The Misfits.pdf - Muzej suvremene umjetnosti Zagreb

putting it together in a perfunctory way from In the numerous texts he exhibited on pink
wooden boards. In A Double Offense, Mladen silk, of which we shall mention only one: "An
Stilinovit painted the Yugoslav flag over a ban- attack against my art is an attack against
knote, irritating the public by failing to respect two socialism and progress", he intentionally
laws, one prohibiting the free use of the flag. and leaves the situation unclear in order to act in
the other prohibiting the destruction of the interspace. Stilinovi sees language as a
money. He wrote texts on banknotes in his living thing, essential in a certain time and place. He
own blood, used money in collages... takes it out of one context and adds another con-
Mladen Stilinovi found the instructive and text to it. This contamination of context tells us
protected symbols of socialism particularly about the way in which political power is used and
provoking. One of the untouchable taboos in about the need to explore carefully the contradic-
socialist countries was the color red. His works tions it contains. The subversion Stilinovi con-
desymbolizing red - even though they used a stantly carried out in his "linguistic works" consist-
tautological structure, as in Consumption of ed not only of violating public opinion, morality,
Red (a painting on which this text is inscribed the law ... but also in finding a paradoxical speech
in red), The Auction of Red (the action of put- liberated from all dogma - in other words, in inven-
ting up for auction a painting on which The tion and provocation.
Auction of Red was inscribed in red), My Red Humor has always been very important both for
(a series of photographs on which the author Martek and for Stilinovi, but their works are no less
cuts his finger with a razor blade and writes on subversive because of this. Moreover, these individ-
the palm of his hand in his own blood) - were ual actions undermined politics as an institution.
not analytical works, but an anarchic and cyn- Because where there is resistance, the system itself
ical rebellion against social symbols. The is threatened. Every initiative may be used as an
Auction of Red is a tautology because the example and lead to other actions.
author auctioned off a red painting, but the The frequent references to Bakhunin and his prede-
"socialist" reading turns the tautology into an cessors Proudhon and Stirner, as well as De Sade,
absurdity. The experience of a color. thought and the quotations from their works in those of
Stilinovi, should be something individual, but Sven Stilinovic pointed to the liberal traditions of
ideology constantly denies this. In Stilinovies the Group. Freedom of creation and freedom
works, the viewer was constantly exposed to the of behavior were priorities. The "non-political"
stimuli of absurd meanings. In the series of photo- stance of these artists was political in the
graphs The Foot-Bread Relationship, the artist kicks anarchic sense. Proudhon's idea of "No state,
a loaf of bread. What an aggressive thing to do! On no government, the absolute freedom of peo-
the one hand, according to R. Barthes. bread is a ple and citizens" was, one might say, felt in
sign of virtue, religion, labor, suffering, need, pover- their works. Sven Stilinovi especially liked to
ty; on the other hand, it is a means of blackmail: juxtapose his photographs and the texts by
tyrants keep the people subjugated by threatening anarchic thinkers in which the emphasis is on
to leave them breadless. Bread is also a symbol of the autonomy of the individual as opposed to
oppression. The deconstruction of ideological sym- the state, as well as on resistance to all the
bols has to be recognized here. Denial and irony are forces within people that deprive them of
Stilinovi's chief methods. their right to arrange their life according to
31 I THE MISFITS