#računari_144

Participative speculative scenography, 2022
#računari_144 is a participative speculative scenography for reinterpretation of the cover pages of the cult magazine Računari. The installation invites the visitors to participate in the creation of the cover page for the new fictional issue no. 144.
This magazine was marked by the dichotomy of the recognisability status—on one hand, it had quality articles which impacted generations of programming communities. On the other, it became recognisable all over the world by often controversial sexualised depictions of women on the cover page hugging the devices that the magazine was writing about. The magazine marked the years (1984–1999) in which personal computers entered our homes and the Internet just started to develop, as well as the narrative about what are computers and for whom they are intended.
Speculative scenography contains elements of visual identity of this magazine in the frame for the cover page, which is enlarged to human size and physically placed in space. Ready to build the future appearance of the cover page, behind it are historical examples of computers from the Museum of Science and Technology that offer the protagonists of the scene to place themselves around two planes.

The scenography is framed by the chronological archive of chosen covers, starting from the famous issue no. 11 in which woman’s legs were shown for the first time, up to the more explicit scenes from the cover pages in the 1990s. The work offers a possibility to see the course of the narratives throughout the years, as well as explore certain exhibited issues of the magazine. The authors are invited to publish their scenes on social networks using the hashtag #računari_144 so that they could end up in the gallery and archive of the cover pages on the new issue no. 144. What would issue no. 144 published in September 2022 say about today’s hug with the technology and the digital expression?