The New Art Practice in Yugoslavia, 1966-1978

Vladan Radovanovi
About my Work
Belgrade
Figs. 223-225
A considerable area of the research that I have been doing
comprises approaches closely related to the new trends in
art (Figs. 223-225). Some of the characteristics of recent
trends (happening-fluxus, body art, conceptual art) appear as
early as 1955-1957 in the works I produced quite independently
of the influences and events which were already becoming
topical at the time. These works include proposals for
performances, description of performances and exercises
(Glass is Taken, Spectacles, Rope and Thumbs, and others,
1956-1957), Developing One's Own Body (1956) and projects
which centre on self-analysis and the analysis of one's
coming into existence. (Subtraction 1955-1956, Lying Down
1957, and others). The features characteristic of the
abovementioned trends are not, of course, clearly delimited;
the three groups intermingle. A feature common to all three
groups is the integration of several media (visual, phonic,
tactile), the use of texts, and occasionally collage. Research
of this type is continued anly later, from 1970 onwards. It
comprises new projects, verbo-plastic-tactile, kinetic works and
trens-media (tape-paper, photo and book medium).
Projects for performance included «actions» or were a record
of their realization. The performances were carried out inside
a room, without the social implications found in fluxus, or the
destructions found in happenings. Though such performances
were not necessarily classed as art, it was not considered
that they were anti-art either. The project as a proposal is
not a report on that accomplished, nor an accomplishment
of that proposed, nor a guarantee of the realization of the
work in general. If the project is an outline for something
that, once performed, will become a work which will not
necessarily be carried out, then the very notion of a work is
brought into question. While the reality of a project for a
performance lies in pointing out something which may remain
nothing but a possibility, with exercises it is important to
actually carry out and experience what has been described.
The similarity of the second group of projects with body art
lies in treating the body as the material on which work is
performed, and thus the body becomes both subject and object.
This again was not necessarily classed as art. Since the
feeling of the body is stressed rather than its visible appearance,
it is even less possible for the subject to be an object for
others. The fact of attaching greater importance to the
proposed experience with one's own body than to the
observation of someone else's experience leads to
mono-communicativeness. Otherwise, the impulse to feel one's
body, to feel it as one's own, represents the starting point
for work. Since this impulse has a tautological relation to the
already existing feeling of the body, this relation has only to
be analogized by means of data text and object and
somebody's participation.
In projects of self-analysis and other similar recent research
projects there are, in addition to autonomous trends, certain
features that can be related to conceptual art.
In Subtraction and Lying Down the demateralization of the
object is not particularly stressed, since these projects were
not conceived as deriving from the field of plastic arts. It was
considered from the start that they derive from an area lying
between the art genres and the media. In the first three parts
of Subtraction descriptions are given of the actions, intentions
and states which affect the formal relations, while in the fourth
part, the observer is ordered to subtract the concrete contents
which had been added to the subject-matter. In more recent
projects the object has not disappeared, but its position has
been obscured when it acts as both presentation and
realization of the project. Reduced to conventional signs which
only serve to designate and not to influence, the object is
replaceable by another object as long as it refers to the same
concept. The irreplaceability of the concept shows that the
object has been subjected to the concept.
In the trans-media there is a tendency to depersonalize the
artistic genre. The media can be retained and the related
artistic genres need not be represented, because the simple fact
that we listen to something does not necesarily mean that this
belongs to music, literature or the theatre.
Already in Subtraction the conceptual approach is most closely
related to the scheme, outline and idea of the work which has
not, however, been identified with art. The expression
«representation» was used for the elements of the scheme which
should «spark off from within., while in actual fact, what we
had in mind was the representation of the notion (hypotheposis).
After the request for reduction was made, the observer is asked
in the fourth part of «Subtraction» to retain that «which is ...
formed in the mind., which can be «taken as a cluster of
sense, meaning.. The scheme presented at the end shows
the work as a whole, the setting up of the fourth part on the
basis of the reduction of the previous three, the position and
behaviour of notions within the coordinate system of intensity
and time. However, there is an awareness that this scheme is
only a «material', presentation of a construction which should
be grasped in itself: Words in themselves are inadequate to
direct us to the 'graph of subtraction.. It is easier to spark
of the subtraction from within. This does not have to be done
with the aid of material or through elaboration With
regard to the more recent projects, in addition to the idea as a
notion which is a logical creation, I believe that the further we
go towards an individual piece of work, the more it becomes
a question of ideas as something experienced as general
representations, close to the generl meaning: idea image,
appearance.
Self-analysis in earlier works has developed in later works
into self-confidence, but not in the sense of usurping
uncoditional rights to proclaim somethnig as artistic and
valuable. In Subtraction self-analysis covers everything,
starting from the consideration of certain elements of the work
in the form of treatises or outlines of possible dialogues with
the audience, to the consideration of the whole work which is
itself included in the work. In the tape and paper medium,
self-analysis is carried out during the general setting up of the
work and medium. Listening to the phonic-sematic model in
time and space is used to develop one's awareness of listening,
time and space. The new awareness consists in recognizing
the frequently overlooked reality of the «here. and ..now'
which, together with the equivalent audio-semantic resources,
create the necessary relations and function within the context
of work as a system.
The linguistic nature of these works derives from the fact that
they are mainly discursive. Here too the role of «speech. was
«to raise the shemes which were produced to determine a
work of art» (K. Mille), and to facilitate the apperance of the
tautological component which emerges when meaning and
function coincide. But the fact that their elements me2n
something. that they are of a linguistic nature, and that the
works themselves, by dealing with the articulative, can be
classed under «art as language., does not mean that art in
general is language, because it also contains efements which
have an immediate effect and are of a factual nature.
Already used in the Portrait-Landscape (1954) and Subtraction,
tautology appears in the more recent works as a unit of work,
and not as a specific type of work in relation to art, not in the
definition of art according to which «a special world of art is
art» (Joseph Kosuth). While tautological systems also cover
their own definitions of symbols, a work of art is a tautology
only when all the definitions are comprised within the work,
which is rare. The extension of the tautological to the definition
of art leads to even greater difficulties. In the past, the
connotation of the word «art» changed, but it was never
replaced by a different expression. This replacement is achieved
already by the definition according to which «art is a definition
of art». Since art has never been this, the word «art. as used
in the above definition does not refer to art, this definition only
says that the nature of «something. is its own proper definition,
but not that this is art. Owing to the dubious nature of such
operations which have become quite widespread, I thought it
important to adopt an approach which would make my work
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