The Story of Has-Been

"I started working on The Story of Has-Been during a two-month stay at an anarcho-punk occupation in Zagreb, three years ago. The occupation took place in an idle pharmaceutical plant. They had a circus school and warehouses where parties were thrown. It harbored several artists, musicians and people passing through, like circus groups and touring bands. 

My accommodations were next to the kitchen, which was frequented day and night. During those two months, I documented the leftovers from collective lunches, breakfasts and dinners on a daily basis. I also recorded the routine of a Danish tattoo artist, Esben, who was passing through Zagreb. At night, I would take pictures of the area south of the train station, a decadent region where many of the stores were empty. 

The choice of what to photograph was dictated by the space and by the people who coexisted in the occupation. Since I was not given a room like the others and was instead placed next to the constantly used kitchen, I accepted the space that was offered me without trying to assert myself. For some reason, I failed to mingle with the others in that community, and therefore had to look for material for my photos amidst the leftovers and traces of lunches and dinners. 

After half a year, I thought of editing the material and realized that there were some recurrent themes that ran parallel to one another. That led me to think of a sort of fragmented photonovel where each volume would address a different theme, but designed to be seen in relation to the others. 

The idea was to create a sort of movie for the book’s viewer, featuring four elements in a fictitious story: the city, a private place (the kitchen), a character and a landscape. By randomly leafing through each book – because there is no closed linear sequence –, the viewers edit their own film."

Vijai Patchineelam​ in a statement to PLATFORM:VB (October 2013)