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 re: ex-post
Critical Knowledge and the
Post-Yugoslavian Condition, 20 January â 21
February 2010
Opening: 19 January
2010, 7 pm
Project curator: Luisa Ziaja
Participating artists:
Chto delat? mit Vladan JeremiÄ und Rena RÃdle
Nina HÃchtl
Marija Mojca PungerÄar
Exhibition design: Toledo i Dertschei
Presentation/discussion: 19 January 2010, 7 pm
Chto Delat International / Issue 001: Transitional Justice with Vladan JeremiÄ
The exhibition
project re: ex-post. Critical Knowledge and the Post-Yugoslavian
Condition explores artistic strategies of re-reading and re-writing recent
history in view of the present post-Yugoslavian condition. Despite its complex
and specific nature, the Yugoslavian experience of Socialism and its collapse
is frequently incorporated into a dominant pattern of historical interpretation
that is said to hold true for âEastern Europeâ in general: the inevitable path
from communism (allegedly doomed to failure) via a cathartic process of
âtransitionâ into
the final form of normality â a leitmotif that could be called âsalvation
historyâ, justified by a universal norm of general historical evolution. For (Ex-)Yugoslavia, Boris Buden has shown how this instrumentalization of the year
1989 âfactually operates in its hegemonic version as a historical master
narrative of sorts: as a well-known story about the ultimate victory of
capitalism and liberal democracyâ.
But this claim
of an all-embracing explanation constantly cracks when juxtaposed to the
political realities of these societies. With its independent course of
socialism and its bloody dissolution as a multi-ethnic state, Yugoslavia in particular differs from other post-communist countries. Such
contradictions are increasingly addressed through critical art practices
questioning these politics of history and the politics of amnesia as
âsideâ-effects of the âtransitionâ period and its dynamics of normalization.
The exhibition presents three artistic projects that link current political and
economical conditions with potentialities of the past in order to look for
modes of their actualization.
Boris Buden, The post-Yugoslavian Condition of
Institutional Critique: An Introduction. On Critique as Countercultural
Translation, in: eipcp (ed.), transversal 02/08,
http://transform.eipcp.net/transversal/0208
Artist nformation:
Chto delat? with Vladan JeremiÄ and
Rena RÃdle
Partisan Songspiel. Belgrade Story, 2009
Structured
like an ancient tragedy, the video work âPartisan Songspiel. Belgrade Storyâ
(2009) depicts contemporary Serbian society by means of different âarchetypesâ
that embody the confrontation of political and economical systems and their
respective ideologies. The forced eviction of the Roma settlement Belleville on the
occasion of the summer Universiade Belgrade 2009 serves a concrete cause in
this context. The ruling power â exemplified by a woman politician, an
oligarch, a nationalist, and a Mafioso â encounters the oppressed, exemplified
by a war veteran, a Romani woman, a worker, and a lesbian activist. A choir of
âdead Partisansâ functions as historical consciousness and political conscience
commenting on the confrontation.
The exhibition
also presents the current issue of the newspaper Chto delat International
entitled âTransitional Justiceâ, produced in cooperation between authors and in
connection to the previous realization of the video Partisan Songspiel. Belgrade Story, which was realized in Belgrade in Summer
2009. The authors gathered for this issue give a contextual overview of the
situation and condition of transitional Serbian society, which during the last
two decades existed as an isolated camp where everyday life was monopolized by
corrupted politicians and ruthless tycoons. After the catastrophe of the wars
in the ex-Yugoslav countries, which unfolded in the manner of a mutual
extermination, there followed the economic polarization and discrimination of a
large part of the population which ended up being homeless and deprived of any
state protection.
Chto delat? / What is to be
done? was founded in early
2003 in Petersburg by a workgroup of artists, critics,
philosophers, and writers from Petersburg, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod with the goal of merging political theory, art, and
activism. Since then, Chto delat? has been publishing an English-Russian
newspaper on issues central to engaged culture, with a special focus on the
relationship between a re-politicization of Russian intellectual culture and
its broader international context. These newspapers are usually produced in the
context of collective initiatives such as art projects or conferences and are
distributed for free. The workgroup Chto delat? includes: Olga Egorova/Tsaplya
(artist, Petersburg), Artiom Magun (philosopher, Petersburg), Nikolai Oleynikov (artist, Moscow), Natalia Pershina/Glucklya (artist, Petersburg), Alexei Penzin (philosopher, Moscow), David Riff (art
critic, Moscow), Alexander Skidan (poet, critic, Petersburg), Kirill Shuvalov (artist, Petersburg), Oxana Timofeeva (philosopher, Moscow), and Dmitry Vilensky (artist, Petersburg).
http://www.chtodelat.org
Vladan
JeremiÄ and Rena RÃdle have
been working together since 2002 in Belgrade, Serbia and elsewhere. They use art as one possible format
for radical criticism and take an active public position in different fields of
social activism. JeremiÄ/RÃdle are founders and members of the organizations
for culture and communication Biro Beograd, slobodnakultura.org in Belgrade and Top e.V in Berlin. http://www.modukit.com/raedle-jeremic
Nina
HÃchtl
Tales of Protest.
A Necessity, 2009
5-channel-video
installation
After a two-year long fight against the
privatization of their factory âJugoremedijaâ in Zrenjanin/Serbia the workers
finally succeeded: for the first time in former Yugoslavia, this factory has been recovered and handed over to
self-management. The experiences of the workers are the basis of five fictive
stories that are linked with footage from the silent film âStrikeâ by Sergej
Eisenstein in Nina HÃchtlâs 5-channel-video
installation âTales of Protest. A Necessityâ. In 1925, Eisenstein and the
Proletkult Theatre restaged a workersâ fight that had taken place in
pre-revolutionary Russia in 1912. HÃchtl revisits history and its political potential on
many different levels, not only depicting but actualizing it. She asks for the
relation between collectivism and individualism and how they are represented.
Nina
HÃchtl was born in Austria
and lives in Vienna, Mexico City, and currently London. She studied at the University of Applied Arts
in Vienna and the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.
Presently, she is a doctoral candidate in Art by Practice at Goldsmiths College, London. Her
projects deal with identity, language and communication and employ different
media. Most recently, she has exhibited Tales
of Protest. A necessity, CZKd, Belgrade; Print Matters, CHAUVEL CINEMA, Sydney; moved, mutated and disturbed identities, Casino Luxemburg, 2009; Too Early for Vacation, OPEN/INVITED e v
+a, 2008, Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick (Curator: Hou Hanru). http://www.ninahoechtl.org
Marija
Mojca PungerÄar
Brotherhood and Unity, 2006
Photo-video-installation
The most famous slogan of the Socialist
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, âBratstvo in Enotnostâ â âBrotherhood and
Unityâ, serves as a multi-leveled frame of reference for the photo-video
installation of the same title by Marija Mojca PungerÄar: Coined by Tito as a motto of the Yugoslavian fight for liberation
in 1941, it was opposed to nationalist and separatist tendencies in the
different ethnic and religious groups and later designated the official policy
of inter-ethnic relations aiming at the equalization of nations and
ethnicities. âBrotherhood and Unityâ is also the name of the motorway that
connects Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade and Skopje, and which was built in the 1950s by shock-work brigades from the
different republics. On occasion of the reconstruction of its Slovenian section
in 2006 Pungercar looks into the changed political, social, and economic conditions
of this kind of work. Today, it is mostly migrants from the former republics of
Yugoslavia who are working in road construction for comparatively low wages.
How about the relevance of ideals like Brotherhood and Unity or solidarity and
community in fragmented societies now urged to follow a neo-liberal logic?
Marija Mojca PungerÄar
Born in Novo
Mesto, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. A former fashion designer (1983â87), she holds a BFA in painting from
the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana (1989) and an MFA in new genres from the San
Francisco Art Institute (2001). Since its foundation in 2004, she has been a
member of Trivia Art (KUD Trivia). She works as a freelance artist (video,
photography, performance, installation, theatre costumes design). Her work is
marked by strong social engagement, critically rethinking consumerist culture
and underscoring issues of locality and community. Recent projects have
involved examining fate of the Slovene industry: Singer (2003), Brotherhood
and Unity (2006); developing the art-fashion brand name Socialdress (2006âongoing); and
documenting her local neighborhood: Special
Offer, Stereo-Visions (2005); Outside
My Door (2004) â a work that has been included in the permanent collection
of the Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana. http://www.mojca.info
supported by:
BM:UKK
Stadt Wien - Kulturabteilung MA 7
in
kind support by:
IG Kultur Wien
About us:
Open Friday, Saturday 11.00 -
18.30 and open for the rest of the week days by appointment only.
Admission free
Open Space
Zentrum fÃr
Kunstprojekte
Lassingleithnerplatz 2
A- 1020 Vienna
Austria
(+43) 699 115 286 32
for more info: office@openspace-zkp.org
http://www.openspace-zkp.org
Open Space - Zentrum fÃr Kunstprojekte
aims to create the most vital facilities for art concerned with contributing a
model strategy for cross-border and interregional projects on the basis of
improving new approach.
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