The Misfits.pdf - Muzej suvremene umjetnosti Zagreb

end hikes on Medvednica, and gradually quite when the project was presented on the web
deliberately and consciously so, into a highly aes- site of Frac Languedoc-Roussillon
theticised art product, whether it was to do with (www.frac.org/weekend.htm). from 28 June to
the series of postcards that they would send by 18 October 1998. Thus the project. after being
post to thousands of addresses of friends and art distributed via exhibitions, via postcards sent
professionals, or of showing up in the virtual space by snail-mail and inserts in magazines12 set out
of the net of all nets, or slide projections and pho- into the digital medium which was to procure
tographs at various international exhibitions. Unlike it a dematerialisation completely different
Gorgona, which took no care to leave any trace of from that of Gorgona - and enabling it to com-
itself, working assiduously at its own dematerialisa- municate with a still greater audience.
tion. the essence of the WA project was in the It is in this that there is the greatest difference
shaping of being together, of intersubjectivity, into between Gorgona and Weekend Art. Although
a work of art, an art product. Interpersonal rela- WA has taken over the methods of proto-con-
tions, thus, are materialised into an aesthetic ceptual and conceptual art of the sixties and
object, designed for distribution, for communica- seventies, it has articulated them in a new
tion with the public. However, Battista llit, the manner. Thus there is no return of conceptual
intellectual force principally behind WA. who signs art. The process of work no longer has primary
the project as director, photographer and pro- significance over the manner in which the
ducer, is not interested in the documentation work is materialised. But the art object has now
of a Sunday performance without a public in taken on new importance. It does not necessarily
the same way that the conceptual art of the have to be painting or sculpture, rather the rela-
seventies worked. Thus the slides, postcards tionships that are created among those taking part
and photographs have no date about when in the process, becoming in this manner an aesthet-
the excursion took place. More than the doc- ic object.13
umentary nature, he is interested in media Unlike many art projects of the nineties that are
transformation and transitiveness, conceal- founded on a relational aesthetics and the ambition
ment and camouflage of the real nature of the of a noisy patching up of the world, what is much
media, the transition from one medium to closer to the WA artists (and Gorgona too after all)
another. For this reason it is hard to determine is the ideal of art as a minimal event - or eventless-
the genre of the WA project, because there ness - which was of key importance for artists like
are elements of performance, Body Art, pho- John Cage, the Fluxus. Yves Klein, the Zero group
tography, film. Land Art, Mail Art and and the Azimuth group.
Conceptual Art all mixed up. With conscious Describing the happening of Allan Kaprow on the
blurring of the borders and taking over other Segal property. on the beach, in which men and
identities, WA is clearly opposed to the mod- women watch the play of the wind in the vegeta-
ernist dogma about truth to medium. Also tion on the surface of the sea. French critics Allain
making a contribution to instability is the tran- Joufroy and J. J. Levaque in a text called "Crisis of
sition from one space to another, from the pri- Content in Today's Art", from way back in 1964,
vate space to the public, from the real to the conclude: "There is no better performance than the
virtual. It is interesting that the WA walks got moment in which one lives, no dialogue better than
their first date of origin in the virtual space, a talk with friends. Is this not in fact the abandon-
41 THE MISFITS