Aldo Milohnić

Equality before the law is one of the basic elements of the state governed by the rule of law. Following this principle, we all have an inalienable right to equal and non-discriminatory legal protection, including the basic rights and freedoms, which are guaranteed by the constitution. However, regardless of this basic principle of the state governed by the rule of law, contemporary legal systems grant special rights to certain social or professional groups, and the latter enjoy these rights because of a broader social interest which they supposedly pursue in their actions and activities. A classic example of this situation is, for instance, parliamentary (or deputy) immunity of members of the parliament, whose role in the political system of parliamentary democracy is to represent the “voice of the people” in the legislative part of the authorities. An early example of specially protected representatives of the people’s will in representative bodies were the people’s tribunes (tribuni plebis) in ancient Rome, who were considered untouchable (sacrosancti). Parliamentary immunity in today’s sense, however, is related particularly to the development of this legal institution in the history of British parliamentarism, which was the site of rivalry between the Crown and the parliament. Namely, from the 14^th century onwards, it was no longer a matter of course that a member of the parliament should end up in prison if he said something in the parliament that did not appeal to the current king. Nowadays, when one no longer needs to be a king to put someone in prison (one does, however, need a substantial amount of money to hire a good lawyer), the function and form of parliamentary immunity have also changed somewhat; yet, parliamentary immunity still serves its basic purpose: the people’s tribune should not fear punishment, for instance, for uncompromisingly criticising the executive power, even if it later turns out that this critique was misjudged, that it was not based on solid facts, etc. Judges of the Slovenian Constitutional Court have also observed this fact when they wrote the following in their explanation of the important decision No. U-I-226/95: “The demands concerning the adducing of proof that the asserted facts are indeed true, which are difficult to meet, can not only jeopardise an open public debate but can actually paralyse and limit it. Not taking into account the difficulties entailed in the verification of facts would have the same consequences. The fear that a statement could not be authenticated not only prevents the disclosure of false facts but also entails a reluctance to disseminate the facts that are true. Because of this kind of self-imposed censorship the control over the actions of the actors of political decision making could only be bogus.” In this case, the Constitutional Court considers the stylistic questions of, for example, the (in)appropriateness of the chosen words or the (lack of) sophistication of the speaker or the writer completely irrelevant: “If a debate is to be truly free, the right of the individual to express his or her own opinion must be protected as a matter of principle, regardless of whether the statement is rude or neutral, rational or emotionally charged, calm or aggressive, useful or harmful, accurate or inaccurate.”

Immunity is a form of a special, specially protected, and thus privileged status, which can be understood as an exception or a particular kind of suspension of a general and commonly valid rule, such as the principle of equality before the law (at least this is so within the system of the state governed by the rule of law). Yet, even in this case, differentiation is acceptable if the legislators have complied with certain rules, such as those mentioned in the explanation of the abovementioned decision of the Constitutional Court: “The principle of equality before the law does not forbid the legislators to manage the positions of legal subjects differently; it does, however, prevent them from doing so arbitrarily, without a rational and objective reason. This means that differentiation must serve a constitutionally acceptable purpose, that this purpose must be reasonably related to the subject of the regulation, and that the introduced differentiation must be an appropriate means of accomplishing this goal.”

Differentiation, then, is acceptable because it is precisely these special guarantees that ensure the implementation of the basic constitutional provisions (and thus values) of a given society. In addition to the members of the parliament and the judges, whose immunity grants them special legal protection in performing their functions, some other professional groups (for instance, journalists, scientists and artists) as well as certain social groups (such as minorities, who need special protection because of their originally unequal position in the society – this is called positive discrimination) also enjoy constitutionally recognised special rights. Immunity is a legal notion, whose meaning is determined within the legal system; however, in a somewhat broader or metaphorical sense, we can also apply it in the field of art. The constitution and the penal code thus guarantee a certain (functional) immunity to the artists or rather, if we are utterly precise, to all those people who “are creative” or who “express themselves” in the field of art. The Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia (Article 59) thus guarantees the freedom of “artistic creativity”, while the Penal Code of the Republic of Slovenia (Article 169) states that “whoever expresses words offensive to another in a scientific, literary or artistic work” will not be punished (however, with an important addition, “provided that the manner of expressing such words or the other circumstances of the case indicate that this expression was not meant to be derogatory”).

The legal systems of contemporary parliamentary democracies thus incorporate certain mechanisms or institutions that guarantee special protection to those individuals who are involved in certain activities that are considered particularly important from the perspective of constitutional law. These guarantees are meant to balance the collisions of rights, which can be anticipated and which are in fact frequent in these professions and activities. In court practice, there are numerous examples of collision between, say, the right to privacy, honour and reputation and the right to artistic creativity and expression. In these cases, the court must decide how far the latter can extend without excessively jeopardising the other constitutional right. As the constitutional judge Dragica Wedam Lukić says (the article was published in 2009 in the collection Pravna država), “it issues from the decisions of the Constitutional Court that the specificities of artistic creativity must be taken into account when searching for an answer to the question of how far artistic freedom (as a special instance of the right to freedom of expression) can extend or the question of where the boundary is located that separates this constitutional right from the constitutionally protected personal rights of others, which include protection of honour and reputation”. As demonstrated by some important examples of constitutional judgement in the past few years (for instance, the Pikalo case and the book Modri e, or the Smolnikar case and the book Ko se tam gori olistajo breze), court practice habitually attaches considerable weight precisely to the “specificities of artistic creativity” and it is less favourably disposed towards the absolute protection of personal rights, with which these specificities are often at odds.

Yet, things are not as simple as it might seem. As long as artistic activities are specially protected and deemed an exception to the rule (as mentioned before in relation to Article 169 of the Penal Code), the judges are able to tip the scales in favour of the right to “creativity” and “expression”, when this right collides with a certain personal right. However, more difficult to solve are the cases in which artists with their work find themselves at odds with a certain regulation that does not explicitly mention art as a possible exception to the rule. In these cases, the judges and their scales are put to a new and important test.

It is a slightly easier task for the judge if an artist has done something in his or her work that raises suspicions that this might be a minor or even a criminal offence, yet, this act as such has not been properly sanctioned by a special law yet. This could be called a legal void or, a bit more metaphorically, wilderness, that is, that sphere of human activities that has not been – at least not entirely – regulated by positive legislation. As far as artistic activities are concerned, this area of legal wilderness resembles Hakim Bey’s “temporary autonomous zone” in the early days of the Internet. With the accumulation of new regulations and the ever increasing legal standardisation of a certain social field, there is less and less room for manoeuvre left to the artist who is entering into some sort of interaction with this social field. This somewhat abstract presentation of the problem can be illustrated with the example of the original and the reconstructed performance Pupilija, papa Pupilo pa Pupilčki.

As we know, there is a notorious scene in this show that involves the slaughtering of chicken. This was one of the reasons why in 1970 the Police Station Ljubljana Center brought charges against the members of the (original) theatre group with the municipal misdemeanours judge. The judge moderately fined seven members of the group, while the rest of its members – who were said to “have played an inferior role in the incident”, as the rule about the misdemeanour stated – were acquitted. It is important to note, however, that the judge pronounced the sentence only in relation to that part of the charge that concerned violation of Article 8 of the then valid law on misdemeanours against public order and peace, because the group gave no previous notice about the theatrical event to the appropriate body. The judge dismissed all other elements of the police charge – including the accusations that “their shows were a brutal insult to the public morals” and that “they tortured animals” (in both cases, the police quoted the law on misdemeanours against public order and peace) – and explained that “the actions of the accused show no signs of misdemeanour”.

Since, at the time, there was no law equivalent to the current Animal Protection Act and the then valid law on misdemeanours against public order and peace named no such misdemeanours, the judge deemed that the disputed acts showed no signs of misdemeanour. The judge thus acted in accordance with the principle of legality, which means that someone can be punished only if there exists a corresponding legal rule. Whatever one’s opinion about the courts during the period of Yugoslavian socialism may be, we could not argue that, in the just mentioned case of “Pupilčki” and the alleged misdemeanour, the judge did not act in accordance with the law.

The Universal Declaration of Animal Rights was solemnly proclaimed – in 1978 in Paris at the meeting of the International Society for Animal Rights – after the performance Pupilija, papa Pupilo pa Pupilčki. In the 1970s, a number of other conventions were adopted, which concern humane treatment of animals and preservation of their natural habitats. In Slovenia, the Animal Protection Act was adopted on the eve of the new millennium – on 18 November 1999. The difficulty facing contemporary “Pupilčki” group, who set about reconstructing the original show, was the fact that what lay between their attempt at putting on the show in 2006 and the original “Pupilčki”, who staged theirs in 1969, were the Animal Protection Act, several regulations and a whole series of international conventions that have been ratified by the Republic of Slovenia as well. Since legal rules determine precisely when an animal may be put to death, by whom, how, where, for what purpose, etc. and since the legislators have not explicitly allowed the slaughtering or execution of animals for artistic purposes, it is very likely that the court, in case a report were made, would recognise this act as animal torture and penalise the performers and the producer with a draconian fine.

As this case demonstrates, art shares the fate of other social activities whose destinies and (admissible) scope are determined and shaped by the legislation. Yet, the setting of the boundaries of acceptability should not be left to the discretion of the judges or, even less so, the lawyers. The state governed by the rule of law is meant to be the opposite of the police state; yet, the excessive power of the judicial part of the authorities can also make life completely unbearable. The story of the alleged neutrality of the state governed by the rule of law as regards politics and social values is the unattainable myth of liberal political theory. Dragica Wedam Lukić has pointed this out (in the abovementioned article): “We must consider the fact that constitutional judges are also only human, and their value judgements are sometimes more conservative and sometimes more liberal. And it is precisely in relation to the dilemmas concerning fundamental values that the question of the judges’ self-restraint versus activism resurfaces time and again: to what extent should the judges pay heed to commonly held values and to what extent should they use their decisions to enforce new values?” We must locate the Pupilija case in the broader context of the legal systems of contemporary parliamentary democracies, in which many legal provisions concerning animal protection are, to put it mildly, imbued with hypocrisy and double standards. Despite the fact that these laws prohibit the slaughtering or execution of animals for artistic purposes, they still allow supervised execution of animals in traditional fighting events (such as bullfighting), in hunting, for religious purposes (the so-called ritual slaughter), for the purposes of natural science museums, in experiments and for the purposes of scientific research, for educational purposes, etc.

In Slovenian legislation and in the European Union law, experiments involving animals and the use of animals for the purposes of scientific research are dealt with and standardised in great detail. The key guiding principle in this area is “the goal justifies the means”, for Article 21 of the Slovenian Animal Protection Act allows the use of animals (in this case, vertebrates) for the purposes of scientific research “if it is expected that the suffering of animals would be ethically acceptable compared to the anticipated result” and “if it is expected that the results would be of exceptional importance to people or animals or the solution of scientific problems”. On the other hand, the Act completely ignores artistic practice and makes no exceptions in this regard, for it automatically considers any kind of execution of animals on stage a violation of the law. The problem here is probably the fact that the legislators understand artistic practice as an activity that is meant to provide to its consumers, first and foremost, entertainment and distraction. If we only consider the dominant forms of popular entertainment industry worldwide, it may be true that art is often precisely such an activity; however, this is not a good enough reason to lump all kinds of art together, including those productions that strive to create precisely the opposite effect. We can mention the Croatian Animal Protection Act as a telling example of a law that claims that all shows, in which animals appear together with other (human) actors, are necessarily intended to entertain the audience. Hermann Nitsch’s shows and performances with their ritual animal sacrifice; Günter Brus’s anxious performances, in which he mutilated and tortured his own body; the slaughtering of chicken in the engaged show Pupilija, papa Pupilo pa Pupilčki; the slaughtering of a rooster in Vlasta Delimar’s socially critical performance; the slaughtering of a calf in Franc Purg’s tormenting performance; and the list continues – is it really possible to claim that these events are primarily intended to “entertain the audience”? Are these performative events not meant to stir the viewers’ critical thinking rather than provide entertainment? The point of these events is not to entertain but rather – to paraphrase the title of Handke’s famous dramatic text – to “offend the audience”. A viewer lulled by inane entertainment is probably not worth the life of any “serially fattened” chicken sacrificed on the theatre stage, but the audience that feels “slapped in the face” after seeing such a show and that leaves the theatre thinking that there is something wrong with the things that seem self-evident – such an audience is a matter of a broader social interest and this is why it is worth thinking through the limits of the right of the artist to probe social norms, which are crystallised in legal norms and the legal practice of a given society.

Group Terms, DSC, spring 2010

Mailing list

A mailing list was mostly used for arranging and coordination of deadlines and working obligations. This is not necessarily a problem, but in the context of a regional collaboration, where one group works in two cities, a mailing list can be a useful tool for discussions. This applies especially concerning the subject of this group’s work, largely comprising work with text. Discussions via mailing list lasted several days – only when the group started to ‘communicate’ during Bojana Cvejić’s workshop – and soon went on with a tendency of ‘coordination’ by means of the mailing list.

Working procedures

A procedure of work was not conceived in advance, nor was it the same for Skopje and Belgrade sub-group. At individual meetings, the working procedures were established ad-hoc, because in the whole course of the work both the approach and the subjects were constantly redefined. Proposed formats of collective self-education on the DSC web site (http://www.deschoolingclassroom.tkh-generator.net/) were used intuitively, and not systematically.

Workshop with Bojana Cvejić (December 2009)

Concerning the subject of our work (terms/concepts), as the co-editor of EDA (East Dance Academy) Lexicon, Bojana Cvejić was invited to lead the workshop. EDA is an artistic initiative, in this particular project engaged with launching and defining new terms/entries from theory and practice of performing arts, generally referring to the region of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. During the preparations for the workshop, already finished entries were distributed, including a list of five ‘free’ entries, proposed to Skopje and Belgrade group as potential contributions.

When we decided on the terms – “contextual approach” and “festivals”, during the workshop we elaborated the premises for future contributions. We had a month and a half to deliver the entries: Belgrade group finished the work on April 15, and Skopje group on May 15. (Publication of the EDA Lexicon being postponed, this will probably not affect the inclusion of our contributions in the book.)

Post-workshop or “the ecstasy of communication”

Bojana Cvejić’s workshop ended in a Belgrade-Skopje idyll: we distributed topics and tasks, discussed details, and it seemed that we would easily fulfill our obligations.

However, as soon as we split apart, something else happened: what we between ourselves called “the ecstasy of communication” (which may also be called an “e-mail clash” along the Belgrade-Skopje line). The workshop ended, promptly followed by a feverish exchange of e-mails, assuming a dramatic tone – it was at times tragic, and at other times a comic dialogue. In fact, it seems that in this period we all began to seriously think about the end product of our self-educational process. Skopje fraction of the group conceived the end product as a performance – a show. The correspondence went too far, and we were all forced to agree on a compromise. We decided to do both. However, the compromise ultimately turned into a compromise of a compromise: instead of a book we made – a publication; instead of a performance – a public print house. In other words: neither of the two. And, yet, we did both – but in a less ambitious form. It seems, finally, that the “ecstatic communication” phase of the process brought us together and calmed us down. In this phase all our personal wishes and doubts were laid on the table, and there were no reasons left for confrontation. The correspondence lost its intensity and our next encounter (during Rancière’s talk in Belgrade) went nicely and quietly… We all felt that from the two groups we finally became one.

Writing

As one of the tools of collective self-education, collective writing appeared as a cohesive process, assembling the Belgrade group in a more systematic manner. In both groups, the first draft of the text emerged relatively quickly, initially went through a series of individual interventions and then a series of collective ‘close readings’ which additionally improved the text, instigating (as well) some constructive debate and actual self-education. What is important to note is that the groups were heterogeneous and members’ experience in writing (especially pro-theoretical) texts like glossary entries, varied considerably. However, those differences contributed to the dynamics of work in the group and, more importantly, instigated learning by doing procedures. On the other hand, the language barrier discouraged exchange between the two groups during the process of work on the texts. As the Belgrade contribution was finished earlier, reading sessions of the text conceived in Skopje were organized during the timeshare sessions in Belgrade, in order to break the language barrier verbally, which turned out to be a useful approach.

Balance of the group – number

It appears that for a continuous work in a group, size of its membership matters. Belgrade group was larger in number, so individual absences from sessions had a lesser impact on its work. When the Skopje sub-group was reduced to three members, stronger discipline was required.

Terms from the text

During the process of writing, our work on the entry Contextual approach suggested some of the terms we were busy with on the grand nylon. It was decided to base our further activities as a group on those terms. Short entries were written for two terms: Soros-realism and artistic immunity. Because of the subject of the text – engaged, contextual art – we began to study and search examples from artistic practice. This was becoming all the more interesting because we ‘re-read’ and ‘apprehended’ the contemporary and historical examples through and through, after writing and reading the text as our theoretical platform, a specific point of observation. Our work on the text (and awareness of own ignorance) initiated the collective viewing of Miško Šuvaković’s Video Glossary – as an additional opportunity for self-education through discussion.

Video Glossary

Miško Šuvaković’s video glossary is a TV program produced in 2000-2002, describing terms from the artistic practice of the 20^th century. Similarly to EDA, this project gave us a possible example of work with terms/concepts which does not imply compiling a standard dictionary. All episodes (3-4 in one session) were screened and they instigated further discussions. Subsequently we decided to release a DVD of the glossary as one of the end products of the project, and a study tool which contributed specifically to our work on collective self-education.

Timeshare

Timeshare Campus in both cities turned out to be the most productive working format, realized according to the conception of the whole project – as time specifically dedicated to articulation of the final output. Two months before the timeshare period, in a video link session, both groups agreed on the format of the final work (online, DIY-publication), and the meetings were used for completing the text and other initiatives launched in the meantime, as well as negotiating production terms during the Open Week. Timeshare in Belgrade, beside the closed sessions, comprised three sessions with our guests. With Bojana Kunst and Ana Vujanović we discussed the position we assumed as a group in our work with the terms through the publication, and consultations with Milena Dragićević Šešić helped us finalize the entry “festivals”.

The victim of such concentrated productivity is this crude and ‘unenlightened’ fragment.

The Group and DSC

The group gave its best performance to DSC when it responded to the demands of the project – when the deadlines for selection of lecturers approached, or during the Timeshare Campus.

After the initial zeal at the first meetings, the group work and communication gradually expired, until the workshop lead by Bojana Cvejić. At the same time, the group inadequately used the open structure of the project and the material resources at its disposal until the very end – when its interests were finally clarified. This situation was reflected within the group from the very beginning, and as the working procedures were applied ad-hoc, the group dynamics was left to its natural flow, including the risk of total failure. This was partly a conscious development, because the group was accidentally composed mainly from people complying to a particular working ethics, as active protagonists of the independent scene, with a certain experience with (self-)organization and self-education. This fact added some difficulty to coordination (due to our numerous other commitments), but also guaranteed that the ‘inertia of work experience’ would bring results – a closure or conclusion of the ‘academic’ year (implying not only the final product in terms of an object). What clearly stands out as an indisputable quality in the experience with this type of work is a fact that self-education is most difficult precisely in conditions of procedural freedom – in this case, a process which does not necessarily end with a product, but is a ‘product’ in itself.

Language

Although English is the official language of the project, we insist that all our material is published in Macedonian and Serbian, in support of Jacotot’s methodology of learning a language. J

The process of ‘levelling’

does not imply ‘equation’, but work on several levels – everyone learns according to his engagement. Everyone gains in the process only what he takes from it.

Lost in process – graveyard of ideas

Graveyard of ideas was conceived as a list of initiatives – ‘dead ends’ in the process. However, all discarded ideas economically found their elaborations and a new place in the publication. However in the course of the work those ideas seemed abandoned and obsolete, each of them did reflect a specific approach to our work on the terms.

Satellite Terms

Collective irresponsibility, Laziness, Auto-motivation, Responsibility to the group, Responsibility to the project, Responsibility. Tardiness. Misunderstanding. Remaining on board. Taking time, Inclusion in the project, Who is who?, Hierarchy, Distribution of work, Work tasks, Moderation. Lost in translation/Language barrier. Initiative, The big picture, Conflict. Daily life, Personal interests/Group interests. Hegemony of the Serbian over the Macedonian language, Sharing knowledge, Jargon, Self-evidence. Self-indulgence. Prom night.

Time as obstacle – perception of time within the group

Group moto: “There is still time.” … The learning principle defined as: taking time, was perceived within the group as resisting the demand for efficiency and hyper-productivity of the neo-liberal, post-Fordist conception of work in culture. The time at the group’s disposal provided for learning of a different kind, based on practicing the modes of collectivity, instead of the modes of production.

What is a waste of time?

Collective responsibility occasionally becomes__________________________.

A product is not imperative              YES    NO   MAYBE

(Budget as bait! – indecent proposal – twilight zone!

Phenomenon of the sense of guilt if a budget remains unspent.)

When something is facilitated, where are the borders of your demands; which rights do you claim?

How to assess motivation which is not based on interests of a broader, programmatic type?

Self-exploatation is____________________________________________.

Luxury:

Possibility of questioning and changing one’s function/role in a collective;

Personal acquaintance through collective work which is not conditioned by a direct (profitable) result, nor occurs at a private gathering (party, birthday, barbecue, New Year, boat restaurant, premiere) – ? ‘From the cradle to the grave’ (school days are the best part of one’s life);

Getting a better picture of the cultural-political events in the region;

‘Reverse exam’ or opportunity to question the professor (Miško Šuvaković).

ARTIST STATEMENT, I Wei Li

Contexterin is a neologism first announced over a friendly beer talk in Berlin in the summer 2009 by several cultural workers (artists, curators, cultural managers) while discussing the various job titles they use when they have to describe their work. Since the job titles in the independent cultural field is under a constant development by re-defining the already existing ones and developing new ones, this term was seen as a proposal that can be used sometimes as an ‘umbrella-term’ to describe the wide range of actions that these workers do. This talk was followed by it’s first actual use of the word in the real-time event, when it was put into circulation by the artist I Wei Li, a visual artist currently based in Europe.

My definition/understanding of Contexterin:
Contexterin = context + er + in

I-Wei positions herself as a ‘contexterin’ – a female person who aims to generate new context each time in her art practice. The artistic experience for her is an overall experience that queries all aspects of life.
As a curator, she seeks to highlight the approaches, viewpoints, and visions of contemporary artists.
As a producer, she animates events where intellectuals and artists are invited to share their critical reflections on current social changes.
As an artist, she commits herself to experimental and documentary films, multi-media installations, and interactive performances.

Why I use Contexterin?
Since I have many different roles when it comes to creative practices, labeling myself as a curator, producer, or artist is rather limiting because these titles describes more about what I produce rather than why I create.

I first used Contexterin in public when I was invited to give presentation in various workshop during Festival d’Avignon in 2009. The audience was a group of international cultural operators – curators, policy makers, directors of festivals and cultural institutions. I introduced myself as ‘contexterin’ and wrote the composition (Contexterin = context + er + in) on the white board for everyone to see. The writing is as significant as talking about it because it allows people with different cultural background to associate the word visually. Many of them can relate to this word with their own work.

When I talked about it, I prefer to provoke people by this job title as a way to question:

Why we do what we do?

Why we create?

Why we produce?

Later, some participants quoted my introduction or put my photo with the title ‘contexterin’ on their websites.

I still use contexterin, for this year’s “Transmediale 10” festival and on my own website. For me, this word enables me to claim the value of my work.

Rok Vevar

Notes for lecture performance

DISKURS 04 – HOPE

»A Fistful of Empty Hands« at the DISKURS. Picturebook for children.

Brotherhood and Unity!

Making friends – students from Giessen, David Lakein, Andros Zinsbrowne, Mare Bulc from Ljubljana,

Facebook friends with some of them

IT ALL STARTED YEARS BEFORE DISKURS 04

• In Slovenia in the 90′s: festivalization of non-institutional performing arts’ praxis
• I was eager to be somehow a part of every festival: Ex-ponto, Exodos, City of Women, Mladi levi, Gibanica, Nagib etc.
• It was hard to wait for another one
• What did I do? Watching performances, discussing about them and most of all, having a groovy time
• IDEA: to see as many performances as possible and as different ones as possible, to sharpen up my watching skills
• A festival represented to me an ideal life
• Now, after Diskurs 2004 I slowly started to realize that I was attending a lot of festivals in one way or another
• In 2004 shortly before Diskurs I started to write for one weekly cultural magazine called Deloskop: I had written a lot of previews and I got my first grey hair from wiritng festivals previews – a huge amounts of programmes and every time I had to make a selection out of it to preview it on 1500 characters with spaces; an impossible job
• And there was no end to festivals

Let me give you a list, my festival season in Slovenia looks like this:

• Gibanica – A Moving Cake, slovenian dance platform (every second year in February)
• Rdeče zore, a feministic & anarchistic performing arts festival at Metelkova (February)
• A week of Slovenian Drama, Kranj – 20 minutes out of Ljubljana (in March)
• Break 21 (May)
• Exodos (May)
• Intervene, a festival of dance perspectives that I initiated in Dance thetare Ljubljana (next one in may 2010); I curate it, co-organize it etc.
• Nomad Dance Academy, final productions (June)
• The wide range of different summer festivals (Slovenian coastal festival, Kluže festival
• Mladi levi (August)
• Fronta, a dance festival in Murska Sobota (September)
• Ex-Ponto (September)
• Slovenian puppet theatre showcase (every second September)
• City of Women (October)
• BorÅ¡tnikovo srečanje, slovenian theatre showcase (October)
• Naked stage, festival of impro theatre (October, November)
• Read out loud, young playwright platform/meeting (November)

Then every season you have this special/deluxe/collector’s edition festivals like:

• Maska 001 – Celebrating the 100th edition of Maska magazine
• En-Knap – 10 years/ En-Knap: 15 years
• IETM festival
• Via Nova festival
• This year: Shocking Gala Show – about Pupilija Ferkeverk Group etc.
• East Dance Academy
• 25 years of Dance Theatre of Ljubljana
• Every 21st of April, on Hitler’s birthday, Dragan Živadinov has a traditional events

In between one can quickly go:

• to Zagreb to Evrokaz or to a Festival of word theatre or Perforacije or Platform
• to Belgrade: to BITEF, Belef,
• to Vienna: Impulstanz,
• to Udine:
• to Graz: Steiricher Herbst

FIT LAB OPPORTUNITY

Two years ago I applied to participate at a workshop for young critics, organized by FIT network, and they decided that I’m too old to participate at …, so they wanted me to teach young critics. I was scared to death.

So I was teaching at:

• Festival of theatre reminiscenes at Krakow
• Baltic Circle in Helsinki which happened at the time of IETM meeting in Ljubljana (for which I co-selected a programme)
• Teaching at these festivals opened up opportunity to teach young dance critic at the first »Sofia Dance Week« in Bulgaria
• After that I went to Divadelna Nitra, a slovak theatre festival to teach in FIT lab again
• After coming home I had to prepare for East Dance Academy meeting with a short festival programme and for Exodos lecture about Slovenian dance and theatre scene in the 2nd half of the 20th century

This year I attended:

• One residency programme in Portugal, for one project that was presented two weeks ago in Linz (European cultural capital)
• As a dramaturg I was co-mentoring two projects that were presented at Riga performing arts for which I can’t remember the name
• I’ve just come from Kuopio in Finland were I attended one ANTI-Festival – this years edition was on walking performances
• Immediately afterwards I went to Zagreb at NDA meeting where we would every evening go to festival Platforma, then Perforacije
• And now I am here at DISKURS 09

I’m curently in Artistic board for next Gibanica, Slovenian dance platform 2011.

WHAT ONE HAS TO KNOW IN ORDER TO ENTER FESTIVALS NETWORKS

Performing a professional – means:

• to answer mails on time (if you don’t have time, you turn on the automatic mail answer in which you write that you’re currenty unavailable and that you are going to return to you office – your office, no matter if you really have one or not),
• to make an impression that you’re terribly busy all the time,
• to make at least one skype session while preparing something for the festival,
• to walk around with a lap-top while you’re at the festival meeting point etc.

Selfpromotion – means:

• Networking: It’s good to know at least one person at the festival then this person will introduce you to another person. Hopefull important one.
• You should not give impression that you’re too communicative – you should not introduce to people by yourself, you have to wait that somebody else do that instead of yourself.
• The introduction has to be made in the way that it gives an impression of spontaneity.
• Don’t show that you’re terribly eager to be introduced to important people.
• Important people can be adreessed by yourself if they are on cigarette break or something – then you aks them for a fire.

Performing smartness:

• WHAT YOU HAVE TO KNOW: everybody’s afraid of making remarks after performances, because they are afraid of turning out stupid; so
• You wait that somebody else decide to do this mistake to speak up first, then you try to patronize the person, to produce contra-argument etc.

Competition about references:

• While analyzing pieces/events/etc. or discuss about performances and so on, it’s very good that you use references so that gets clear that you are well-informed, that you’re skillfull analyist.
• One has to know which references to use or not use.
• Structuralist and poststrucutralist – including ones that claim that they are not poststructuralist – are really good; philosphers/ theroeticians of deconstruction are exceptable only if you avoid american ones;
• Post-althusserian philosophers as Badiou, Ranciere and Balibar are very hot; as well as Agamben, de Certeau for example;
• Concerning slovene lacanian school it might be good not to fall on Žižek, you refer to Dolar or even better Alenka Zupančič, as she’s the less known of them all;
• Marx and German classical philosophy are also very nice to refer to; (for example: if somebody gets on your nerves, you try to produce a quote from Kant (Critique of Judgement) or some Hegel and they will usually immediately shut up; if you don’t know any quotation, you make it up);
• Concerning modern theatre history one should be very careful not to refer to for example Stanislavski because one can make a complete fool out of her/himself; but for example Brecht can be always very handy reference;

An importance of seeing live:

When you talk to people about performances it’s very important that you make clear that you saw some groups/artists etc. live. But you have to state that this particular artist is important to see live. When you make a claim that everything has to be seen/perceive etc. live or that theatre is a live practice, you can produce the feeling that you might have not read or badly understood Phillip Auslander.

Being to oppinionated – with a step ahead: being too opinionated might be a thin ice too.

Carrying promo materials along: when you have some promomaterials to give away, you have to produce a situation, that people ask you for them. You just mention them and you say that you have some materials about something by accident with you in a hotel room. Then people get immediately curious.

AT EVERY FESTIVAL ONE HAS TO KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH HANG OVER.

Parties are very important part of the festivals.

So That’s why I consider myself being on the verge of alcoholism.

ONE SHOULD NEVER STAY UNTIL THE LAST DAY: YOU SHOULD LEAVE FEW DAYS BEFORE THE END

One day before the end of the festival audiences, programmers and festival crew enter the first stage of the post-festival depression. So you should be very careful not to take part in it. It’s very disturbing: it makes you think of something.

LET’S GET SMART – WHAT’S A FESTIVAL

Of Other Spaces – Heterotopia (1967)

Now I’m being smart using a reference, but not too strategic and tactical, because it is a really too exploited. Anyway.

In his text about other spaces, Foucault systemizes heterotopias with 6 categories.

Fourth principle. Quoting Foucault and being very smart: »Heterotopias are most often linked to slices in time – which is to say that they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies. The heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time.«

Foucault talks first about heterotopias which acccumulate almost endless amounts of time in form of archives, libraries, museums etc.

“Opposite these heterotopias that are linked to the accumulation of time, there are those linked, on the contrary, to time in its most flowing, transitory, precarious aspect, to time in the mode of the festival. These heterotopias are not oriented toward the eternal, they are rather absolutely temporal [chroniques]. Such, for example, are the fairgrounds, these’ marvelous empty sites on the outskirts of cities that teem once or twice a year with stands, displays, heteroclite objects, wrestlers, snakewomen, fortune-tellers, and so forth. Quite recently, a new kind of temporal heterotopia has been invented: vacation villages, such as those Polynesian villages that offer a compact three weeks of primitive and eternal nudity to the inhabitants of the cities”.

HOW MY LIFE TURNED INTO A FESTIVAL

I ask myself what is temporary in the case when one’s life turns into a festival. A feeling of temporarity itself? What is the original life when one constantly live in other spaces? In heterochronies?

I HAVE FESTIVAL AT HOME

I have a festival at home, waiting for me in my room and it almost never happens. It consist of books, films on DVDs, of music on CDs, of food waiting for me in the fridge etc.

To end this lecure seriously and with a drop of sentiment, I will read you one badly translated poem and a sumarized one; bacause I didn’t have time to find it in the library. They are from a Slovenian poet called Alojz Ihan. He’s a poet and professor of immunology at Ljubljana’s Medical Faculty.

They are about being stucked or cricling endlessly.

A TUNNEL

Imagine a tunnel that is passedy by many people every day,

An entirely short tunnel,

An ordinary pass under a road or railways

Which was passed by you thousands of times totally by the way.

But some day you enter it and when you supposed to exit after a few steps,

You are still in it, in the entirely short tunnel.

It is passed by dozens and dozens of people every day,

You see them how easily they find their way out,

There’s only you who walk and walk and run and run, crying for help, screaming … but you can’t find its end.

Although the tunnel might be only a step long, a half of step, centimetre, a quarter of a word, it takes weeks, months, years or even decades for you to come out.

And if it happens that you manage to come out at last,

You come to know that you were crazy.

A FOX

A wolf is chasing a fox.

A fox is trying to escape from him.

From time to time she is looking back to see how good she is in leaving the wolf behind.

There comes a moment when the fox could rest for an hour,

But she’s running on.

There comes a moment when the fox could rest for a day, but she’s running on, trying to escape from him.

Looking behind at a certain point she realizes that there’s no wolf on a horizon and that gives her an extra push and another portion of self-confidence. In that moment she realizes that she is really good in escaping from.

There comes a time when the fox could rest for a week.

But she’s running on because she’s trying to escape from wolf for good.

And then comes a time when the fox could rest for the rest of her life.

But she forgets what it is that she is running from.

Some say that this is the moment, when the wolf gets this strange almost spooky feeling that he’s being followed.

Forming the group Terms

One of the groups that were “created” during the Ohrid Summer School was the group named Terms. The idea was to work out and develop – but also connect – the certain terms and phrases that are being used in contemporary art and society into a web system in order to thoroughly contemplate their meaning and their uses today. The idea was not to create yet another lexicon which will explain the phrases, but to find a creative way in approaching their re-formulation. In other words, as we later on figured out, the goal was to “de-jargonize” the terminology or rather, to affirm certain terms that we use in our day-to-day practices.

We were interested in the origin of certain terms – how they were formed, how they evolved, i.e. how they become part of the everyday contemporary art and society language; how all these terms penetrated the jargon of modernity and what the terms mean today. From the very beginning the group was oriented towards a “product” and had an idea about the goal it was trying to accomplish by the end of the year long working process. The initial idea was to publish a book, but as the time was passing it developed into something more…

The idea to work with phrases and terms was introduced by Bojan Djordjev, who gave us an ‘infinite’ list of “hot words” (approximately 700). The list included terms that are part of the language of contemporary art and society.

After Ohrid and Bojan’s suggestion, the groups met on Skype. Due to the posed practical limitations of Skype, the groups did not understand each other well enough when it came to figuring out the best approach in defining the way we’ll work with the terms. At that moment we felt we were going to fail. We had a general idea that seemed attractive to all of us, but we did not know how to develop it further. In our communication through e-mail we decided that each of us will select certain terms from the ‘infinite’ list and then separate them by using the following individual criteria as a guide: familiar terms; terms repeating – and I don’t know what they mean; suspicious terms; commonplace stuff; terms I use most frequently; terms without an adequate translation; neologisms; ‘personal terms’.

We all (at least the members of the group from Skopje) understood this post differently. We had a list of terms we wanted to work with, which was still fairly big and not cleaned up enough. The way we were going to classify the terms remained an enigma to all of us.

The group from Skopje was very diverse. At this particular moment it was composed of members with different professional experiences and interests, therefore we decided to begin by working on reaching a consensus regarding the individual interest in certain terms, before we were to work on defining the best approach to the working process. Agreeing was hard, therefore the next step involved an attempt to classify the terms according to personal usage and to find a way to translate them in different mediums, in other words, to find the different formats by which they will be presented. For example, to use the terms in a text, but also, to translate the text in other mediums so they can communicate with interested groups in other spheres of interest.

Therefore, at the beginning of this process, we were searching for the methods we were going to use and approach our work with the terms. We were also deciding on the processes we were going to use in their development. Therefore, a large portion of our work was spent thinking through the process.

In order to check and ascertain our way of thinking and approach, we decided to call for the help of Suzana Milevska. We spent the session we had with her discussing the rhizome, and the use of the concept as a methodology. This meeting motivated the group to continue to work, even though we were still undecided on the methodology and our approach.

Finally, an idea started to fall into place: to learn more about certain terms by using our personal perspective in approaching it. We decided to have each of us select one term and to work with it using the following criteria:

• Initial acquaintance with the term
• Visual idea about the term
• First use of the term in colloquial language
• References
• General (flexible) usage of the term

Together with Suzana we developed two terms (the fold and networking). Unfortunately, though the idea was very interesting, it was not developed any further. However, the approach helped us to look at the terms – and look at our relationship with them and towards them – from a different perspective.

However, our work came to a halt again until the workshop by Kalle Hamm.  We used Hamm’s workshop to continue the work and define our approach in working with the terms, but we still could not come up with a defined and clear method. In the workshop with Hamm we decided to write down the previously chosen terms (those that each of us selected from the ‘infinite’ list) and post them on the “big glass”. The “big glass” referred to the classification of the terms in groups according to several categories:

• The terms I see
• The terms I hear
• The terms I feel
• Groups of terms I completely do not understand
• Ãœber terms – terms that do not fall in any category since they are used widely

We worked together and divided the terms into categories. By working together, we opened the door to a discussion regarding the different individual insights about the terms, i.e. the different sensible experiences which are a result of our individual approaches. (An example would be the term Soundart – even though it is widely accepted that this terms refers to an audio form, still, some of us classify it into the visual rather than the audio category).

Afterwards, we split into smaller groups and each of us tried to find a logical connection between the different terms, or find a new meaning of the terms. This work resulted in interesting connection of two or three different terms into one combination of terms, which prompted us to discuss the idea that we could further develop them and translate them into different mediums (e.g. text + picture, text + sound, and so forth). We also felt that we could organize them into programmatic units. The idea was to create categories in order to define how the terms could be researched in the different formats; how a certain term is being used, or how it could be used in the different mediums: text, verbal, visual, audio…

(Throughout our work and our meetings – which were not as intensive, but were quite productive – we came up with several ideas about how to further develop the project. Since we could not apply all of the ideas, we decided to place them into a segment which we called “a graveyard of ideas.”)

At the Hamm workshop we were joined by the group Identities. They worked at the same time we did and perceived themselves as an ‘addition’ to the group Terms. They decided to develop their own approach to the predicament which was completely detached from ours. They combined two separate terms to create one new one. For the purpose they made up a fake history and fake references about the development of the terms.

Later on they attempted to include these newly developed words in Wikipedia. Unfortunately, their fame in the virtual world was short-lived since their approach did not fit the terms and conditions of the online encyclopedia. Therefore, the terms were removed from Wikipedia shortly thereafter.

The Identity group’s approach to work gave us a new idea. We thought it might be useful to look at the terms from the new perspective that they suggested. We also thought we might take into consideration their approach in developing new terms.

After the engagement with Hamm’s workshop our group became inert once again, and remained so until the workshop with Bojana Cvejić. At her workshop, the entire group (including the members from Belgrade and Skopje) finally worked together. Working together helped us to get to know each other a lot better. This workshop was an important boost of motivation for both of the ‘factions’ which made up the group Terms.

Bojana motivated us to work on several terms that are included in the EDA’s (East Dance Academy’s) lexicon.  Initially we focused on the phrase contextual approach in the arts which is specific to the artistic practices in our region. Later on we began working on the term festival(s). What was significant about this workshop is that the two groups (from Skopje and Belgrade) began working together to locate the origin, the essence and the context in which these terms are used. This helped us clarify the direction we needed to take in our work. Once we started using our mutual associative ideas and thoughts regarding the terms, and took onto a clearer and systematic approach in working with them, their meaning began to uncover. More so, the terms began to connect with the practicalities that pertain to them.

At the workshop we split the assignment between each other.  Each group had a responsibility to develop their terms and to write a text. Our group from Skopje continued to work on the terms festival(s). Since our visit to Belgrade was short, we did not get a chance to talk thoroughly with Bojana, thus we had a lot of remaining work to do in developing our term. But, we followed the approach Bojana suggested and decided to invite an outside member to join our group. This is how Iskra Geshoska joined us and offered her suggestions, ideas and guidance. We needed to fill in the gap which was created when two members of our group quit due to personal reasons. Iskra’s presence compensated for their absence and contributed positively to the ‘atmosphere’ in our group.

It was important that we all continue to work as a group. The motivation and enthusiasm were still solid and our group did not dissolve. We managed to find the motivation to continue to work both as individuals and as a group. At this point our group, which had three members – plus the outside member – continued to work with the term festivals and to analyze the context in which it evolved in our region, as well as its meaning and usage… We talked, we commented, we wrote…

The work intensified when we met with the Belgrade group at Timeshare. It was during Timeshare that the ‘big group’ came about. Our friendship became even stronger, and we worked on new terms and on coming up with fresh thoughts and ideas.  We also talked about continuing to work together as part of the ‘big group: Terms.’

A final word from the Skopje “faction”…

We accepted to take part in this project, based on self-organization and self-education, even though some of us were already acquainted with it in somewhat different contexts and others were not familiar with it but found it interesting. Initially, we found working according to the suggested methods hard to accept, because many of us are used to a hierarchical model of functioning. Despite that, in the year long period we managed to produce both direct and indirect ways through which we recognized the benefits of these self-educational processes. We were changed and transformed daily by having to find our own way, our own approach and motivation to continue to work after each ‘failure’. We started to see the time and the ‘assignments’, as well as the goals we had, in a different light. We had enough space and time to think and rethink again and again. We had the space and time to search and find ways to resolve the dilemmas, and to also lose ourselves in them. We were faced with a process that is completely open to us. Our responsibility lay in deciding what to do with that open space, how to develop the process, what to add, and what to take away.

The biggest accomplishment from working in a group came on the Timeshare campus in Skopje and Belgrade, where the group gained in significance, in other words when we finally became a whole. The chance to replace the virtual space with the real time/space allowed us to get to know each other through work. It also allowed us to learn how each of us thinks and contemplates about things. During this intensive period the two groups became cohesive which brought a joint result: an open publication: Publication in Process, an open printing house, and commonly shared challenges for future work and cooperation…

Milena Bogavac

Work of the Belgrade fraction of the group Terms (informally known as the ‘crossword puzzle group’) began when Bojan Djordjev, after the summer school in Ohrid, e-mailed us a list containing more that seven hundred different terms, associated with contemporary art and contemporary society in general. Bojan, with his collaborators, had already compiled this list at some other workshop… The list was altogether unsystematic, but for all of us in the group it provided an initial inspiration.  Confronted with hundreds of randomly listed terms, we opened ourselves to reflection on the concepts they termed…

We set the first meeting, with a plan to show up with individual lists of dozen terms each of us would be interested in. We did not perceive our task in the same way: some members of the group made a selection of terms from Bojan’s list, while the others compiled their own, new lists of words and corresponding terms. At this meeting we agreed to compile more systematic lists for the next one. We still did not try to classify the terms according to thematic sections, but according to their usage.

This is how the initial ‘terminology categories’ were conceived:

1) Familiar Terms; 2) Terms repeating – and I don’t know what they mean; 3) Suspicious Terms; 4) Commonplace stuff; 5) Terms I use most frequently; 6) Terms without an adequate translation; 7) Neologisms; “Personal Terms”.

Our next encounter was an opportunity to discuss the terms included in our lists. This meeting was useful, because we tried together to clarify the terms unfamiliar or suspicious to some of the group’s members… Likewise, we expanded our lists, discussing some new terms relating to the previously listed words…We managed to find out adequate translations for several terms, or at least agree on the reasons of impossibility of finding respective translations… During one of the first meetings we got an idea to mount a large piece of nylon on the wall, and draw a ‘map’ of all the terms we wanted to explore… Thus, the third meeting ended with distribution of identical pieces of paper and an agreement to write each term on one of them. The next meeting was marked by the ‘official’ mounting of the nylon on the wall.

The group’s members sticked upon it pieces of paper containing the terms, regardless of their sequence and systematization. The nylon sheet with various words sticked upon it became a display panel for a collective game of self-education, of classifying terms into different thematic blocks. Those were not determined in advance.

We tried to discover them, disclosing the relations among the terms on the nylon sheet. Systematization occurred gradually. To begin with, we decided to stick the pieces of paper with same terms on top of each other. Thus we could see which terms occurred most frequently. Around the most frequent terms, we began to stick the corresponding ones…The first section that stood out referred to the professional jargon of practical work in theatre, and concerning the fact that this jargon was learnt with Belgrade’s Faculty of Dramatic Arts (FDU), this group was termed FDU… This side of the nylon gradually began to accumulate terms with common references to traditional and traditionalist forms pertaining to performing arts. Genres, movements, historical periods, and titles of various acting exercises all ended up there. This group occupied the extreme right side of the nylon. In the middle, we began to arrange the terms directly derived from the language of new technologies. Computer commands, labels, derived terms and ‘serbisms’ came to the fore, forming an independent thematic section: NEW TECHNOLOGIES… Not far from the NEW TECHNOLOGIES terms related to pop culture began to regroup on the nylon, featuring as a sub-category assorted jargon expressions for particular phenomena in the contemporary society… This category included names of pop stars, as well as familiar advertising slogans (“Maybe she’s born with it”)…This group was labeled as POP…

Having defined the initial thematic frameworks, we ‘cleaned’ the mess on the nylon: now the terms that remained outside those thematic sections became more visible. We noticed that many of the terms related to the human body and corporeality, being of medical provenience. Thus death, therapy, cyborg, idiot, madness and orgasm entered the same group with the notions of post-human, bare life, objectification, or monster… This group was termed BODY AND MEDICINE… Philosophical terms, or terms conceived in various strands of theory were grouped in the category RELATION TO REALITY: WRITING AND READING. This, fairly serious category, became the ‘common denominator’ of Foucault’s and Baudrillard’s terminology, additionally comprising the words like: process, procedure, method, contemporary, or relation.

In the vicinity of this category, another one crystallized, comprising terms related to the question of authorship. Auto-poetics, auto-fiction, original, and authentic were some of the key concepts in this thematic section.

We grouped the techniques and procedures applied by the artists into a separate category. The rest of the terms were classified in two groups, POLITICS and MARKET, and we promptly noted that many of those terms may fall into both of them. As a quite distinct thematic section, often used PREFIXES listed by Katarina Popović emerged, as well as FATIGUES from occurrences, phenomena, and norms of the contemporary world, defined by Siniša Ilić.

Staring into the nylon sheet with the attached papers we realized that it infinitely resembled the map of the world! Of course, we immediately wanted to see it in the 3D version, as the globe of terms and concepts related to contemporary art.

If our map of terms is compared to a world map, there are some striking and almost incredible coincidences. Prefixes and Fatigues occupy the place of the archipelago of the Land of the Rising Sun. FDU jargon commands a territory corresponding to Asia on the world map.

Europe is filled with Politics, i.e. the terms falling into this category. The place of Africa, on our map, is (ironically?) occupied by the Market. South America is inhabited by Pop terms and New technologies. Central America is a home to Techniques and Procedures, and North America cultivates Authorship and Relation to Reality. Canada is claimed by the (chilly) terms relating to Body and Medicine.

In the next phase, we typed the terms from the wall into a Word file.

Each member of the group got one category to deal with and present it to the other members. We did not try very hard to define what exactly ‘dealing with’ meant, and we left some space to each others for a creative approach.

Presentations we were about to prepare, would mainly demand completion of the lists of terms and their systematization within a thematic section.

After we had classified the terms into different categories, we came up with the idea to invite to the group meetings an artist or expert in the respective fields. These collaborators would not be treated as lecturers, but as added members and consultants in different fields. … The workshop we would subsequently have, would probably address a search for terms ‘spanning’ the space between the categories.

****

This paper, initially conceived as a Chronology of our previous work was written in October 2009, when our self-education group first came up with an idea to produce a “diary of self-organization”. This was a month and a half after the launching of our group, and this paper did not come about just because we could see at this early stage how many interesting phases in our work were to follow, or because we thought that some kind of a record of the process we went through (or, more precisely: we created) could be presented in the final publication.

This paper was written for much more practical reasons. Our purpose was to communicate with the Skopje fraction of our group, because it appeared that, since the last meeting at the summer school, our working concepts were diverging completely. Because of the frequent cancellations due to technical reasons, our meetings via video link were never efficient enough, and our e-mail exchange only confirmed our feeling that we understood our work with the terms in completely different manners.

Namely, while we in Belgrade cut and pasted little pieces of paper on a nylon sheet, reckoning how to connect and define them, the Skopje fraction was, as it seemed, concerned with personal responses to specific terms. Moreover, the Skopje people opened a Wiki page where, in only few days, they attached video presentations of their terms.

We were encouraged to begin publishing our content on this page which, for some reason, to us in Belgrade seemed quite impossible. However, with a strong wish to cooperate, we decided to attach to the Skopje Wiki page a report on our previous efforts. Thus, we hoped, we would demonstrate both our cooperativeness and our alignment with the working principle we found more appropriate. From this point of view, the fact that our chronology of work was the last piece of information we ever delivered online (from Belgrade, but from Skopje as well), is quite interesting.

The Wiki project was thus “successfully” completed and soon utterly forgotten.

However, the same thing happened with our idea that each member of the group should ‘deal with’ one category, and subsequently, in the ‘sharing knowledge’ spirit, present it to the rest of the team. Although we, initially, agreed on the question of this ‘homework’, we equally unanimously kept on ignoring this agreement. There was no one among us to get this initiative going, so we – in a tacit consensus – decided to drop it. Our subsequent meetings were regular, but 100% inefficient. At the time, we were all busy doing other things: both in Serbia and abroad. Our meetings were held in a creative, friendly and not at all productive atmosphere. In other words, it seemed that we met in Magacin in order to report to each other what new was going on in our artistic lives: how far one went with the new show; who went to a new festival; who saw or read something nice. The two hours would elapse quickly and we would conclude our meetings with occasional ideas on how to proceed with our pursuits in collective self-education… Those are probably forgotten by all of us. Although it may seem that in this phase of our joint work we merely wasted our time, it is highly possible that this period was decisive and determined all our subsequent actions. At this point I would like to refer to Bojana Kunst’s lecture at the Open Day, delivered many months later. In this lecture she put forward the claim that learning demands time, but also generates friendship. If the purpose of the project Deschooling Classroom is investment into the independent scene, then it might rightly be claimed that in this phase our stakes were highest.

We gave ourselves some time and enjoyed our friendship, which significantly contributed to the rapid flow and quality of information shared among us. One should not overlook the fact that in this brief period each of us completed several other projects; each group’s member was acquainted with all the phases the students of our ‘deschooling class’ went through. In other words, we did become a class.

And when, in the early winter, the situation cleared a bit, we were ready for new pursuits in self-education. Bojana Cvejić came to town, and her workshop was a big turning point in our work. Although in the beginning we couldn’t agree on what to expect from her and how we should conceive her workshop, in a conversation with Ana Vujanović, Bojana came up with the idea to engage our group as contributors to the glossary published by the East Dance Academy. On the first day of the workshop she presented to us the concept of this book, including the working principles of EDA. In the next two days, under Bojana’s guidance, we collectively brainstormed on the notion of contextual approach and roles of art festivals in the context of artistic scenes in the countries of the former Eastern block.

Bojana Cvejić took off and left us with deadlines that we, certainly, missed…

However, what happened during and after her workshop was decisive for the direction our work would assume. First of all, at this workshop we finally met the Skopje fraction of the group (again). Also, we were finally confronted with concrete tasks. We were supposed to jointly write two texts within a certain amount of time. Or, as Bojana Cvejić put it, it was about time to finally shift from theoretical to practical work. More precisely: a phase of production of something resembling our final output. In this case, faced with an utterly concrete task, we demonstrated that writing can be a collective action. All the members of our group equally invested themselves in conception of these texts. So, it may be claimed that, while working on them, we developed our own technique of collective writing which shows in many aspects that collective self-education is a possible, practical and plausible concept. Assembled around the same task or the same problem, in the course of writing of the text on contextual approach to art, members of the Belgrade fraction appeared as a company of individuals who were, vanity-relieved, willing to share their knowledge, insights and ideas with everyone else. Even if the text we produced is not perfect, it is quite important to stress that we wrote it for several months, in more than ten versions, and that we had long discussions on each subsequent change, demonstrating to the others how the same definitions or phrases might be read in more than one way, depending on the reader’s educational, political/personal or ideological background.

As our professor Miško Šuvaković happens to be the author of a Video Glossary in the field of art theory, Katarina Popović suggested that we should watch this program together, and then discuss it. At that point someone remembered the forgotten idea to include in our work experts and consultants from various fields. As the first guest in this capacity, professor Miško Šuvaković was invited, contributing with new content and new dynamics. He kindly accepted our invitation, and the first session with him was planned as follows: episodes of the program are screened in Belgrade and Skopje, and then we connect via video link and debate together. As many times before, video link did not work. However, the conversation we had in Belgrade with Miško Šuvaković was recorded and sent to Macedonia in the mp3 audio format. This session was inspiring, so we decided to promptly arrange the next one. For that one, we prepared some questions for professor Šuvaković. They concerned the basic concepts and terms, used on daily basis in the jargon of contemporary art. Conversation wherein Miško Šuvaković clarified the meanings and references of the terms: method, format, practice, strategy, procedure, technique, platform, protocol and many others, was decisive for the continuation of our group’s work. We kept on getting together once a week in order to see all the episodes of the Video Glossary. As professor Šuvaković had other commitments, we discussed what we saw between ourselves. Sometimes, instead of the Video Glossary, we watched other programs on art, but we kept our habit of discussing them afterwards. During those sessions we shared knowledge, information, talents and skills. A similar thing happened during the timeshare period, when in Belgrade and Skopje we all worked together on this publication: on its concept, contents, visual identity and layout. This publication is not a textbook. It may rather be compared to an exercise book, working sheet or compendium of problems we were not able to solve. Our ‘Publication in Process’ does not provide answers, but it does provide some space for raising new questions, which – after 10 months of group work – might remain forgotten.

Working group Terms within the project Deschooling Classroom: (o^o): (in alphabetical order): Milena Bogavac, Dragana Bulut, Bojan Ðorđev, Anđela Ćirović, Siniša Ilić, Milan Marković, Katarina Popović, Ljiljana Tasić

In this text we address the phenomenon of contextual art in the countries of Eastern Europe today and its possible predecessors in the socially engaged art of the socialist realism. By pursuing the contextual approach to art in Eastern Europe, we confront it with the colonial concept of contextual art, as conceived by Paul Ardenne in the West. From György Lukács’ notion of “reflection”, via the transitional and post-transitional socially engaged art of the 1990s, our focus is the present situation and assessment of the artistic action as intervention in the social context. Though our topic is the contextual art in Eastern Europe, the emphasis is on the perspective of Serbia and the region of former Yugoslavia, with corresponding examples from artistic practice cited in the footnotes.Artistic tradition of the modern European (Western) societies, from the 18^th century onwards, was based on an intuitivist approach, derived from romanticist and expressionist theories of the genius, accounting for art as self-expression of a gifted individual’s exceptionality. Foundations of such conception of art were addressed by Giorgio Agamben, who wrote that since the 18^th, and especially throughout the 19^th century, the philosophical notion of praxis transformed.[1] Praxis came to be conceived as ‘expression of the will’ of an individual, and art itself was increasingly being defined as practice, and less as poiesis. Such approach is characteristic for the modern, developed and democratic societies. They are determined by the ideology of individualism and attitudes towards the relative autonomy of art, whose social function may include a total absence of a social function. Auto-expression or reflection of the will of the gifted individual becomes per se a sufficient reason for his actions, namely: it may be the sole purpose of his creative output.

In the later half of the 20^th century, after the World War Two, Europe was divided into the (capitalist) West and (communist/socialist) East, which contributed to further divergences in the theoretical development of such approach to (and understanding of) art. The capitalist countries pursued this ideological-theoretical pattern. Capitalism manipulates art while conceiving its discursive realms, setting the price for an artwork. The author’s genius is observed as a market value. It is, therefore, sufficient to be recognized as a gifted individual; as a genius whose talent translates into specific units that may be expressed in numeric, that is, monetary terms – as an equivalent of all other values.

It would be erroneous to approach the artistic tradition of Western Europe as a binary opposite to the values of art of the European East. Their “base” is common; the “superstructure” differs, due to differing social orders and social-political contexts wherein, in the later half of the 20^th century, authors from the socialist and communist countries conceived their work.

Western ideology of individualism confronts collectivism as the key notion associated with the societies shaped by socialist ideology. In socialism, a gifted individual operates within a context prone to interpretations of his work through the discourse of “social totality”, while the ideal of “socially beneficial” art becomes a specific criterion for assessing the importance of an artwork. An instance of this is György Lukács’ “theory of reflection”, repeatedly emphasizing the category of typicality[2]. According to Lukács, typicality is a sum total of the dominant phenomena and relations in the particular time, representing as such an important feature of art meant to reflect an objective reality. Lukács confronts such art to that which renders images of individual experience of reality in individual’s consciousness. In broader terms, in socialist countries, the mission of art was to reflect the society through projections of its future (and past).[3] In such contexts, an artist was being recognized as gifted if his work had a powerful social resonance; if it emancipated or educated the masses; if it communicated a relevant and straightforward message (instruction) of an ideological nature.

Against this social and conceptual background, the artists from the Eastern European countries developed a strong sense for structural thought, as opposed to intuitive and individualistic one – and thus, at the same time, a sense for social engagement of art. Structural thought implied a re-examining of the position of art and artists in the society, bringing about socially engaged art in the times of soc-realist affirmation of the new social order and, in excess, a problematic and critical art emerging (e.g.) with the new artistic practices in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) in the 1970s. Soc-realism was not the only form of artistic practice in the Cold War Eastern Europe. For example, another major paradigm was the moderate modernism in SFRY, largely converging with the Western art. However, this is not our present concern.

With the cessation of the Cold War and relieving of the divide of Europe resulting in the fall of the Berlin Wall, since the 1990s there had been some radical turns in the countries of the former Eastern block. In a transition from the socialist and communist into capitalist social orders, the dominant ideologies in those countries have changed. However, a critical-contextual approach and reflection remains an important feature of contemporary art in the countries of the former Eastern block. Engaged art of the 1990s in Eastern Europe was marked by the campaigns for civic freedoms, human rights and positive values of democracy, and in the case of Serbia, additionally and critically charged against the nationalist regime.[4] However, in the present decade, instead of projections of a democratic future, we are facing the cruel actuality of the transition – demise of the communist ideology of collectivism, privatization of public assets, ‘primary’ accumulation of capital, mass unemployment etc. – and the critical blade of the artistic practices turns to those and similar issues.

What is characteristic for the contextual approach is that artist’s motivation does not progress from within towards the outside. It commences outside, grows in the subject’s consciousness, from where it again goes out, into the street, into the society, into the reality it came from. The artist’s intention is not to express and reveal his individual, inner state to the society – even one directly caused by the surrounding reality; his aim is to affect the society pinpointing a common social issue.[5]

This could be a problem concerning the artist personally, but not a problem concerning him solely. In other words, the artist is not perceived as an individual whose inner, “intimate landscapes” are worth exposing as such, but as an individual advocating a certain social stance, speaking on its behalf, or claiming its voice. Similarly to Lukács’ theory of reflection, the object of contextual art is currently not the personal, but the typical. Individual reflection may function only as an addend in a computing operation whose sum total is an expression of the common. The common-social, namely: collective. The artist is the intervening social subject and the purpose of his creation is not to express himself (his inner depths) but to “change the world”, to affect the value, ideological and other dominant systems he recognizes in his creative environment, namely: in the context he intervenes into.

The artist is not a lonesome figure, but an aware and conscious individual who discovers a background for his actions in the social reality. In this context, the artist is not a genius. He is rather an ‘engineer’ and his task is to suggest correct guidelines for construction of a collective future. Art has no autonomy. Artists have no autonomy. Art is a social practice, and artists – social subjects.

Such conception of contextual art is essentially different from the one advocated by Paul Ardenne.[6] Writing on contextual art from a position of a Western-European theorist, Ardenne defines the notion of reality as an “assortment of events the artist may borrow from” and, subsequently, as a “playground for exploration claimed by the contextual artist”. In the countries of the former Eastern block, reality is not a playground claimed by the artist, but the only available ground for setting the rules of his game, the only ground of his very existence. If under the socialist regime the rules of the game were known in advance and determined by the dominant ideology, today they are confusing, new and unclear: the role of the artist is to clarify them or try to redefine and adapt them to the needs of the society forced to play on that ground.[7]

Ardenne terms contextual art the art of the found world, whereas the countries of the former Eastern block still search for their own “world”: the world that had been lost; the world whose reflection was meant to be the future projected by the art of soc-realism – namely, the world whose future never came true.

Therefore, in those countries, contextual art should be observed notably as an “intra-social practice”. The contextual artist acts in the society on its behalf, transgressing the border between himself and his audience. What determines his position as an artist is awareness of the social context, namely: his social consciousness. However, it is important to make a distinction between the notion of social consciousness in the art of soc-realism, and the same notion in the discourse of contemporary contextual art in the countries of the former Eastern block. Soc-realist art was commissioned by the state and may, accordingly, be observed in terms of “ideological state apparatuses”, as defined by Louis Althusser.[8] Contrary to this ‘programmatic’ contextual collectivism, contemporary art complies to the so-called bottom-up or grass-root principles, in response to the systems of the state pursuing the neo-liberal capitalist order and re-affirmation of individualism resulting in imposed principles of competition at all social instances. In the past, social consciousness of the artist was perceived as a value advocated by the dominant ideology and ruling social order, with a view to their affirmation. Today, this notion is associated with a critical approach, characteristic for the so-called independent, alternative scenes, whose role is, to the contrary, to question the social order.[9]

Consequently, the critical-contextual approach may be observed as an important characteristic of the contemporary artistic thought in the Eastern European countries, where the notion of social consciousness, in a way, historically evolved. In the years of transition it had transformed, nevertheless retaining its basic postulates of approach to art and its position in the society. Indeed, those postulates changed a direction: the ethical dimension, sense of collectivism and notion of art as an instrument of social progress remain, with a difference that they no longer represent the dominant regime, but criticize it. Political and social changes affecting the Eastern European societies brought about changes of the dominant value systems. Thus, the prevailing ideological and aesthetic patterns of Leftist provenience changed sides in the times of rising capitalism, becoming alternative.

Therefore, on one level, we may address contemporary contextual art of Eastern Europe in terms of search for new forms of collectivism or new aspects of pursuing social justice. For a contextual artist, the society is not merely a space for artistic intervention. At the same time, it is a cause for the inner state demanding an intervention. Context is, consequently, a cause for action and playground of action. “Personal is political” and vice versa.

In such an order the artwork assumes a (social, political) mission, claiming an active contextual impact. Such approach demands a strong sense of the context and structural reflection. It commences with perceiving the problems or deficiencies within the existing context, raising questions in turn on what to do and how to react in order to transform it.[10]

To set straight the deficiencies of a context, it is necessary to challenge its basic postulates and (tacit) consensuses. In that sense, a critical-contextual approach always implies a particular “dissensus”, allowing for a sharp critique of the context. Critique is, nevertheless, the start but not the end point of conceiving a contextual-intervening artistic act, as the very need for intervention indicates a desire, necessity, demand of a new context, or even a clear vision of a different one. This vision needs not necessarily be a vision of the better, but it always starts from the need for change. It is, therefore, a vision of the different. The artist as an intervening social subject is not obliged to know exactly what kind of a change he wants, as many artworks based on such principles demonstrate to us. His desire to change the context might not be an illustration of a program, manifesto or a political proclamation of a new society, for in the complex contemporary social realm (no longer informed as a whole, as would be previously effected by the master narrative of the communist ideology) there is a consciousness on the part of the artist that he cannot precisely anticipate the consequences of his intervention. The critical-contextual approach to art may accordingly remain in the frameworks of clear dissent, of statements on what one doesn’t want; of attempts to suspend laws, even temporarily, in order to test new ones.

Sharp critique of the dominant regime is a starting point for contextual art. It builds upon it, as long as this attitude does not become an end in itself. At this point we reach the main problem associated with this artistic approach.

It may easily become – and often does – a cynical, pessimist and unproductive phenomenon of “parasitism on the negative”[11], rendering the intervening subject passive. He identifies with detachment from the context, perverse pleasures of constant negations, and exclusivity of his position of an apatride.

The opposite of this position is the one assumed by artivism. The artivist approach is active and affirmative. It starts from dissent and critique of the existing, and focuses on the change bound to happen, conceiving the artistic act as a tool for attaining a goal. The goal is the change, here and now.[12]

We may conclude that a pronounced critique of the context, followed by a detailed analysis of its mechanisms, relations of power and their effects, underlies each critical-contextual artistic action. It begins with diagnosing a particular social problem: however – in medical terms – we might add that a correct diagnosis does not necessarily imply the right therapy and the ultimate cure. Diagnosing is important, but not sufficient. Namely: a clear articulation of a problem is merely the starting point in the process of its solving. The problem and its correct definition operate as topics, but not as concepts for an interventionist artistic act. The problem is the trigger, but not the target.

Therefore, in art conceived with a critical-contextual approach, one should distinguish the works disclosing the problem in its context[13] from those displaying intention to actively affect the context. This difference equals a difference between representation (implying that the purpose of a particular artistic act is to render a certain problem visible), and investment (fr. l’enjeu) in the sense outlined by Althusser.[14] According to Althusser, the intervening subject – observed from the perspective of post-humanist theories, beginning with structuralism, and especially in the context of the poststructuralist materialist theory (therefore as a product and effect of different texts and their intersections) – cannot objectively grasp the totality of a society. Nevertheless, he can invest himself into it, thus subjecting himself to critique and self-critique which activates the process of change, directs it, but demands responsibility of the subject to the change.

The artist must be ‘aware’; his social position is a position of a subject aware of the complexity of the situation in the society.

Conscience and awareness additionally demand responsibility, and the notion of responsibility indeed implies an ethical dimension. Consequently, a question is raised: do only those affected by a problem have the right to concern themselves with it? … Instead of answering this question, we may cite examples from practice of the numerous artists who performed their interventions in contexts they never belonged in. This especially applies to various artistic practices concerned with marginal groups and identities.[15] Although the ethical dimension of these works may be debatable, the artist’s right to intervene in any context is taken for granted – keeping in mind the premise that context is a public property.

The context never belongs to an individual, regardless of the level of his identification with it (whether he feels as a victim or an accomplice). His comfortable unchallenging of his own position does not necessarily imply obedience: however, it has the same effects as tacit acceptance of the existing order in a certain context.

Thus the critical-contextual, interventionist art approaches the notion of solidarity and suggests a conclusion that the context is ever changing, not because of a single person, but because of us all. Each artistic contextual intervention multiplies social confrontations, opening new possibilities for plurality. This plurality is not smooth and unchallenging (as the postmodernist “anything goes”): it raises the criteria, questions the dominant values, and creates a social climate providing a discursive space for multitude of, often dissonant, voices.

The essay Contextual art in the countries of Eastern Europe: Approaches, diagnoses and treatments of the problems was conceived in the process of collective writing by the members of the working group Terms, as part of the project Deschooling Classroom (o^o): (in alphabetical order): Milena Bogavac, Dragana Bulut, Bojan Ðorđev, Anđela Ćirović, Siniša Ilić, Milan Marković, Katarina Popović and Ljiljana Tasić, with assistance from Ana        Vujanović and Bojana Cvejić.

Belgrade, spring 2010

[2] Đerđ Lukač, Estetičke ideje: za marksističku estetiku, BIGZ, Belgrade, 1979.

[3] Note, for example, the large soc-realist canvases by the painter Boža Ilić, or the Yugoslav Partisan Cinema of the 1950s or 1970s.

[4] In Eastern Europe in the 1990s, and notably in the countries of former Yugoslavia, the artists were additionally encouraged to take such an approach by the Soros centres for contemporary art as the main commissioner, and in the case of Serbia, the sole infrastructure for production and ‘distribution’ of contemporary art.

[5] We find examples for such an approach in: Tanja Ostojić’s project “Looking for a husband with an EU passport”, Vladimir Nikolić’s “Rhythm”, Dušan Murić’s “I′m pro: spam”, Igor Štromajer and Davide Grassi’s “Problemarket”; in design actions by the Škart group etc.

[6] Pol Arden, Kontekstualna umetnost: umetničko stvaranje u urbanoj sredini, u situaciji, intervencija, učestvovanje, IK KiÅ¡a-Muzej savremene umetnosti Vojvodine, Novi Sad, 2007, pp. 38-42. (Paul Ardenne, Un Art contextuel: Création artistique en milieu urbain, en situation, d’intervention, de participation, Flammarion, 2002)

[7] Instances of redefinition and reclaiming the public space: TkH Platform’s TV performance “SMS Guerilla”, the projects “Lilly” and “Tempo” by Danilo Prnjat, “Raspeani Skopjani”, Horkeškart’s early performances, Ana Miljanić’s production “Listen, Little Man” as part of the project Lust for Life (CZKD) etc.

[8] Luj Altiser, Za Marksa (For Marx), Nolit, Belgrade, 1971; Luj Altiser, Elementi samokritike (Elements of Self-Criticism), BIGZ, Belgrade, 1975; see also Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”, in Mapping Ideology, Slavoj Žižek (ed.), Verso, London-New York, 1995, pp. 100-141.

[9] Instances of bottom-up initiatives include Belgrade’s “Other Scene”, Zagreb-based “Operacija: grad” (Operation: City) and “Pravo na grad” (Right to a City), Nikolina Pristaš and Ivana Ivković’s performance “Protest” etc.

[10] Examples of “systematic” interventions into the cultural-artistic context: Marina Gržinić’s theoretical and artistic work, actions and projects launched by the TkH Platform and TkH Magazine, Prelom magazine and collective, the project and the gallery Kontekst, Per.art and “Indigo Dance Projekat” by Saša Asentić (and Ana Vujanović).

[11] Bojana Cvejić’s notion may be observed as a definition of one of the problems of our local context, and in turn as a launching pad for a critical-contextual artistic intervention into that context.

[12] Some artivist groups include: Žene na delu (Women at Work), Queer Beograd, Stani pani kolektiv, Zluradi paradi, E8 group etc.

[13] This approach features in the works by Vladan Jeremić; “Gypsies and Dogs” by Zoran Todorović; slam performances by the Drama Mental Studio (Jelena and Milena Bogavac); The Monument Group; project “Janez Janša”; Ana Miljanić’s production “Bordel ratnika” based on the anthropological study by Ivan Čolović etc.

[14] Luj Altiser, Za Marksa (For Marx), Nolit, Belgrade, 1971; Luj Altiser, Elementi samokritike (Elements of Self-Criticism), BIGZ, Belgrade, 1975.

[15] E.g. the artworks and actions aiming at integration of marginalized social groups, like the ethnic, religious, sexual or other minorities: the poor, parentless children, victims of violence, medical patients or persons with special needs. Such artistic practices feature in the so-called inclusive theatre, forum theatre and the works conceived in workshops and adult education trainings. This group additionally includes all the practices which may be labelled as community art, and the works thematizing the position of marginal groups and identities, rendering their problems visible for the rest of the society. The examples also comprise numerous documentary films and videos whose content explicitly addresses the socially marginal.

This controversial term refers to a phenomenon in art of the post-socialist Eastern Europe in the 1990s. The term was initially conceived by Miško Šuvaković, art theorist from Belgrade, and defined it his essay “The Ideology of Exhibition: on the ideologies of Manifesta” in 2002.

Soros realism does not imply the revival of the painterly realism of a paranoid nationalist type, evolved in most of the post-socialist societies in the 1980s and 1990s, nor is a crude variant of the socialist realism which established the artistic canons in the East in the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s. To the contrary, it implies smooth and subtle uniforming and setting the norms of the postmodern pluralism and multiculturalism as criteria of enlightened political liberalism expected in European societies at the turn of the century. The specific benefit from such approach is the shift from “restricted” (indeed elite) emancipation brought about by high and alternative art, to general social emancipation within the given local culture. For instance, post-structuralist theory and liberal values with “academic” or “museal” properties (and, certainly, a “minority intellectual” discourse), now “by means of” art become the discourse, taste and value of the “normal” culture embraced by the freshly emerging middle-intellectual level of the bourgeoisie and its public opinion (doxa). The specific disadvantage of such approach to art is imposition of “average transparence”, conceiving artistic and aesthetic aims as effects determined by culture. In other words, art of the young, marginal and those in transition acquires its “own” mobility ghetto with granted possibilities of survival and realization.[1]

The term Soros realism is controversial for the following reason: in fact, it refers to socially and politically engaged art, conceived throughout former Yugoslavia in the time of its dissolution in the 1990s. It affirmed positive values of the democratically ordered societies, like emancipation, multiculturalism, human rights and freedoms. In this way, it severely criticized the dominant ideology in the local context, namely: the rapid rise of nationalism as a reaction to the demise of the socialist-communist order and the value system it represented. According to its political-aesthetical premises, art termed as Soros-realist may be perceived as opposite to the nationalist art, and that encouraged by the state apparatuses in the communist and socialist times.

On the other hand, all those artworks and actions were supported by the Soros Foundation through its centres for contemporary art, whose purpose was to support cultural-artistic projects which contributed to fashioning of a social ambience befitting a democratically ordered capitalist society. Soros centres provided an infrastructure for professionalization of the emerging artistic scene, through production and education of the artists and cultural workers. This education was different from that obtained in state academic institutions. But, in order to see their works produced and realized, the artists had to comply with the newly established ideological macro-framework.

Such art supported by organizations from the West, in a way approached “state art” of the communist and socialist times, but also the state art produced with a view to propagating nationalist ideas, although Soros realism (in terms of ideology it stood for) featured as its total antipode.

The political engagement was different, but the logic of the ‘commissions’ was the same.

Slovenian art theorist Aldo Milohnić addressed the notion of artistic immunity in the chapter of the same title in his book Teorije sodobnega gledališča in performansa (Theories of Contemporary Theatre and Performance)[1], in the block “Strateški dispozitivi: umetnost in vladavina prava“ (Strategic dispositives: art and the rule of law), examining on several recent examples from the Slovenian artistic scene the concept of (legal) autonomy of art in a neo-liberal capitalist social order.[2]

The term artistic immunity was conceived with a combined terminology pertaining to art and law (legal theory and practice) wherein persons assuming specific social functions are permitted to claim exemption from certain legal norms. Legal immunity can not be granted to an individual, but exclusively to the function assumed by this individual. Accordingly, there is diplomatic, presidential or witness immunity. Artistic immunity is, therefore, a term addressing the exceptionality of artist’s position, as a social subject according to specific legal grounds of art as (an autonomous) social practice – beside the guaranteed freedom of thought and expression applying to all citizens.

The notion of artistic immunity becomes significant for contextual and interventionist art, because the actions acknowledged and legitimized as artistic by the institutions of the Artworld are occasionally exempted from legal persecution. As an example we noted the project Crni peristil (Black Peristyle) by Igor Grubić (http://www.pp-yu-art.net/node/25), where certificates from the Croatian Association of Artists and Directorate for Cultural Heritage Protection in fact protected the artist from legal consequences initiated by the police Anti-terrorism and War Crime Department.[3] However, this marriage of art and terrorism in the times of ‘crises’ often leads to ‘suspension’ of artistic immunity (along with restriction of other civil rights and freedoms – e.g. after the 9/11 attack on the WTC in 2001). Thus, for instance, Steve Kurtz from the Critical Art Ensemble was accused for bioterrorism and released without charge after four years.[4]

[2] Ana Vujanović, “Beleške na marginama interdisciplinarnih teorija savremenog teatra i performansa” http://www.tkh-generator.net/sr/openedsource/aldo-milohnic-teorije-savremenog-teatra-i-performansa.

[3] Suzana Marjanić, conversation with Igor Grubić, ‘Aktivizmom protiv crne mrlje na duši’, Zarez br 219, 29.11.2007, http://www.zarez.hr/219/kazaliste3.html

[4] More on this legal case at: http://www.caedefensefund.org/overview.html

Bojana Kunst

I. Philosophy

The future is not related to the past as an actualisation of its becoming, but finds itself in a rupture between something which has not happened and something which has yet to happen. This is a temporal rupture which is intrinsic to the mode of potentiality, to the revealing of the ways that life comes into being. When reflecting upon potentiality we have to be aware of the paradox that for Giorgio Agamben is an inevitable paradox of this peculiar philosophical concept. One can namely become aware of his or her potential to exist, create and spring forth from oneself only when this potential is not realised. Potentiality is then a temporal constellation, which is divided from the action itself, it is not translated into the action at all. Potentiality can come to light only when not being actualised: when the potential of a thing or a person is not realised. A certain failure, an impossibility of actualisation, is then an intrinsic part of potentiality. At the same time, only when the potential is not being actualised, one is opened to one’s being in time, to one’s eventness. In this openness one experiences the plurality of ways that life comes into being and is exposed to the plurality of possible actions.

II.  Political moment

It is very important to reflect on this notion in the time when we are confronted with the ruthless appropriation and exploitation of human potentiality. Our present time is experienced through the actualisation of all potentials, where human beings are continuously displaying their potential. The actualisation of potential has become a primary force of the value on the contemporary cultural, artistic and economic market. To put it differently: with the rise of immaterial work, human language, imagination and creativity have become primary capitalistic sources of value. The present time of permanent actualisation is also deeply changing the ways that we perceive and experience time, where the present is perceived as the only (more and more contracted) time we have, the past is transferred into the nostalgia of remembering and the future deprived of its imaginative potentiality.

III. Performance

A performance deals with the rupture between that which has yet to come and that which has not yet happened, a kind of exposure of time of another becoming. Therefore performance itself has to refuse the contemporary processes of actualisation and not participate in the exploitation of the totality of experience. In that sense the performance has to resist the actualisation of experience, the experience without remains, which was one of the key aesthetic and political notions of contemporary performance in the 20^th century. In the core of a performance there is potentiality, a resistance to actualisation, a kind of working together which resists the presupposed ‘now’ of performance. A performance is a result of a creative process that is interrelated around what it could be and tracing what has yet to come. Even if performance is most of the time experienced as an event in present time, where the co-presence of dancers / actors / performers and audience is of essential importance, that doesn’t mean that performance is fully about actualisation of the present moment. Performance practitioners know very well how strong the work on performance is related to the paradox of potentiality, how much it has to deal with actuality, which always surpasses itself and with anticipation of what has yet to come. Therefore I imagine the performance as a field of potentiality, a certain rupture in time, an another time frame where there is no difference between the possible and the impossible event. The concept of potentiality helps us to invent and give a voice to our ongoing practice, which would not conform to the affirmative exclusivity of our own time in which we live and create.