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Interview
with Vladimir Radisic, p.RT™
by Vladimir Tupanjac (Centre for Contemporary Arts Belgrade), 1999
(excerpts from an interview published in Intermedial
Flash, and 3+4 magazine for contemporary arts in 1999)
print
interview
…......
V. Tupanjac: Your works and actions use the
language or means of mass media for which Escensberger says, "they
don't contribute to communication but to its prevention". How did
the art succeed in overcoming the problem of " interaction of those
who transfer and those who receive" and do you think that art, which
is left to the laws of "informational totalitarism", can lose
some of it's primary qualities, namely individuality?
V. Radisic (p.RT™):
The media of mass communication are submitted to it's own formalism, which
makes the transmition of the essence difficult. They are all filled with
the functional stereotypes that made them closed, but powerful too. Media
is even too aware of it's power, and we are especially interested in discovering
the strategies of "manipulation through mystification", not
only in media but in every day life too. Mystification is a pure strategy
of power used by almost everyone, from politicians to artists, and through
it, in a relatively simple way, various things are given an aura of unreachable
values, although they suffer the "extra reality" or even banality.
V.T: Do you think that it is enough to be aware
of the presence of the certain art work in media district, so that it
makes it transparent, and as such ready to transpose the artist's idea?
p.RT™: That would be ideal if the artists were entirely
honest, but very often certain things, even in the art are solved at the
level of packaging. If you have something to say, the hardest thing is
to say it in a short, effective and clear way, avoiding simplification
and banality. Mystification and wrapping are used many times in order
to hide banality, which stands behind many contemporary works. We were
also very interested in these phenomena, and dealt with it in some of
our works.
In our project exhibited at the Biennial of Young Artists in Vrsac 1998,
we asked Dr Vladimir Trajkovic from the Institute of Molecular biology
to make project "for us". We were merely producers. He took
one of his published scientific papers in which he explains "the
influence of pentoxifilin on nitric-oxide production in rat peritoneal
astrocites". This is obviously strictly scientific and highly non-transparent
immunology work. What we did was just transferring this text into our
ambiance and saturated it with mystification. We made the SF report out
of it. It was read in American English with sound background, and a disco
ball to radiate "stars" in the dark. But, this is an art piece
because all the mystification encodings are transparent through the presence
of the visible ironical element - the disco ball, which looked like the
some "crystal of knowledge".
Audience was deceived and hypnotized, but at the same time they were aware
of the deception and enjoyed it. I don't know if all this contributes
to solving the informational chaos. We are studying it, playing with it,
nourishing it - or avoiding, but all of these could be good strategies.
V.T: What about the truth? What is the level of
its resistance in fighting the compromises imposed by the society and
its needs for art?
p.RT™: The spirituality is, after all, the society's
inevitable need, and in the end it is the essence of all things, but spirituality
itself does not exist without the truth. As I have already said, it is
not only the art that can reach spirituality, especially today.
Of course, the question imposed here is why doing art today and what is
the meaning of it? We might say that there are myriad of other ways to
reach toward spirituality, and in this sense, the monastic life, mentioned
before, might be equally good - even visually.
V.T: In this sense, the minimalism offers you the
chance to concentrate on the essence.
p.RT™: For sure. We are the minimalists, in a way,
but this is not always very obvious in our work. The question of individuality,
"creative aura" or what is sometimes pathetically called "trace
of artist's soul" still stays opened, although it is not modern.
These traces are not, in my opinion, placed in visible expressions today,
they are situated in the conceptuality of the work. Art can legitimately
take other forms of communication, it can become mere informational flow,
but on the other hand, this could be too close to losing its being, the
one that differs art from other forms of human cognition. We are also
interested in these situations where the line between art and non-art
is being annihilated. It can be very exciting, and conceptually challenging.
V.T: In the place deprived of anxiety (in fact
used to it), where the Lyotard's "logic of the informational type'
is in power, which is in your catalogue illustrated by B. Dimitrijevic
with the Auge's theory of supermodernity where "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", you are trying
to find place for your art without retreating from the question of responsibility
upon distorted social/ethical relations. Do you see, in the media you
are using, advantage of engaged art and how will the chain "art-technology-egagement"
develop in the future?
p.RT™: There are no more revolutions, I think, a
bit of posthistory is going on. There is an evolution, and after the experience
of Modernity and later experiences, art firmly knows that the world cannot
be changed, not with great concepts and ideas. What art can do is explore
and make step by step toward something. We have this advantage of using
computers and Internet, video and all forms of commercial print technologies,
but also the traditional crafts. We are not restricted to one media, but
we are rather choosing the one that fits to the concept adequately. In
this sense, we feel the responsibility towards media, as every media imposes
questions, especially the media of mass communication: how to use them,
why and in what ways… There is also an another story: a "what
is IN and what shines the most", and at the moment the most shining
is CD-ROM, cyber art, communication / interactivity pieces; which is hopefully
a temporary hype, and the time of natural attitude towards this is coming.
What makes information society interesting to us, is that it is a society
of the lonely ones, and that's why everybody talks about "communication".
Loneliness is very interesting, as well as sadness, or unexplainable discontent…
V.T: In relatively short period (two years) you
achieved full affirmation on domestic scene (4 one-man shows, and several
group exhibitions), but at the same time you were present abroad. What
is, speaking in that context, relation with urban audience who come to
exhibitions without preconsumptions and how much does impression and reaction
of a small, postindustrial and melancholic European man mean to you?
p.RT™: Concerning we are interested in this kind
of "site-specific" work, it is logical for us to be legible
to local audience, either in Austria or elsewhere; because today's art
does not subsist for itself or by itself, as before, when it offered one-sided,
pure scopic enjoyment in visual field of its realizations. Social surrounding
is inevitably present and art must be tied up with the context from which
it emerges. Majority of our works are made like that, so that they make
sense, for example, toAustrian, but in the same time the piece preserves
its meaning when it is brought here, it does not ask for additional elaborates.
We tried to avoid sheer suiting to the place and operating with data recognizable
only in very local circumstances. It is very important for us not to be
"too site-specific". Project, made for five people interested
in contemporary arts is, in a way, futile.
….......
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