater, underwater sound cannot yet be fully recorded. The hydroacoustics of such a pivotal moment in the ship’s life must be reconstructed from underwater footage, in much the same way that a human face can be carefully and speculatively recreated from the contours of a skull. Only in this revived way will we be able to understand the full scope of the events and the situation woven into the creation of the symbol of the “ship of friendship.” Only when we hear the sound of underwater welding, riveting, hissing, banging and the breathing in a heavy diving suit, the timbre of a kind of “industrial dialect”, will we be able to understand the shared grammar of the language of non-alignment. Before Gamal Abdel Nasser, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Josip Broz Tito, it was Vlado Kokezar, Vicko Lapov, Skopazzi, Bonifačić and Filčić who stayed underwater on the future Galeb in a series of attempts to raise it from the seabed of Rijeka. And, there, in the fertile waters of Rijeka, these diver-obstetricians brought the ship back to the surface and handed it over to the workers of Uljanik, who would prepare it both for the naval training fleet and the symbolic system of the then young socialist federation.
A propulsor is, therefore, not merely a propeller that converts engine power into the thrust that drives a ship forward. It is not merely a propeller that pushes a ship through space; it is also the force with which this ship diachronically sails from the Ligurian Sea to the Adriatic, and then to the Ionian Sea and the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Thames, the Suez Canal or the Bay of Bengal. At the same time, the propulsor is the dead time of the ship at the bottom of the sea; the propulsor is the ship’s body, which symbolizes peace, simultaneous rupture and riveting, its sinking and resurfacing. The propulsor is the arrested propeller at the heart of a tertiary economy. The propulsor is a future attraction.
– Andrea Matošević
Propulsor, Score for the Ship Galeb
Alen Sinkauz – music
Nenad Sinkauz – music
Andrea Matošević – research, concept and text
Vladislav Knežević – film concept and direction
Miodrag Gladović – multichannel audio setup, sound design
Mario Kalogjera – editing and image processing
Hrvoje Pelicarić – sound engineer
BIO
Nenad Sinkauz is an ethnomusicologist, composer and performer, the winner of five Golden Arenas for Best Music at the Pula Film Festival. He is currently researching MIDI mapping of the electric guitar and taking part in numerous audio-visual, theatre and concert performances.
Alen Sinkauz is a musicologist, composer and performer, the winner of five Golden Arenas for Best Music at the Pula Film Festival. He composes and designs sound for musical stage productions, dance and theatre performances, as well as radiophonic, site-specific and multidisciplinary performances.
Miodrag Gladović holds a degree in electroacoustic engineering and works as a musician, music producer and multimedia artist. He collaborates with numerous artists from Croatia and other countries as a sound designer and in the technical realization of multimedia and interactive art installations.
Mario Kalogjera is a performance animator and visual designer. He has extensive experience in the post-production of numerous projects, including animated, experimental and short 3D stereoscopic films, which he created for the Croatian national television (HRT), Zagreb Film, Bonobo Studio, and Kinorama.
Andrea Matošević is a university professor and researcher in the fields of ethno-anthropology, cultural studies, history and philosophy. He has published several dozen scientific research papers and six monographs. His last monograph is titled Kolos Jadrana. Industrijski film i brodogradilište Uljanik u drugoj polovici XX. stoljeća.
Vladislav Knežević is a media artist and director. He primarily engages in audiovisual research and creates works by using filmed video material, digital photography, micro-animation, stereoscopic 3D techniques and generative electronic sound in an attempt to create a new experience of viewing film media.
Organization: SCCA-Ljubljana and Kino Šiška. With the support of the Ministry of Culture and the City of Ljubljana.
