The Museum Becomes Living Cinema

With Nula, Irena Haiduk presents a hybrid project that is at once a film in production, an active exhibition, and a social experiment. On view at the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, the work transforms the museum into a “camera” that accumulates, projects, and transmits images and desires. Set in 1990s Yugoslavia, Nula portrays the unraveling of a society amid war and hyperinflation, following three women who reinvent themselves in order to survive. Filming, open to the public, engages visitors in a participatory economy: each receives a symbolic banknote and can enter the narrative by taking on roles and tasks. The museum thus becomes both film studio and narrative device, where every presence alters the scene. With cinematography by Manuel Alberto Claro and based on an autofictional novel, Nula explores how desire and value are redefined within the space of art.