art-e-conomy _ reader - marko stamenkovic

“Dossier ‘96” derived from a one-year research project by the artist, along with
four exhibitions, that placed the artist in a new role as he discovered new paradoxes.
Tosevski re-examined the problem of the extensive “production” of faulty objects by
bankrupt factories as well as the process of privatization in various stages. First, he
visited the factories that were declared insolvent, and with permission (not always
easily obtained) he took photos of the buildings and the piles of rejected objects. He
observed tons of decaying material on the premises of factories awaiting privatization.
Some managers declined to assist in the export and use of this material because
they hoped instead that they would be able to purchase the firms more cheaply if
these firms appeared to be less productive.[9]
It is worth noting the “desiring machines” concept, in which there is no distinction
between the product and the production--the desiring production has become the
continuum. Machines are connected to other machines in an endless chain, and
in such a context, “Dossier ‘96” could be treated in a way similar to that in which
desiring machines function--with ruptures, cracks and fissures. Distances and
fragmentations, in this schema, function best when they produce nothing at all
except the art itself.[10] To adopt the terms of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the invisible
power of capital is that it forces the system of managers and politicians to abuse
their positions and act as “wild beings?”[11]
The conversations with the workers and managers presented real adventures.
Tosevski needed to explain readymade and conceptual art to them, a challenge
in itself, especially when the workers were reluctant to talk for fear of losing their
jobs and the managers were reticent because they suspected their work was being
investigated for purposes beyond art. During 1996 the artist realized three exhibitions
in different cities where he found similar factories and received permission to relocate
a certain amount of waste material, although he was obliged to pay for some of it.
Galleries that usually display local artists were now being used to expose local factory
installations. For example, in Titov Veles, while Tosevski was exhibiting broken plates
from the local ceramics and porcelain factory, he projected a slide made of the original
enormous pile of abandoned material over the small pile of objects in the gallery and
thus simulated the actual situation in the factory yard. In addition, the destiny of the
gal lery itself furthered the concept since it was otherwise vacant.
In March 1997, Tosevski opened his large exhibition at the Museum of the City
of Skopje, displaying faulty textiles, granite blocks and porcelain from the three
previous exhibitions and adding a fourth - irregular bottles from a glass factory in
Skopje. In addition to the rejected factory material he projected slides of words taken
from an economics dictionary, defining terms such as “transition,” “transformation,”
“privatization,” “solvency” and “bankruptcy.” The paradoxes that Tosevski dealt with
may be interpreted by applying a theory of linguistic discourse to the given aesthetic
context. To be sure, the polemics surrounding the issue of whether performative
artistic acts still fall within the realm of the aesthetic can reach radical extremes,
from Duchamp’s assertion that art is separate from aesthetics to Greenberg’s claim
that the aesthetic is identical with the artistic. Regardless of one’s critical stance, it
is obvious that the performative work of art re-examines the relationship between
the artist ic, the aesthetic and the real.
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