art-e-conomy _ reader - marko stamenkovic

The ready-made might be not the most appropriate medium for the art activities in
the Balkans in the technological sense, but it is appropriate in terms of the content.
It can express the specific reality of countries affected by continuous economic
and political instability; especially if the industrial shapes and their difference from
perfection are used within profoundly conceptualized artistic projects. Focusing on the
ready-made as an artistic mode of expression was expressed in Tosevski’s “Dossier
‘96.” Its method of investigating the possibilities for a perfect mode of production,
along with other problems initiated by the switch to a market economy implies there
are other ways of using and interpreting the ready-made: e.g., the treating of state
symbols as “unready” ready-made products. Or, in the conditions of establishing a
new state with unclear strategies, as in the case of Vangeli’s projects, Naskovski used
theses images as a strong critical context of the bombardment of Serbia, emphasizing
the possibilities for manipulation via television--the most powerful ready-made of
all--during a time when the whole population was forced into a “home TV prison.”
The absurdities and paradoxes of life and art in the Balkans are emphasized by the
medium of ready-made. The tendency toward a society of high-tech objects and
the not-so-perfect everyday life of their consumers are inevitably in conflict so that
partial information about globalization and its technological advantages often sounds
unconvincing and hollow in such social, economical and political conditions.
This text was first published in the magazine Afterimage, January 2001 and in Primary
Documents: A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art since the 1950s, The MOMA,
New York, 2002
1. Marcel Duchamp, “The Richard Mutt Case,” in The Blind Man (No. 1), April 10, 1917. (The Blind
Man was a magazine published on the occasion of the first exhibition of the Society of Independent
Artists, Inc. at the Grand Central Palace in New York City.)
2. Gene Swenson, “What is Pop Art,” in Art News 62 (November 1963), p. 26, quoted according
to Hal Foster, The Return of the Real (Cambridge: MIT Press. 1996), p. 130.
3. Thierry De Duve, Kant after Duchamp (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), p.413.
4. Ibid., p. 295. The statement,” I threw a bottle rack and urinal in their faces as a challenge and
now they admire them for their beauty” once attributed to Duchamp, now, according to De Duve, is
re-attributed to Hans Richter.
5. Trajko Slavevski, Makedonska ekonomija vs tranzicija (Eko Press: Skopje, 1955), pp. 83.87.
In this book, a professor from the Faculty of Economics at Skopje University investigates different
models of privatization in western and eastern countries, arguing with the local government and
solvency officials that the fast model of privatization employed in the Czech Republic would be more
appropriate than the slower approach already employed in Macedonia.
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