The Misfits.pdf - Muzej suvremene umjetnosti Zagreb

does not offer a social utopia but, on the con-
trary, provides a personal "daily" utopia made
in the context of social limitations and per-
sonal attitudes.
Misunderstanding
Although Martinis in his video and multimedia
works often deals with communication, the
purpose of these works is not communication.
In installations and video art from the 1980s
(Sic Transit. 1981, Image Is Virus, 1983) and par-
ticularly the 1990s (The Line of Fire, 1994:
Coma. 1997; Binary Series, 1998). Martinis used
communication to create an autonomous
(metaphorical) work, rather than to convey a
message. In the video installation The Line of
Fire, the faces in slow motion spout fire, not words.
In the Binary Series of installations and multimedia
actions. Martinis encodes the message using the
binary principle of the Morse alphabet or the digi-
tal code system of digits 1 and 0. The messages are
accessible only to those who can decode them.
Although binary codes are the foundation of mod-
ern technology and global progress. most users of
technology have no knowledge of its language. In
the video installation To America Say.33 2001.
what we see on the screen is the title of Hollywood
film King Kong. edited so that identical frames alter-
nate at a varied pace with minimal changes. It is,
however, clear that behind this sequence is a bina-
ry coded message. Although this may seem like a
tautological procedure in which the work is con-
cerned with itself, its in-depth, subversive dimen-
sion charges it with a poignant social commitment.
With these works Martinis touched upon a number
of sensitive issues concerning global and individual
freedom, equality and distribution of power.
THE MISFITS I 14
Art as total non-art
Community Art started out in 2001 when an artistic
group34 of the same name was founded. Evolved
from the several years long project of Weekend Art,
its goal was to prompt communication that would
aid development of new and better relationships
between individuals and communities. The strategy
of this group may be said to inaugurate a new
model of "total non-art" in which everything is sub-
ordinated to forms of communication, dialogue and
exchange, interaction and partnership with the aim
of creating new communities that would perhaps
have the character of a new form of art.
Andreja Kulunit devoted several multidisciplinary
projects. such as Closed Reality - Embryo (1999-
2000) or the recently started Distributive
lustice36 (2001-) to exploration of the possibil-
ities of expression and new fields of action
provided by online communication. For the
majority of cyber space users, the virtual
world ends when the monitor, an interface
between the real and the virtual, is shut down.
This is not quite accurate as it is based on a
misconception that virtual space is an entirely
new space, separate from reality. In fact, virtu-
al space is just a mirror for reality: whatever
exists in the real world is also there in the vir-
tual one. They are partly differentiated by
their image, but structurally they are both
constructed of data and pure information.
Closed Reality - Embryo is an interactive proj-
ect of fictitious content that supplies tools to
design an utopian human being (embryo). a
"custom made" baby. The online project was
accompanied by discussions, lectures and
workshops which analyzed the various levels
and aspects of the project, from the ethical
dimension of bioengineering and cloning to
the relation towards socio-cultural context
and its impact of self-construction.
In the project Distributive justice Andreja