Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...

the social under socialism
example, was ‘Dean of the Royal Counsel and Keeper of Seals’). Various
photomontages produced an amusing false history for the activities of
Restany as ‘President of the National Assembly’ (meeting Stalin, Brezhnev,
Roosevelt, etc.). It is instructive to compare this imaginary realm
with Marcel Broodthaers’ fi ctional institution brought to a conclusion
shortly before Argíllia was formulated, the Musée d’art Moderne (1968–
72). Both use the trappings of an institution (headed paper, fi ctional
directors, badges, stamps, etc.) and make reference to the nineteenth
century, but Mlynárčik’s project has none of the elliptical poetics of
Broodthaers’ pseudo- museum (which was geared towards an oblique
demystifi cation of museum institutions and their imperial foundations).
Rather, Argíllia is inspired by Saint- Exupéry’s novel The Little Prince
(1943), the story of a boy who visits other planets, including earth, all of
them inhabited by fl awed adults. Like Mlynárčik’s earlier festivals, Argíllia
is above all escapist. In an interview undertaken in 1981, Mlynárčik
refl ected on this tendency in his work:
Since 1970 our world has been so greatly permeated with ideology that
should you even decide to plant a fl ower somewhere it is perceived as
a political gesture. Especially if your name is Mlynárčik . . . Should
ideology be the problem of my life, or some politician currently in
power, or some regime? I would like to live in transcendence, somewhere
else, and be devoted to different values . . . There are much
higher gains to consider which do not overlap with superfi cial worldly
planes. 54
Artists like Mlynárčik present something of a problem for Western critics
keen to fi nd heroic gestures of dissident opposition to totalitarian regimes.
Participation and collaboration were for him a way to manageably live
with the world, to create a ‘total expression’ of art as life (for which he
unexpectedly references Mayakovsky and LEF as precursors): in short, ‘to
fuse organically with life in the name of the totality of life, the totality of
reality!’ 55
What matters art historically is that Mlynárčik’s brand of collective
happening is not an isolated example in Slovakia: other actions by artists
during this period are equally festivalist and escapist, with an interest in
even more ancient forms of nature ritual. Jana Żelibská’s Betrothal of
Spring (1970), for example, invited friends of the artist to a remote country
location (in this case a fi eld close to a wood). 56 Her work, like that of
Mlynárčik, exemplifi es some of the typical characteristics of art of this
period in Slovakia: while adopting an avant- garde position vis- à- vis
collective production, participation and appropriation, it remains
attached to folkloric tradition and mythology as vestiges of a national
culture that had been erased by the Soviet presence.
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