Workshop “Land Art on the Beach”, as a part of the Benčić Youth Council project was held on May 6th, 13th and 14th 2017 in Križanićeva 6A and on the beach Srebrena, Pećine, Rijeka. This workshop was designed and held in co-operation with artists Una Rebić and Metod Belejec.
In continuation you can read a collaborative text from artists and BYC about the workshop:
The idea for the workshop came from two artists who recognized land art not only as a powerful media outline, but also as an educational approach and method. This is more than relevant today for the younger generations which is less and less in touch with nature, not only because of living in urban environments, but especially for the intensive life in the virtual world. Land art as a medium of expression has the potential to change our perception of nature, questioning our relationship to it. Exiting from the given artistic frames of size, space, and duration, we are being led to think about the same conceptual frameworks: size, scale, time and temporality. Land art is also a provocative practice because it often moves the boundaries between art, architecture and urbanism, thus disregarding the strict definition of what this practice does.
Since the Benčić Youth Council is consisted of elementary school children living in the urban environment, the land art workshop was a great opportunity to initiate a dialogue on nature in the urban context, above all. Some of the questions we set during the workshop and answered them are:
What is nature in the city of Rijeka and where can we find it (hidden)? What is our relationship to it? What are the benefits of spending time in nature? How can nature be an inspiration and medium for our creative expression, what does it mean to do work in nature and that durability of that work to be influenced by weather and human influences? What is the purpose and the value of such work?
For the location of the workshop we chose the beach of Srebrena, next to the port of Pećine. The specificity of this beach is that it is made up of white pebbles, which the beach has been named after, and gray, green, red, blue and yellow shades river pebbles, which were added a few years ago. The proposal of artistic intervention on the beach was sorting and shaping the beach pebbles in six groups of colors in a way that as a result we get a graphical drawing in the space that is influenced by the weather conditions as well as the visitor’s reactions to the beach.
The workshop was structured in two phases: in the first phase the children had the opportunity to get acquainted with the history and philosophy of land art as a contemporary art practice, to get to know the location of Srebrena beach in Pećine and to make suggestions about the beach intervention. In the second stage of the workshop, for two days, the children together with the artists made the selected intervention proposal. The intervention took place on the left (smaller) side of the beach and the sorting of the pebbles on the right. In addition to the work on sorting and sorting the stones, the goal of the workshop was through fun activities on the beach – such as throwing stones, splattering in the sea, playing cards and many others – to remind children of the many opportunities that spending time in nature bring us even when it is located in our immediate (city) neighborhood, as is the case with the city beach of Srebrena.
The result of our land art intervention was performed by fixing the pebbles in vertical lines in six shades. In this way the beach is transformed into a graphic drawing bearing the title “Color Positive”. Its duration will depend on weather conditions and human influence. For this reason, we recognize this work as a kind of experiment in the city that can directly address the acceptance and understanding of artistic processes, depending on how long it is held intact. Apart from human influences, the impact of nature on the work will also be interesting to follow.
We would like to invite all citizens who visit the beach Srebrena in the coming days, weeks and months to photograph and post their photographs (FB Page or e-mail) to assist in monitoring the interventions and changes that will be happening.

Metod Blejec (born in 1979 in Ljubljana) is a multidisciplinary hybrid producer in the field of art, design, photography and education who works on experimental and engaging process-based projects. His work goes beyond the boundaries of media, scale, modality, and concepts in personal and collaborative practices. He lives in Ljubljana and works internationally.

Una Rebić (born in 1986 in Rijeka) is a multidisciplinary art and design practitioner. Her work is multilayered and fluctuates between individual and collaborative projects. She is interested in researching communication in the sphere of social, physical, mental and spiritual. Currently lives in Slovenia and is active in both Rijeka and internationally.