Industrial Heritage of Korčula Island

If we do not count in the traditional production of olive oil and vine, we can list approximately ten industrial plants engaged in the wide spectrum of production: shipbuilding, mounting ship parts, fish and related packaging industry, textile industry, chemical, and electronic industry, etc. Vela Luka is an industrial leader of the island where more than half of the island’s industrial plants find their place. Also, the urban development of Vela Luka in the second half of the 20th Century was mostly marked exactly by the town industry.

In the so-called transitional period of transformation of the public into private ownership most of the plants were closed, went bankrupt, or significantly changed the management and production structure as well as lowered the number of employees. Inversion of industrial and post-industrial is interesting from historical, cultural, political, ideological, economic, and legal perspectives and one should tackle it interdisciplinary, inclusively, and with an activist stand.

The project involves more generations of the local population, the local government and cultural workers, experts, and artists who tried to build a platform for acting and networking, as well as for offering new models for recognition and re-evaluation of the local heritage.

The feminist and critical approach to the gender aspect of the industrial heritage on the island and the specificity of female remembrance and transfer of experiences is recognized here as a key aspect in re-writing both informal and official local history. The artistic production within this project includes the prose and video by Marija Borovičkić, workshops with the local community and pupils of the local grammar school in Vela Luka that were conducted by Božena Končić Badurina and which resulted in art book publishing. There was also a film and VR installation produced by the author Dijana Protić.

Project Leaders: Marija Borovičkić and Lea Vene, grey) (area