FOUR EXAMPLES OF RELATIVISM IN CONTEMPORARY CROATIAN ART
By Branko Franceschi

A suggestion by Janos Sugar, a member of curatorial team, inspired us to agree on Biennial Quadrilateral theme. We chose relativism, today's  crucial spiritual construct. Immediately, my curatorial mind plunged into mental archive, which, as opposed to Malraux's Antimuseum, is automatically created inside a head of every art historian from the moment his/her other personal interests are overwhelmed with a bias towards sphere of visual images. Despite all the usual criteria and mechanisms that I use when performing a selector's job, on this occasion I was burdened neither by their relativity, nor by relativity of the actual curator's position and I coud instantly see the choice realm is huge. For how long, without being noticed at all, artworks had been imbued with that fluid, polyvalent quality which renders them completely open to interpretation? Is it but a result of our mind's width in the era of relativism? Let me paraphrase William Blake by asking: Is the meaning in a selector's mind or maybe a creative instinct, one that was following unmistakable existential artist's impulse, gauged their practice towards patterns of contemporary perception?
Relentless objectivity of budget framework limited selection to four participants and defined artists and artworks which, according to my judgement, relatively  fully cover totality of  collision between aesthetic realm and spiritual horizon of relativism. Aspects of relativism in aesthetic discourse will be presented by works of Kristijan Kožul. Relativism pertaining to a syntagm on art success – as related to space of origination and presentation of an artwork - will be illustrated by work-in-progress titled "A Dummies' Guide to New York Art Scene" by Andreja Kulunčić. Relativism of general Croatian social-political context - due to actuality and fatefulness anyway a frequent referential point of engaged Croatian artists -  is presented in fullness of the dilemma and strength of symbolic charge, stemming from well balanced visual and semantic qualities featured by a video-installation "Integration / Who shall play?" by Sandra Sterle. Finally, latent provocativeness of relativism within institutional frame and linked relativism of unequivocal definitions of copyright, ownership and original artwork are realized by Goran Karabogdan and Nikica Klobučar in their multimedia project www.enigmaobjekta.com.

Kristijan Kožul

After we have adopted a postulate of tolerance towards the other as a civilizational platform from which we speak, a problem of aesthetic relativism most often got reduced to problem of valorising an artistic act. The confused audience will most often articulate this final dilemma as a question: Is something a work of art, and if so, by what criteria? It is a slippery terrain of judgement, present in a moment of opened aesthetic criteria and countless talks which all of the colleagues in business had to have with their families, close friends, acquaintances and general audience, all in an attempt to demystify complex structure of their own judgement,  based on activating the entire experiential and theoretical knowledge in a sublime moment of a decision. After all, a slippery terrain remains hardly explainable and even  more hardly compressable into a practical set of instructions for the uninformed ones. However, actually the works that succeed in confusing, in shaking up and even rearranging ossified mental construction of the experts are realization of that dynamic mental activity which lies at basis of every true artistic act. In spring of 1993, Zagreb gallery Vladimir Nazor hosted exhibition "Posthumous Objects" by which Kristijan Kožul introduced aesthetic discourse whose variation he has been entertaining ever since. The exhibition was met, more or less, with dead silence. Nobody surely knew what to do with the artist who mixes lace, pearls, satin ribbons and rhinestones with dry pork legs, sculls and porcelain grave-portraits. Few months afterwards, rotating sculpture made of invalid chairs, from a "Discoware" cycle, reshaped by gluing hundreds of small mirrors into a disco ball, has been awarded the second prize by the expert jury at Triennial of Croatian Sculpture, while exhibition "Feast" at "Miroslav Kraljević gallery was met by critics' acclamations and sold out. Expressly, Kožul became unomittable part of a set of renown Croatian younger artists. What has changed? Form of Kožul's sculptures has proven to be too bizarre for the critics prone to traditional media, while simultaneously too decorative for the critics prone to contemporary creations, those who at the very beginning are defined by aesthetic heritage of historical vanguard  and productional stinginess of local conceptual art. However, everyone was upset. Kožul came on from an entirely unexpected position, performing a madcap stunts and sacrilegious pranks, relativizing in toto comfortably tuned black-white screen of a local system of aesthetic values. His origination point is tradition of appropriating the trite objects. Unlike Duchamp who uses most simple intervention to transform thebanal items  into something else, Kožul turns towards pop art tradition of using mass-produced, industrial products which he then patiently assembles, adding hundreds to a mimicking membrane covering the original object. This conceptually simple, yet production-demanding procedure, by which  Kožul stratifies elaborate decorative patterns, refers us – Westerners – to an influence of exotic aesthetic codes. On one hand, Kožul is inspired by forgotten local traditional of decorative motifs which are strictly off limits regarding the supposed contemporary art practice here. On the other hand he applies hypertrophied manner of decorating, close to taste of street life at overpopulated metropolises, from Mumbai to Manila to Mexico City, in combination with populist glamorous aesthetic of Las Vegas and adult clubs. Simultaneously, this fusion aesthetics is an engine of sharp social critique.  Seedy fetishism of his objects is built from the objects symbolizing death, pain, individual degradation and collective paranoia. In a way  of manneristic still natures or mediaeval dance macabre pictures, he clearly points out fragile equilibrium of consumers' society. Mental space manifested by Kožul's works is a product of amortization of ferocious impact of multitude of cultural power-lines, impact caused by bombardment form mass media of global civilization. It is a space where past, presence and future are mixed, as well as are real and virtual, elitism and populism, eros and thanatos, wealth and misery of multiculturalism, global and local, decorative and engaged... all the coexistent and opposed standpoints of modern civilization. Although personally I envisage he will have a successful career, Kožul's final position in a corpus of local and international art scene is hard to pinpoint. However, we can certainly establish that up to this moment he exerted positive influence at local art scene's judgement models, towards their relativization and abolishment of  established narrow-minded validation criteria.

Andreja Kulunčić

Talking of local art scene's discourse, the subject of the newest multimedia exploration by Andreja Kulunčić at www.andreja.org is relativism in tyranny of feeling of peripherallity. Her research begun with a preparation for participating at Eastern European Residency Exchange programme at Art In General Gallery in New York. The theme was: studying global obsession of visual artists with success on a place considered to be the centre of international art scene regarding the creativity's heyday, as well as modus and significance of presentation and market potential. A final result of the project will be a book "A Dummies' Guide to New York Art Scene" that is going to present  a large body of experiences and opinions, collected in a form of interviews with all the protagonists of art scene: artists, critics, gallerists, museum workers, merchants and collectors. Individual talks and round tables are recorded and presented in a form of audio and visual recordings. They are organized in every place where  the artwork is presented and include participation of local protagonists who state their analysis and opinioms on relation of their own milieu towards the targeted one. The first phase was finalized in New York, while the next will be realized in Rijeka for the needs of Biennial Quadrilateral. Confrontation of these two segments will enfold during the Biennial, while the third part is planned during Zagreb presentation. Previous projects by Andreja  Kulunčić based on research of - for example - the annual revenue of young European artists, the viewpoint on application of genetic engineering on human offspring or the justice distribution, have been concluded by percentage statement of result's relativity. As opposed to them, the guide project includes dose of sarcasm. It's essence hides the eternal question as to what is art success, where and on which level it has to happen in order to truly be realized. Project's aim is to disclose mechanisms which make up operational segments of the art milieus, their general and particular features, opinions and projections towards other milieus. From aspect of methodology, Andreja Kulunčić uses appropriation of patterns of scientific research, documenting, analysis and presentation. She also includes an expert team, hence relativizing division of human activity on – among other things – science and culture. In this manner she stresses creativity as absolute of human activity. On the other hand, Andreja Kulunčić's art discourse  relativizes idea of art creation, not only in the eyes of the widest audience, therefore going beyond the final borders of what is commonly regarded as its realm. However, international success and media echo of her projects have quickly silenced even the worst sceptics, brining us back to relativism of contemporary aesthetics' sphere.

Sandra Sterle

Performance is exercised by the artists who love and need intensive immediacy of bodily and personal expression in front of an audience. During this act, action and body get equalized within a performance space. In other words, message and content are identified with gesture and artist. However, Sandra Sterle's procedure is totally different and succesfully represents art practice that conceptually reinterprets performance discipline as "musealised" part of cultural heritage. At the very start, Sandra Sterle conceives realization of her performative works at two-dimensional surface of a static photographic image or, more often, of a moving picture intended for projection. While the original performance's form simultaneously also meant a radical break with traditional institutional and market systems, such a medialized performance integrates classical gallery-museum treatment and presentation, achieving competitive material at the art market. In this regard, the significant issue is a testament of immediacy. Original objects used by artists in the very moment of the act have now been petrified into relics. Art generation of Sandra Sterle has developed this shift in nature of performance art as a level of freedom of interpretation of discipline,  as well as aesthetic challenge,  a new genre fitting main trends of modern art practice marked by fusion of procedures from differing art spheres and disciplines through multidisciplinary and multimedia art practice.
Sandra Sterle finalizes her projects after productional pattern which links artist's functions of a creative subject and that of a model – object with technical realization of the collaborators. Obviously Sterle does not find immediacy of artist's contact with the audience to be crucial, hence media for transferring content to the audience, as opposed to original performance – does not have to be true her. On contrary, she is - like an actor – separated from a character she interprets. This work's constant places Sandra Sterle into a richly nuanced current of contemporary visual arts based on acting – or let us use an international synonym- performative art, which enables wide spectre of themes.
Three-channel installation titled "Integration / Who will play?" enriches her repertoire with a character which can be intuitively defined as a clown, since Sterle's disguise is as a rule fragmentary. Costume has less bearing on the impression: it is a wig – cap or a theatrical, one-size-too-big blue suit. More important is the posture, movement and mimics. Sterle is simply joyous, sad, she moves around and she is sexless... as a clown. Following symbolic code, a clown's figure points at the real state of things by reversing of order, significance and consequences of visible state of things. It represents ironic awareness, so the fatefulness of Croatian (or any other county's) joining the European Union will be presented as a game.

"Integration / Who will play?" brings new elements into Sandra Sterle's oeuvre. Technically, it is her first multi-channel projection. Author's previous setups have founded their ambiental charge, that is active relation towards the showroom or working space, at manifold forms of transmission of content in combination of video, photography, multimedia and/or objects. Installation is founding understanding of  author's attitude at the basis of projections' simultaneousness, all within spatially adequate arrangement of a setup.  Conceptually, as opposed to personal and existential statement previously prevalent in her works, this shift is a reference to an actual political dilemma. Of course, this dilemma is lived through, every day, by those with a childish dream of carefree space that shall be kept up after merging with bigger and richer entity. Symptomatically, thanks to institution of twofold citizenship, Sandra Sterle already is a citizen of European Union and has experienced working and living within its borders. Her position is based on personal experience. Are the expectations  we have more comical than our endeavours? Is the fortress of civil society more repressive than we can imagine? Are we its prisoners before we even set our foot in it? *

www.enigmaobjekta.com

Object's Enigma, exhibition of the collection by centre Georges Pompidou of Paris was organized by Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art around the 2004/2005 turn of the year, at Klovićevi dvori and Miroslav Kraljević gallery. The show has presented a respectable section of more relevant authors from the past half of the century. Besides weak response from the audience, it has brought about – at least regarding the status of video art in Croatia – an indicative excess by two artists belonging to the younger generation. Through carefully planned action, Goran Karabodgan and Nikica Klobučar misappropriated, made a copy and then, via site www.enigmaobjekta.com offered everyone a charge-free DVD whose scrawled title "Beuys all" comprised - clearly connoted - complete Bobour's offer of video material by legendary Joseph Beuys. The artitsts took possession of the actual DVD just as much as is it takes to rip'n'burn and then they immediately returned it to the showroom. The rest is known from the newspapers. The artists have been taken in for a hearing, and  finally court acquitted them of all charges. We can easily assume that in a case of missapropriation of a painting or any other  art object, or even a technical unit consisting of monitor and reproduction device, the legal consequences would probably be different. One can presume the involved artists also would not misappropriate with equal ease some traditional art object. even if it was only temporarily. In any case, not so simply. The whole case has evanescenced in a grey zone of benevolence and inexistence of legal regulation. To justify their action, the artists have claimed all kinds of arguments: from a freedom of artistic expression, to  organizer's negligence, to colonial relation of Paris institution to invoking the presumption that even Beuys himself didn't think much of a copyright concept – which in reality implies institutional exploiting of copyright instead of its free distribution - and therefore Beuys would be the first to support anarchist character of their action. Involved institutions endeavoured to solve the whole case with as little hassle and soon as possible. The only repercussion was to include the involved two-man team onto never publicly proclaimed black list, which until the furthest notice excludes them from the MSU activities. Basis of this art action discloses romantic attitude on exclusion of artistic creation (which in their case means any act done by someone with an artistic vocation gained through education) from totality of legally regulated social relations. It also reveals typical public presumption on artists, one that is close to youthful energy, as well as tacit consensus on irresponsibility of an artistic act that is confused with a freedom of art creation. The case has touched all the levels of complex relation by which video art still radically transforms inveterate structures of entire social context of the art creation. It demonstrated basically tense, almost hostile relation and general dissatisfaction of the artists with institutions and also manifested disaccord of the artists with generally ruling concept of the copyright. The whole affair proved that scandal is the accepted strategy of getting even with institutional despotism  and cultural colonialism, while possibility of endless copying of video works is a tool in battle against institutions' monopoly. The case revealed impotence and negligence of the Croatian institutions  in control of presentation of video art/documentation, lack of juridical definition and museological care towards video art, based on hidden argument of its lesser value and importance in relation to traditional art disciplines. Finally, it revealed humiliating tacit social consensus on unimportance of an art act which here got manifested through institute of forgiveness, understanding and mitigating circumstances, otherwise assigned to children and persons within a state of diminished responsibility. To support these claims I shall quote the acquittal which after summarized event calls upon ".... institute of Insignificant act form the paragraph 287 of the Criminal Code. The mentioned institution states there is no criminal act, although its legal features have been realized if the act is obviously insignificant regarding the manner of treatment by perpetrator, his guilt and following consequences to protected goods and legal system." (quote from Court's decision K-DO 4505/05 of April 25th 2005). The acquittal represents Pyrrhic victory of the artists, one that made everyone happy. However, nobody is not and cannot be satisfied that case of www.enigmaobjekta.com, as much as it has escaped control and caught everyone off guard, has not been used to articulate obviously opposed stances and clearly outlined conflict spheres. **

* Segment of the text on Sandra Sterle is based on my introductory essay to the catalogue of exhibition "Integration / Who will play?" published by Galženica Gallery in 2004.