Nebojsa Vilic on Thu, 29 Apr 1999 09:06:35 +0100 |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
Syndicate: <nettime> ART ASTRIDE - on the role of art today |
dear friends, in all of these days i was wandering how to act and what to do. i found my self cycling like maniac, but that does not help others. therefore i decided to write for a biweekly magazine [for a first time in my professional life ever] 'forum' in skopje. the text below is my view how the artists in general have to act NOW! on your request i can send two images published together with the text ART ASTRIDE by Nebojsa Vilic Forum 32/1999, [April, 9-22, 1999] p. 72 It might be interesting, when the art today (at the threshold of the exit of the millenium) is already asked about its role and essence, and when it can not find answer to these questions. Usually, it is assumed that art may anticipate the events and changes, in some periods even self-initiatively to realize them, but this recentness speaks about some other conditions. Can art in this century take over an engagement once more? The engagement in the past (European) experiences appears either as simultaneous or aposteriorical. In the both cases it has certain and defined role that is realized either through spontaneous reaction, or as defined program. These appearances are noted in several turns, and in all of them the essence of the engagement is filled completely. But, in the nineties the engagement of the art and the artist is getting another occurring: the engagement gets quote-marks and becomes 'engagement'. For a first time the cutting edge of the art is dulled, the art is not the one that is ahead of or, in other words, from the a priori position it turns into a posteriori one. It turns from an avant-garde into the conclusive one - as never before art and the artist are accepting noting and concluding the conditions, leaving the premises of and belief in the modern project and idea, that they are able and powerful to change the things on better. Even earlier, this kind of conclusion turned back the art of the eighties to the experiences of the past: the formal and the phenomenological (maybe as a consequence of the pressure of the art institutions). After awhile, the art turned it's interest towards the attempt to speak once again on the reality and the actual surrounding. The weakened criticism (or better to say - the lost of the faith in the constructive and implementable criticism) of the social reality is essential for the conclusive character of the art of the nineties. However, which is the attitude or relationship of the art in Macedonia towards the actual social reality? Does someone have right to ask from it to fill the vacuum by the emptied or left criteria and values? Why it does not feel the need for that? Or, why it is so little present? The futility of the effort or the attempt (as a conclusion of the previous experiences), as a statement of the disappointed engaged art, is not an argument and it does not excuse the lack of interest, or apathy and closure in the 'disinterested world of the artist'. This world is marked as secure shelter, world in which the artist safely retreats, saying that she/he is just an artist. Art and the artist are the ones that have to find the way out from these conditions, and to turn this moment in which the loosened receptive structures of the today's subject will find kind of brake from this actuality, moment in which the established criteria for artistic valuation will be turned aside and will get new meaning. Maybe the others, those out side of the artist, all of those subjects who are around her/him, those ones that are approving the existence of her/his art, have right to ask for this in this situation. Maybe they are needing the lucidity of the 'EX-FYROMism' project [particularly the work 'Postnationalism'] of Zaneta Vangeli from March 1998, much before than the anti-NATO demonstrations appeared on the streets of Skopje. Or the fifteen peaceful minutes of the 'Ushabala elo' performance on March 31, 1999 of Perica Georgiev - Pepsi and Stefan Saskov, in the moment of the everyday exhausting auditing of the verity of the recent reality and the sense of the existence. April 1, 1999. legends for the images: image: metadesigner > Zaneta Vangeli, 'Postnationalism', 2x90x210, plotter art, CIX gallery, Skopje March 13, 1998, photo: Nebojsa Vilic, c SCCA-Skopje, Macedonia; image: pepsi > Perica Georgiev Pepsi & Stefan Saskov, 'Ushabala elo', performance, 15 min, CIX gallery, Skopje March 31, 1999, photo: Nikola Pisarev, c SCCA-Skopje, Macedonia; Nebojsa Vilic, Ph.D. Faculty of Drama Arts University 'SS. Cyril and Methodius' Ruger Boskovic b.b. / P.O.Box 134 MK-91000 Skopje, Macedonia tel. 389 91 37 05 96 e-mail: nvilic@soros.org.mk --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/east/ to unsubscribe, write to <syndicate-request@aec.at> in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress