Abuseis the action of drilling the already broken lock on the door of my mother’s house on the island. After the double break-in by a family member and the last, unfinished attempt, the door was moved to a public space and placed on the Breakwater path of the lighthouse. I am completing the unfinished work of breaking the lock on the door of the now houseless, publicly displayed freestanding object overlooking the sea and the islands. An absurd monument to a family tragedy in the time of turism. Drilling the lock cylinder is not only the completion of an unfinished “job”, but also a reaction to the frustration of acquittal and unpunished violent action. I am doing this also in response to a judicial system that does not protect the victims of violence, does not respond promptly to domestic violence, so misdemeanor processes take too long, especially in cases of violence against older women.
The broken lock is a paradigmatic object of contemporary society, immersed in the shift of priorities and values, violent relations of power and the supremacy of the property over the affective, especially in the context of the tourist exploitation of Dalmatia. Abuse is a product of aspiration, the insatiable desire to possess and the normalization of corruption, which are at the core of criminal-capitalist relations in the post-socialist transition, but also in the contemporary post-transition society. In addition to the obvious reasons, the name of the work is linked to the brand of the lock cylinder: the famous German company Abus.