The New Art Practice in Yugoslavia, 1966-1978

This discussion was spelled out in the photocopies exhibited
by Gergelj Urkom: The Evening News of 31 October, 1971,
The Story of a Shoelace (Fig. 227), The Carpet, Hair, The
Tassel, The Newspaper, a catalogue of 10 author's copies
(Fig. 226). Urkom used the xerox as a machine for copying
in Six Minutes in the Operation of a Clock, (1971 72, Fig. 262,
shown at the exhibition "Young Artists and Young Critics",
Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade). The materials chosen
for photocopying are almost invisible, concealed on the
photocopy. Urkom's intention is to produce a work without
form the invisible object. The movement of the clock
hand, in a process in which the clock records the work of the
Xerox machine and the xerox machine that of the clock, is
barely discernible on the paper. All Urkom's subsequent works
have the same quality, the interspace, an interlayer of the
inv'sible, which he adopts as a radical attitude to life and
behaviour. This quality makes his work irreproducible.
Urkom's work concerned with art without form and with the
object, partly or totally concealed, are related to the early
works-projects of the Art and Language group and to Sol
LeWitt's works.
At the exhibition "October 71" Raa Todosijevi showed objects
made from wood, wire and string entitled The Coils (Fig. 236);
he also presented projects for objects on ozolite copies and
provided the instructions with which the objects could be
produced anywhere by anyone, while still remaining Todosijevi's
work His other exh.bits included two plaster sculptures and an
objects made from cloth entitled Floating Squares. His idea in
showing several groups of objects was to emphasise the
delusive nature of reality and negate the aesthetics of the work
of art.
At the same show Slobodan Era-Milivojevi performed the action
of sticking celotape cn all the mirrors he could find in the
Students' Cultural Centre (Fig. 237). At the opening of the
show he performed the action of sticking celotape all over
Marina Abramovi (Fig. 240). An action similar to that of
sticking celotape over mirrors was the smearing of glass
with marmelade (all the glass that is part of the inventory used
for exhibitions in the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Ni was
covered with marmelade in 1973), which expresses the need
to eliminate all the pictures and reflecting surfaces such as
mirrors, glass, polished metals, eyes, seas ... A parallel to
this may be found perhaps in Yves Klein's objects/paintings
covered with ultramarine or gold and in his idea about
painting the whole planet blue or gold.
Zoran Popovi showed a series of objects entitled Kancum Art
(kancelarija means office in Serbo-Croatian), which consisted
of office equipment.
Marina Abramovi showed a series of sound boxes
cardboard boxes, from which could be heard Bleeting,
Moaning and A Shot. She also produced the first Sound
Space. Birds Twittering in the Tree. by placing a loudspeaker
which transmitted the chirping of birds in a tree in front of
the SCC.
During 1972 she produced a number of Sound Spaces, all of
which were designed in such a way as to provoke shock in the
audience, a feature that marks all her work and especially
her body actions. In her sound environments she selects
sounds that result from natural or mechanical operations and
are therefore a kind of ready-made, a finished material or
object. The space, which is usually round in shape is stressed
by means of light beams or while draperies (Fig. 242).
Sound effects have an important role in her body actions: a
tape recorder and video tape record and immediately play
back the sound and action of the body, so that the rhythms
and movement seen on video tape play an equal part in the
action. The sound in the sound environements and the
artist's own body in the body actions are used in such a way
that both are viewed from the outside, as an object, with the
body or the space acting as the reacting subject.
The same artists participated in the exhibition "Young Artists
and Young Critics" in 1972 at the Museum of Contemporary Art
(Fig. 238). At the -Festival of Expanded Media" organized
by the SCC within the framework of the f. rst "April Meetings"
Slobodan Milivojevi showed his 21M (Ziveo prvi maj Long
Live May 1n, Figs. 264), the first in a series of performances in
which he introduced the participation of several persons.
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"October 72" (Figs. 228, 230, 231, 233, 239, 242) consisted of six
exhibitions and projects. The authors of the exhibited texts were
members of the art board of the SCC Gallery: Dunja Blaevi,
Nikola Vizner, Biljana Tomi and myself. Like the preceding
show, "October 72" was not held only within the walls of the
Students' Centre Gallery. The projects and proposals of all
the participants were interrelated in the form of an internal
discussion. The exhibition was not a fixed, abstract and linear
event, it was not planned in advance. Its use, i.e. the use of
each work was a demonstration of the exhibition and of the
work.
On the glass door, the entrance to the Gallery. Urkom stuck
a cassette-shaped piece of paper with the inscription The
Definition of what art is not (Fig. 228), thus presenting his
idea of the interstratum, the hidden object. In the gallery he
showed the Mental Object.' two sheets of white paper from an
earlier work in which he used a sheet of A4 paper to obtain
the photocopy in the positive and the negative. Urkom defines
the projects on A4 paper as objects for certain mental
exercises (the slide-project, the SCC, 1972): "Ranges 73",
Gallery of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, 1973: Video Project,
London, 1973). On the example of a previous, xeroxed work,
Urkom realized, as the work itself, the positive-negative relation
between the two works.
Marina Abramovi's sound environment is filled with sounds
that imitate the destruction of the building, while the actual
building is floodlit; in the Airport Sound Environment the voice
of the ariport announcer is heard n the lobby, while the sound
heard in The Circular Space is the echo of a strung wire.
In The Dark Chamber (Fig. 239) Milivojevi was standing in the
corner of the chamber beneath dim red light so that the contour
of his head was barely discernible. The chamber could be
entered only by one spectator at a time, who, after a few
moments, would discern photographs on the wall or a
marmelade jar and a knife covered with marmelade. After
some time the spectator would notice the contours of
Milivojevi's head. This usually produced a shock in the
viewer because he had the feeling that someone was
watching him without his being able to see the observer.
Nea Paripovi hung Three Letter Tapes (Fig. 233) and a
Number Tape on the wall. Zoran Popovi presented his work
The Axioms (Figs. 230-231), which consisted of eight basic
signs/notions: the circle the square, the vertical crossed by
the horizontal, the diagonal, the point, the vertical, two crossed
diagonals and the empty (black) square, presented as graphic
diagrammes white lines cut in black square surfaces,
constructed on the principle of symmetry. During "October 72"
he also gave a performance of The Axioms: standing in a
pitch dark room with small lighted bulbs fixed on his
fingertips, he repeated the signs endlessly with the same
movements to the accompaniement of monotonous rhythms.
Todosijevi showed the project Homo Art and a group of
objects, The Biological Process consisting of a piece of gauze.
wire, a lath, a pot with coloured water and pieces of string.
After "October 73" the same group of artists organized the
exhibition "Materials 73" at the Gallery of Contemporary Art
in Ni. They also produced a four-hour performance at the
1973 Edinburgh Art Festival (Richard Demarco Gallery).
The exhibition in Ni was the only joint exhibition of the group
in Yugoslavia. They subsequently exhibited in one-man shows
and in so-called theme shows which were organized by art
critics and differed in character from the exhibitions they put
up themselves.
They defined their initial work in the group as new attitudes,
which implied not so much the group's aesthetic and artistic
programme as the answer to the current situation in art and
culture in a concrete area and the prevailing mentality for which
art is historically fixed and can therefore use only certain
media and perform a fixed social function.
The result of a critical stand to the traditional forms of art and
culture was "October 75", a show of texts, proposals and
projects which define the social authenticity of overcoming
the traditional forms of culture and art. Organized and put up by
the SCC Gallery and artists and critics including Dunja
Blaevi, Nena Baljkovi, Vladimir Gudac, Jea Denegri, Bojana
Peji, Zoran Popovi, Raa Todosijevi, Slavko Timotijevi,
Goran Dordevi, Dragica Vukadinovi and myself, "October 75"
was not a platform for theoretical defintions of the untraditional