The Misfits.pdf - Muzej suvremene umjetnosti Zagreb

Branka Stipanie
omatio-
(eljko Jerman)
What I
remember most from the time of the
exhibition-actions by the Group of Six Artists
is the spirit of constant rebellion: rebellion
everywhere and in all its aspects, varying
according to the occasion. Rather than waiting
for someone to issue them with an invitation,
they themselves found venues in which to
exhibit their work, bypassing the traps set by
art institutions. In the mid 70s they organized
exhibition-actions in Zagreb: on the bank of
the River Sava, in the center of the old town,
at the University: in Belgrade; in Venice; on the
beaches of the Adriatic coast; and elsewhere,
spontaneously. as a loose association of artists
realizing their ideas by appropriating a new
type of exhibition context. They set up their
works, which often knocked down the prevail-
ing aesthetic and ethical norms, on the grass,
they laid them out on the road, they project-
ed slides and films onto the walls of houses,
and they performed actions which disturbed
the public. The creative territory of the artists
was broad, and it seemed to be expanding by
the day.
It was important to break down people's pro-
hibitions, to get rid of the value judgments fet-
tering artistic creativity, to enable a work of
art to assert itself and test its own merit. With
their sudden, mostly one-day exhibition-
actions, the Group of Six Artists adopted a
style of guerrilla warfare, the tactics of con-
stant disturbance. These were "piecemeal"
permanent rebellions, a resistance full of criti-
cal spirit and imagination, simultaneously deri-
sive and joyful. Boris Demur, eljko Jerman.
Vlado Martek. Mladen and Sven Stilinovit. and
Fedor Vutemilovi, then very young artists,
resisted all forms of ideology, and each of
them waged a battle in his own way.
To change life, to change art, not to submit to
any requirements or systemic rules, any inherited
conventions in art, this was, in brief, the romantic
desire of each of them.
If society was hard to change, one could at least
shout out, "This is not my world," and radicalize
one's methods in art. eljko Jerman started his "rev-
olution" in photography. He addressed the photo-
graph in scribbling and writing ("Death, drop dead,
photograph"). he clouded his photographs, overex-
posed or underdeveloped them, ultimately reject-
ing the camera as his main tool, continuing to work
Ilko Jerman
Bloody Sluts, 1973
291 THE MISFITS