The Misfits.pdf - Muzej suvremene umjetnosti Zagreb

life and culture, which otherwise has the greatest the examples from Croatian art, know too well
power of cohesion, and represents the possible both what "troubles with ethics" and "troubles
cohabitation of their identities, but with the open with the East" are to put us somewhere
and unstable constitution of reality of meaning. and "where we haven't been". Namely, art is not
in the never-forgotten tradition of Duchamp. In this just Form, somewhere in the nowhereness of
work, the artist is institutionally aided by the critics, eternal infinity, but rather a form created in
theoretician and curators, of course, from a certain the dynamic of meeting, like a plaid and a
segment, and not with a general consensus: these braid of the work of art and the action of
theoreticians can almost be said to be imitating the other formations, whether artistic or not: and
artist in the transfer of artefacts from culture into where something takes place becomes sec-
the exceptionality of the space of art. ondary, the margin loses its favourable posi-
Such transfer is possible because they, as cultural tion of confirming the centre. As these artists
workers, are no longer tied merely by a partial are no longer burdened by the problems of
musealic or galleric goal, like for instance the view researching meaning and sense of the artistic
of aesthetic value, style or iconography. They share "language", "concept", "project" etc. through
a joint voice of activity in culture, or a close historical questions, today, within the frame-
theoretical and practical view of their action, work of the culture of eclectic, they test the bor-
coming from the lap of inciting the relation of ders of resistance which the global and/or local
intersubjectivity. like a Voice utopia' of our social field provides to their strategies.
age, a micro-approach to its 'crisis' environ- The afore-mentioned "troubles" spring exactly from
ment (a group against the mass, tactile against the awareness of these artists of the fact that there
the visual, event against the "linguistic" is not now, and there has never been, any imaginary
process of work, inclusion against distance place where the artist could be excluded from the
etc.). However, the observer/visitor of the world they present: they are more than included,
space of 'exhibition' also falls into the "inter- but as "post-subjects". The artist Goran Petercol
space", the same contextual situation of the says: "I am actually betraying the definition of proj-
choice of a certain model of behaviour: ect." What he means is that, although he works
between the passive look/consumer, for within the 'constructive idea' and 'analytical
whom the work catches the eye, and the methodology', his poetical modus operandi
active look/participant, with a palette of interim "betrays" the "constructive principle" of his-
forms (witness, partner, associate, protagonist...). In torical constructivism. by conceptualising it in
any case, the space of the exhibition becomes the an ambiguous manner. Namely, by not consti-
field of meeting, where the basic function of art is tuting a clear system of rules (project) of con-
actualised: to be exposed to mutual communication struction, where the construction does not get
of all relational factor, i.e. the process of communi- 'materialised' in a firm material, several equal-
cation itself. The communication has a term of ly valuable systems are generated, opening the
maturity all its own, sufficient to accept art both as production of varieties and the possibility to
the object and the subject of ethics. But strategies choose. When the artist in his light-object
of art, which at the same time continuously lean on installations uses radical reductionist tools
the experience of historical conceptualism and the such as light/no light and ready-made strate-
experience of historical ideologism, as shown by gies transferring the objective appearance into
THE MISFITS I 26