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Branislav Dimitrijevic
p.RT™: TRAJECTIVE projects or on the
disappearance of art
(published in p.RT™ catalogue
Godisnji izvestaj / Annual Report 1996/97)
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In its works / actions, the p.RT™ association explores one of the
critical phases contemporary art production is going through, which is,
to put it simply, the imperceptibility of artistic movement.
The art of the 20th century has opened up to the possibility of the continual
reassessment of the limits of artistic expression and of the "institution"
of art, up to the point where, according to "post-modern" assertions
, the dividing line between art and non-art is annihilated, as well as
the difference between fiction and reality, free expression and obligation.
This naturally leads to the incessant invocation of the death of art,
the theorising about what art is not any longer and to the ultimate entropy
of the whole system of representation.
Today's artistic performance, which is devoid of the restraints of originality
and at the same time with a new generation of artists which, unlike the
previous one, does not insist on the fact that that border and the myth
of the of modern aesthetic are outdated, indicate that art does not incline
towards its own extinction, but rather that it lives
under the sign of that extinction.
The sign of extinction is becoming a new starting place of revitalisation,
the place into which the energy of the society is invested, the society
which has endangered art, either by making it unrecognisable/invisible
or by incorporating it into ideological and commercial strategies of representation.
This "negative" energy, aimed at the mystifying position of
„sublime autonomy" that to the period of modernism was occupied
by art, opens up to the possibility of artistic reflection on its own
extinction: extinction in social relations which „proove" art
to be unnecessary, even immoral (wars, poverty, low education) , in the
economic relations which control and make it "usable" (acquisitions
by corporations and financial dependencies), and in media relations which
exploit it and make it retrograde; keeping in mind that communication
through pictures is becoming the dominant form of global exchange of information
using all the patterns which will become visible in art as much in mass
media.
Thus, for example, the action of the association p.RT™ (then signed
as "Anonymus authors") which was
performed in the course of the group exhibition named "Murder 1"
is based on series of unrecognisable instances, on crossing the "barrier"
of artistic and non-artistic restraints; insofar that both the artistic
creativity and the place of the spectator are out of focus, the proscribed
unity of time, place and media is abandoned as well as aesthetic or anti-
aesthetic puritanism, be it engaged or autonomous.
Two of the photographs on the wall of a gallery appear "aestheticized";
by the simple procedure of blurring the scene so that it becomes out of
focus, (one is a scene from the street , and the other is an outstretched
hand holding a coin) they do not affect our consciousness as a mirror
image of the world around us, but rather as an afterimage
of that world, as a simulation of the image that has been recorded in
our memory. These photographs speak about the reality of photography,
and express the same thought Susan Sontag expresses at one point: "photographic
images tend to subtract feeling from something we experience at first
hand and the feelings they do arouse are, largely, not those we have in
real life."1
On opening night, the whole action, however, is a question for the spectators
to answer considering their own experience on entering the gallery. Namely,
there was a little beggar girl for them to encounter; she was begging
in the middle of the exhibiting space and on average, she got the same
sort of reception as she does in the street; some people chased her away,
some ignored her pretending not to have seen, others were more generous.
The barrier between the social space and the space intended for the manifestation
of art did not exist, just as in the minds of the
people present there was no connection between the exhibited photographs
and the presence of the little beggar girl.
The artistic activity was completely that of mimicry, whereas the activity
of reality was excluded as a non-art, as something belonging to some other
domain implicating other type of relations. The whole action was taking
place at a non-place, the place without organic coherence, where there
is no chance of the meaning of art or social relations being understood,
let alone the possible interdependencies between the two.
A gallery became "a non-place", which can be defined in Marc
Auge's terms of non-symbolised space which occupies it, as opposed to
symbolised space which occupies places. The gallery becomes just a transit
zone (as an airport, metro station, or an elevator) where "the individual
feels himself to be a spectator without paying much attention to the spectacle".2
In other words, an spectator comes in with a traditional preconception
that a gallery is a place of transfiguration ; that that which is inside
it still has something to say about that which is elsewhere, so that "elsewhere"
continues to be the primary category, to such an extent that "here"
stays unperceived. The already mentioned work of the association p.RT™
treated the "murder" announced in the title of the project as
an exclusion by means of ignoring and the
art exhibition as the place where lapse of memory concerning social disorder
is at work.
As a result of such an attitude toward a gallery space, the orientation
toward gallery exterior spaces does not come as a surprise; thus, for
example, the group performed a project in Austria named „ Untitled"
(Tajana #1 #2) symbolic matrix of exhibiting space, the work in Austria
is a reversion of the process of analytical annihilation of the status
of art: the intrusion of the intimate, ephemeral into a public space.
Two billboards were located at different places, ranging from a pastoral
Alps countryside to a "neutral" place by the road. The photographs
that were put on billboards come from a hyperproductive private collection
of the snapshots of people in situations relevant only to the author and
those featuring on the photos, which are taken by a small automatic camera.
"Teleportation" of the intimate into the public, where such
large visuals are, by the rule, an expression of economic power, does
not lie solely in the usage of a billboard as „windows of supermodernity"
with the purpose of exhibiting a non-manipulative scene, but is rather
an expression of ideological auto-reference of the artistic scene. In
other words, the treatment of the imperceptibility of art is done with
the utmost care; photographs do not have an artistic look, they are 'ordinary',
of an average quality for which no 'professional' equipment is needed
; the things represented on them are auto-referential to the extent which
equals the photographs which are meant to be art; at this point the difference
between these two almost ceases to exist. The possibility that "your
snapshots" can find its place on one of the advertising boards refers
to the very nature of the "non-place" where such signs are put:
the scene is perceived but exclusively in an incoherent and partial way
; every kind of theme is likely to be encountered, even of the most intimate
nature; the reason for this is that the public place has become a place
where the subjects do less and less integrate, which leaves them the augmenting
space to be alone in it, and to have their representations and representations
of themselves left unnoticed.
In his concluding remarks in his book on "non-places", Auge
states that "there will soon be a need for something that may seem
a contradiction in terms: an ethnology of solitude"3 A contemporary
artistic movement which is conceptualising its own imperceptibility is
nether subjective nor objective, but it is , to make use of Virilio's
term, „trajective". That trajectivity is located in space in
the continual passage between "here" and "elsewhere"
and interferes between a neutral objectivity of science and a subjective
individualism of art.
The imperceptibility of a such an "art in transit", gives rise
to new "products" for its consumption, such as the Art Gloves®
by p.RT™. The product is sterile, packed in a box with detailed instructions
for use, the kind that usually accompanies pharmaceutical products. It
came into being as a result of joined efforts of an research institute
of microbiology (a scientific institution ) and is aimed at, according
to the members of the association ," artists, critics and curators";
in other words those who still believe in the myth of the subjective individualism
of art.
On the other hand, the trajective project directly reflects on the project
Entering Machine. This project began as the school practical assignment
at The Academy of Fine Arts in Novi Sad when the final year students were
asked to make a machine with no purpose (thus forced to conform to the
traditional metaphor which sees a work of art as a non-utilitarian aesthetic
object. Metaphorically speaking, in the project of the association the
machine was already in situ (The Academy of Fine Arts), but as a work
of art it was treated trajectively : on its front it reads "entering
machine", and on its back just impersonal "exit" - these
labels being most frequently used in "non-places".
One of the standing points inherited from minimalism or postminimalism
(besides the fact that this "style" represents the dominant
visual formation of "a non-place") is that the reduction of
form opens up to the possibility of the conceptualisation of the surroundings
of the object, i.e., the more concise the text is, the larger the context.
In contemporary art, which is aware of Judd's notion of "specific
objects", the meaning of minimalism does not have a formal character
in any instance of its existence but rather its character is first of
all in the nature of the mass media, and then in politics.
That is the meaning relevant for the practice of the association, whose
medium is neither painting nor sculpture, nor even performance (but also
neither it is a form of appropriation of "new technologies"),
but is rather a form open to context and the possibilities of the context
being contained in it, and is not, as Judd said for the sculpture and
painting of his time, „a particular form producing fairly definite
qualities' and which is becoming less neutral, less containers, more defined,
not undeniable and unavoidable".4 And instead of weeping over the
retreat of art in the face of reality (the situation in the countries
of the former Yugoslavia is a typical example of such a retreat), the
possibility is opened for contemplating and utilisation of such a retreat
and abolition of the possibility (and need) for performing an artistic
action.
An example of such a possibility is leaving theoretical space for non-realisation
of a project, for the problematization of the imperceptibility of an artistic
act to the point of its non-existence, which is the major trait of the
Rodna kuca (Birthplace) project, which remained (un)realised in the summer
of 1997 in Sarajevo. This event was conceived as an overture i.e. visiting
"cultural landmarks", places where members of the association
were born. The first part was realised without distraction; it consisted
of putting a plaque in front of the birth house of Jovan Trkulja in Novi
sad, while the second part which was supposed to be the same action but
in Ilidza, in front of the birth house of Vladimir Radišic (by the
way, such treatment of the myth of an artist is not a novelty in the conceptual
practice; for example, it the practice of the most renowned artist from
Sarajevo, Braco Dimitrijevic). The political context prevented, but also
made possible the (non)realisation of this work: according to the members
of the association the „work was not finished because of political
reasons and the lack of the possibility of co-operation with the present
tenants of Radišic's birth house in Sarajevo". In numerous cases
of today's art, "work" exists by virtue of such collisions with
circumstances. The association p.RT™ from Novi Sad is occupied with
this kind of collision and also with uncertain place of art practice in
unsettled social relations.
Used and quoted sources:
1 Susan Sontag, On Photography,
Doubleday, New York 1977, str. 168.
2 Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity,
Verso, London 1995, str.82.
3 Marc Augé, Non-Places, str. 120.
4 Donald Judd, „Specific objects", u Complete Writings 1959-1975,
Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1975.
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