DOI article:
Beroš, Nada: Blkan Bacteria
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51713#0285
vertical axis with a self-portrait above and portraits
of men in her life bellow, what we are confronted
with is not simply the embarrassment of coming
to terms with someone’s intimacy, but also the very
modem fear of aging and dying. No other period has
invested so much in the body and no other period
has been faced with such an inflation of insensitivity
towards the body of others. But in the general indif-
férence of our time and the dismantling of many
taboos, the taboo of death refuses to die. Vlasta
Delimar’s work the late 1990s further accentuâtes
the ultra-melancholy of the female body, a kind of
astringent beauty that borders on death (“Mature
Woman”, 1997).
Mladen Stilinovic, artist living in Zagreb, was
probably one of the best conceptual artists in this
region to mock the communist ideology during the
leaden 1970s and 1980s. In his “Exploitation of
Dead”, work-in-progress, which started in 1984 and
lasted till the beginning of the 1990s, he clearly shows
the other side of the glorious life under Tito’s régime.
The artist himself takés up the role of an exploiter.
Fragmentation, montage and appropriation are the
key déterminants of his work. Exploiting the dead
poetics: Russian Avant-garde, Socialist Realism and
Geometrie Abstraction of the 1950s (he calls them
dead because they have ceased to convey meaning),
but also the signs of death: the cross and the star,
Stilinovic, points out worn out art language problems
and the pétrification of cliché perceptions caught in
various idéologies. The photograph of youth rally,
the labour actions or some other socialist ritual, a
plate or painted fie, monochromes or texts, mourning
band or simply cake, they ail affect each other, creat-
ing an endless words-and-images game of different
meanings and possible misinterpretations.
Through reconstruction and contextual dé-
composition these amazing, mostly small objects
lined up in thick rows (once again, after Malevich’s
last futuristic exhibition in 1915), are losing their
concreteness and one-dimensionality. They show
oxymoronic nature of Stilinovic’s works, his effort
to equalise a pathetic tone with burlesques “run for
a cake” in a world where many guises have already
dropped. In the 1990s he reflected the overall impov-
ŽIŽEK, S.: The Spectre is Still Roaming Around. An Introduction
to the Communist Manifesta. Zagreb 1998, p. 73.
erishment of middle dass caused by ravages of war
as well as by unscrupulous acquisition of wealth by a
handful of people in the process of privatisation of
state-owned property. In a sériés of installations, for
example “Money, eggs, authority”, Stilinovic’s simple
and “poor works” continue to “convey meaning”,
because the complexity and contradiction of post-
communist society didn’t cease with the changes of
governments and recent process of démocratisation.
“The ideologicaldream of a unitedEurope aims at achieving
the (impossible) balance between the two components: füll inté-
gration into theglobal market; retaining the spécifie national
and ethnie identities. What we aregetting in post-communist
Eastern Europe is a kind of negative, dystopian réalisation
of this dream — in short, the worst of both worlds, an uncon-
strainedmarket combinedwith ideologicalfundamentalistu”
says Zižek in his The Spectre is Still Roaming Around.
An Introduction to the Communist Manifesta?
“The twentieth Century began in Sarajevo. The twenty-first
Century has begun in Sarajevo, toof wsxrie. Susan Sonntag,
one of the few intellectuals who visited Sarajevo
during the siege, in her book Spring in Sarajevo! It
is true that Contemporary art scene in Bosnia and
Herzegovina is almost completely confined to Sara-
jevo, emblematic city of the last wars in the Balkans.
The siege of Sarajevo, that lasted more than three
years, deeply marked both the present life and the
art scene. Needless to say, due to the cataclysms of
war many people, and among them many artists, left
their home and this process is still going on. But
many stayed fighting for their lives and even express
their feelings in the form of artwork. During the
war, several international artists, photographers and
writers spent some time in besieged city helping the
Sarajevo artists to create an art scene of résistance
and survival. Paradoxically, a long period during
which Sarajevo was eut off from the outer world
has not resulted in the complexes of inferiority, on
the contrary, young artist feel to be equal part of an
international art scene.
Besides material damage, many professions, such
as art historian, curator, critic, etc, disappeared. The
restoration of Sarajevo contemporary art scene was
greatly helped by Dunja Blaževič, a distinguished art
historian, curator and critic, who left Belgrade as an
6 SONTAG, S.: Spring in Sarajevo, 1993.
277
of men in her life bellow, what we are confronted
with is not simply the embarrassment of coming
to terms with someone’s intimacy, but also the very
modem fear of aging and dying. No other period has
invested so much in the body and no other period
has been faced with such an inflation of insensitivity
towards the body of others. But in the general indif-
férence of our time and the dismantling of many
taboos, the taboo of death refuses to die. Vlasta
Delimar’s work the late 1990s further accentuâtes
the ultra-melancholy of the female body, a kind of
astringent beauty that borders on death (“Mature
Woman”, 1997).
Mladen Stilinovic, artist living in Zagreb, was
probably one of the best conceptual artists in this
region to mock the communist ideology during the
leaden 1970s and 1980s. In his “Exploitation of
Dead”, work-in-progress, which started in 1984 and
lasted till the beginning of the 1990s, he clearly shows
the other side of the glorious life under Tito’s régime.
The artist himself takés up the role of an exploiter.
Fragmentation, montage and appropriation are the
key déterminants of his work. Exploiting the dead
poetics: Russian Avant-garde, Socialist Realism and
Geometrie Abstraction of the 1950s (he calls them
dead because they have ceased to convey meaning),
but also the signs of death: the cross and the star,
Stilinovic, points out worn out art language problems
and the pétrification of cliché perceptions caught in
various idéologies. The photograph of youth rally,
the labour actions or some other socialist ritual, a
plate or painted fie, monochromes or texts, mourning
band or simply cake, they ail affect each other, creat-
ing an endless words-and-images game of different
meanings and possible misinterpretations.
Through reconstruction and contextual dé-
composition these amazing, mostly small objects
lined up in thick rows (once again, after Malevich’s
last futuristic exhibition in 1915), are losing their
concreteness and one-dimensionality. They show
oxymoronic nature of Stilinovic’s works, his effort
to equalise a pathetic tone with burlesques “run for
a cake” in a world where many guises have already
dropped. In the 1990s he reflected the overall impov-
ŽIŽEK, S.: The Spectre is Still Roaming Around. An Introduction
to the Communist Manifesta. Zagreb 1998, p. 73.
erishment of middle dass caused by ravages of war
as well as by unscrupulous acquisition of wealth by a
handful of people in the process of privatisation of
state-owned property. In a sériés of installations, for
example “Money, eggs, authority”, Stilinovic’s simple
and “poor works” continue to “convey meaning”,
because the complexity and contradiction of post-
communist society didn’t cease with the changes of
governments and recent process of démocratisation.
“The ideologicaldream of a unitedEurope aims at achieving
the (impossible) balance between the two components: füll inté-
gration into theglobal market; retaining the spécifie national
and ethnie identities. What we aregetting in post-communist
Eastern Europe is a kind of negative, dystopian réalisation
of this dream — in short, the worst of both worlds, an uncon-
strainedmarket combinedwith ideologicalfundamentalistu”
says Zižek in his The Spectre is Still Roaming Around.
An Introduction to the Communist Manifesta?
“The twentieth Century began in Sarajevo. The twenty-first
Century has begun in Sarajevo, toof wsxrie. Susan Sonntag,
one of the few intellectuals who visited Sarajevo
during the siege, in her book Spring in Sarajevo! It
is true that Contemporary art scene in Bosnia and
Herzegovina is almost completely confined to Sara-
jevo, emblematic city of the last wars in the Balkans.
The siege of Sarajevo, that lasted more than three
years, deeply marked both the present life and the
art scene. Needless to say, due to the cataclysms of
war many people, and among them many artists, left
their home and this process is still going on. But
many stayed fighting for their lives and even express
their feelings in the form of artwork. During the
war, several international artists, photographers and
writers spent some time in besieged city helping the
Sarajevo artists to create an art scene of résistance
and survival. Paradoxically, a long period during
which Sarajevo was eut off from the outer world
has not resulted in the complexes of inferiority, on
the contrary, young artist feel to be equal part of an
international art scene.
Besides material damage, many professions, such
as art historian, curator, critic, etc, disappeared. The
restoration of Sarajevo contemporary art scene was
greatly helped by Dunja Blaževič, a distinguished art
historian, curator and critic, who left Belgrade as an
6 SONTAG, S.: Spring in Sarajevo, 1993.
277