Küba: Journey against the Current

T-B A21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary

Renata Poljak László Csáki & Szabolcs Pálfi Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová

Želimir Žilnik Nedko Solakov Matei Bejenaru

Emanuel Danesch & David Rych Kutlug Ataman

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by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna

Slovakia

Vienna Vie Vienn nnaa ★ nn

★ Bratis Bratislava va

Austria

★ Budapest dap Hungary

Croatia

Vuk ukovar ★ ukovar

★ Nov Novii Sad

Serbia and Montenegro

Romania

★ Constanta ★ Rousse Rousse

Bulgaria

★ Ist stanbul stanbul b l

Turkey

Contents 8

Küba: Journey Against the Current Francesca von Habsburg

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Aesthetics as Travel Ivaylo Ditchev

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Kutlug Ataman Küba What is Küba?

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Life as a Metaphor

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Kutlug Atman

Daniela Zyman in conversation with Kutlug Ataman

34 “I Was Happy When I was a Virgin” On Being Puzzled Irit Rogoff

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Matei Bejenaru Travelling Guide

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How Rough May a “Rough Guide” Be? Branislav Dimitrijević

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Nedko Solakov A BG Bar Welcome to “A BG Bar”!

Iara Boubnova

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Želimir Žilnik Soap in Danube Opera Danube Soap Opera

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A Force Moving Movies

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Gabrielle Cram

Teofil Pančić and Nebojša Grujičić in conversation with Želimir Žilnik

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Media Ontology Mapping of Social and Art History in Novi Sad Zoran Pantelić and Kristian Lukić

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Renata Poljak All One Knows All One Knows Nataša Ilić

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Boris Budens’s Silent Albanians Politics as Nondiscursivity Sezgin Boynik

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From Stari Trg to Stari Aerodrom and Back: Answer to Sezgin Boynik Boris Buden

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László Csáki & Szabolcs Pálfi Agár – The Hungarian Greyhound Project Greyhound Country Zoltan Sebők

126 “My” Danube What Artists Should Google Sorin Antohi

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Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová After the Order Playing with Modernity Konstantin Akinsha

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In the Air Between Boris Ondreicka

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Emanuel Danesch & David Rych Minority Logbox: multiple degrees of representation logged 0106–0506: TR-RO-BG-YU-HR-H-SK-A Multiple Degrees of Representation Space, Place, and Subaltern Identity in Moving Images Emanuel Danesch & David Rych

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Minorities and the Other within (the New) Europe Marina Gržinić

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Danube Imaginary Daniela Zyman and Gabrielle Cram

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Biographies List of Works Schedule Imprint

Kßba: Journey Again the Current Francesca von Habsburg, Chairman of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary

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Küba is many lives, more than a cast of characters. After a while one begins to form a bigger picture of their interconnections, shared difficulties, common struggles and complex betrayals. Küba has the richness of a novel: a mosaic of truths and lies, insight and ignorance, anger and humor, lyricism and humanity. It is a babble of intimacies. We are also constantly aware of the bigger picture, stretching away all around us. ★ While each inhabitant defines Küba differently, has it become the model or the exception to the way the rest of us live? Küba invites each one of us to investigate the level of hypocrisy in our lives. All of us deny to some level or another the violence in societies that we tolerate, whether we live in a free and democratic Europe or not. ★ The Küba testimonies reveal a reality that is present in all our societies. They touch on a commonly tolerated mistrust of foreigners, while revealing humanity’s depth and ability to cope with and deflect abuse, common violence and the lies of all our societies and religions. They remind us that we live together with the same violence, whether it be in our home or on TV, that we are faced with the same lies, whether from our spouse or our politicians, and that we are faced with the same shame, whether the one generated by our own sense of guilt or the one which we carry on behalf of someone else. The political begins with the personal. The stories that these people share with us, remind us that politics cannot be escaped. For the

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people of Küba, that is not an option. Kutlug Ataman rejects any opposition between the center and the margins of society. For him, there are “as many centers as there are individuals.” ★ There is a lot of specious talk in contemporary art about “breaking boundaries.” Mostly, this is inconsequential blather. Installing the 40 television sets which represent 40 lives of Küba residents, on board a 68-meter barge traveling up the Danube from the Black sea to Vienna, actively “breaks boundaries, as it does tradition.” However, Küba: Journey Against the Current has itself overcome the categorization of “breaking boundaries” with the resonance of its honesty, the infinite richness and lyricism which is Kutlug’s signature. It is Küba itself that led to the enlargement of this project from being a simple one-way journey, to it becoming a catalyst of parallel positions within the whole Danube region, as well as a gesture of bringing hope and relief to many thousands of people that are affected by the recent tragic floods. As the proposed EU enlargement is the subject of great debate amongst member nations, it is all the more relevant that we now remind ourselves of our common humanity. The language that we at the T-B A21 foundation have chosen to use has a great deal in common with an effort to change things for the better. ★ I believe that there is room for a greater respect and understanding for all people who make the effort to give a clear and honest picture of themselves. I feel compelled to support a rich combination of artists, musicians, performers, photographers, writers, directors of film, video and documentaries, in raising their voices in response to the stories told in the process. The question remains, will we really change anything, and if so, how much? Will we set the records straight and give renewed hope to thousands? Will we convince our governments to be more generous with policies and support allowing indigenous cultures to be protected and encouraged to flourish? Will we live in increasing fear of terrorism, immigration, and the globalization that will eventually kill the human spirit? Will we help to heal old wounds created by despots, and rebuild societies having confronted ourselves with our own past, or shall we just leave war torn landscapes to rebuild themselves, letting time heal old wounds, whilst we all look the other way? Or should we create a dialog in the arts to galvanize talent, knowledge, courage and great spirit, which together might generate an awareness of the kind that moves people, rather than informs them? All the artists and curators that have agreed to participate in the journey have offered their own views of the distortions of the world we live in, and I am proud to be looking at the truth as seen by them, without whom we would certainly remain blinded by the darkness of what we can’t or won’t see. ★ Küba is Ataman’s finest work to date, and T-B A21 is proud to have co-produced this masterpiece commissioned by Artangel (London) as well as of the new T-B A21 commissions that give this project genuine 11

significance in our lives, as well as offering the residents of Küba a symbolic presence in all places where lives are treated in the same way as theirs: with contempt and ignorance. I hope that the Journey Against the Current will move enough people closer to a more honest approach towards the quest for identity. We cannot shelter ourselves from the humanity of the individual forever, any more than we can distance ourselves from the poor souls who have watched generations of savings be washed downstream as our extreme winter morphs into a flood of despair. This year, under the auspices of Austria’s presidency of to EU, T-B A21 designated the Danube as the life force of Kutlug Ataman’s Küba project, and we hope that this dedication will bring hope to all those it touches. ★ I am extremely grateful to all the artists that have donated a work to our Phillips charity auction, which kindly Simon de Pury has accepted to hold in the Műcsarnok Museum in Budapest on the 3rd of June. I am also grateful to our friends and colleagues who have also donated funds to the Disaster Relief foundation, that I set up years ago with Bianca Jagger to raise funds for the Nicaraguan survivors of hurricane Mitch. With these new funds, in collaboration with the attaché of social affairs of the Austrian Embassy in Bucharest, we are now building replacement homes in Romania, and hopefully also soon in Bulgaria and Serbia.

This means a lot to me. ★ I am particularly grateful to the Secretary of State for the Arts and Media Franz Morak for his unyielding support of this project. Without his faith in Küba and its respective projects from Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia and Austria, this project would not have been possible. I would also like to thank Mr. Manfred Seitz from via donau for making the Negrelli vessel available for this 2-month epic journey, as well as Andreas Treichl from Erste Bank and Boris Marte from Tranzit for collaborating with us on this project. My thanks also extend wholeheartedly to Mr. Fink from the Wiener Städtische, who has showed courageous and unwavering support to the work of the T-B A21 foundation. Also, my thanks extend to Julius Meinl and Boris Nemšić, who both heroically stepped in at the 11th hour with some crucial support as well. ★ Again, I am overwhelmed with the dedication and talent of the T-B A21 team itself. We have grown into a force to be reckoned with in the art world, thanks to the talents of Daniela Zyman, Gabrielle Cram, Jasper Sharp, Eva Eversberger, Barbara Horvath, and Alexandra Henning. Thank you for all the heart that you all put into this extraordinary project. ★ Special thanks to Kutlug Ataman, Matei Bejenaru, Nedko Solakov, Želimir Žilnik, Renata Poljak, Szabolcs Pálfi, László Csáki, Anetta Mona Chisa, Lucia Tkáčová, Emanuel Danesch, David Rych, Iara Boubnova, Zoran Pantelić, Branko Franceschi, János Szoboszlai and Boris Ondreicka for their superb contributions to this project, and all the anonymous citizens of Rousse who contributed their furniture and TVs to create a “state of emergency edition” of Küba since the T-B A21 barge was stuck behind the chain bridge in Serbia, due to the floods.

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Aehetics as Travel Ivaylo Ditchev

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Borders are the aesthetic phenomenon par excellence, as the aesthetic experience is an experience of transgression. Remember the anxiety, with which we approached the check-point officer, the insuperable smile, the secret obsessional gesture you make in your pocket to prevent bad luck. ★ I won’t forget a Chinese colleague, at the German-Dutch border, fascinated by the fact that there is nothing there—no barbed wire, no machine guns, no Chinese wall—started to jump over the imaginary line shouting “Germany—The Netherlands, Germany—The Netherlands…”. If he has got his residence permit since, he probably hardly ever notices where countries shift in Europe anymore. ★ Some think that the gradual disappearance of borders is about to trivialize the world. The easier you can pass from one place to another, the lesser the experience of being anywhere at all. If the virtual utopia should be fully realized, the day you would be able to find yourself instantaneously anywhere in the world would be one of total immobility. When I say utopia, I mean not only the technological aspect of it, but mainly its socio-political implications: the ideal that a person should be able to come and go without asking permission from anyone, the abolition of the age-old distinction between locals and aliens. Travel becomes signing in, then signing out, implying no body, no effort, no relationship whatsoever. ★ It is against such visions that you realize the erotic potential of the actual proliferation of borders. It is the very way you move around these traces. To take but the Balkans, you enter rather a different country depending on the means of transportation. There is the glorious descent by plane, with nice airports and Europeanized border officers. It is this type of travel that creates the cosmopolitan illusion of what Paul Virilio called the end of geography. Then come the shabby, aging trains, inherited from the times there was a State, in which you tie up the door with your necktie against possible intrusions, and play cards with strangers on attaché cases. Further down the social ladder, buses circulate full of suitcase traders asked to get off at each border, to stand in a line and open their luggage for check. Finally, those who cross on foot, led by obscure guides at night, hunted down by guards. You can see how different the same imaginary line on the ground can be, when two cars stop at the checkpoint: one expensive and shiny, where some blackspectacled driver hands over the documents through stained glass windows, the other old and suspicious, which the customs officers will turn upside down in search of secret traces of crime. ★ It has become a banality to say that in the global world borders are not disappearing, but proliferating. Every artistic gesture, every thought, every political action is automatically situated on some border by interpreters, as well as by the actors themselves. In fact, the more we scrutinize the world through the magnifying glass of media, the more alien it seems. The result is some general ethnicization of what is surrounding us. Ethnic phantasmagoria is meant to separate, to trace insuperable borders. ★ Once we were longing to experience the fashionable, the progressive, the avant-garde; now we are fascinated by Indian cuisine, medieval puzzles, Zulu dances, Bosnian genocides. Aesthetics are reduced to ethnics, that is, to instantaneous otherness that needs no

effort or time, otherness visualized and projected into space. It is not some ethnic essence that has thrived all of a sudden in the global world multiplying borders; it is the over-aesthetization of the media that produces the effect of spatial difference, that we call ethnic. I can hardly think of any artwork, in which there is not this ethnic otherness; and if it is not explicit, it is me who would be tempted to add it, “Wait, wasn’t she Jewish…”. ★ If you have been following this argument, you will see why the new ethnic aesthetics can travel. Do not expect the artist to fast in monastery cells, to contemplate truth or brood over his unconscious. The beyond has now purely geographical dimensions, you only need to take a trip around in order to meet absolute otherhood. ★ There is here a sudden chance for the Balkans, where gods are not quite transcendent, leaders not quite legitimate, traditions—not quite authentic. For all that, the region is a powerful reservoir of otherness producing various overlapping borders and transgressions. We speak here not about tourism, but about real travel, where things may happen, cameras get stolen, people get drunk, nice girls propose marriage, and neighbors cut their throats. You see why there is always some writer or film-director traveling across the Balkans (go East), or the other way round, some artist or musician coming from there and discovering his/her ethnic self (go West).

On one hand, there is popular kitsch, often being but a continuation of the tourist industry with other means, that breaks your heart with folk songs and local color. But on the other, all this might be complicated and deep, and you almost think he/she is been taken to modernist universalism struggling with the limits of one’s own self—then the journey concludes upon some tragedy, based on culture, that is, on space, and we are back to postmodern aesthetic geography. It is so ethnic in the Balkans, thus so aesthetic!

Ivaylo Ditchev was born in 1955 in Sofia, Bulgaria.

He lives and works in Sofia.

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The Negrelli barge in the 1960s and 2006

Kutlug Ataman Küba 40-channel film installation, Turkish, with English subtitles

Küba is a community of men, women and children who live in one of the most notorious ghettos in Istanbul, a shantytown slum that started as a hideout for left-wing militants and other outsiders, refugees from the “East” in the 1960s.

Since then it has developed into a cohesive society, a security zone presenting an impenetrable solidarity to the outside world and providing protection against violent assaults and political terror. Today, Küba consists of several hundred temporary refuges. The makeshift houses, built from scrap metal and soil, stand in the shadow of a twenty-first century megalopolis. It is a marginalized place that has learned to make do. ★ Kutlug Ataman spent more than two years getting to know Küba’s inhabitants and filming them talk, narrating the stories of their lives in an uncontrolled stream of language. The majority of those interviewed leave a lasting impression with their arresting stories of sometimes tragic, sometimes bitter events. With Küba Kutlug Ataman seeks to fathom the boundaries—both geographic and mental—of an urban area. ★ The unsettling stories of Küba are presented on old television sets as part of a 40-monitors installation. In front of each TV is a chair, allowing only one viewer per set. Seen individually, from voice to voice, their soliloquies present a detailed mosaic of humaneness: terror, tragedy, love, obsession, resistance, survival. Seen together, the voices of Küba reveal a deeply moving communal portrait of the hidden society that they are proud to call home. ★ Küba was awarded the prestigious 2004 Carnegie Prize, and has been seen by audiences in London, Pittsburgh, Sydney and Stuttgart. ★ Küba was commissioned by Artangel and co-produced with Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (T-B A21), Vienna; Theater der Welt, Stuttgart, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. ★ Kutlug Ataman was born in 1961 in Istanbul, Turkey. He lives and works in Buenos Aires and Istanbul.

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What is K端ba?

Kutlug Atman

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Küba, named after the island republic, is one of the most notorious ghettoes in Istanbul. Squeezed in the midst of a circle of low-income, high-rise suburban blocks near to the airport, the makeshift houses of Küba are made of cheap construction materials, scrap metal and soil: single storey hut dwellings in stark contrast to the rest of the buildings in the distant Istanbul megalopolis. Living in Küba—above all else—defines the Küba resident’s sense of identity, unique in the way that it has no political, ethnic, gender, religious or national determination. If you’re from Küba, then that is enough.

In the past I have revisited the method of using talking heads and created a body of work revolving around the discourses of individuals. ★ In the case of Küba I want to go further and recreate the reality of the neighborhood through stories of the individuals that go to make up this community. The formula I found for this concept is to make an installation consisting of 40 talking heads, each one a Küban, from the matriarchs to the children. Each one will have a monitor allocated to him or her, and each monitor will have one chair in front of it, allowing only one viewer per monitor. By way of an installation, I intend to create a neighborhood that can travel as a whole, not just to the greater Turkish society which created Küba as its own anti-thesis, but more pointedly to major western centers where non-westerners are often accessed not as real individuals, but as role players of a greater presupposed fiction constructed for them by the international media, where Muslims imply terrorism and Africans simply embody poverty and disease.

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Kutlug Ataman Küba, 2004 Arafat, Arif, Arife, Avni, Bahri, Bozo, Bülent, Dilșah, Doğan, Eda, Ekrem, Ekrem, Emine, Erol, Fevzi, Güler, Hakan, Halis, Hatun, Ilhan, Kadriye, Makbule, Mehmet, Mehtap, Meliha, Mithat, Mizgin, Muzaffer, Nejla, Ramazan, Raziye, Safiye, Soner, Tozkafa, Uğur, Vesile, Yalçin, Yüksel, Zübeyde

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Kutlug Ataman KĂźba Exhibition view the Sorting OďŹƒce, London 2005

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Life as a Metaphor Daniela Zyman in conversation with Kutlug Ataman

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Daniela Zyman: How would you describe your way of documenting? Would you use that term when speaking about your work Küba—and if so, in what sense?

Kutlug Ataman: There is a fundamental difference between a documentary and documentation. If documentary basically means the method of making films about issues, people, places, animals, events or whatever, to access information, I think there is something fundamentally wrong with this. ★ From the very beginning, my work had been showing that documentary is actually a very subjective medium. For me, there is no documentary because of that. But there is documentation and documenting and recording. I believe in recording. My research brought me to a point now where I am going to explore in recording: in visual and oral history. And inherently always making clear that what you see is something very subjective and personal. That is important, because we forgot to diversify. With the invention of the documentary, and the worldwide media, we created, without realizing, a reality that doesn’t exist. It’s a world of fiction, a format. People don’t realize that. So we have a lot of fiction written about the “Other”, about distant lands and peoples and cultures, that is in fact not real. And a lot of the political and social problems that are happening are basically happening because of this master screenplay. ★ So up until Küba, I showed only individuals constructing their identities in front of the camera. I exposed

this construction, the engineering, and I said the person you see is not real.

But the act of engineering is. The difference between the two has to be realized. We all do this, and in the end, that’s also the basis of art. Art is all about artifice. Artifice can have negative connotations, but for me it doesn’t, for me it is the basis of all creation, it has to be. It’s a jacket that you wear, like identity. ★ With Küba, the process was slightly different. The reason I was so interested in doing it was not initially to give a voice to people who are otherwise voiceless, it wasn’t that face value approach. For me, Küba was interesting because for the first time I had seen a community of people working on a singular common identity. I was very fascinated by the way they were doing this. ★ For me, this is research. But I’m not a sociologist, I’m not a philosopher, and in the end, it has to be art. I don’t do social study. And I don’t have the responsibility that news people or documentary filmmakers have. They feel that they have ethical responsibility and they legitimize what they do. But I have a problem with that. It’s a very blurred area, and I prefer it that way. I am trying to invent a new area, a new space. And when you are doing that, everything gets dusty, because you are breaking things.

In one of your texts you bring up the notion of the metaphor in the context of Küba.

You are claiming that “It isn’t really a place—it’s a metaphor”. Why would you say it is a metaphor rather than a real place? Did you offer “them” a metaphor in order to be able to speak about themselves and their lives just as you are offering this metaphor to “us” in order to allow us to direct our gaze at Küba?

Obviously, Küba has a geographical address, it is somewhere in a city. But for me, it is not about that specific little village-like area. Yes, it is there, it is real, but it could be anywhere. My Küba is not that Küba. My Küba, the way I created it, could be anywhere. It travels, it goes from one city to another.

Obviously, the artwork is different from the actual thing, because it’s beyond social documentation. The notion of Küba is something that is created by the subject. It’s a creation and for that reason it is a state of mind. That makes it more an idea than an address.

You are documenting and representing a disappearing island, a community of people. And you give the people of Küba the possibility to present themselves in front of the camera—to other people, who might not have thought about this before and who obviously never organized themselves in order to speak up but rather “simply” live their lives. How do you see your role in this process and how are you changing and interfering with the situation? Have you been aware of your strong impact throughout the project?

I knew what was going to happen, but I didn’t know it in all its dimensions.

You never know in advance. You have a concept, you develop it and you create it. And it evolves, it’s organic, but the moment it comes out of your hands, you lose control of it. And that’s only normal, with any work. I can’t say that’s not how I meant it, it’s supposed to be the other way round. The work of art starts having its own life, independent from you.

What was the moment for you where you felt that the people of Küba were prepared to participate, what made them want to be part of the project?

In the beginning, it was not possible to get their okay, because they didn’t

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know my intentions. They thought I was from Turkish television, and, since Küba is a very conservative society—when I say conservative, it shouldn’t be understood as religious fundamentalism, but more connected to tradition…

For example, Kurdish tradition doesn’t really allow women to come out in public and talk. So I started talking with them and trying to describe what it was. Slowly, they started believing in the project. Some of them were actually very, very thankful, it was almost like a free therapy. They were talking for the first time. There was one woman that said she didn’t want to talk in the beginning, but then she was so glad I made her talk, because this made her realize she had never talked about these things before. So it started with very good intentions. But as with anything, when something is so traumatized, something like tradition for instance, you cannot change it immediately. So there are always two steps forwards and one step backwards.

Does the trauma result from the traditional lifestyles?

That’s different from individual to individual. Men usually don’t have trouble with this, they don’t care if they are seen in public or not. It was mostly women who had a hard time and who were under a lot of strain. For instance, when we did this show in London, the Turkish tabloid press started to show these women’s images and printing things they never said in order to create a sensation in Turkey. The women were scolded by the male members of the Küba society. We were very worried that there were going to be serious incidents. That luckily didn’t happen, we kept it under control. But that was the backlash. ★ They warned me. They said we can only talk with you if it is never shown in Turkey, and I made this promise to them. Now I feel it is a pity that we cannot show it in Turkey. But it is imperative that we keep this promise, for the wish of the subjects and their well-being must remain sacrosanct.

Küba has a very strong testimonial aspect, with people revealing secrets, even intimate details for the first time in their lives. What is the reason for this phenomenon? What is the trigger for people? To testify to a stranger, knowing it will be seen by a broader public—is that something rooted in us?

I think it is, in a way. Sometimes, when I’m interviewed by the press, I say what I believe, and I say it very openly and boldly. When people around me start telling me, “don’t talk like this, you will get into trouble”, I start having second thoughts. But I think human beings have this specific voice they cannot stop. Under any type of endurance, you shut up, you hide, or you freak out and you say don’t publish it, I didn’t mean it, but then you say it again.

Maybe there is one side of your brain that simply can’t stop, even if it concerns secrets that have never been revealed before.

While filming, do you actually notice these “testimonial” moments occurring? Do you have the feeling of borders getting crossed, of people stepping beyond a certain line right in front of you—and because of you?

I guess I do. In fact, I am only looking for those moments. You have to build trust to bring them out and it’s important for the strength of the pieces to come there. It’s a very blurred area, ethically. Showing it is the next step.

They sign a release, they say you can show it, but if this is going to get them

into trouble, you don’t really want to show it. But if it reveals a greater truth, you take a certain risk. You take it for them. It’s a very blurred area. It has to come out, you feel you have to do it, because maybe your own kind of voice makes you do it. It’s not even a voice, it’s this one side that tells you it has to be done, it cannot be hidden, and you cannot stop yourself. It happens. You do it out of self-respect. It is so fundamental, it’s everything that you believe in. If you don’t do it, it will be jeopardized.

What is the advantage to you as an artist of using storytelling and narratives to talk about very concrete personal or social matters? Would you say that through such artistic strategies you can reach a “higher level” of profundity?

I never really think of a higher level of profundity. For me, it’s more basic. I go for the rare ingredient that is life itself. Life is made out of stories and what is interesting about stories is that they use life as a metaphor. It has a beginning, middle and an end. It has a hero, that is us—we are all heroes and heroines of our own stories. You are, according to me, the supporting character, and the other way around. Then there is conflict, which is also important.

In fact, if you look at any dramatic structure—opera or theater, film, novel, mythology, religion, painting—any creation, any art is a metaphor for life itself. And the main player is always a human being. Even in a photography of nothingness one is aware of the gaze to nothingness, it tells a story. You cannot escape the narrative. The way we organize it as an art form is not just craft: The way you organize it is capable of making a much more important and universal comment, a piece of communication. I don’t like the notion of “message”, but in the end, it is also a message, although I prefer to call it communication.

You often reference theater. I rarely hear you referencing other films, for instance…

I don’t reference theater per se, in terms of plays. If you look at the narrative structure, theater and film are the same. In theater it is perhaps more visible.

When we talk of narrative and fiction we immediately think of theater, but film and novel come from the same tradition. If we remove the dogma from Brecht, the alienation effect that he formulized… That formula became very important for me, I borrowed it as a tool. I’m trying to demonstrate how this doesn’t have to be something that we have to learn because it just happens in life. That is where this parallaxing of reality comes into play. Especially in my earlier work I was very much interested in showing how people are not what they seem to be. ★ But I don’t want to limit it to that. It’s an ongoing research. I’m not always happy to see my works shown by themselves, but in an order: Chapter after chapter, because that’s how I do my work. I am following a progress of always going to the extremity of dealing with fiction and reality, as long as it takes me. When I did Veronica Read, I thought that was really it. I attached the beginning to the end, it became a circle, a sculpture.

I thought there was nothing after this. And then I did Stefan’s Room, which is like a sister piece, and then Küba. I never knew this was going to happen.

And now I do Paradise, which is like Küba, but it won’t be. You always go forward. ★ As I said, it’s a research. While I am doing it, I am not trying to take advantage of the subjects. They want to understand, they are the heroes

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and heroines of their own fiction. They use you in the same way. When I did Veronica Read, she used me for her own publicity, I was the supporting actor for her. ★ This is also my comment about the periphery and the center.

This is not only about society, but also about people. Who is in the center?

There are so many different centers. The people of Küba have their own lives, their own issues, they don’t care about me, I’m just a cameraman.

You’re always searching for very special characters that carry some kind of popular cultural language…

This comes to me more instinctively. Maybe it’s because of my film training that I’m naturally attracted to them, without realizing. I knew a lot about my subjects before my art career started. Stefan, Semiha, all the women in Women Who Wear Wigs. I knew them before, I didn’t have to find them for the sole purpose of making art. When I was little, my mother had a friend who was clinically mad. She used to come to our house and I was fascinated by her. Maybe that’s how I learned to be attracted to unusual people.

As an artist, you have never been attributed to a specific discourse, your work always flows in a greater context…

I am glad about this, because I don’t like labeling. That’s just not challenging enough, you don’t really learn something new, it’s repetition. ★ I see Küba as my own work, but the Küba journey concept is not my own concept.

I think it is great, very refreshing. It gives my work a dimension that I myself didn’t see before. It’s a bit like my De-regulation show. Irit Rogoff conceptualized it in a way I didn’t think of before. My work is used as an ingredient, which is much more challenging than showing the same installation again and again.

In Küba, there is a strong parallel between the formal aspects and the content of the work, like in many of your works. You identify very specific ways of showing it, how to install it, how it works in space. Can you elaborate on the ways how format and content interact in your works?

For Küba, I have an original concept that I like to keep as much as possible. I want to maintain the 40 separate monitor approach because of the relationship between the work and the viewer. I want the viewers to visit this island like tourists, to go from monitor to monitor. Two people should never have exactly the same relationship experience. Each visitor does his own, non-linear editing, watching five minutes of this and an hour of that. When walking out, you navigate through it, just like a tourist in a foreign country. That is a very strong comment on the nature of information, the nature of documenting. I want to preserve this comment. ★ The fact that it travels is a completely different notion now. That doesn’t have to stay. It is an outside element.

Daniela Zyman was born in 1964 in Vienna, Austria.

She lives and works in Vienna.

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Kutlug Ataman Kßba inallation view Negrelli barge, 2006

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“I Was Happy When I was a Virgin” On Being Puzzled Irit Rogoff

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I have written a brief paper entitled “I Was Happy When I was a Virgin”, which tries to think through some notion of “state experience” and of Küba the art project and Küba the place in Istanbul as efforts of creating zones of “deregulated experience”. Ataman’s work is not only about experience, it is in itself a form of experience and one which defies conventional viewing relations with art. ★ So why was this experience, the experience of working with Ataman’s work, so puzzling for me? Because the bulk of the work that he has produced as art work (to distinguish from his feature film work which is quite different) is made up of great swaths of talk, hours and hours of people talking at you, great long streams of language that flood over you, a Sheherazadelike experience of being seduced by eccentric and extravagant narratives that get more and more detailed, more and more complex, as they unfold following their own weird lines of stream of consciousness logic. They are seductive stories for sure, but they are also a mode of address and as such they demand a response. When I first worked with these pieces, I would watch hours of tape every night in order to be able to write an exhibition catalogue and then would go to sleep and dream in Turkish monologs, a language I do not understand or speak. It was a very limited and unsatisfactory response to the address I had experienced; an address to be seen, to be heard, to insist on one’s reality, to be allowed to mix fact and fantasy as the building blocks of one’s life’s narrative. ★ The puzzling nature of the encounter with this body of work then, is how to relate to being addressed? I think this is significant enough to make a point of it—this work is not documentary, it is not a body of information about a place, or a demographic, it is not social or cultural history—it is an address and it demands a response. If we were to leave Küba with some notion that we knew something about Kurdish migrants into Istanbul or about ghettoized ethnic communities—we would have failed it. If, however, we open up some speculation about how to listen, how to hear this, if we understand that what is being addressed are the limited categories and tropes that we think in, then that address has indeed taken place. ★ Now, I am a theorist and that is significant because it is my mode of address and it too makes a demand. A demand to entertain with me the possibilities of critically inhabiting the edges of paradigms and of unsettling assumptions and of imagining other possibilities than those we have become habituated in. So what I offer here is a theoretical perspective into the dimension of “experience” that I see being played out before us in Küba. ★ “I Was Happy When I was a Virgin.” Mehtap, one of the inhabitants of Küba, burdened by children and stepchildren, without access to any form of exteriority, tells us that she was very happy when she was a virgin. Happy before marriage, children, dislocation, domestic isolation and the trappings of a regulated adult life in extreme, difficult circumstances. In the proliferation of narratives that spatialize the perimeters and make up the site of Küba in this installation, we often hear of the clash between the drive to try and imagine a life and the demands of “regulated experience”. Confronted with this dichotomy, I tend to think about Deleuze’s and Guattari’s “state philosophy” applied to a notion of “state experience” and of how Kutlug

Ataman’s work snatches experience back to some kind of “deregulated experience” which describes a given reality, but also dares to speculate about possibilities. The narrative spatialization of Küba is the zone of this deregulated experience. ★ Deleuze and Guattari, speaking of official lineages of philosophy as “state philosophy,” say that it is populated by “bureaucrats of pure reason who are in historical complicity with the state.” Their discourses are that of these bureaucrats of pure reason, and “are of sovereign judgement, of stable subjectivity legislated by good sense, of rock like identity and of universal truth”. State philosophy, say D&G is representational thinking, thinking which is analogical—it seeks to establish a correspondence, a similarity of thought, an analogy between the subject, its concepts and the objects in the world to which these concepts are applied. This supposed unity is obviously a hugely privileged assumption. Sitting here amidst the inhabitants of Küba it seems laughable that one could posit a world so without ruptures, fissures, chaotic disruptions and necessary mobilities, that might allow one to sustain this fantasy of unity between the subject, its thought and the objects in the world to which this thought is applied. ★ Obviously, D&G are highly critical of “state philosophy” and they offer their own brand of vertiginous contingency, of process in flight, as a direct opposition to the rock-like identity of official thought that supports and sustains the state. ★ Taking off from their critical characterization of thought, I wanted to think about a parallel proposal, that of “state experience”. It seems to me that “state experience” is experience that can only be understood through the markers that frame and legislate experience; birth, marriage, profession, war and the legal parameters of belonging; location, home and citizenship. ★ Much of the discussion we encounter concerning experience focuses on the demise of its force and authenticity. Walter Benjamin in “The Poverty of Experience” locates the horrors of WWI as emblematic of a modernity that wreaks havoc with a notion of having an individualized and recountable experience. ★ Giorgio Agamben in “Infancy and History” laments the sensory bombardment of humdrum contemporary urban life that has robbed people of the ability to have, or to speak of, their experience. ★ Kate Love reads this, far more interestingly, as “neither the events of modern life, nor the individuals who experience them, have sufficient authority, to render them as experience”. ★ Her take made me think back to my not too distant life in California where there was much preoccupation with multicultural pedagogy. Of great concern was the often observed exhortation to minority students to “speak from their experience”— thus setting up an assumption that majority students had no experience, because experience was equated with oppression, suffering and marginality of one kind or another. These were the breeding grounds for “authentic” experience and these were the legitimations of its authority. The issue of who could hear, of how they could hear, of what they had at their disposal to comprehend what they heard, never entered the picture. The entire scenario operated through moral guilt—those who do not suffer, who are equated with the forces of oppression, should be made to sit and hear—but can they hear?

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How would they know how to hear? The notions of address and response I spoke of earlier did not figure into the discussion, which largely followed the logics of “state experience” operating the binary dichotomies of belonging/ unbelonging. ★ In Küba, something very different takes place and I would propose that it is the constitution of an alternative zone to “state experience”, that of “deregulated experience”. Women speak of marriage as a necessity, a required right of passage. They speak of children as an incontestable, but grim reality which requires Herculean effort. Men speak of work or the lack of it and of fighting. There is little pleasure in any of these markers of a regulated adult life and there is absolutely no unity of subject, thought and encompassing world. There is nothing and nowhere to belong to, and the village that was left behind is never a site of nostalgia or a possible site of return. Pleasure only enters the monologues through the unexpected kindness of strangers, the loyalty of friends, the solidarity of the fight, the ability to make a picnic out of disparate scraps or to beg enough outside the Mosque to afford three meters of cloth. Every so often people say that Küba is leftist, but they never detail its politics and we assume that they occupy a generally oppositional space. Certainly, their encounters with authority, the police or the school board are instances of hostile clashes in which they are positioned outside of the protected space of Turkish law and citizenship. Their Kurdishness is usually referred to via their lack of spoken Turkish and the difficulties and isolation that dictates. ★ And so the act of speaking, the topography that is constituted by these forty voices and all of the others that they reference in their stories, this little Küba army of talkers, produces a zone of “deregulated experience”. Grounded in actual suffering, it transcends its material harshness to become a gesture, demands a mode of listening that can’t simply be explained by knowing more about the miseries of what it is to be a poor Kurd within the Turkish megalopolis. Rather, it dares us to listen differently, speculatively not empathetically, to spatialize and to imagine space when that much grief and discontent and sheer bloody language is enfolded in its midst.

Irit Rogoff lives and works in London, Great Britain.

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Matei Bejenaru Travelling Guide Public art project, brochures and billboards

Travelling Guide, as its title suggests, is a guide for travelers. Its intended readers, however, are not those affluent Western tourists accustomed to such assistance.

Rather, it subverts the language and purpose of the format to speak directly to the clandestine Romanian traveler, the illegal immigrant worker, providing information on possible routes to take through border controls, ports and stations into western Europe. ★ The data it supplies is exhaustive: statistics underlining the importance of migrant workers to the Romanian economy, photographs and computer-generated maps of routes and terminals, instructions on accessing shipping containers to hide and acquiring forged identification papers, and advice on what to expect on arrival. ★ Matei Bejenaru was born in 1963 in Suceava, Romania. He lives and works in Iaşi as an artist, curator and director of the Periferic Biennial.

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Matei Bejenaru: Travelling Guide Even if official statistics show an approximate number of 900,000 Romanian workers in foreign countries, no one can give a precise number. It is estimated that the real figures are between 2 and 3 million people. It is likely that more than half of them are illegal workers. Few commit felonies of various degrees. Romania has an active population of 8.3 million (age range 20 to 45 years). Romanians who work abroad represent 10% of the country’s population and 25% of the working population. Practically one out of four active Romanians works abroad, legally or illegally. In 2004, the Romanian expatriates sent 2 billion euros to the country, according to official statistics issued by the Romanian National Bank, while the unofficial amount tops 4 billion euros. ★ The money sent by expatriates has made a more significant contribution to the budget balance than foreign investment. Without this money, the current account deficit could have been 4–5% higher, which means a lot of problems. The economic growth of the past 5 years began to be influenced by the money sent from abroad (the 4.9% GDP increase last year was due to the 7% consumption increase whereas the medium wage hasn’t increased at the same rate) so that this indicator becomes almost irrelevant for Romania’s economic development proper. ★ There is a direct connection between the level of foreign investment and the migration of labour. In Romania, direct foreign investment amounts now (1990–2004) approximately 10 billion dollars as compared to 25 billion dollars in Hungary, over 30 billion dollars in the Czech Republic or 40 billion dollars in Poland. Most of the Romanians who leave the country for work come from the regions of Moldavia and Wallachia, where there is less investment. The destination countries are Italy, Spain, Austria, Germany, Israel, Great Britain and Ireland.

Whether they entered these countries legally or illegally in order to find work, many Romanian workers have stories worth listening to.

Fig. 1 Rail map for trains from Romania to France and Belgium

General Information If you want to go to Great Britain or Ireland and you have no chance of getting a visa from the Bucharest embassies of these countries, you must carefully size up the chances you take when you decide to cross their borders without having the legal papers. Most of the illegal workers who decide to work in England bare in mind the following circumstances: ★ the wage per hour for working illegally in England, which, according to some statistics, is 40 to 60 percent higher than in Spain and 25 to 30 percent higher than in France; ★ the cost of living, 30 percent higher than in Spain (a reason for not trying to work in England); ★ the extent of freedom for the illegal worker (there are no identity cards in England).

For those who wish to get the residence papers afterwards, the law is more permissive than in other European countries. It is worthy of note that when leaving Great Britain, there is no stamping on the passport, so you can leave this country legally, even though you came in illegally. There are several ways you can get into these two countries. The first condition is to reach France, Belgium or Holland (the guide does not offer any information about this country). A Romanian passport allows you to travel without problems through the Schengen space and Switzerland. In order to get there, the harshest filter is the one at the west border of Romania. According to the normative issued by the Minister of the Public Administration and Interior, if you do not have an official invitation from a private or a corporate body, stating, along with the reason for visiting, that you are provided with housing, you must show the following papers at the border: ★ a valid Romanian passport; ★ a minimum sum of 500 euros; ★ a medical insurance (costing about 140,000–300,000 Lei, depending on the insurance’s length). You can buy one from any authorised travelling company in Romania.

More details about the demands that the Romanian citizens must comply with may be found in the Law no. 580/23.10.2002.

There are several routes you can use in order to enter England or Ireland: 1. By water, from any of the harbours Le Havre and Calais, in France, or Zeebrugge and Antwerp in Belgium, or Rotterdam in Holland.

Be it by train or by bus, when you leave Romania you must reach one of these harbours.

2. By train, passing through the Eurotunnel (Calais–Dover).

3. By plane.

B. Ways of Getting to France or Belgium B1. By Bus It is the cheapest way. For example, a return ticket Iaşi–Paris costs about 170 euros (valid for 30 days) or 240 euros (valid for 6 months), and a return ticket Iaşi–Bruges costs 275 euros. The main inconvenience with this way of travelling is that the border checks are more severe and unpredictable, depending on the customs officers.

Another reason for the more minute controls is that the majority of legal and illegal Romanian workers travel by bus. Some of the obscure travel companies help those who wish to cross the border by lending them 500 euros, with their profit included in the ticket

price. It is advisable that you carry 20–30 euros for tipping the policemen. Never count money in front of the other travellers or the drivers. In many cases, travellers were robbed in the toilet of the first Hungarian highway stop, with the suspicion that the drivers themselves informed the gangs of thieves about the travellers. Keep away from all the slicks wandering around the buses during the customs wait and asking the travellers to play “alba-neagra” or other games, resulting most surely in the loss of your money. If, taking into consideration the cost, you decided to take the bus, chose one of the wellknown companies from Romania: Atlassib, Amad Touristik, MarshallTurism or the international operator Eurolines. There will be a border check when passing from Romania to Hungary, then from Hungary to Austria, where you will have to wait for at least two hours. If you do have the necessary money and papers, you will have no problem passing. Just to make sure, there must be a reason for your visit (for example, visiting a relative in Paris or Brussels). ★ No matter where you want to go, you will switch buses in Frankfurt. There is a direct line to Bruges via Brussels, which is 15 kilometres from Zeebrugge (you may take a local bus to get there). Another line will take you to Paris, where you can take another Eurolines bus to Le Havre or Calais.

B.2 By Train It is most convenient to go to any CFR travel agency and buy an international Inter-Rail ticket, which is about 1,400 RON (about 400 euros), which you can use to travel for a month anywhere in Europe, including Great Britain. You only have to write down the routes you use and the number of the train on a chart on the ticket. You will have to pay an extra charge for a sleeping car or for the ultra-fast trains in France. There is a very convenient train leaving each day at 5 p.m. from the Bucharest North Railway Station, reaching Westbahnhof Station, Vienna, next morning at 9 a.m. It is advisable to pay the extra charge for the sleeping car. There are two borders to be crossed: between Romania and Hungary (Curtici-Lokosháza) and between Hungary and Austria (Hegyeshalom and Bruck a.d. Leitha).

In the first case, if you have a valid passport, the 500 euros and the insurance, there should be no problems, as the check is pretty fast.

For the second border crossing, the Hungarian and Austrian revenue officers get on the train at the Hungarian station, making a passport and customs check on the way between the two borders, thus avoiding long stops. If your passport is all right and if you had no problems in the past (they check it on the computer), you should have no problems passing. There are some good connections from Vienna Westbahnhof Station to France and Belgium via Munich after just a three hours wait, so that you arrive in Paris or Brussels next morning (fig. 1).

C. Calais Above all, it is very important that you don’t go on this trip alone.

It is advisable that you have at least one colleague you can count on. However, if you do leave the country alone, you can meet other Romanians during the Paris stop, in front of the Romanian church.

Here you can find the latest information about entering England.

It is true, though, that the number of Romanians meeting there has decreased since the visa liberation early in 2003. Once in Calais, you must find the central park Richelieu, where Romanians meet every afternoon. You will easily identify them from their clothes and their language. Here you will find the latest information from the harbour and the Eurotunnel ramps. If you fail to sleep over with a Romanian who is working in the area, the best solution is to rent

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Fig. 2.1 General view of the harbour of Calais (1 – trucks gate)

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Fig. 2.2 Trucks gate in Calais Harbour

Fig. 3 Calais

a cheap room for a couple of days at the city students’ hotel called Auberge de la Jeunesse, on Avenue de Maréchal Lattre de Tassigny.

You can get there by taking bus No. 3 in front of the railway station and getting off at the Pluviose stop. The price for one night at the hotel is 16 euros, which is very decent. Another thing that you should know is that in the evening, along with the groups of Romanians in the Richelieu park, local homosexuals show up and make appealing proposals, offering you housing, food and even money in exchange for sexual services. Some of the younger boys go along with that.

The most efficient way of going to England through the Eurotunnel is to get on a train or a loaded truck passing through the Tunnel or to embark on a ferryboat from the harbour of Calais (fig. 2.1, fig. 2.2). In order to do so, you have to go to a sports articles shop and buy a sleeping bag with a double aluminium foil, granting perfect thermo isolation. Why would you need such a bag? Starting in 1995, the French, the Belgians and the Dutch introduced thermo and sweat sensors able to detect the presence of a living body in a container. The bag will assure your protection. Based on the information received from other Romanians, it is advisable that you visit the railway yard, where the wagons going to England through the Eurotunnel wait. The main railway yard is between Rue Hoche and Rue Colbert, about 30 minutes walk from the Richelieu park (fig. 3).

You can easily jump over the fence. There is a panel on each wagon with the number of transportation, the date and the destination. It’s relatively simply to get on the wagons covered with tarpaulin (fig. 4).

It is also possible to position yourself under the wagon, which is risky, or to unseal the wagon and break in. In either case, you have to get off the train at the first stop in England. Based on the information you gather, the following night you get on the wagon. It is advisable that the train leaves at night. It would be fortunate that, with the help of other Romanians, you make acquaintance with someone working at the railroad yard; once paid (about 200–300 euros each), he can give you all the information you need and help you get on the wagon. Never get on the train alone! Leave word to those you trust about when you leave and on what train! Take at least 4 litres of drinking water, some pills, chocolate bars, bread and some dry salami. It would be great if you had a mobile phone, with the roaming service on. Your chances are higher in the winter, because on frosty nights the patrols of officers with dogs make superficial checks. Another solution is to get on a truck waiting in the big parkup at the Eurotunnel terminal. Based on the information you have, you must find out the date and the time when the truck leaves, and install yourself under the truck during the night, wrapped in the thermo-isolating bag. At the first stop in Dover, England, you get off.

Fig. 4 Wagons covered with tarpaulin

Fig. 5 The harbour of Le Havre

D. Le Havre Once in Le Havre, you can easily reach the harbour area, which is large and divided into several piers. Le Havre is the largest commercial harbour of France. You can reach the harbour from the centre of the city by walking about half an hour on Avenue Amiral de Chilou.

You must reach Quai d’Atlantique, from where loaded boats and ferries leave for England, Ireland, Spain and Portugal (fig. 5). The first two things you have to do are: to get an overall and a crash helmet and to buy the harbour newspaper from the booth in front of the harbour headquarters. The protection equipment costs a few euros and you can find it at one of the special stores in the city. You can also take it from one of the Romanians who doesn’t need it anymore. Dressed like this, you can enter Quai d’Atlantique without having any problems through one of the access gates after the lunch break, when you can intermingle with the other workers. The harbour newspaper will give you complete information about all the departures and arrivals: the date, the time, the destination, the departure and arrival berth and the transporting company. There is a railroad yard for the cargo boats, where the containers are lifted using cranes, from where railways belonging to every pier start. Here, the containers are stacked together (up to four levels on the vertical) in order to be shipped. Other containers are brought with cargo trucks and unloaded in order to be lifted on the boat afterwards (fig. 6).

D.1 Basic Information about the Containers The containers have two standard lengths: 6 metres and 10 metres.

They all have the same height and width. Their locking system is simple, based on a metal lever, a locking bar which is sealed (fig. 7).

The containers can be easily unlocked with a metal lever. If you are handy, you can unlock it without breaking the seal; thus the breaking in can only be observed on a close look, which doesn’t happen when the container is loaded by crane. There is a panel on each container stored at the harbour, with all the information about the destination, departure and the content. Along with the information from the harbour newspaper, you have all the necessary data not to miss your destination. Once in the container with the desired destination, check the ratio of the amount of load to the remaining space. The more space you have in the container, the easier you can breathe. Each container has two little air holes on the upper part of the door side. Unfortunately, the size of the holes is small, as they were designed to protect against condensation, which may damage the goods. It is advisable that no more than three persons are in one container. The special containers, with a tarpaulin top, are preferable. They usually carry large equipment, which doesn’t fit through the door and is lifted in with a crane through the upper side. You can enter more easily in one of these containers and you also can breathe without a problem.

D.2 Travelling by Boat The first thing you have to do after finding out which boat will take you to the desired destination in England or Ireland, is to check out the identity of the shipping company. You subject yourself to great risks if you get on a boat or a ferryboat owned by a Philippine, Taiwanese or Thai. It is advisable that you chose a European, American or Canadian company. Here we have to talk in detail about your position on the boat. Another possibility is to remain hidden in the container all along the journey and get off in secret after it is unloaded in the harbour berth. There is a story going around among the illegal workers about a group of Romanians who entered into some special containers carrying export cars and had no change of getting off them, all along the journey. Generally speaking, the journey from Le Havre to Cork or Dublin in Ireland or Southampton, Plymouth, Bristol and Liverpool in England takes a maximum of two days, so it’s endurable to remain in the container until the end. If for various reasons you cannot remain in the container, you must get out and surrender yourself to the shipmaster. He will arrest you and deliver you to the Immigration Bureau at the destination harbour. The problem is that his company must pay a fine, which may exceed 5,000 dollars.

There were cases when, in order to avoid paying the fine, the shipmasters of some Asian companies preferred to throw the clandestine passengers overboard. This is what happened in 1995 with the shipmaster of Maersk Dubai Company, who threw three Romanians overboard into the Atlantic Ocean who, obviously, ended up drowned or eaten by sharks. It is for this reason that you should embark on a boat with European commanding officers, because there’s no way you are going to end up like this. As mentioned before, it is necessary to have at least four litres of mineral water, several chocolate bars, bread and dry salami, some pills, a flash lamp, a lever, a hammer and pliers.

Never travel alone. Many of the loaders working in the harbour come from Maghreb and may be easier to bribe for helping you sneak into the containers. If you have the chance of meeting someone who can make your acquaintance with someone else who is willing to cooperate, you will be spared the effort of opening the container.

Fig. 6 Containers shipping in Le Havre

E. Zeebrugge The Zeebrugge harbour is about 15 kilometres from the city of Bruges (Brugge in Flemish). To embark from this harbour, you first have to reach Bruges, where you will live a few days, until you find the right boat. If you don’t know any Romanians living in the area, willing to lodge you for a couple of nights, then you can go to Bauhaus International Youth Hostel, on Langestraat 135, five minutes from the central plaza. At the railway station you can take the bus No. 6 or 16. A night at the hotel costs about 16–18 euros, depending on the number of persons in the room (anyway, you are with at least one Romanian).

You can take a bus and in a maximum of 30 minutes you can reach Zeebrugge, the final destination and the harbour where the container terminals in the Britanniadokk area are (fig. 8 and 9). All the details presented for the Le Havre embarking apply here too, except that the risk of being caught wandering about the harbour is smaller.

There are a lot of boats leaving for the east coast harbours of Great Britain: Southampton, Dover, Dartford, Purfleet, Harwich, Felixstowe, Grimsy, Immingham, Hull, Middlesborough (fig. 10).

Fig. 7 Locking mechanism of the containers

F. Travelling to England via Milan Paradoxically, a one-week stop in Milan can help you enter England without problems. In order to get there, you can take the train from Bucharest to Vienna, passing through Hungary, Austria, Slovenia and entering Italy through Trieste; here you get off and take another train for Milan (fig. 11). If you have a valid Romanian passport, the health insurance and 500 euros, you can enter without any problems, even though sometimes the Italian customs officers may give you a rough ride. Once in Milan, you will run into Romanians everywhere and with their help you will manage to find a place to sleep and to achieve your goal: getting a NINo (a British National Insurance Number, a paper that you need in order to work officially in England) and an Italian passport with your name on it. It is the most risky part of your incursion and you must acknowledge the danger you put yourself through by using fake Italian identity papers with your name. The prices are high, too, going up to 1,000 euros for both papers. If you got lucky enough to find a passport and a NINo with your name on it, you will officially be an Italian with the right to work in Great Britain.

From Milan, you take the train to Paris and then to Lille, where you will get on the high-speed train Eurostar, which will transport you to London in two hours. At the Lille Eurostar terminal, in the central railway station, you have to pass the same filters that you would have on an airport: an X-ray baggage check and a passport check. It is a quick and superficial check, so your chances to officially get on the train are high. The British border officers also get on in Lille; they summarily check the travellers’ passports up to Dover. In some cases, they do not even check all the passengers. If you are fortunate enough to pass these checks, you can get off in London as a happy person. You can also take the Eurostar from Paris, but the price is higher than in Lille.

Fig. 8 Brugge/Zeebrugge (1 – Zeebrugge harbor zone; 2 – Britanniadokk)

G. By Plane You can enter England without a visa if you get a plane ticket with a stop on Heathrow Airport. Here is a scenario with great chances of success: ★ You buy a plane ticket from a travel agency from your city for a Scandinavian city (Oslo, Begen, Helsinki), on the condition that, when buying the ticket, you ask to switch planes at Heathrow Airport, near London, so that you arrive as late as possible in the evening and have the next flight next morning (fig. 12).

I have chosen the flights to Scandinavia on purpose, because these countries do not ask Romanian citizens to apply for their entrance visas in Bucharest.

★

Once in Heathrow, you have two choices: either sit down in a chair at the airport and wait for the next morning flight or go to a hotel in the area to spend the night. In the first case, the airport closes at 1 a.m. and you are asked by the security officers to leave the area. Due to the fact that you tell them that you do not want to go to a hotel, they invite you to the border police officer who gives you a 24-hours entrance visa for Great Britain and asks you to go to another waiting space, from where you can leave the airport legally. In the second case, if you do want to sleep at a hotel in the area, you have to take a special bus that will take you there. If you are fleet of foot and cold-blooded, you can avoid getting on the bus and leave the airport. A comparative chart of costs and risks for crossing the border in different places can be evaluated in fig. 13.

Fig. 9 Britanniadokk

Fig. 10 Ferryboat lines between Zeebrugge and England

Fig. 11 Train ticket Iași – Milan

H. How You Can Live and Work in Great Britain Once illegally in this country, you have to know how to manage in order to stay and work as long as possible without being traced and sent back to Romania.

H.1 About the Papers Necessary in England The English don’t have identity cards and may identify themselves with any “photo-ID document”, which in most cases is a driving licence. For the last two years there has been much talk about introducing ID cards for English citizens and at the beginning of July, the Parliament passed a law in this regard. It’s good to know that foreigners too will receive an identity card. Until now, the law stated that you were free to declare any identity when opening a bank account.

In order to work legally in England, you need a National Insurance Number (NINo) and a bank account at a British bank. This paper can be obtained in several ways and the necessary papers are: ★ the passport with a working visa for England; ★ the proof that you already work for somebody (either as an employee, in which case you have a work-permit, or as freelancer, in which case you have to register as such to the revenue authority); ★ the proof that you have an account at a bank in Great Britain; ★ the proof that you have a residence (rented or bought).

When you have all these papers, you schedule for an interview at DWP (Department for Work and Pensions), where you have to fill in another form. After two other weeks you will receive their answer: if it is positive, you receive the NINo card; the answer may be negative, if they feel like it.

H.2 About Illegal Romanians in Great Britain In most cases, illegal Romanian immigrants buy a West European NINo (usually an Italian one) from the English or Italian black market. This way, the authorities regard them as Italians working as freelancers. You can find work with the help of Romanians living in England for longer. They introduce you to an employer. Most illegal workers live in London. Some of them pay the traffickers thousands

of pounds to help them bring their relatives or friends from Romania. Most Romanians work on construction sites, based on a paper called CIS, which one can obtain quickly, even if you entered the country illegally. In case you manage to buy an illegal NINo on the black market and open a bank account at a sub-office of a bank that doesn’t request too many papers, you can be legally employed. Anyway, it is safe to stay away from police checks. It is advisable not to use the underground, where there are more checks, but rather take the bus, even if it takes longer. Sometimes the Home Office Police make raids on places where illegal immigrants meet, like the site yards or the streets known as meeting places. If you are caught, you are sent back to the country, losing the right to exit the country for 5 years (that is if you didn’t break any other laws). Generally speaking, if you are connected to more groups of Romanians, you will find out that the rumours about the raids or the legislation go about very fast. You have to pay attention, because they are often not entirely true. Romanians rent houses together, where, in 4–5 rooms, up to 15 persons live, using the same bathroom and kitchen. In S-W London, area 3, you can find many houses rented by Romanian immigrants. It is safe to keep away from the gangs of Romanian crooks, who frequently rob their own compatriots. Most Romanians have poor English skills and that’s why they cannot read and understand the laws and regulations regarding the immigrants. In many cases they are tricked by rumours, they cannot conform to the demands of the Home Office and, as a result, they are denied the extension of their visa. The majority of illegal immigrants are young men. Women don’t come to England on their own because it’s risky and they cannot find any other jobs than those of waiting girls or washers, poorly paid with 5 pounds/hour. Many Romanians living in England complain about the food and the weather, more humid and depressive than in Romania. They all want to get as much money as possible in order to come back and invest it back here, in the home country.

Travelling Guide was published in IDEA art + society, no. 21/2005, and commissioned as a public art project by T-B A21 in 2006.

Translated by Alex Moldovan

Fig. 12 Flight ticket Bucharest – Bergen

border crossings (0: minimum, 10: maximum) travelling conditions (0: convenient, 10: very difficult)

risk level (0: minimum, 10: maximum) vigilance of border control (0: inattentive, 10: alert)

Fig. 13 Comparative study of the risk conditions for passing the frontiers

How Rough May a “Rough Guide” Be? Branislav Dimitrijević

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Matei Bejenaru thoroughly embraces the possibility that an artistic project may be valued for its capacity to be beneficial to others, as an acknowledgement of an empathetic continuity between the self and the “other”. He is not an artist who simply gathers experiences and turns them into another form of commodity. Also, his works are not following the routines of “critical art”, but are about modes of “practical assistance” in the field of real social antagonisms. His most recent project Travelling Guide is quite literally a detailed “instruction” to underprivileged Romanian workers who are impelled to illegally enter Great Britain in search of jobs, and is produced through gathering information from experiences of those who have already established these channels. In his characteristically minute method, he embarks from the pressing fact that one out of four active Romanians work abroad, and more than half of them do this illegally. In the wake of the Romanian candidature for EU membership, the drastic economic inequality between Romania (or other countries of South-East Europe) and developed countries of the EU marks a fundamental point of frustration in contemporary Europe, which challenges many basic principles of liberal democracies, alleged openness of borders, freedom of movement, etc. Bejenaru explores the hidden world of illegal migration, provides information on the possible routes to take through border controls, ports and stations, produces diagrams and maps of routes and terminals, but also charts and instructions on how to access containers for travel, how to acquire a National Insurance Number, as well as some general advice on what to expect on arrival. ★ One can view this project as simultaneously subverting the model of a “travel guide” for tourists visiting some exotic but unsafe land, and the model of the artwork produced within the “administrative aesthetics” of conceptual art. Whether or not we want to actually use Bejenaru’s guide, this project is about formulating tactics of the underprivileged in relation to “master-strategies” of political bureaucracy, as well as it is about the hidden kernel of repression which protects the “dreamworld” of liberal democracies. By tracing the makeshift self-organization of illegal migration, Bejenaru is following something that we may even call a cultural activity (based on the “speech” of the underprivileged within the unequal global distribution of wealth), an activity that is semi-visible and semi-symbolized, but which “seizes” opportunities and prompts decisions. Through this dangerous and illegal activity the underprivileged “make space for themselves and sign their existence” as a form of counter-ideological tactics, which Michel de Certeau identifies as manoeuvrable and polymorph “tricks of the ‘weak’ within the order established by the ‘strong’.” ★ Bejenaru’s attitude towards disclosing these tactics may seem “administrative”, yet this gathering of information and instructions carries a destabilized notion of purpose. It may be seen simply as “raising the issue”, but there is this uncertainty about the ethical “purpose” of this investigation: may it help someone to do something illegal, may it help the authorities to trace this illegal activity, or is it just addressing our general curiosity? Bejenaru is not simply idealizing illegal workers, nor does he see them as mere victims. This practice-based research does not make

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claims, but reveals a (grim) picture in which those who directly experience real antagonisms of contemporary Europe find themselves. As a practice of artistic research (as opposed to sociological, anthropological or any other “scientific” research) this project does not propose functional understanding of a certain phenomenon, but opens up a field of ambiguity which creates misunderstandings that are prevalent in our general inability to generate answers and solutions. However, artistic research produces information that may serve practically, whilst developing scientifically unauthorized methods of understanding the link between art and its social context. By doing so, it initiates rethinking and questions the role of the artist. ★ This, and other projects of Bejenaru, is about thinking self-organization and mobility outside of hierarchical institutional confinements, outside the authority of the decaying center, outside of the governing mechanism of developed capitalism, and outside the ethnographic impulse with its double edge of curiosity and colonialism, of direct experience and structural thinking, of observation/description and understanding/interpretation. The useful concept here may be that of “participant observation”, which we borrow from James Clifford.

This concept “encompasses a relay between an empathetic engagement with a particular situation and/or event (experience) and the assessment of its meaning and significance within a broader context (interpretation).” It is the stress on the former that has recently been of much more ethnographic and artistic interest, but here instead of either we may stress the word “relay” in order to express a link between observation and action.

Branislav Dimitrijević was born 1967 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro).

He lives and works in Belgrade.

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Nedko Solakov A BG Bar Inallation, 2006

Nedko Solakov’s installation A BG Bar is a very special bar whose form and physical contours echo those of the Bulgarian state. Metaphorically speaking, it is intended to represent the dominant historical metaphor and cliché of Bulgaria as a crossroad: at “the very edge of Europe”, a place through which peoples and nations have passed at will. The cultural traces left by Thracians, Goths, Byzantines, Ottoman Turks, Russians—to name a few—have been assimilated into the hybrid national culture of Bulgaria. This sense of fluidity and movement is symbolized by the manner in which A BG Bar functions, with customers arriving, taking bottles out of the fridge or having a drink at the bar, and then leaving. Ostensibly, alcoholic drinks and smoking are not permitted. However, in an ironic comment on the arbitrary implementation of such regulations and the lack of importance they carry, both are allowed upon discreet request. ★ Nedko Solakov was born in Cherven Briag, Bulgaria, in 1957, and lives and works in Sofia, Bulgaria.

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Nedko Solakov Drawing for A BG Bar 2005

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Nedko Solakov A BG Bar Drawings, 2006 (top) “Some BG Stuff for a BG Bar”, 2006

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Welcome to “A BG Bar”!

Iara Boubnova

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The first thing, which Bulgaria and Bulgarians know about themselves, is that they are constantly at a crossroad. This characterization is one of the most commonly used as far as Bulgarian history is concerned. The geographical dislocation of the country at “the very edge” of Europe (when you look at it from the West) or at its very beginning (if you consider the definition provided by the medieaval expansionistic view from the side of the Orient), allowed multiple “crossings” of its territory by a slew of peoples and cultures. The soil of Bulgaria contains traces left by Thracians and Goths, ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Hungarians, Ottoman Turks, Sephardic Jews… Our culture displays the obvious influence of many others: of Russians, Germans, French, Gypsies… The list can go on in content and detail.

Nearly every ethnicity, every civilization, and every religion has brought over and left here something of their own. The very name of the country had been imported from the steps of Central Asia in the 7th century, when the tribal “newcomers” found not only the leftovers of the indigenous peoples of the ★ The represenland, but also the previous wave of “migrants”, the Slavs. tation of Bulgaria as a crossroad is the dominant historical metaphor and cliché, through which primary school textbooks as well as historical tractates and speeches of politicians excuse and explain away a number of aspects of ★ One of the main ideas of the project Küba: the hybrid national culture.

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Nedko Solakov A BG Bar Inallation views, Canetti House Rousse, Bulgaria, 2006

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Journey Against the Current is the very notion of being on the road, of moving from one place to another. It aims to give the people from the Istanbul ghetto called Küba, who are portrayed in Kutlug Ataman’s work, the opportunity to get out of it at least by means of art. Forty people from the invisible or hidden Küba neighborhood are willing to share their private histories with people from other places—the countries along the Danube River. Seen as a whole, the forty monologs transgress the stereotype in human relations and reveal the personal and the intimate, where the superficial gaze refuses to duel. They are traveling in order to gain their right to dialog. Naturally, their journey through the quite crowded space of Europe is impossible without meeting and making acquaintances along the way. And what better, more pleasant and less engaging place for meetings and exchange of “cultural cap★ Nedko Solakov is utilizing, furthering ital” could there be than a bar? and mocking the Bulgarian metaphor/cliché of the cultural crossroad in his new installation from 2006 entitled A BG Bar. The shape of the bar follows the outline of the Bulgarian national borders. The customers lean on it, and in doing so overcome their negative experiences with the concept and reality of the border through their own bodies. Normally, a border is an insurmountable obstacle, intended to divide people. In Bulgaria, it is often a metaphor for the civilization barrier between West and East, the United Europe and the Balkans, between wealth and poverty, democracy and totalitarianism, the Schengen countries and the rest… However, in the “world model” suggested by Solakov, the state borders become a comfortable surface to lean on, a symbolic common plane of communication between host and customer, given new life by the strange white outlines of the Nedko-drawn creatures hovering here and there under the bar. They too are sharing stories of their own and reacting to the problems of the larger world out there—they are offering in wonderment the world to us, and while not being aware, luckily, of their own minority status, these creatures are bypassing the cliché of that ★ Solakov’s Bar is advertised as a non-alcoholic one in line same world. with the habits of its creator. But in as much as this is A BG Bar, the realistic approach foresees the possibility to have a drink there too, provided you can talk the bartender into it or through some creative “smuggling”. The same is expected to happen with smoking, which is forbidden in principle, just like in most public places around the country, otherwise known as a producer and powerful consumer of tobacco, and an obedient neophyte of European regulations. Such a place, though, displays the typical Bulgarian characteristic of impossible to enforce control and restrictions; or as the folk wisdom would have it—you are not going to get away with it, unless you try ★ It is not the first time that Nedko Solakov has envisaged Bulgaria first. as a place where unusual things are happening. In an earlier installation of his from 1992–95, a multisided narrative with “real” witness accounts of fantastic events, the characters—a Novel Prize Winner, a local artist, a sailor, an astronaut, a politician, a bum and a little girl—suddenly realize “The Truth (The Earth is Plane, The World is Flat)”. And, as the startled Solakov himself mentions in the installation: “The strange thing is that, in one way or another,

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★ Most of the events that we come to this story is related to Bulgaria.” know about from Nedko’s stories are actually related to this very place, otherwise not so noticeable in the space of geo-politics. For instance, here are the roots of the insufficiently researched alter ego of El Greco, the far more earthly and vital El Bulgaro (2000). Also here is the bathroom of a panel block apartment, which becomes the site where some strange creatures are begging for deliverance from the modern Noah in New Noah’s Ark (1991/92). The oeuvre of Nedko Solakov is like a visual chronicle of unbelievable encounters and astounding events that usually take place in the native land of his imagination. ★ The bar is a place on the side of the road for fast consumption of drinks, of meetings and of news. You enter without either a serious commitment or responsibility to spend some time in the free space of relative anonymity. The task of the bartender/Bulgaria is to provide a pleasant atmosphere and a temporary refuge from the real problems “on the road”.

Of course, Nedko Solakov is fully aware that the roadside place to eat and drink, the Inn (the caravansary) and later on the pub, the coffee shop and so on, in Bulgarian history is also a place for intellectual and political activity; a place intimately linked to the national liberation struggle where, especially in the 19th century, many a hero met and talked. The Bulgarian experience in this respect could perfectly illustrate the idea of Jürgen Habermas that the literary public sphere with its rational-critical is inherent in a coffeehouse during Modernity. Ironically though, Bulgarian common folk have observed that when things are not going well, the pubs are busting full of ★ Although Francesca von Habsburg, the initiator of the Küba people. project, obviously had somewhat different experiences in mind when she said that “art lovers… will travel all distances on this planet to enjoy these very special experiences! When art is present in such exceptional locations, it opens minds, sharpens perception and stimulates contemplation”, still I want to believe that these words in some way refer to a quite extraordinary bar in Bulgaria.

Iara Boubnova was born in Moscow, Russia.

She lives and works in Sofia, Bulgaria.

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Želimir Žilnik Soap in Danube Opera Workshop and single-channel video projection, 2006

With Soap in Danube Opera Želimir Žilnik addresses his immediate surroundings, inviting a group of youngsters from the settlements along the Danube shores between Belgrade and Novi Sad to learn filmmaking and editing through a series of workshops held in the Spring of 2006. Parodizing the formats of the “soap opera” and the sweet and melancholic dramas of the Latin American telenovela, the youngsters tell stories which portray their own and their peoples’ lives and interactions in proximity to the Danube. While being aware of the rules of cinematography such as camera perspective, role-play, staging and editing, the film reveals most directly the unspoken rules of the youth’s communities as well as their hopes, fears and desires. ★ Želimir Žilnik was born in 1942 in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), and lives and works in the city.

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Želimir Žilnik Soap in Danube Opera Workshop footage, 2006

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Muha and friends at a building site Workshop footage, 2006

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Muha’s Song About Work And Life ccokoladni reper ja sam ccokoladni reper iz Novoga Sada i pretezno zzivim od fizičkog rada il me neko prokleo, il bacio ccini što lagano propadam, na gradjevini ja radim po blatu, po smecu i prašini po kiši, po snegu i po najvećoj vrućini da promenim zzivot na bolje, šansa mi je mala sitne pare brate brojim, cista sociajala ljudi, ja sam dete bola,klosar, propala škola, i zato od mene beže pripadnice lepšeg pola doduše, nemam kola a u busu me bez karte uvek uhvati kontrola i zbog tako male greške, ja dalje idem peške ko ima lake džepove noge su mu teške

Chochocolate rapper I’m a chochocolate rapper from Novi Sad city a blue-collar worker, all sweaty and gritty a curse, or worse, I’m in a terrible plight, stuck on this construction site, working in the mud, garbage and grime in the rain, snow and heat it’s almost a crime no way to turn my life around, just counting petty change— the only income in my range, a social case, a pain and disgrace, a bum, a drop-out scum with the pretty girls—I don’t get very far, why, I don’t even have a car, get caught on the bus without a fare, with no change in my pocket—I just have to walk it an empty wallet, your legs really feel it.

idem tako ulicom i brojim bandere lagano zavirujem u kontejnere al ne uzimam sve što moje crno oko vidi mora nešto ostati i za penzionere ama čudan ovaj zzivot, zadaje nam muke i pošten ccovek mora da zaprlja ruke ali u fazonu, kao fizikalac a ne kao tamo neki teški kriminalac koji poslove radi u trećoj smeni a da tako nešto radim, kuku majko, teško meni jer ja nikad nisam bio, niti zzivim u getu i nikad nikom nisam ništa radio na štetu ali zato bi Pamelu ljubio po celom telu jer obožavam njenu siluetu

I walk down the street, counting the bumps, checking out the garbage dumps but I don’t take all that I find leaving something for pensioners behind, it’s all kinda crazy, its full of strife dirty your hands to get ahead in life, an honest working-class ass but not like some great big crook play it by the book, in a late night shift cage just for a minimum wage, man it sucks coz shucks I never, never lived in a slum, and never did anything to upset anyone, that’s why I’d kiss Pamela’s body all wet coz I adore her silhouette.

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Danube Soap Opera Gabrielle Cram

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“Along the River Danube, between Belgrade and Novi Sad, there are many modest settlements, home to fishermen and workers who dig sand from the river bed, or dump into it waste from buildings being torn down in nearby cities. Many of those people are without proper jobs, unemployed for years. some are refugees, or youngsters without any prospects—mostly members of the Romany community (Adice, Shangaj, Provalije, Gardinovci, and Ovèa to name a few). On the other hand, along the same shores, luxurious areas have sprung up where so-called ‘transition’ capitalists have built their villas.” ★ “My idea is to contact youngsters living in those under(Želimir Žilnik) privileged settlements, to research their potential interest in video and filmmaking and organize a workshop for up to 15 participants. During the workshop they would learn how to use cameras and computers for basic editing, ★ “Želimir Žilnik and how the documentary is articulated.” (Želimir Žilnik) occupies a unique position in the cultural scene in Novi Sad and Serbia. From the very beginning he has tried to implement key aspects of time and space in any period of his production, which runs continuously from his neo-avantgarde period in the 1960s and 1970s to the present day. Žilnik has thus created a significant ‘social diary’ of Serbian society. This would include his workshop within the project Soap in Danube Opera, but this time he plays the role of mentor to groups of young protagonists from villages on the banks of the Danube. In this role, Žilnik conveys his energy and distinct aesthetics.

The final product will comprise a powerful input of creativity from non-pro★ fessionals and their points of view on their own lives.” (Zoran Pantelic) Želimir Žilnik has devised a most unusual strategy in order to avoid or develop questions of presentation, which specifically arise in the discourse concerning documentary filmmaking. Whereas many artists dispense with pure documentary and deliberately employ narrative, fictive and/or artificial elements, thereby avoiding dogmatic criticism, Žilnik makes use of the TV soap opera ★ Through the title—rather than format for his Soap in Danube Opera. the format—he makes it clear from the beginning that it is not about the fact that the young workshop participants only present themselves or their own situation, nor that he seeks to represent them. For in a soap opera, public reaction is often suggested in a preset format. The protagonists and their stories are not only put on show, but at the same time the expected reactions pre-empt the real ones, thereby also making them subject matter. This is an ambivalent stylistic method to prop up viewing habits, to make them visible and subject them to scrutiny. It functions as a subjective, often manipulative, occasionally subversive commentary on the events. Above all, however, it enables humor and self-analysis to come into play. The filmmakers simultaneously become authors and protagonists of their filmic products, whereby the fact that they stand in front (and behind) the camera always remains aware ★ Želimir Žilnik does not vouchsafe us an unfiltered view of an to them. act of charity, which enables underprivileged youths to develop know-how in making a documentary. Rather he allows them to produce their own view on their environment and their interactions with those around them. Soap in Danube Opera subverts the documentary genre, while at the same time offer-

ing us a “persiflage” on reality stating the soap bubbles of those who wash their laundry in the Danube—whether reality or pretence. By presenting something serious or even dramatic as almost comical, Žilnik achieves a stylistic break, a technique which runs through his films. In the “doku drama” Kenedi Goes Back Home, the very name of Kenedi, which belongs to a Roma refugee who roams the world, causes confusion, since one would immediately refer the name and the content of the film to the former president of the United States. The film contains a tragic-comic repertoire announced it its title. ★ The 45-minute video collages short stories about life on the Danube: like Muha, himself a workshop participant and a passionate hip hop musician, who provides for his family by working on a building site; or the horse breeders on an island in the middle of the Danube, who sell their horses in Italy for the production of the famous Italian Salami. The stories document both the working and learning processes of the young filmmakers, while reflecting on their prospects and interests. Sometimes motifs and techniques are slowly approached and worked out. The film is remarkable also for the surprises it creates between the immediate reactions of those filming and those being filmed. The storylines and main characters reflect and incorporate the habits and different unwrit★ “March and April left a ten laws that form the communities’ languages. striking impression along the communities that line the Danube, in the vicinity of Novi Sad, when that big, strong and unpredictable river managed to flood not only houses and embankments, but also demonstrated its natural power— defying technology, politics and the economy. Eternal and undisciplined forces of nature—water, sun, ice, mud—all repeatedly made us aware of our humility and the need to keep our narcissism in check in regards to our notions of having tamed the elements of nature.” (Želimir Žilnik, Along the Danube, Spring, ★ In the meantime the horses that had been filmed on the little 2006) island on the Danube have all been evacuated. Želimir Žilnik and the youngsters filmed the selling of the horses at some Roma festivity, which ended in heavy rainfall. That way the recent flooding of the Danube becomes an indicator for Žilniks’ investigations and for what he is trying to show to us: the situation and especially the way of life of the people close to the Danube and even ★ Želimir Žilnik himself lives the irony that life itself can sometimes take. on the Danube in Novi Sad and knows the people he is working with, some of them for a longer period, and is familiar with the social background of the region. The film, then, is firmly rooted in its immediate environment, which he would also describe as his home, despite the fact that on occasion he has perceived himself as ‘Guest Worker’, sometimes even he had been obliged to emigrate due to his dogged insistence on pointing out the deplorable political and social conditions.

Gabrielle Cram was born in 1978 in Falkirk, Great Britain.

She lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

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A Force Moving Movies Teofil Pančić and Nebojša Grujičić in conversation with Želimir Žilnik*

* Shortened version of the interview published in Vreme, no 778, Belgrade, Dec. 2005

“In my movies I show that in today’s world, the ‘scum’ of society are not those people who walk around in worn shoes and tattered clothes. The real ‘trash’ of the Balkans are the ones wearing fine fabrics and expensive suits.” ★ It’s amazing how Teras Kermanuer’s old idea referring to the poetics of his work as “never consistent—always radical” creeps into one’s consciousness in the context of Želimir Žilnik’s creations, and to a certain extent can be applied to his life and work; only to a certain extent, though, for Želimir Žilnik is both consistent and radical—a combination that is never boring. Due to circumstances as well as his personal intellectual make-up, Žilnik kept away from local mainstream movie production. Regardless of whatever regime was in power at the time, he followed his own particular aesthetic sensibility, shunning the slow degradation of the “village-style cinema full of provincial glamour” that has marked the downfall of the Serbian film industry.

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Vreme: In your latest movies—Tvrđava Europe (Fortress Europe), Kenedi se vraća kuć (Kenedi Comes Back Home), Evropa preko plota (Europe Next Door) you deal with living within the boundaries of Europe, and confront the problem of how to cross those boundaries as an individual and as a nation. What has led you to spend the last ten years focusing on this theme? Želimir Žilnik: The bare facts of war and the collapse of Yugoslavia have

made it necessary to ask essential questions regarding our identity; the identity we have discovered and the one that remains uncovered. It is debatable if historians have really revealed the true identities of the first two states, both called “Yugoslavia”; the original one ruled by King Alexander and the second one run by a communist regime. Were we misled by history? Or did we discover our true identity? I claim that the rationale behind forming the first and second Yugoslavian state was the same as the one behind the creation of any number of European states, a century ago, at a time when the South Slavs were citizens of two empires in conflict, two very different civilizations—the Ottoman Empire and the Austrian Monarchy. That, however, didn’t stop brilliant minds from constructing a collective South Slav State back in the 1850s.

And in all fairness, the discrepancies when it came to economics, culture, language and the “degree of civilization” were no greater between Skopje and Zagreb than between Sicily and Milan or Munich and Hamburg, at the time when these confederate states were founded. It is interesting to note that the cruelest tools from Europe’s arsenal of war and violence were applied in the destruction of both Yugoslavias: national-socialism, fascism—even the ★ Howforced exodus of national groups and episodes of ethnic cleansing. ever, the average citizen has pleasant memories of both these former Yugoslavias—once they dissolved into the past, that is. As a kid, I heard my share of stories about “the good life before the war.” And now the next generation is destined to hear the same old stories. The conclusion seems to be that the “Yugoslavias” didn’t just disappear through the will of its citizens, but because of the power and self-interest of the ruling classes, whether foreign ★ But the country is gone and there is no going back. So, or national. what do the youngsters of Ex-Yugoslavia have to say about the future? They can’t say that they would like to live together again; that would be impossible to say after so much death and destruction took place just so a few ‘tribal chiefs’ could promote themselves to the status of ‘fathers of a nation’.” They say something else—something which only confirms the above assumption—namely, that they want to leave the country, as soon as possible. To go where? Well, why not go to those places where other Balkan warriors, nationalists and party faithful alike are allowed to live luxuriously in style: Paris, London, Vienna… These members of the “establishment” dream of forgetting all this speculation about the Balkans once they settled down in their city of choice, because the Louvre, the Belvedere, or the Tower of London were probably not built without some bloodshed or injustice or slave labor or something equally unscrupulous, after all, damn it, if you really want to ★ And so, after all the war, all the devastation and all the boundknow. aries had been set-up, we swore we would never live under a common roof again, and presto, next thing you know, here we are eager to share the cover of an all encompassing European tent. And even though they still aren’t letting us in—we aim to push and shove our way through. They’ll probably let us in at the end of the day; they’ve accepted far worse countries. This is the general attitude throughout all of Serbia, from Đevđelija to Kumerovac. I’m fascinated by how now all of a sudden everyone seems to be interested in “Euro-

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1 A time of protests against the autonomous government in Vojvodina (translator’s comment).

2 A Croatian oil refinery (translator’s comment).

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pean values and norms”, even though I’m afraid they don’t have a clue about any of this, just like our royalists, who simply choose to overlook what King Alexander said on his deathbed and left as his message.

There is much confusion regarding identity; Yugoslavian, national and European identities seem to be all tangled up.

This doesn’t apply only to us. Look at the regional, cultural and linguistic differences in Spain, Britain, Italy. One of the goals of European unification, among other things, was to rationalize and smooth out suppressed tension between complicated and conflicting identities, in globally unstable economic times. And all this now, a decade before China and India become the economic powers of the world. In two decades, their culture and traditions (5–6000 years older and richer than Europe’s) will play a leading role.

Europe must collect and unite not only its strengths, but also bridge its differences, when it sits down to negotiate with huge nations like Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Brazil and China—nations billions of people strong with hundreds of minorities.

Europe on the other side of the fence is a fact of our lives right now. We are facing the consequences of the events of the last fifteen years. In 1988 you made a movie called Stara mašina (Old Timer), which is a key to understanding the break-up of former Yugoslavia. The movie is about a man who has lost his job as editor at the student radio station, and embarks on a motorbike journey across Yugoslavia, from Slovenia through Bosnia to Novi Sad. Caught in the middle of the so called “anti-bureaucracy revolution”¹, he sees that his country is falling apart, and flees to Greece. The imagery and symbolism of the political gatherings at that time were communist in nature, and the messages were nationalistic, as exemplified by the chant “Rain tumbles as Pristina crumbles, the wind blows as Serbia grows.” How do you view those times from today’s perspective?

When I shot that movie, in the summer of 1988, Yugoslavia was undergoing great structural upheaval—the ruling class was trying to hold on to its position, and keep its head above water. Now people talk openly about this, on TV as well. About a month ago, I saw a talk show on the Croatian TV-channel (Hrt) about the secret police and the fall of Yugoslavia. The topic was prompted by an event: the Germans were calling for the arrest of the secret service (Udba) member who, in the seventies, in Germany, had killed an ina² functionary (Stjepan Đureković) for criticizing Tito. The assassin then fled the country, stealing some money as well. A guest on the show, Mr. Manolić, a high ranking police officer during both communist and nationalist regimes, gently and tactfully explained that the secret police was supposed to protect all people, regardless of their personal history, providing they towed the new party line. There were tensions in Slovenia and even some arrangements with “colleagues from other republics” to descramble the system. I remember something funny and sad that happened to me when I brought some recorded material to TV Ljubljana and openly talked about the “anti-bureaucratic revolution,” with its iconography of socialism and nationalism, labeling it as “Mussolinian.” “Wait,” they said, “we have to call comrade Smole from the Socialist League about this.” And comrade Smole came, sat down

and watched the entire TV movie, before informing me that I had misunderstood “comrade Sloba³, who is simply using a bit more rigid methods”—and banned the movie from being broadcast. It was only a few months later, after they had definitely parted company with “comrade Sloba,” that the movie was ★ The Slovenian nomenclature dissolved itself and the indeed broadcast. transition was reached through compromise. In Serbia, political gatherings shifted the negative energy and hysterics of earlier partisan anathemas and campaigns to finding ‘enemies’ in local neighborhood, and in discriminating against “other” ethnic nationalities. The tools for this were national-socialist ones, loaded with all the sentiment and stories about a country with centuries of history. Mussolini went to Ethiopia, and our warriors, as the current legal cases show, went to hangars and neighborhood schools…

What is your view now of all those past and current ideological paradigms?

Any ideology, ripened by experience and measured in decades, has always been a publicly proclaimed and distributed lie. And if you look over the past ten years of transition and the move towards capitalism, this has remained more or less the same. The actual ideology of capitalism gone wild is very banal and already has many opponents. It is still unclear how this will develop.

What we do know, however, is that there is a clear resistance to Bush’s politics and protests against the handling of the Iraq issue. I’d like to live long enough to see the reactions of the impoverished masses, stripped of their rights, in a broader post-communist context and territory.

We’ve talked a lot about identity. In the film Stara mašina (Old Timer), which I’ve already mentioned, you’ve paid homage to the city of Novi Sad. How would you describe the identity of this city and its people? How is it different now in 2005, compared to the mythologized golden age, and to the recent dark nineties?

Novi Sad is an urban center from the eighteenth century, built alongside the Petrovaradinska fortress. It’s a fascinating place. Novi Sad welcomes newcomers. They are proud of their city, and do everything to play up its beauty.

Lots of people, new to the city, even tone down the accents of the regions from which they originated from to fit in better. They take on the local dialect, and imitate its pronunciation. This city is an example of a place where communication flows, be it in business, education, or entertainment. It is a place that radiates centuries of experiences in a multi-cultural exchange of people, ideas and trade. Even if the actual history has long been forgotten, this atmosphere is still present. It can be felt in the diversity of the people who live here—Serbs, Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Slovaks, Croats, Armenians among others. Eighty years ago it was normal for everyone who wanted to work in the public sector or at a trade, to speak at least three to four languages. That repressed memory is still here, somewhere under the surface, and it emerges unexpectedly in many facets of life. For example, the unbelievable openness, the readiness to communicate, and the generous hospitality, which greeted tens of thousands of “foreigners” during the Exit (music festival) is a prime example of the uniqueness of Novi Sad.

3 Slobodan Milošević : Sloba is the short form of Slobodan, but he was often wrongly referred to as Slobo by the international press due their negligence of Serbian grammar. In the vocative case when someone is called or addressed directly (the “a” changes to “o”).

So at demonstrations “Sloba” was addressed as “Slobo” (as in the chant “Slobo, Slobo”) leading to the misinterpretation of his name (translator’s comment).

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Media Ontology Mapping Social and Art History in Novi Sad Zoran Pantelić and Kristian Lukić

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After breaking relations with Stalin and most communist countries at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s, Yugoslavia experienced a certain kind of democratization, which influenced the artistic and cultural scene, dominated at that time by soc-realism. Moderate modernism became the mainstream cultural framework for the young socialist state in the fifties. In 1954, the Youth Tribune was established in Novi Sad as a cultural center that strongly promoted modernist art and culture as well as free speech and dialog on contemporary social and political issues. ★ Youth Tribune was influenced by international youth movements that culminated in 1968. Youth movements as well as radical artistic and social practices from Yugoslavia provoked a dominant discourse on moderate modernism.

The most radical demands for the democratization of culture came from artistic and cultural circles in Novi Sad gathering around the Serbian language magazines Fields (Polja in Serbian), New Symposion (Új Symposion in Hungarian), the student magazine INDEX, the film company Neoplanta and especially around Youth Tribune. The character of these practices was multicultural, experimental, new leftist and international. Youth Tribune was linked to other cultural centers in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade, Budapest, Berlin, ★ Significant protagonists of the art scene at that Paris and other cities. time were the members of the KôD group (Slavko Bogdanović, Slobodan

Tišma, Mirko Radojičić, Miroslav Mandič, and partly Janez Kocijančić, Peđa Vranešević, Branko Andrić, Kiš-Jovak Ferenc), the (∃ Group (Čedomir Drča, Vladimir Kopicl, Ana Raković and partly Miša Živanović), and the KôD Group (∃ Group (Čedomir Drča, Vladimir Kopicl, Mirko Radojičić, Ana Raković and partly Slobodan Tišma and Peđa Vranešević), who worked in the sphere of linguistics, performances, process art and conceptual art with strong emphasis on intertextuality and interdisciplinarity. All of them were highly influenced

by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Marshall Macluhan, Stéphane Mallarmé, Guy Debor, Marcel Duchamp, Kazimir Malevich, OHO, Art & Language, Joseph Kosuth, Dejan and Bogdanka Poznanović. Strong influence also came from the Vojvodinian film production (gathered around Neoplanta), which produced the socalled black wave with names like Želimir Žilnik, Dušan Makavejev and Karpo ★ An important part of the artistic strategies, that are a Aćimović Godina. common signifier for these groups, is reducing the importance of authorship, strongly emphasized in the works of The January Group, The February Group and The March Group. Members of KôD and (∃ created these groups and worked, acted and performed so that during January they called themselves The January Group and during February the February Group. This strategy became quite interesting as during performances (like in the Youth Cultural Center in Belgrade in January 1971) they created strong negative feedbacks from both audiences and the media. They made assemblages with faeces, openly and publicly attacking the cultural and political establishment ★ At that time, the Youth (open letter to the Yugoslavian public, 1971).

Tribune’s critique of the Yugoslavian society derived from a non-dogmatic radical left position (there was a wide range of anarcho-liberal, Marxist, Situationist, Trotskyist and Maoist ideas) that imperiled the exclusive right of the state to practice Marxist and left ideologies. The state reaction corresponded with the victory of party hardliners (in the years 1972–74). Until that time, culture, the media, and even politics and economy had been relatively liberated ★ After the reaction of the state apparatus Slobodan Tišma canareas. celled his public art practice and together with Čedomir Drča created several works and performances that dealt strongly with the death of utopian projects and the end of modernism. It was interesting that after the state reaction most of the artists sooner or later reduced their presence in the cultural scene, some among them stopped working or started to symbolically perform these attitudes as reactions to new situations. There were works like Invisible art, Invisible band or Invisible artist, all part of a time-based performance called The End, that took place from 1972 to 1977. In that time, Slobodan Tišma and Čedomir Drča drank American Coca-Cola and Russian Kvas every day with friends in front of a local store. This performance presented a strong ideological dimension for the desired autonomy of art, declaring the avant-garde’s artistic acknowledgement of the defeat of art in the clash with the ideological state apparatus. This period coincides with the end of utopias and the avant-garde experience from one side and the appearance of popular punk and new wave movements on the other side (1972–77), that got these artists to start working again in a somewhat changed cultural environment. At that

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1 Because of its strong critical engagement and critique of the Yugoslavian cultural and political establishment, Youth Tribune was stamped down in 1974. The editorial boards of Novi Sad’s artistic and literary magazine Polja on the Serbian language and Uj Simposion on the Hungarian language, the students’ magazine INDEX and the film company Neoplanta were completely deposed in the period from 1972 to 1974. In 1971, Slavko Bogdanović and Miroslav Mandić were sentenced to one year in prison because of their artistic activities.

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time, they were deeply involved in the subcultural scene and spent time away ★ Unforfrom art institutions that were occupied by state aparatchicks. tunately, at the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies, the local art infrastructure and art critics did not have mechanisms and tools to process the rich artistic and cultural activities that were happening right in front of their eyes. This specific “cultural heritage” vanished from the public sphere after the state’s intervention and became part of the local mythology.

These artists went into denying art in general, engaging in escapism and the symbolic death of utopia, a similar destiny to that of other utopian and avantgarde movements in the mid-seventies. The KôD Group and the (∃ Group called into question moderate modernist values and the defined boundaries between different arts as well as the boundaries between art, culture and politics. They were acting from inside the mainstream cultural and youth state institutions, a position quite rare in Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe by that time. Since the provocation of the state apparatus and ideology crossed the imaginary boundaries of the state’s tolerance, the state reacted, thus confirming its position in the hierarchy of power. The state apparatus completely replaced the editorial boards of institutions and magazines with agents and bureaucrats, which imprisoned some of the protagonists of the scene. They also banned the distribution of films.¹ ★ The question of the so-called “new media” today and the exploration of media is quantitatively identical to the problems that the neo-avant-garde of the sixties dealt with while conducting experiments with installations, video and electronic sound. These problems deal with the question of the relationship between the medium and the content, i.e. what is new in new media. Media research is the history of the research of communication and extroversion, while simultaneously seeking the channels to address the masses and send a message. The avantgarde’s aspiration to penetrate society and lead it in an utopian project of creating a just society is closely connected to media research.

Zoran Pantelić was born in 1966 in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro).

He lives and works in Novi Sad. Kristian Lukić lives and works in Novi Sad, Serbia and Montenegro.

Renata Poljak All One Knows 2-channel film and sound installation, 2006

In All One Knows, Renata Poljak takes the risk of walking on an emotional tightrope, traveling from Belgrade to Vokovar with a companion, whereby she discovers herself as “Croatian”, an identity which she had never explicitly adopted. She perceives her environment, both surprised and overwhelmed by her own “incorrect”, because suddenly nationalist, feelings. ★ Due to their inability to adequately address their emotions the two travelers comment on their immediate impressions gathered in the course of this journey. They look for explanations for what has happened, the war between Serbia and Croatia, and for relevant traces. But explanations are nowhere to be found, not in Belgrade, nor in Vukovar. What they find instead is people’s alarming suppression of history and memory. ★ This episode is juxtaposed to the projection of an arguing couple, whereby the same patterns and unresolved conflicts – ultimately trivial matters– repeatedly lead to ferocious disputes. Renata Poljak merges the borders between the personal and the fictional, and so creates a position which allows her to develop and tackle suppressed issues and the trauma of being unable to talk. ★ Renata Poljak was born in 1974 in Split, Yugoslavia (Croatia), and now lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

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Renata Poljak All One Knows Videoills, 2006

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All One Knows Nataša Ilić

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While I write this essay, Renata Poljak’s work All One Knows is still in the process of being realized, and in this situation of uncertain outcome, in which the interpretative projection of the artist’s desire interlocks with the projection of my desire, I try to persuade myself that we are moving over the same terrain. But All One Knows actually troubles me with the doubt of claiming the opposite—that in the field of ideology, which is especially concerned with the production of meaning and the field of the symbolic, nothing is to be taken for granted. ★ The video installation All One Knows consists of two video projections. What connects them is sound—music made of the edited sounds of steps on a parquet floor comes from two speakers and through looping occupies the space between the two projections. The first film is a 16-mm film, hand-held, made in Belgrade, on the way from Belgrade to Vukovar, and in Vukovar. The images show the surroundings, panoramas, landscapes and scenes by the road, mostly without people. We never see the protagonists, a man and a woman, but in the background we hear their comments and fragments of dialogs, spoken in our universal English, with an occasional sentence in Croatian. The viewer cannot immediately discern who the characters are, what they are talking about or whom they are addressing—we guess that they are fellow travelers talking to each other, but sometimes it seems as if they are referring to a third person, a woman whose experience they are retelling, thus sabotaging the autobiographical character of the “road movie”. There are no sounds of the surroundings, but only their voices, which echo in the empty, purified space—as if in a vacuum of “truth”, unpolluted by the relativity of intersecting perspectives, positions and temporalities, in clear contrast with the spoken content, which undermines every possibility for a fixed position and solid story. ★ Vukovar is a city-symbol whose semantic field oscillates between the extremes of disparate perspectives. It is a multi-ethnic city on the Croatian side of the Danube, a city whose destruction by the Serb army in the autumn of 1991 filled the world media for a while, and those images (the bombarded hospital, the convoys of refugees, the sufferings of civilians…) supported the media campaign which contributed to the international recognition of the Croatian independent state a few months later in January 1992. It is a city for whose fall those responsible are still being brought to justice today, a city in which multiethnicity is once again being tested, and in which the homogeneity of an identity-based public discourse is being expressed by different political, ethnical and religious symbols. The artist arrives in Vukovar in a roundabout way, from Belgrade, the capital of the ex-state, a topos of political decisions and maneuvers which in the 1990s instigated a series of wars in ex-Yugoslavia, a city which in the artist’s narration fully fits the hegemonic media image of ethnic and racial stereotypes of aggression and militarism, thus contributing to the national mythology, which works its way from the inside and confirms itself on the outside. ★ The second film is a feature film, made in Zagreb with a video camera according to the artist’s script, in a wellto-do apartment, in which the story takes place—a heated discussion and argument between a man and woman, a couple. The roles are played by Cro-

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1 A woman waits at the window, a man enters the domain of the home from the outside; woman as nature and home, man as the social world.

The 18th century compartmentalization of the public and private defines the public sphere as a world of productive labor, political decision-making, rule, education, the law and public services, which became exclusively male, while the private sphere became the world of home, wives, children and servants. Woman was defined by this other, non-social space of sentiment and duty from which money and power were banished.

2 Niklas Luhmann, Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1986

3 Rastko Močnik, Tri teorije: institucija, nacija, država (Three theories: institution, nation, state), p. 16, CSUb, Belgrade, 2003.

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atian actors, the language: Croatian. The banality of their argument confirms all the clichés of a heterosexual marriage¹, spiced with contemporary motifs which reproduce old clichés in new forms of the neo-conservative return to family values, with respect for identity differences and the general gender confusion. Every contextualization takes place only in language; love is expressed in the language of the contemporary Zagreb literary speech, permeated with specific urban idioms and their class connotations. ★ The fact that the film on travel is (mostly) in English, and the film about the argument between a “generic” couple in Croatian, actually confirms what is possible to utter in which language. And in some of her previous works Renata Poljak, by multiplying the languages she uses, suggests that the “truth” of the displaced subject exists only as the experience of a body which is being confirmed in each language anew. The experience of the meeting with Vukovar, to which the artist arrives from Vienna via Belgrade, is possible to bear only in a dislocated way—in Belgrade, and in a language which is foreign, yet understandable to “all”—in English. The “political incorrectness” of her excess is only possible in a foreign, “civilized” language, in which it is not a reproduction of the clichés of mad nationalism, the delayed fever of ethnical belonging and religious fundamentalism, but its strategic displacement. ★ The stories could be understood as a parallel of war and love; not in the sense that has been developed in the semantics of love since the earliest texts of antiquity, but on the level of ideology, as ideological speech which establishes or maintains some social relationship. Love understood not as a feeling, but as a communicative and symbolic code of intimacy and an expression of feelings in modern society, as has been developed since the 18th century, functions as a “cultural imperative”, as an ideological rule². Love finds its fulfillment in a marriage, the marriage being the result of a romantic love, which becomes the only legitimate reason for the choice of partner.

This institutionalized exchange for exalted passion takes place in circumstances in which the independence of sexually-based intimate relationships under the code of love is based on the strict differentiation between personal and non-personal relations, just like the modern bourgeois ideology of democracy is based on the autonomous political sphere, in which people are treated as separate and abstract “equal and free” individuals, isolated from the social matrix, freed from (real) status and other limitations, orderings and responsibilities. ★ By being established through the abstraction of social relations and by supporting only abstract individuals, the autonomous political sphere decisively influences social relations, and “its effect is not the same on both sides of the class demarcation line”.³ In the same vein, the coding of romantic love as an autonomous space of intimacy realized through marriage, a social relation in which an individual can communicate about itself, “to be just like s/he truly is”, in a way in which it is not possible in nonpersonal relations or in the narrow confines of the system, does not work equally in relation to the questions of gender as a continuing axis of power and domination, and to the questions of sexual difference as the ambivalent scene of meaning, fantasy and desire. “Discrimination is but a symptom of

a liberal bourgeois society, which proclaims itself the society of liberty and equality for all, while it nonetheless prevents the enjoyment of equal rights through structural constraints, economically, socially and psychologically.”⁴ ★ The story of the second film is a common point of the ideology of the bourgeois family as both social institution and discursive formation for the production of male and female subjects, just as the first film deals with the common points of nationalistic ideology and its terror of identity-based utterances and identity-based communities, exclusive in their homogeneous dimension. The surprising “encounter” with the ideology of a nation, in Belgrade, on the way to Vukovar, that surrendering to the ideological illusion of national belonging which is experienced as something unconditional, as something that cannot be cancelled and that forms the rational framework within which it is possible to make decisions and to act, actually registers the traumatic event that happened at the beginning of the 90s: with the dissolution of the state, with the war and with the establishment of a new social order. Only with the repeating of the traumatic event, by its retroactive recoding, is trauma established and integrated into a psychic economy, into a symbolic order. Trauma is never historically effective or fully significant in its initial moments; it is a hole in the symbolic order of its time that is not prepared for it, that cannot receive it, at least not immediately and not without structural changes. ★ Questions of repetition, difference and deferral condition the questions of causality, temporality and narrativity. The viewer is faced with two stories, and in order to see one, s/he must turn his/ her back to the other, while still hearing the sound of the first one in the background, and the stories are mutually connected through the sound loop that permutes and perpetuates the sound of steps on a wooden floor, moving without direction, in an endless loop. A direct confrontation would hardly achieve immediate success. The traumatic event, in order to be understood or resolved, can only be seen when looked at “askew”, with a look imbued by desire that enables the shapeless and meaningless image to acquire a clear shape. The story about the trip to Vukovar, by way of Belgrade, embodies and materializes the excessive disturbance, which desire brings into objective reality, and in that sense it is not realistic, but points to the Real, which cannot be symbolized. It does not deconstruct the fascinating presence of images and emotions, but recognizes the unbearable presence of the Real. Subjectivity, which is not established once and for all, but is structured as a relay of anticipations and reconstructions of traumatic events, is exposed as a set of multiplied views, that attempt to reconstruct the event. The stage of the event is dislocated from Vukovar to Belgrade, where the uncontrolled nationalistic outburst, aggressive and defensive at the same time, compensates in advance for a reaction that might not happen in Vukovar. ★ In the period of the current ideology of “normalization”, which acts in the field of the symbolic and the production of meaning producing consensus and consent, nationalism as a specific mechanism of social cohesion has been replaced by political correctness as dictated by integration processes to the European Union, that promised goal of normalization. But social tensions have not been resolved,

4 Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference, p. 50, Routledge, London and New York, 2003.

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5 Michel Foucault, “Friendship as a way of life”, in: Hatred of Capitalism, A Semiotext(e) Reader, ed: Chris Kraus, Sylvére Lotringer, p. 299, Semiotext(e), Los Angeles, 2001.

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only suppressed by a promise of “normalcy” to which the “Western states of late capitalism”, as welfare states in which human rights are fully respected, are supposedly close. Normalization today serves to legitimize liberal capitalism and the political system of parliamentary democracy and free market as the only natural and acceptable solution, the optimal norm of political consciousness, and all its traumatic consequences—unemployment, poverty, widening of class differences, degradation of the education system, decrease of social and health security, conservative backlash, and soon have not been understood as a regular product and symptom of the liberal-capitalist system, but as mere “side-effects”. All One Knows does not produce a politically correct and highly functional, aesthetic suggestion of non-conflicting transition towards a liberal ideal of equalizing multicultural sociability, and it reacts to the frustrating situation of false dilemmas between the “European way” and “local extremisms” with a gesture that opposes the entrapping mechanisms of normative coding, that create a community in which all voices tend to be absorbed into the homogenous black hole. By situating itself outside of the contemporary scheme and its “political sphere”, All One Knows calls for the imagining of subjectivity established in a community, in a restored space of the “political”, in which a new coding of intimacy and love stands a chance beyond “two ready-made formulas of the pure sexual encounter and the lover’s fusion of identities”.⁵ Nastaša Ilić was born in 1970 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (Croatia).

She lives and works in Zagreb.

Boris Buden’s Silent Albanians Politics as Nondiscursivity Sezgin Boynik

First published in Albanian in MM magazine, Prishtina, Kosovo, Dec. 2005 The text in this catalog is the shortened English version as first published in Prelom magazine, Nova Gallery Newspaper 08, Zagreb, Croatia, Dec. 2005

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A form of new colonization is taking place, aided by the techniques of representation. It is a new form of cultural and class control, which can be perceived in all areas of contemporary knowledge, from anthropology to video art. ★ As it is already known, representation is a way of presenting “other” (the one who is absent) in your own system. ★ Words contained in this definition such as “presentation”, “other”, “absence” and “system” are sufficient for the understanding of political connotations of representation. I would like to analyze in this essay the representation of Albanians from Kosovo and their interpellation in the great ideology of exclusion. ★ Sometime in the beginning of 1990 in Blue Box café in Vienna, Boris Buden was watching some photos from a projector, accompanied by rock music, and much to his own surprise, he noticed briefly some writing on the wall “Krv i smrt” (Blood and Death) in the Croatian-Serbian language. ★ This unutterable word, with no vowels in it, is not an association of any kind for the Austrians, however this word takes Buden to his South and he sadly remembers his Yugoslavia. Moreover, this association leads him to Kosovo—where at the exact moment Kosovo Albanians are going through very difficult situations—to the town of Djakovica, and, at that time insignificant, Mëhalla e Gërës, where “genres of life and death, inadvertently created high art and ritual got mixed up”. ★ Namely, we are

referring to the long article that Buden wrote in 1990, entitled “Inconscientia Iugoslavica” (Yugoslavian Unconscious). In this article, he analyzed problems in Kosovo, as one of the more important factors of the Yugoslav problem.

This article is certainly not the only one analyzing the breakdown of Yugoslavia, from the standpoint of the Kosovo syndrome; what is more, it is not our topic in this essay. It is more important to emphasize and state precisely, how Buden represents Albanians during the demonstrations in the beginning of 1990, or the way he aestheticizes them. ★ Boris Buden is a symbol of Yugoslav solidarity and nostalgia for lost democracy. Not only as an analyst but as a journalist, he has always stood up against narrow-minded nationalism and mafioso-provincialism. He has been one of the rare intellectuals who clearly and loudly criticized Tudjman’s fascist government during the war.

Buden is a progressive anti-nationalist and left-orientated critic. That is the reason why it is interesting to analyze how he represents Albanians in his essay. ★ At the very beginning of the text, Buden conceives these difficulties in Kosovo, quoting a journalist from Start magazine from Zagreb, as highly artistic performances and ritual actions. It is not of much significance to him which national-class, economic-political and historical factors are at work here, but only those factors which are symptoms of these demonstrations. ★ For Buden, these demonstrations are a ritual, taking place in a pre-linguistic state of consciousness. ★ Naturally, it is clear to everyone that Buden’s real intention in this article is to analyze the conditions of exclusion of Albanians from the public sphere and public discourse in Kosovo. ★ As a reminder, those were the years of mass exclusion of Albanians from the modern public sphere and of ghettoization in parallel institutions. Buden is even very clear when he explains that this exclusion was directly planned and introduced into practice by Serbian police policy (which are etymologically of the same meaning). ★ Thus, “Kosovo Albanian, as a man, descended into the darkest depth of the Concrete” (page 10), and in this depth he lost his humanity (which begins with words and language) and started expressing himself in rituals (pre-linguistic state). ★ Furthermore, the most important signifier (significance) in this ritual is “blood and death,” which is associated with the image of “two Albanian demonstrators, two actual persons with first and last names, Fatmir Kaleshi and Xhevat Hoxha. This place of death, marked by the puddle of blood, their citizens surrounded with candles and in that circle they erected some sort of an altar, assembled from various objects that were used by the deceased in their lifetime, their photographs, vases, candles, etc.” ★ So, this is the image (Buden psychoanalytically-cinematographically calls it Dream Screen; without any irony we can read this as a hidden slip), which he comprehends ritualistically and artistically, and that is the only historical fact he uses in the entire article. ★ Without delving into the discussion of this practice of necrosymbolism (which is a universal practice of symbolic alteration of political death across the world), we will continue with the explication of the image (man) of an Albanian in Buden’s system. ★ This Albanian is no longer human, he cannot speak, he is excluded from all pub-

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lic spheres and the only thing left for him is the practice called ritual. It is an African, it is the “Other”, a multitude, homo sacer (bare man), a primitive…

It is Unconscious. ★ It is a Silent Albanian. ★ Even the slogan “Kosovo Republic” no longer belongs to the discursive plan of desires for ending the injustice, instead it is a “ritual staging of collective identity.” Moreover, it is claimed that “this content speaks in the ghetto of pre-linguistic, sensual immediate symbol, it finds its expression on the deeper, unconscious level of meaning in the form of its bodily substrate” (page 12). ★ This bodily substrate of an Albanian is, according to Buden, visible even on the level of totally instrumental and rational practice, such as a strike. ★ The strike, which Albanian miners started in 1989 in the ninth horizon of Stari Trg mine (the most spectacular workers’ strike of the post-war Yugoslavia), is also, according to Buden, pre-discursive and “immediately sensual”. Let us continue: what an Albanian declared a year ago “by going down into the depth of mining underground, he is symbolically repeating now by descending to the ‘ninth horizon’ of the unconscious, the place where desire speaks in the language of the body, where life merges with its own simulation, where fantasy becomes illusion and symbol turns into symptom” (p. 15). ★ This anatomization and corporality of political discourse is actually one of the oldest and most popular methods of a colonizer’s representation. By maintaining this psychoanalytic symptomatology, Buden even reaches a conclusion that, as a result of these repressions, an Albanian experiences complete expression (again bodily) of his total, superior body. ★ As Buden notices, “Serbianship drops like a shadow, while at its place Albanianship is rising gloriously as a substitute in all its bare, vibrant nature, in the identical situation of the ritual-mythical staging of collective identity” (p. 19). ★ The Albanian, who is silent in a psychoanalytic discourse, now is also in “its bare, vibrant nature” reduced to the level of pre-human and precivilized state. Now, he is a powerful animal. ★ This anatomic machoism, along with pre-discursive politics of ritual, is a common of almost all elite and mainstream discourses. ★ It is interesting that Buden, who would like to analyze the reasons of exclusion of Albanians from modern public space of ex-Yugoslavia, falls into the same semantic representation of an excluder (this illustrates that the exclusion of Kosovo was not just a problem of Serbia, but of the whole of Yugoslavia as well), which is evident in two motifs: the man who cannot speak and the bare man in his nature, where the “Otherness” is formulated in pre-humanity, almost in animality. ★ The problem with Buden and a large number of other pop-leftist theoreticians is that the potential for accepting generally accepted representation always lies in their universal theories. The reasons for this are various—starting from insufficient information to ideological a priori neo-liberalism, which accepts western culture as an absolute and the only cognitive culture and rejects all other political acts as pre-civilized and pre-verbal. Actually, the culturalization of politics, which Buden criticized on several occasions, is not even noticeable in this case, as entirely different categories are in power. This is a system which has not reached its culturalization yet (words and cognitive discourse

are still missing), thus everything is ritualized. ★ The economicpolitical state of Kosovo in comparison to other former Yugoslav republics is not of any relevance for Buden. Again, here we are going to make a digression, as we have to point out that Buden is not the only critic falling into this anomaly of representation, but only serves as an example of a cultural expert and humanist with problems of representation. ★ On the other hand, another Croatian, Branka Magaš, is a rare example of a writer who, even though she analyzed the breakdown of Yugoslavia, with Kosovo as a symptom, did not fall into these problems of (un)cultural representation. ★ Branka Magaš’s article, written in 1989 for New Left Review, entitled “Yugoslavia: The Spectre of Balkanization”, is an analysis from the aspect of class problem, from the beginning to the end. ★ The difference is visible right at the start, because in this case the problem is not formulated as “unconscious,” but as “spectral”. Starting from Marx to the present moment, as we all know, spectre is a political other, not exotic otherness. ★ Magaš notices that Albanian miners created “the biggest workers’” movement of post-war, revolutionary Yugoslavia in 1989. What Buden commented on as psychoanalytic practice, is presented here in view of class movements of workers. ★ Throughout her report, Magaš presents with intensity how Kosovo has always suffered from a weak economy and how miners were primarily interested in their poor salaries and bad working and living conditions, more than in “ritual performances”, which held so much attraction for the reporters of Start magazine and Buden. Magaš goes as far as to quote an old miner who looked upon the demonstrations as “feast without meat” and real politics. ★ Besides, she sees these demonstrations as totally disciplined, with completely cognitive democratic and new political demands (we should bear in mind that this is the time of turmoil in the whole of Yugoslavia). ★ Also, Magaš notices that out of thirty Yugoslav journalists in Kosovo, only three spoke Albanian. In the end, it is logical that the whole story was based on a non-cognitive and exotic scenario. ★ Nevertheless, this is not a story of Buden’s Kosovo vs. Magaš’s Kosovo, but the story about two politics of representation. ★ The first is Buden’s, which by trying to preserve local otherness in its totality and structure, wanders into absolute corporality. It is powerful, uncultured, exotic, incomprehensible, therefore impossibly “other”. ★ We dealt more with the former semantics of representation in this article, whereas the latter, developed by Branka Magaš—according to terminology, Marxist—is truly against any kind of representation. When she is analyzing the reasons for exclusion, they relate solely to economic-political factors, while the representation is only a product or symptom of these factors. It is a method, which analyzes even otherness and localness from the position of universality of politics and compares culture, nation and discourse from the standpoint of class differences. ★ Naturally, a whole complex of relationships between cultural by-products and economic policy was not developed in Branka Magaš’s article, which is a sort of new-leftist report for an international left magazine (NLR). ★ Yet, the position that Magaš defends is universal, methodological and critical,

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which is called Marxism and is different from the sensual sentimentality of Buden’s exotic essay writing. ★ The situation is going to get even more complicated, yet more interesting, if we analyze the concept of “nation” by employing a Marxist method, especially when it involves Kosovo and the whole of the Balkans, where all problems have been reduced to nation or nationality. On the other hand, nation is connected with so many associations, it is almost impossible to reduce to only one factor, in this case economic-political. ★ In its history, Marxism made many mistakes regarding nation: starting from Engels, who believed that Slavs were not capable of socialism (history proved the opposite), to Marx’s catastrophic understanding of the Asian way of manufacture, etc. Yet, Eric Hobsbawm’s theory, which differs from Anderson’s culturalization of national issue, explained the matter by developing the term of nation as “an invented tradition,” to the understanding of class difference between ethnical entities.

To put it more simply, if colonialism is a matter of economy, then colonizer and colonized are two different economic classes. ★ Hobsbawm managed to explain the renaissance of nationality in the 19th century by comparing this entire development to modernized bourgeois economies. For example, new nations of the 19th century were not just a product of Romantic thought, but an uprising against the minority of capitalist, colonizing oppressors, while all of it was popularized in national idealism and “we together against…” clichés. ★ According to this theory, national dialectic between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo is not induced by archaic motifs of unconsciousness, instead it is a contemporary and historically understandable complex of structure of money, labor, productivity, standard, etc. ★ Due to all these reasons, theatralizing, sensualizing, ritualizing of Albanianship by psychoanalysis is nothing more than the hiding of the above mentioned dialectic in the name of neoconservative politics of representation. ★ Mister Buden, obviously, fell into this trap.

Sezgin Boynik was born in 1977 in Prizren, Yugoslavia (Kosovo).

He lives and works in Kosovo.

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From Stari Trg to Stari Aerodrom and Back: Answer to Sezgin Boynik Boris Buden

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I deserve a critique, but Sezgin Boynik hasn’t made an effort to accomplish one. He hasn’t even properly read my essay “Inconscientia Iugoslavica” published 1990 in Zagreb and Salzburg. Before I finish off the task he has left over for me, and do this critique myself, let me explain briefly what he is actually accusing me of. ★ He argues that I wrote this text dealing with Albanian demonstrations in Kosovo in the beginning of 1990 from a colonial angle, that is from the perspective of universal theories, which he finds typical for “ideological a priori neo-liberalism”. From this perspective, according to Boynik, I would present the Albanian as a non-human, as an animal, as “an African, (…) the Other, a multitude, homo sacer (bare man), a primitive, (…), Unconscious”, as a man who cannot speak, as a “silent Albanian”. By doing this, I would hide economic and historical facts, which explain the Albanian struggle for independence as class struggle. And, finally, I would do all this “in the name of neo-conservative politics of representation”. ★ Generally speaking, I didn’t write a text about unconscious and silent Albanians, as one gets the impression reading Boynik’s accusations, but about “the unconscious logic of Yugoslav totalitarian system at the moment of its collapse”. Already the title “Inconscientia Iugoslavica” as well as the motto I owe to Slovenian philosopher Mladen Dolar (“Yugoslavia is European unconscious, or: the unconsciousness is structured like Yugoslavia”), stress clearly

enough the actual topic and the real intention of my essay. Finally, in the conclusion, I even explicitly say whom I consider to be really silent in the whole story—Austrians, Germans, that is, Europe. I actually blame Europe for not being able to apprehend the drama of the collapse of Yugoslavia. ★ But Boynik has completely ignored the text he criticizes. The funniest example of this is his mocking my use of psychoanalytic concepts.

So he reads Dream Screen as “without any irony” my “hidden slip”. Boynik didn’t have to check many psychoanalytic vocabularies to see that this is not my slip, but a concept introduced by B.D. Lewin. The true irony is that I even wrote it explicitly in my text. But again, he didn’t read it. It is Boynik himself who mocks his own credibility already at the level of an accurate reading and quoting of my essay from 1990. ★ So he accuses me—and this is the major point of his “critique”—of the “theatralizing, sensualizing, ritualizing of Albanianship”, in short of “aesthetisation” of the political reality of Kosovo 1990. ★ The truth is that I am not the one who did it. It was a journalist from the Croatian magazine Start. Boynik several times quotes my quotations of the Start article as though these were my own words. So it seems as though I would, for instance, argue that during the demonstrations in the town of Djakovica “genres of life and death, inadvertently created high art and ritual got mixed up”. I didn’t write these words, I only quoted them. What I did in my essay was to analyze where “the impression that political events in Kosovo have got an aesthetical character” comes from. I am not the one who theatralizes political events in Kosovo and I explicitly stress this: “But this is not a real theatre. (…) Kosovo ‘theatre’ [yes, I write theatre with quotation marks] is born out of the bondage, as a result of the repression. This is why reality appears to us as in a theatre, that is, not in an aesthetic illusion, but in an illusion of the aesthetical…” I even openly accuse Serbian politics of making Kosovo a “theatre” referring to Serbian staging of the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in 1989 as well as to Serbian propaganda, which was presenting at that time “every form of Albanian mass-protest as staged, as directed and acted like in a theatre”. ★ Let me be clear: I have never aestheticized or theatralized Kosovo reality. On the contrary, I analyzed and criticized this practice. ★ In a similar way Boynik accuses me of presenting Albanians as “silent”, as pre-discursive and therefore nonhuman. Yes, I really did, I really argued that Albanians cannot speak, but I never ascribed it—as a sort of a property—to Albanian identity, as Boynik would like the audience to believe and therefore openly falsifies my words.

So he writes: “The strike, which Albanian miners started in 1989 in the ninth horizon of Stari Trg mine (…) is also, according to Buden, pre-discursive and ‘immediately sensual’.” Actually, I wrote exactly the opposite: “At the beginning of 1989 Albanian miners went down to the ninth horizon of Stari Trg mine (…) to articulate their political claims, which at that moment represented the political claims of the majority of Albanian people in Kosovo.

Albanians at that time still participate in the political discourse and although deep under the ground they affirm their identity on a conscious and discursive level.” ★ If I nevertheless talk about the inability of Albanians to

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speak and to discursively articulate their political claims, I do it strictly in one sense: as a symptom of their oppression. For me, Albanians are not silent, they are made silent (I hope the audience can understand the difference), and I am very clear about who made them silent and how: “The act of repression of the Yugoslav/Serbian executive force in its most concrete form: so-called differentiation (exclusion of those who think differently), isolations, arrests, physical and police violence, killings.” Without waiting for Vukovar, Sarajevo or Srebrenica to happen I recognized already in 1990 the genocidal and fascist motivation of this repression, which, as I write, “discloses a not realized and not realizable desire for the ‘final solution,’ for the physical liquidation of the enemy”. ★ This point is crucial to understanding what I actually wrote in 1990. Far away from presenting Albanians as irrational barbarians, primitives, non-humans or animals, I try to show how the political situation (not only in Kosovo, but in former Yugoslavia as a whole) gets out of rational control and is being—as a result of the violent exclusion of one particular (Albanian) political claim—dehumanized, barbarized, naturalized and, if you like, animalized. It is in this context that Albanians, instead of articulating discursively their political claims, have to reconstruct their collective identity on a pre-discursive level, that is, using gestures instead of language. Otherwise they would get beaten, arrested or killed. ★ In the same context I don’t present Albanians—from an allegedly universalistic (Western, European) perspective—as the irrational, unconscious Other, as “Africans, Multitude, homo sacer” (!?), etc. It is the oppressor—Serbian nationalistic politics of that time—whom I accuse of irrationality and of manipulation with universal claims. It is this style of politics, which presents its own particular political interest, based on an irrational right to a Holy Land, as universal and Albanian political claims as pathological. ★ Similarly, Boynik’s accusation says that in my analysis, I ignore historical and economical facts. Again: I am not the one who ignores facts. I show and analyze by whom, why and how the facts are ignored: “The politics, which wants to achieve Serbian sovereignty in Kosovo is blind to these facts and will stay blind because its actual objective is not a juridical and political sovereignty in Kosovo, but the reclaiming of the ‘lost’ identity of Serbian nation.” And about this Serbian politics I wrote already in 1990 that it is “in the last consequence doomed to repeat the defeat of which it is a phantasmatic compensation [I refer here to the defeat of Serbs in 1389]. It necessarily loses Kosovo …” Could I have been more clear? ★ But Boynik chooses to ignore what I really wrote. Actually, it is obvious that his “critique” hasn’t targeted me, nor the text I wrote in 1990. Instead, he is kicking a body which is already dead: the role I was identified with in the nineties—the role of the so-called public intellectual: a person who critically intervenes in the public sphere making use of his intellectual capability in the name of social justice, suppressed truths, excluded minorities, etc.—this role has exhausted its historical justification and ceased to have real effects. Boynik is right. The public intellectual is really dead. Not because intellectuals today are no longer able to use their intellect publicly (to repeat good old Kant’s figure) but because the public sphere they are sup-

posed to address doesn’t exist any more, neither in reality nor normatively. It has lost its most important functions together with its political cradle, the traditional nation state being today radically transformed by the processes of globalization; it has faded away together with the ideal of communicative rationality and pragmatic normativity, which had deeply influenced the democratic mind of late modernism. What we have got instead is a chaotic plurality of dispersed and fragmented audiences, which are informed temporarily around different clichés—the cliché of a common cultural, religious, ethnical or national identity, the cliché of a poor little minority suppressed by the colonial monster, the cliché of economic facts determining the political superstructure, the cliché of an autonomous victim-perpetrator dialectics, the cliché of the evil universalism, etc. ★ In this parody of what once used to be public space every truth can be falsified and no lie punished. Why then read the text you criticize? If you are happily rooted in your own identitarian community, which you pretend to represent, and if you strictly follow some common clichés, you will get your audience anyway, you will find people who believe you regardless of what rubbish you write. ★ Probably the most mean cliché Boynik (mis)uses is the one about the so-called Yugonostalgics: People, mostly not nationalistic and often left-wing-minded, who instead of accepting a new reality still believe in the “lost paradise” of former Yugoslavia. ★ So he ironically writes about me who “sadly remembers his Yugoslavia.” Let me quote how I really do remember “my Yugoslavia”: At the beginning of 1990, I wrote about the Yugoslav system that “Blood, death and poisonings in Kosovo are the presentations of its truth. The authentic Yugoslavian—the Titoist has been petrified in the shape he had had at the time of Tito’s death. Kosovo is his portrait on which he has continued to grow old and which discloses now his worn-out character, his ugliness, wickedness and open signs of his cadaveric dissolution. In reality he represents those forces (before all the JNA and the revived Serbianship/Yugoslavianship) who can only defend their particular interests by preserving the existing Yugoslavian system—a system whose truth is exactly the collapse of today’s Yugoslavia.” ★ Is this a description of the “lost democracy” I am, according to Boynik, nostalgic about? Is this the picture of my beloved Yugoslavia I sadly remember from Vienna? ★ Let me briefly repeat what I already know and openly say in early 1990, more than a year before the war started: that Yugoslavia is helplessly collapsing, that Europe has no answer to this challenge, that Serbian nationalism has fascist and genocidal motivation and that the politics based on this ideology will necessarily lose Kosovo. ★ It is true, today I don’t believe in communicative rationality any more, in the key role of public space (free and independent media), I don’t even believe in parliamentary democracy as I emphatically did 1990. But, was I really blind to the facts? ★ Again and for the last time: Boynik didn’t write a critique of my essay from 1990. He hasn’t even tried. What he actually wrote is an apologia of the post-war reality. For the actual purpose of his “critique” is to retroactively silence the voices, which opposed the Yugoslavian communist system from a non-nationalistic perspective and to defame those

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who raised these voices as a bunch of lunatics completely out of touch with reality. As though there has never been any option other than the nationalist one. ★ In 1990, I intellectually intervened in what was once Yugoslavian public space, praising striking Albanian miners in the Stari Trg mine for their moral dignity and justified political claims. I invite Sezgin Boynik to do something similar today: to write and publish in Kosovo an article— inspired by a transnational class solidarity and based on the historical and economical facts—about Stari Aerodrom in Belgrade, a place where Roma lived under the most inhumane conditions, expelled from Kosovo in 1999 by the Albanian majority. ★ I admit it would be the act of an old fashioned public intellectual. But nevertheless we could then say the last goodbye to him together, having finally experienced both what it means to be at odds with the majority and to take alone an opposite way to what most people believe is historical necessity.

Boris Buden was born in 1958 in Yugoslavia (Croatia).

He lives and works in Zagreb and Vienna.

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For the German version of “Inconscientia Iugoslavica” by Boris Buden see: Werkblatt, Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse und Gesellschaftskritik, no. 22/23, Salzburg 1990.

László Csáki & Szabolcs Pálfi Agár – The Hungarian Greyhound Project 30-channel DVD installation

Agár – The Hungarian Greyhound Project is an audiovisual collage composed of thirty individual interviews and filmed sequences, screened on television monitors arranged in clusters within the exhibition space. The central character is a dog, the Agár, in its role as a specific Hungaricum. The animal is used to demonstrate a complex system of stratification across Hungarian society. Alongside footage of the dog hunting, racing and training, Csáki & Pálfi investigate and explore this system of representation by presenting recorded interviews with the parties directly involved with the dog, or indirectly affected by its activities: the breeder, the owner, the veterinarian, the dog handler, the hunter, the politician. ★ László Csáki was born in Mosonmagyaróvár, Hungary, in 1977, and currently lives and works in Budapest. Szabolcs Pálfi was born in Budapest in 1974, where he lives and works today. The two artists work collectively under the name of the Hipokaloric Group.

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László Csáki & Szabolcs Pálfi Agár – The Hungarian Greyhound Project Videostills, 2006

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Greyhound Country Zoltan Sebők

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Looking over the work of László Csáki & Szabolcs Pálfi entitled Agár – The Hungarian Greyhound Project, as well as the accompanying documentation, one gets a sense of déja vu: the fate of a canine-breed, that of the Hungarian greyhound, shows structural parallels with many other Hungarian phenomena, amongst others with the fate of the modern Hungarian avant-garde art of the last few decades. During the period preceding communism an organic culture related to the keeping, raising, nurturing and use of this breed was slowly and gradually developed on the basis of foreign and local experiences.

It was put to an end at the stroke of a pen by the new regime, which banned hound racing, indeed hound keeping. The reason given was that the dog was a vestige of the aristocracy, which the new regime must be rid of. As is known, a similar fate awaited Hungarian modernist culture, which was internationally oriented, but also open towards and sensitive to local challenges, the only difference being that in one case they used the term “bourgeois”, whereas in the other the word “imperialist”. Both the Hungarian greyhound and the avant-garde artist were damned, forced to go underground, as indeed Marcel Duchamp had much earlier suggested, this being the proper place for the artist of the future. Of course it is not irrelevant whether a person or indeed an animal does this willingly or due to external pressure. ★ Looking back, one must say, that coercion affected the Hungarian greyhound much more strongly than it did the Hungarian avant-garde artist. If during the 1960s a curator from abroad happened to wander into this region, with a little networking, he could easily meet up with dozens of fresh spirited artists.

However, when during the same period Károly Makk needed a few greyhounds for his film What your wife is up to from 3 to 5, the producers were clueless. The Hungarian greyhound, this truly Hungarian breed, was nearly extinct. ★ Then came a milder political climate, the regime-change, integration into the European Union, and once again the people had a need to revitalize, re-establish the culture of the Hungarian greyhound. The process was and remained much slower, and more problematic than within the art-scene. While the artist forced underground gained ample publicity already before the regime change, later followed by prestigious state honors, the Hungarian greyhound had to wait until 2004 to be officially accepted as a “Hungaricum”, and be declared a national treasure. ★ However, the conclusion of this story is in no way reassuring. The main problem with the Hungarian greyhound is that it is subversive not only symbolically or metaphorically, as was the case of the avant-garde style artist, but is predestined to be used for hunting in the literal sense: mainly for rabbit, at times for fox, or even deer. It thus not only depicts, portrays or delineates aggression, but truly kills, while blood spurts, horrified cries are heard, and irrevocable death approaches. This belongs to the very “nature” of the Hungarian greyhound, as gluing belongs to the nature of glue. The only difference being that in the dog’s case this “nature” is once again culture, that is, the result of human activity—namely mindful and precise breeding—, spanning over a long period of many generations. But can you prohibit glue from gluing? The analogous question concerning the Hungarian greyhound is on the agenda

to this very day, and the judiciary answer is more no, than yes. During the past decades, the operative laws prohibited all forms of hunting with greyhounds, with the exception of the qualifying exams for hunting-dogs traditionally—and once again—held a maximum three times a year, during which they judge the abilities of this four-legged Hungaricum which are otherwise banned. This is as if we were accepted to excel at a school exam in a subject that we otherwise were not allowed to practice. At the moment greyhounds are permitted to hunt at some seasonal gatherings organized by the hunting lodges, but only for rabbit, or bobcat, that is, for small game. ★ It is partly due to this paradoxical situation that whereas with Hungarian artists the regime-change occurred before the political change of regimes, in the case of Hungarian greyhound culture it is only beginning to unfold. And the situation is just as muddled, chaotic, ambiguous and often scandalous as it was in the Hungarian art-scene approximately two decades ago: those truly and emotionally committed to the cause, as well as its practitioners, appear on the same scene as the Mafioso, or the small time cheats, and swindlers: experts and bungling amateurs; liberal innovators and nationalist traditionalists. ★ When old customs and rules have been in part forgotten, present regulations are useless, and new ethical standards are as yet absent, then you get a situation which the movie-goers best know from the Westerns, and the intellectuals from the aesthetics of Hegel. In the Western a lonesome hero appears, who with his exemplary deeds creates law and order, while in Hegel this amorphous, centrally as yet unstructured state of affairs is the fundamental material for an artist. ★ László Csáki & Szabolcs Pálfi are closer to Hegel than to the spirit of the Wild West. They do not rely on the exemplary deeds of the lonesome hero, and they themselves do not wish to create order, nor do they want to pass judgement. Rather, they take the existing chaotic and ambivalent situation as the material for their art, viewing and displaying each and every aspect with the neutral glance almost reminiscent of a sociological perspective. The Hungarian greyhound is of course only seemingly the true subject of their work. They are much more concerned with genuine human relations, social, economic and political stratification, which in the various regions of the country almost automatically crystallize and polarize opinions around a symbolically valued breed of dogs. The Hungarian greyhound is an excellent pretext for this, for it is the center of a host of personal, social, economic, legal, and ethical concerns. It is seen completely differently by the seventy year old cavalryman, who is the descendent of a famous greyhound-breeder dynasty, and the animal rights activist; differently by the gypsy, who, thanks to his dogs, can feed his family, and the well-armed hunter, who fears that because of the hounds he will be left without his prey.

The list is lengthy, for in this culture—the culture newly forming around the Hungarian greyhound—a wide variety of social layers and groups can locate their own interests. There are already many conflicts surrounding this issue, as is generally the case in all societies. Naturally here too the true question is how people can handle these conflicts. Two very strong habitual responses have emerged within this region: people are prone to utilize legal disorder,

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taking advantage of the murkiness of the situation, or they await the grand solution from “above”, looking to the politicians and the state for an answer.

Often, however, these conflicts are not even discernible from “above” and consequently solutions coming from here can only coincidentally be sound.

A good example of this is the present case of the Hungarian greyhound, which to the external world is basically unknown and which László Csáki & Szabolcs Pálfi do not wish to “solve” either from above or from the outside, but rather try to portray from the insider perspective of the involved protagonists. With this, they create the prerequisites of all consensual solutions. I stress, the prerequisites, and not the solutions themselves. ★ It is this requirement that determines the structure of their work. This is media art, in the sense that it is based on motion pictures, concretely on video recordings.

These are divided into short thematic sequences, which are displayed on monitors not in a linear—one after the other—manner, or according to any predetermined hierarchy, as is usually the case in standard documentary films, rather the task of “cutting” and editing is up to the viewer. The artists achieve this by having the sequences run on different channels, while with the help of the remote control the viewers themselves decide which version they would like to see. We are thus in a similar situation within the museum as we would be when pressing the buttons of the remote at home—with the fundamental difference, that here each channel is showing a different aspect of the same phenomena, and we have the enormously difficult task, of determining who is right, when and to what degree.

Zoltan Sebők was born in 1958 in Subotica, Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro).

He lives and works in Budapest, Hungary.

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“My” Danube What Artists Should Google Sorin Antohi

How to use this text: (1) read it slowly; (2) underline/highlight the words and phrases you do not (quite) understand; (3) prepare your own enlarged version by inserting all the information you gather via Google; (4) read the result at medium speed; (5) share it with your friends, add it to your blog, post it on the Net and (in case you print it out) on every wall. Additional reading: Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus. Observationibus geographicis, astronomicis, hydrographicis, historicis, physicis perlustratus, 6 vols., (1726); Elias Canetti, Die gerettete Zunge. Geschichte einer Jugend (1977); Claudio Magris, Danubio (1986); (immodestly) Sorin Antohi, Romania and the Balkans: From Geocultural Bovarism to Ethnic Ontology, Tr@nsit online, No. 21, 2002; Additional multimedia materials: Péter Forgács, The Danube Exodus: The Rippling Currents of the River (an exhibition –“immersive installation”—including his award-winning film, The Danube Exodus, 1997, as well as other elements, such as the haunting music of Tibor Szemző); the relevant waltzes, by Johann Strauss and Ion/Iosif Ivanovici, respectively.

The main point: In what follows, I offer three snapshots of “my” Danube.

Methodology: To introduce and make them intelligible, I start with a sketch of my approach: symbolic geography.

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Symbolic geographies are complex representations of the world we (think/ imagine/dream) live in. Their next of kin are the (very fashionable, usually misunderstood) mental maps, which are indeed their most abstract counterpart. Mental maps are not ordinary maps, the kind of objects cartographers produce, but rather cognitive schemata that can be represented visually, but have no direct correspondence to physical reality. Mental mapping is a process of gathering/generating, coding, “archiving,” retrieving, and decoding information on one’s spatial environment. Thus, whereas symbolic geographies are a palimpsestic, ahistorical (although they are about long-term temporality), metonymic, encyclopedic mix of geography, history, mythology, religion and fiction (i.e., reality + social imaginary), mental mappings are a hybrid of geography, topology, psychology, and cognition. Symbolic geographies are rather collective and emerge slowly, mental mappings are rather individual and are born at the lightning speed of neural networks (and sometimes forgotten or irretrievably stored almost as quickly), mainly as pragmatic, usable cognitive models of geographic space. Of course, these categories are heuristic and ideal-typical. In our lives, they blend inextricably.

To study all this stuff, one needs to start from both ends: from sacred geography (the ancestor of contemporary symbolic geographies) and from the very basic operations of the brain. (Artists do such things anyway, but my duty as a theorist is to explicate and analytically reconstruct how they might do it. I have second thoughts about theorizing, and I sometimes long for my own pre-theoretical life, when I was planning to become a visual artist; how was I to know at fourteen, when I decided to stop drawing and resolutely turn to physics and philosophy, that I could well become an abstract thinker and, precisely because of that, draw better and better?)

Snapshots Canals ★ As far as I remember, the Danube was first mentioned to me by my parents, as part of a roundabout answer to my straightforward question: “Where are my grandfathers?” As it turned out, around that time they were busy digging the Danube-Black Sea Canal, like many of those who had been singled out by Communists as class enemies (figures vary, but the most frequently quoted are 40,000 prisoners and an additional 20,000 “voluntary workers”; they came from all walks of life; most were educated; the trouble was, they had to be “re-educated”). Growing up and having to draw my first maps for the geography classes taught first by my mother, then by another extraordinary teacher, Mioara Desaga, I noticed no trace of the dreaded canal; it had been abandoned, and its very name was taboo, until it was rediscovered as a project by Ceausescu. While forced labor and extermination were not on the Party-state agenda any longer, the Promethean/ Faustian ambition of beating the old river system, and nature in general (including human nature), was still around in the 1970s and 1980s, among the debris, frustrations, disenchantments, and failures of Sovietization. Back in the 1980s, when the canal was finished (as part of a series of suicidal, megalomaniac economic projects that bankrupted the essentially fictitious

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Romanian command economy; among them, Ceausescu’s/ People’s Palace is the most popular with the rare, haggard Japanese tourists; and with artists), I used to think of it in terms of the ontological shortcut all utopias surreptitiously, hypocritically (and murderously!) fantasize. In order to move from the rebellious ontology (and anthropology) of the real world to their chimeric counterparts, an act of radical separation, a (brutal) caesura is needed: King Utopus, in Thomas More’s paradigmatic Utopia, severs the isthmus linking his kingdom to the mainland (and history). The Danube-Black Sea Canal, which in theory was supposed to bring about Communist Romania’s commercial renaissance, ultimately became a part of the huge North Sea-Black Sea (Rotterdam-Sulina/Constanta) transeuropean waterway, completed in 1992, with the construction of the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal. But Ceausescu and his predecessor, Gheorghiu-Dej, shared another priority: the making of the New Man; thus, the economic effects of the canal were secondary at best.

The canal, on which very few things actually float (most recently, a Romanian serial killer figured that out independently, and used a spot on the canal to hide a few corpses), is yet to demonstrate its main functions. Before that, it remains largely a monument to the mutant logic of state Communism.

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Borders ★ Drawing all those maps as a child and a teenager, I started to think about borders. The Danube seemed to be the most stable border Romania (before it, its various historical avatars, real and imagined) has ever had: the Roman lîmes for a long time; the border with Byzantium; then with the Ottoman Empire, the Danube cutting through Wallachia’s original territory between 1420 and 1878, carving out Dobrudja and making it Turkish (to this day, its Turkish heritage is visible and audible, like the imagined memory of a missing limb); then with the Balkans, when they were invented as a historical region, and as a civilized or symbolic geographical category (Romanians resent their being associated with the Balkans, thus the Danube’s function as a symbolic frontier is vastly overemphasized by them); with the Soviet Union and, since 1991, with Ukraine (another irrational builder of canals: Bastroe is now a serious ecological threat to the Danube Delta). The Black Sea, with the exception of the four and a half centuries of the Ottoman occupation of Dobrudja, has also been a stable border, and arguably this part of the world’s first frontier with Western Civilization, as it was colonized by the Hellenes before the Romans reached the Danube; thus, the Pontus Euxinus Greek colonies of Dobrudja, just like those in Crimea in Catherine the Great’s and Potemkin’s symbolic geography, could be used to substantiate the claim that some of the present-day Romanian territories were European avant la lettre; a similar claim is made by Romanians when they remind Westerners that when Byzantium was a thriving cosmopolitan civilization, the West was a barbaric backwater. All other current Romanian borders are fairly recent, some as recent as the end of WWII. But the stability of the border on the Danube doesn’t mean that it—a border area, a (literally and figuratively) fluid, blurred frontier—was not porous and mobile: before the stone bridge was built on its current Romanian itinerary (28.9% of the river’s total length) by

Gencsi Tibor (87), horse and greyhound breeder and famous Hungarian jockey in the 1930s and 1940s

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Appolodorus of Damascus in the early second century AD, a pontoon bridge had existed for the same military purposes, the river would freeze over, turning into a bridge itself, while boats would cross it since Antiquity; states and power systems would fluctuate, following the river only roughly and frequently integrating it; religions, cultures, languages, ethnicities, nations, armies, smugglers, missionaries, crusaders, and other adventurers and “civilizing heroes” have always crossed the Danube.

The West-East Liquid Slope ★ Ever since 1856, when the Galati-based Danube Commission was established to indicate and enforce the new international regime of the river—basically, the retreat of Turkey into the background on the Lower Danube, and the coming to the fore of the Western Powers and capitalism—, the Danube has functioned as a vector of modernization. The Romanian Principalities had been allowed to use their own ships on the Danube only since 1829 (the Peace of Adrianopolis/Edirne), and the river was originally slow in becoming a significant transeuropean way of communication (now it is officially called PAN-European Corridor VII), although it would seem destined to become exactly that, as it flows, like in an Orientalist fantasy, roughly and somewhat hesitantly, from (North) West to (South) East. Acting as a liquid West-East (civilizing) slope, the Danube starts its work rather reluctantly in the Black Forest, the European Watershed, where it has lost to the Rhine the Pleistocene battle for more water.

After that geological competition, the much larger Urdonau has disappeared, only to be remembered during devastating floods (such as the ones in 2006), seems to indicate. (Although, if we read Heraclitus correctly, rivers stay the same precisely because their waters change!) But there is also an East-West potential trajectory, against the current, very aptly suggested by the phrase, The Balkanization of the West (the title of a book by Stjepan Meštrovic): it is the trajectory of contamination, of the subversive and ineluctable transmission from the (South) East to the (North) West – the return of the repressed, the revenge of the passive “Other”. Navigating upstream is thus the only chance we have as (South) Eastern Europeans to influence the (North) West.

This influence, graphically symbolized by the spreading of avian flu from Turkey (in whose long-term social imagery the Danube is, like Turkish Dobrudja, an unforgettable missing limb) and the Danube Delta to the West, has the strength and vitality of the middle voice, of that cross between the active and the passive, probably the most successful long-term and long-distance vector of transfer. Frequently, this influence is carried by immigrants, refugees, and other displaced persons in their suitcases (symbolic geographies are portable!). Now it is carried by a recycled barge, navigating against the current, with its cargo of artifacts.

Sorin Antohi was born in 1957 in Targu-Ocna, Romania.

He lives and works in Budapest, Hungary.

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Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová After the Order Public sculpture, performance

In After the Order Mona Chisa and Tkáčová tackle the issues of hierarchical distinctions between individuals and groups within societies or cultures. The artists transpose the concept of class society onto Slovakian society by creating a living sculpture classified by criteria such as occupation, education, income, power and social prestige. ★ The presentation takes the form of a pageant, an enactment inspired by The Pyramid of Capitalist System (a poster published by the Industrial Worker, in 1911), translated into the present day, since today “the theoretical focus has shifted from class as a subject of history to the cultural constitution of subjectivity, from economic identity to social difference. In short, political struggle is now seen largely as a process of differential articulation.” (Hal Foster).

After the Order is a giant human monument, referencing the “human ornaments” of Spartacist agitprop parades and celebrations and is staged on Bratislava’s historically memorable Freedom Square, formerly Gottwald’s Square, the former site of a socialist memorial named after the communist president of Czechoslovakia today replaced by the Fountain of Friendship. ★ Anetta Mona Chisa, born in 1975 in Romania, lives and works in Prague and Bratislava. Lucia Tkáčová was born in 1977 in Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia, and is currently living and working in Bratislava.

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Freedom Square (formerly Gottwald Square), Bratislava, Slovakia, with former Gottwald Memorial (top, center right) and Fountain of Friendship (center left, bottom)

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Pyramid of Capitalist System, 1911 Poster, published by Industrial Worker (USA)

Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová Collage for After the Order, 2006

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Playing with Modernity Konantin Akinsha

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Modernity has not been sufficiently delved into or amply understood by our generation—despite its widening historical distance, its place in history and its becoming passé with the passage of time. Yet, it is still present, often unrecognized, popping in and out of our lives. To a certain extent, we continue to live in modernity. In the last hundred years, we have paid a high price for the debts of the 19th century. Ideas of enlightenment and romanticism had turned into monsters, defining the destiny of Europe, doomed to be shattered by Nazism and Bolshevism. The fall of empires and creation of nation states has led to the bloodshed of two world wars (providing a breeding ground for future military conflicts) and ended where it began—in the Balkans. Modernity was not an easy game. But the unavoidable fate was slow to reach Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Slovenians, Ukrainians and other nations, who entangled in unrealistic objectives often forced upon them, tried to skip a stage of the historic development known as “nation building”.

These nations were like bad students, who had to repeat a grade, left behind to pass an exam while others happily graduated. They did it grudgingly, but they could not avoid taking the test. Although we now know that it is impossible to escape history, we still make the same mistakes; repeating, on a daily basis, words and phrases, which have long since lost all meaning. Zygmont Bauman once noted that the Nazis tried to accomplish pre-modern tasks using modern means. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, the US government is exporting democracy to the Middle East, trying to carry out a modern task by applying post-modern methods. ★ Modernity is all around us. It can be glimpsed in the cityscape of New York, which today looks touchingly antiquated as a monument to a future which never came. It can be seen in the concrete monstrosity of the capital of the Brazilian utopia. It is the return of mediums of modernity, important a century ago, and unexpectedly penetrating these days, often overlooked, like two powerful laser beams perforating the night sky of New York in the days of sorrow after the destruction of the Twin Towers. We’ve seen them before on the Zepellin field in Nuremberg, where in 1936 Alfred Speer created his Cathedral of Light. ★ The beginning of the 20th century knew many “modern” mediums which were courted by both modernism and anti-modernism, but which never became fully incorporated into high art. Sigmund Kracauer defined one of these mediums as “human ornaments”. Being distantly related to the live sculptures of the epoch of Baroque, it turned into the panEuropean fashion at the end of the 19th century, when the cult of the body and gymnastics spread and flourished across the continent. However, the epoch of the well-built mustached members of sports clubs, concerned not solely with physical health but also with national purity, ended in 1914 when the human pyramid of Europe fell apart, only to remodel itself into a different shape: the figure of the red star. At the newly created bolshevist society of spectacles, communist youth theaters were constructing endless human pyramids on the cold squares of revolutionary Petrograd. Soon the new “ideological” pyramid was exported to the West German Spartacist, and other members of the Communist International stood on each others shoulders,

sacrificing not only their souls, but also their bodies, to the ideological common cause. ★ The beginning of the 20th century could aptly be described as “the time of crowds”. The horror of those crowds was hunting intellectuals and was appreciated by the tyrants. A metaphor coined by Joseph Stalin, who compared human beings to “cog wheels”, was a perfect description of the new role of the individual in the social pyramid of society, as well as the human pyramid constructed on the parade grounds. ★ The human pyramids of Communism stood in competition (at least in Germany) to the legs of the Tiller Girls, deprived of any ideological charge. However, their mechanical eroticism was related to the no less mechanical zeal of their proletarian counterparts. The girls were nothing more than the same “cog wheels”, but in a different machine. Kracauer made the mistake of believing that “mass ornaments” reflected the mood of capitalist production and capitalist alienation. They reflected the spirit of the crowds, the fear of individualization at the moment when the old order, having survived centuries, now disappeared, leaving humans to their own devices. Being afraid to face themselves, they tried to escape either into the future, as Russians, or into the past, as Germans. The Tillers Girls lost the contest, but not to the Spartacist agitprop. They lost it to the human ornaments created of the bodies of young men in brown uniforms marching in formations, creating a gigantic swastika. ★ But if the Nazi “human ornaments” had a tendency towards horizontal composition (like Nazi culture in general), their Soviet counterparts were tirelessly constructing the Tower of Babel. Human bodies were treated simply as good material for construction. Hierarchical human pyramids became a tradition, decorating the Red Square at every parade. In the mid 1930s, when Stalin decided to construct in Moscow the highest building in the world—the Palace of Soviets—a pyramid depicting the future architectural triumph of communism graced the May Day celebration in Moscow. Some scholars compared both the pyramid and the project itself to the old cartoon depicting the class structure of the capitalist society published in 1911 by the American unionist newspaper The Industrial Worker. They made a valid point. However, the new stratification of Soviet society was more reminiscent of the “Celestial Hierarchy” of Dionysius the Areopagate than the relatively uncomplicated structure of capitalist exploitation. ★ After WWII, human pyramids continued to exist in the communist world, which day by day was becoming more rusty and outdated. In the West they were exiled to stadiums and circus tents to die a natural death. They were not needed anymore by the world, which finally understood that standing on each other shoulders would not save people from the alienation of the final individualization. ★ Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkáčová, two young Slovak artists active both in Prague and Bratislava, portray modernity and modernism in the raw materials they use. At first their artwork seems strange, but soon it reveals a readily recognizable world where fortune tellers are predicting the future using Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital”. Keys, ashtrays and wire brushes stolen in the “respected” galleries are turned into Duchampian readymades, and young revolutionary artists are writing their credo, dreaming

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about the glamour of the art world. The irony here is soft, but sharp. Their description of the post-modern fetishism of modernity is hilarious. In contrast to previous generations of Socialist block artists, who made fun of Communism falling into senility, Mona Chisa and Tkáčová are not trying to deconstruct the world around them. Their art is a sarcastic reflection on the absurdity of cultural attitudes à la mode. At the end of the day, the contemporary American or British Marxist criticism, or even the tired and dogmatic fetishism of Duchamp, are more absurd than anything young artists could create. ★ Participating in the Journey against the Current, Mona Chisa and Tkáčová are determined to address the semi-forgotten medium of “human ornaments”. Using as their source of inspiration the aforementioned 1911 cartoon, they will construct in Bratislava—a city delapidated by socialism—a human pyramid depicting the new class structure of the capitalist Slovak society. However, the artists decided not to limit themselves to one device. They have incorporated into their art the shadow of another antiquated representational medium popular in the beginning of the 20th century—the statistical chart. Of course, statistics never fall out of fashion, but those gigantic, mendacious charts, which previously decorated every second wall in Moscow and excited Walter Benjamin, who naively saw in them a new powerful art form, disappeared from public view long ago. Faceless human figures were depicted in those charts (sometimes designed by such champions of modernism as El Lissitsky) coded in different colors signifying their social status. The ornaments of these tables were the best graphic equivalent of “human ornaments”, proving that if the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is simply a statistic. ★ The ghost from the past, which these two young artists will evoke in Bratislava, will combine both mediums; the human “cog wheels” creating the pyramid will be dressed in different colors signifying the social composition of the Slovak society. ★ Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkáčová are skillfully playing with modernity, reminding us of the words which they presumably learned from their favorite fortune teller: “Traditions of all dead generations are weighing upon the minds of those alive as a horrible nightmare.”

Konstantin Akinsha was born in 1960 in Kiev, Ukraine.

He lives and works in Washington, D.C., USA.

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p. 142: Spartakiada, performance by the Czechoslovak Peoples Army at the Strahov Arena in Prague in 1975 p. 143: Spartakiada, performance by juvenile apprentices from Czechoslovakia at the Strahov Arena in Prague in 1975

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In the Air Between Boris Ondreicka

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Bratislava is a city at the southern edge of the Carpathian Mountains, at the point where the borders of the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary and Slovakia meet. It is cut in two halves by the River Danube. ★ Bratislava grew on the area of a Celtic settlement at the northern end of the defence lines of the Limes Romanum, a borderline separating the Roman Empire from the rest of the barbarian tribes. Later (to put it simply) Bratislava grew in size as a result of being a reserve area for the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and the Habsburg monarchy, as well as a weekend retreat for the Viennese. Of all European capitals, Bratislava and Vienna are those closest to each other.

Bratislava with its 600,000 inhabitants forms a town, while Vienna with its 1.5 million people is a city. Some people say Bratislava is the most distant outskirt of Vienna. ★ Bratislava used to be a meeting place of the German, Hungarian and Slovak languages, resulting in a specific dialect, formed in majority by those mentioned above. The city was the setting of one of the most important yeshivas and one of the first universities (Istropolitana) in the whole of Europe. The Slovak language was codified only in the second half of 19th century, but it was no sooner than 1994 that Slovakia had willingly become independent. The word “Bratislava” means “glory of brotherhood” (brat = brother, sláva = glory), which reflects the masculine character of the 19th century revival (Carola Dertnig has asked me why there is no “glory of sisterhood”, but that’s another question). Other names, such as Istropolis, Pressburg or Poszonyi, are also known. ★ Historically and culturally, Bratislava is in a way closer to Vienna than to the country for which it serves as capital. It was detached from the central European context sixty years ago (metaphorically speaking, it moved further to the “East”), and later it consequently developed in an artificial direction. A clear example of this is, even today, the inconsistently built center with the devastated settlement around the castle—literally horrible. Bratislava is not popular in Slovakia, a fact also arising from the absolute centralization of power from the times of the totalitarian regime. Bratislava was forced to take over responsibilities that it was not interested in. ★ I grew up to be a teenager in the 1980s, still behind the iron curtain. With friends I used to climb Devin Castle hill, a place where the Moravia flows into the Danube, and with a sour smile we watched birds flying over the border freely, with no risk of anybody stopping them.

Radio waves were like these birds, too. ★ At that time, I mainly listened to American rock music such as Black Flag, Big Black, the Swans, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Ween, Minor Threat, Fugazi, the Misfits, Minuteman, the Butthole Surfers, NoMeansNo, etc. British bands, except for the Sex Pistols and the Wedding Present, did not catch my interest. ★ The resistant attitude of Bratislava’s punk scene (and punks of the whole Eastern block), to which I belonged to at that time, was not, compared to the western approach, clearly left-oriented, as the establishment consisted of hated communists. The idea of anarchy was the vision of radical freedom of self-expression, strongly suppressed at that time. I saw this understanding as something identical with the meaning of art. ★ As the Internet did not exist yet, my only realtime sources of information were radio stations—above all Austrian Ö1 and

Ö3 with the voices of Angelika Lang, Wolfgang Kos and many other names I do not recall. On television it was Kunststücke with Dieter Moor. It was on the program Nachtexpress that I heard the band Hüsker Dü, who would later become my absolute favourite, for the first time. I remember the song Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division, presented by the Austrian band Chuzpe, which was much stronger than the British original. It was a truly beautiful version which one can hardly forget. After twelve o’clock you could find me lying next to the radio with my headphones on, trying not to miss Musikbox, on air between 3 and 4 p.m. I always recorded the whole 1-hour program on a 60-minutes tape (I still keep some of these tapes). It was horrible to hear a concert being announced in Vienna and not being able to go–extremely frustrating moments. I even used to write down the names of bands in order to obtain their records. Many times I misspelled them due to the pronunciation of the Austrian speakers and to my own mistakes, and then couldn’t find the records. I had to listen, and I listened very carefully indeed. ★ The reach of television and radio waves created, from a different point of view, a new territory. So there were two hermetically separated entities combined by a freely available platform in the air, though not interactive from both sides. ★ At that time, Austrians didn’t listen to Slovakian radio stations. There was no reason or will for an Austrian to learn Slovakian. I do not think that the Ö1 and Ö3 broadcasters were even aware of “our presence on the other side”, and they definitely had no idea how important a role they played for us. ★ Longings floated in an East-to-West direction, while fears flew the opposite way, which to a certain extent has remained. ★I was buying (and recording for money) LPs and tapes on the black flea market. Illegal fairs regularly took place on Sunday morning in one of Bratislava’s parks. There would be three to four hours of fair, before the police came and managed to dissipate the crowd of around thirty people selling and 100 to 200 customers. On such occasions I witnessed no violence on behalf of the police. I was actually surprised how tolerant they were. Policemen occasionally confiscated some LPs from one of the sellers, maybe in order to pass them on to their son or to a lover. ★ You could also find some stuff at the Polish Cultural Center in the heart of the old town. Surprisingly enough, they sometimes had items that were prohibited throughout Czechoslovakia: A Polton licence for Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetable by the Dead Kennedys from 1987 including an A2-size poster collage of Jello Biafra—quite bad quality compared to the original from Cleopatra / DKS (1980), but otherwise identical. Just imagine: strictly forbidden goods sold legally in the very centre of town… ★ American music; Austrian radio; Joy Division and Chuzpe; communist Czechoslovakia. Bratislava with its national and cultural identity unclear. Slovakia? I visited Košice, the second largest town of the country, for the first time when I was seventeen, for only two hours, and later in 2000, so altogether three times in my life. In Vienna, I am at least three times a month.

Of course this is also due to the geographic distance. ★ A Slovakian artist growing up with American so-called “alternative” music from the Austrian radio, moreover, from behind the iron curtain—an absolute mix? I do

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not think so. It is only a specific cocktail. ★ After the opening of the borders, when I started visiting Vienna frequently, I didn’t experience a culture shock. Via the media I had been able to follow global developments and had felt like being a part of it. But I became aware of the weight, of the trauma of that historical asymmetry, and of how little interest the other side showed, how little they knew us; but also how we underestimated the meaning of being in the center of a town, how much solidarity we showed—being pressed by a common enemy—, to the extent of loosing our self-reflection and suffering from a victim complex. ★ Sometimes, some free-ofcharge media move in one direction only, sometimes sixty kilometers mean 360 degrees for the opposite side. And the act of opening windows does not necessarily mean a bird of desire flying in.

Boris Ondreicka was born in 1969 in Zlaté Moravce, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia).

He lives and works in Bratislava and Bernolakovo, Slovakia.

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Emanuel Danesch & David Rych Minority Logbox multiple degrees of representation logged 0106-0506: TR-RO-BG-YU-HR-H-SK-A Video archive

Emanuel Danesch & David Rych have followed Küba’s journey from Constanta to Vienna, traveling by car and towing a caravan converted to function as a mobile videotheque. In advance of their departure, they have collected film and video works, representing multiple communities in the eight different countries involved in Küba: Journey Against the Current, featuring ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, but also non-homogenous groups marginalized due to other factors. ★ These films, which are screened at each venue as part of the Minority Logbox archive, have been individually selected in order to reflect the cultural, geographical, political and social situation of these communities and individuals, widening the focus on transnational social groups often overlooked by administrative descriptions and thereby deprived of legal status. ★ Emanuel Danesch was born in 1976 in Innsbruck, Austria, and lives and works in Vienna. David Rych was born in 1975 in Innsbruck, Austria, and lives and works in Berlin.

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Multiple Degrees of Representation Space, Place, and Subaltern Identity in Moving Images Emanuel Danesch & David Rych

A central thought behind the video compilation stored inside the Minority Logbox is to archive multiple notions of the other and to further communicate them during screenings in transition; while the archive travels through neighboring societies—where the dominant culture in one place is a minority in another location just beyond the border. A large part of the project’s route crosses a region where displacement and forced migration have created an utterly reallocated configuration of marginal communities. It is an opportunity to (through the use of related visual documents) interconnect groups which have always been astray from the dominant culture. But it is also an impetus to reveal contrasts in different locations due to historical status and attributes connected to locally diverse developments. ★ The process of collecting films followed the intention of juxtaposing a variety of views, taken from the field of visual anthropology, the domain of art video and documentary, NGO material, TV productions and more rarely self-documenting approaches from within the communities. Whilst, generally speaking, one finds a rather limited concern towards minorities throughout local art communities, there appears to be a wider interest from other sectors, be it scientifically, politically or purely visually motivated—and in more than a few cases from abroad the geography of the subjects. As a consequence, the distinct angle of every single film of the archive is made evident to the viewer, by clearly labeling the included films by categories of representation/description, with their specific backgrounds offering a range of interpretations of collective identities and related histories. In a wider comparison this might visualize the different layers of the representation of minorities—sometimes indicating how a “minority” and the term itself is utilized, but also capitalized (even symbolically) by various interests. This concern is certainly more valid for some productions than for others. Since the early days of cinema on to documentary and ethnographic film, marginalized groups have been the focus of investigation and familiarization. Rather than being given the chance to portray themselves, minorities have routinely been depicted by others. ★ This selection is an attempt to extend the most commonly determined descriptions of the idea of minorities into various further meanings of marginalization, including national-, ethnical and gender-related viewpoints. The featured groups may not necessarily be numerical entities, such as migrant communities and refugees—there are also communities that may not wish to be classified as minorities. None of these groups are homogenous, so even within them, some members face further marginalization for various reasons. Currently, one of the more utopian groups (with an ambitious claim to be acknowledged through equality and mutual respect in all societies) is the queer community. ★ Operating as a diffusion unit, the traveling archive could provide an insight into minorities’ conditions of existence, but also indicate their relation towards the governing interpretation of culture and therefore mainly question the forms of segregation performed by the latter.

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Minorities and the Other within (the New) Europe Marina Gržinić

How are we to understand the following political theory text in relation to Emanuel Danesch & David Rych’s journey from Constanta to Vienna, traveling by car and towing a caravan converted to function as a mobile videotheque?

This text sets out to provide a precise and disturbing—if not difficult—political context to their work. We live in a time of unbearable lightness, making a discussion of politics in art disturbing! But Danesch & Rych’s work Minority Logbox is about constructing contexts, literally driving through them in order to show that each context is artificial, and that radical content in art today is inconceivable without a context.

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Emanuel Danesch & David Rych’s project deals with minorities, the construction of the “Other”, and discusses the paradigm of the new European identity.

It reformulates the post-socialist (transitional) condition of former Eastern Europe within the matrix of relations and power structures known today as New Europe. These questions arise from the political and cultural changes that result from the enlargement of the European Union to include ten new members, and from the process of setting the war in the Balkans in a new context. ★ An analysis can be established by reviewing what scholars stated about Europe three years ago. On May 31, 2003, Jürgen Habermas published a text in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, co-signed by Jacques Derrida (who stated that although he had not been able to participate in writing the text, he was happy enough to have a chance to at least sign it). This text is to be seen as a precise answer to, and a sort of “rebellion” against, the declaration of support for the US war in Iraq, dated January 31, 2003, and signed by various EU states. On May 31, 2003, the date the Habermas text was published, Umberto Eco, Gianni Vattimo, Richard Rorty and others also published in different—though no less important—daily magazines additional declarations of support for the basic ideas formulated by Habermas. ★ Two main points made by Habermas deserve closer examination. First, New Europe has to be seen as a space moving at different speeds, at the heart of which remains what he named the avant-garde, the nucleus of Europe, formed by the most developed European countries. He is presenting once again, albeit using a slightly new rhetoric, the old story of West and East. This difference is in his view accentuated, as he sees the West as a spiritual framework, a contour that is much more than Europe; it is a spiritual habitat connected with individualism, rationalism, and, last but not least, the Judeo-Christian framework. Everything, and I repeat, according to Habermas, has to be seen in complete “symphony” with the USA, Canada and Australia. ★ Japan is omitted, although this Western spiritual framework is, first and foremost, the depiction of nothing more than the developed Western World, i.e. the First Capitalist World. It is important to note that, according to the Vietnamese theorist and filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha, within the Global World the Asian space is granted a specific set of domination relations and expropriation processes/ removal of historical foundations. An obsessive situation exists toward this East (of Asia) that has to be seen as radically different from the East (of Europe). ★ Secondly, Habermas exposed two main traits that are in his view at the root of Europe today. He stated that Europe has in common two main features: the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century and the Holocaust.

Here I have to ask where and when we are to include the massacres within the Balkan territory, Kosovo, Srebrenica, and Vukovar. What is removed and abstracted, is precisely the impossibility of Europe becoming, as termed by Habermas, “a happily individual and rational Judeo-Christian entity”. Or let’s put it differently: in this act of omission we can detect precisely the removal and abstraction of that impossibility that today prevents the new European home (as termed by Vattimo) to be fully completed and at peace with itself.

The concentration camps, the massacres (SREBRENICA!) in the 1990s in the

1 Ahmet Soner Pervane/ Propeller 2004

2–4 Anne Schiltz Sweet Life and all That Goes With It 2002

5–6 Nita Mocanu Eden 2005

24 Luchezar Boyadjiev Super! Super!

2003

(from top left to bottom right)

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7–9 Esra Ersen Brothers and Sisters 2003

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10–19 Boris Mitič Pretty Dyana 2004

20–23 Goran Radovanovič Model House 2000

Balkans must be removed, abstracted, and rejected, erased from European memory, in order for this endeavor of the harmonious new European home to become reality. ★ Within the real space of Europe, the Balkans are, on one hand, perceived as a disgusting “remainder”, and therefore the massacres there are constantly abstracted. On the other hand, as has been pointed out by Boris Buden, a specific obsession regarding Eastern Europe, more specifically the Balkans, exists on an aesthetic level. It seems that the Balkans fulfil a special role for an imaginary European identification process. The Balkans are seen almost as a raw entity that can produce new concepts, but solely in the field of aesthetics, and thus the Balkans are capable of providing contemporary European art with some sort of fresh blood. Viewed from such an angle, I can state that the former Western Europe resembles a vampire or a modern cannibal searching for fresh blood and raw meat! This can easily be understood if we think about the proliferation of exhibitions in Europe that attempt to search for a Balkan identity and the “honey” with which to cover up the bloody wounds produced in the real space of the Balkans, also with the help of this same Western Europe. ★ Gianni Vattimo even takes us two steps further in searching for the new European identity, exposing the fact that if we are to talk about identity, then it is something that goes beyond the national states of Europe. But is he not simply giving approval to what is going on anyway in the real space of Europe? The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization make the most important decisions regarding the economic and political situation and future of a number of countries today. Moreover, according to Giorgio Agamben, we have to assert that what really interests the West is genetic material, so-called biopower. There is a whole realm of new technology and biology that is coming together, opening a field that is known as bio-politics. Bio-politics is about exploring and producing (artificial) life, and it is also the way modern states administer our lives. Modern states and even more so multinational companies instead of, or in the name of, national states, are prescribing what life is. It is not the idea of nations so much that is a problem today, pace Agamben, but the administration of our definition of life and of our right to die. The borders in question are almost completely regulated by the bureaucratic administration of a huge machine, which assumes all rights to decide on these topics. It is time to understand that neo-liberal principles of the regulations governing economic, political and cultural imperatives are already at work here, going well beyond the national state interest. ★ And again, Vattimo talks about the gene of socialism, which can be seen as something specific to Europe. In doing so, he simply suggests that we have to put into parentheses the real socialist histories of the horrors of Europe. But the history of socialism cannot be removed from its Eastern European legacy. The gene of socialism as proposed by Vattimo is a process of the swallowing, or to put it better, the removal of several decades of the histories of Eastern Europe. This means removing precisely those conditions of impossibility that would normally prevent one from seeing socialism as a process of humanization and progression.

Emanuel Danesch and David Rych’s project Minority Logbox tackles exactly

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these questions. It is possible to reformulate in relation to their project the whole story of this region and to ask: “To whom do the genes of war in the Balkans in the 1990s belong?” After all, if one is to talk of genes, then it is to underline the gene of oppression and wars exported from the nucleus of Europe toward its east/south borders or out of Europe. These genes produced millions of refugees, immigrants, people without papers, trafficking in bodies and minds, the slavery of millions, and so on. ★ Thinking within such parameters and stories shaping the identity of the new Europe, we cannot but be critical of those concerned with the empowering of naked life. This term (which I am using in reference to Giorgio Agamben) denotes a situation of absolute and total deprivation in which individuals have nothing but their (naked) life. The term comes from Roman Law, wherein slaves were perceived as sacred/animals, i.e. without any rights other than the right to have a naked life, and therefore only the right to die. Today we have a similar situation in relation to refugees, immigrants, emigrants, people without papers, etc, as well as contemporary slaves (i.e. those that are included within the general term of trafficking: children, women, etc). We have to be critical toward such interpretations that see a source of irrational power coming or dissipating from so-called people without citizenship, with undocumented lives. To credit them with an over-empowerment is a dangerous form of academic institutionalization, and moreover a rationalization of the total forms of oppression of people and bodies without papers, without rights, who are in possession of one thing only, their naked lives. ★ My critique is precisely against this transformation of naked life into a category of jouissance, into a category of enjoyment. If we are to give credit to such stories, then it means we are to empower solely the managerial academic groups within the global capitalist system that are trying to rationalize, in a world of an almost panicky, rotating global capitalist system, forms of deprivation and the naked lives of millions.

With reference to Agamben, this is the rationalization of a life without form, or a process whereby formless life is lent a kind of form, but one without life!

Therefore the gesture proposed by Emanuel Danesch and David Rych’s project to “leave the tracks of determined descriptions of minorities and to re-inscribe them within various meanings of marginalization, including national, ethnic and gender-related viewpoints,” is the right one to deal with the planned topic in radical and alternative way. ★ In the end, it is about context, about sharing the analysis of “new” Europe as done in the past, now being presented in an absolutely different context. The new Europe is not solely about differences, it is more about processes of inclusion and exclusion within/outside of Europe. These processes have a history, as well as video film that will be shown as part of Danesch and Rych’s mobile videotheque. The question remains as to whether these parallel histories are to be (re)connected with different publics, sharing them in a collective action of viewing, reflecting and interpreting such contents. In the final analysis, it is perhaps about building a certain collective foundation of understanding and acting, thinking and exchanging.

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Marina Gržinić was born in 1958 in Rijeka, Yugoslavia (Croatia).

She lives and works in Ljubljana and Vienna.

Danube Imaginary Daniela Zyman and Gabrielle Cram

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The Danube is the second longest river in Europe, an aquatic and cultural artery of nearly 3,000 kilometers that connects the Black Sea to the Black Forest. The Danube symbolizes connectedness and disconnection at the same time. It has been one of the most stable borders within Europe, but also, as argued by Sorin Antohi, a symbolic geographic venue, a metaphor for different pasts and histories, languages, mythologies, religions and much more. The Danube is a reservoir of stories and histories—related to the issues of migration, to people’s displacement and re-settling on new lands. “For all that, the region is a powerful reservoir of otherness producing various overlapping borders and transgressions.” (Ivaylo Ditchev) ★ The territory chartered by the river’s eastern course—the Ukraine, a tip of Moldavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Hungary—is still, as of today, the mythologized near East of Europe, central Europe, the south-central European plateau, the Balkans.

The region is the repository of myths, exoticism, the projected image of otherness. The “innocent geographical” appellation, which at one time and for many centuries designated the Land of Ottoman domination and half a century later the territories of Soviet occupation, was, as argued by Maria Todorova, the culturally constructed underprivileged pre-Orient, the incompatible and colonialized anti-world separating East from West. The “Balkans” have been constructed as the geographical bridge between the Near and Middle East, between the Europe of the West and the Orient. ★ “Although the river is no longer the only such avenue, the memory of its function is alive”, writes Iara Boubnova, its function of an axis of orientation, of connecting through trade, culture and the movements of goods, people and ideas the regions constructed as East and West. The “East” in question, the postulated peripheries are not so much geographically remote, as in the kind of regionalism that fantasizes a whole, culturally coherent zone in opposition to a “central”, metropolitan culture. Such binary models of center and periphery, aiming to give value to cultural difference, can indeed have a certain strategic value as modes of resistance to a standardizing world system. Although more often than not predicated on artificial notions of cultural autonomy, they are in themselves a compensatory ideology, and, paradoxically, represent, as Frederic Jameson argues, “a specifically postmodern form of re-territorialization.” ★ It is in fact the literary work of Jorge Luis Borges that has informed many contemporary thinkers, such as Edward Soja or Jameson to readdress issues of geographies with a panoptical viewpoint and to transgress the notions of traditional topologies. Approaching maps as pictures and patterns subject to various kinds of re-composition and repositioning on a sliding scale of abstraction and representation has become a strategy to redraw models of geographical space. The logo image of Küba: Journey Against the Current can thus be read as a schema of cartography creating alternating and self-elaborating patterns, and makes reference to Borges’ labyrinthine approach of metamorphosis.

Travel and journey ★ Contemporary travel raises issues of dislocation, discontinuity, displacement: Passing through ever more remote locations in increasing acceleration in order to reposition oneself from A to B. Arriving

Dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire (1683–1923) Map from “Histor orical ical Atlas” by William R. Shepherd, 1923 (top) Eastern Europe 1878 Map from “An Histor orical ical Atlas” by Robert H. Labberton, E. Elaxton and Co., Co., 1884 1884 (bottom)

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at places (or non-places) which function within the same logic of one’s point of departure (airports, transportation systems, hotels, mobile telecommunication) creates the simulacrum of sameness all over the globe: systems of bridging and eclipsing the notions of difference. ★ The experience of the journey associated with late 19th and early 20th century voyage, the time of the ocean cruisers, ambitious railroad construction, proto-automobile circulation, is an epic endeavor. Whereas travel creates fragmentation, the idea of the journey is to explore the in-between, remaining open for adventure, the dialog between here and there, the self and the “other”. The concept of the voyage has been eradicated by the teleportation of media and communication tools and by transportation via jet carriers. ★ And yet another form of movement is the movement of people and lives, the wanderings of those in search of a “better and safer” place, for political, ethnical, economic or personal reasons. The migration of millions in the past century was the result of forceful, war-driven events. People displaced by long-standing conflicts of war, ethnic or racial discrimination. But in the past twenty years the “free” movement of people has become the symbol and symptom of an era of consolidation and unification. The free circulation of people and goods is the promise of the community of Europeans, the promise of a borderless world. And yet, free movement has become the single most important feature of distinction, the distinction between those within and outside of the frontiers. Those outside the new walls, divided by the economies of the capital, are signified by the markers of geography, status, ethnicity, race, religion, and any combinations thereof. The markers of the margin. ★ In Travelling Guide, first published in IDEA, art & society, a Cluj-based magazine, and then reformatted as a public art project, Matei Bejenaru combines the format of the leisurely traveling guide designed for the archetypical traveler and issues of illegal movements through frontiers and economic blocks. He addresses the present-day conditions of Romanian workers and the “impossible politics of separation” (Eyal Weizman), that has become one of the main stumbling blocks of European integration today. It is a guide designed to help cross the multitudes of borders (national borders, Schengen border, EU border, etc.), that are slicing up the European map. “In the past decade the wall, the guard, and the gate have become increasingly popular devices for maintaining difference, the difference between the garden and the world”, writes Rebecca Solnit, devices implemented to posit place-bound stability versus spatial mobility.

Strategies of representations ★ “The French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (...) argues that the words ‘night’ und ‘day’ cannot mean anything on their own; it is the difference between ‘night’ und ‘day’ that enable these words to have meaning (to describe).” (Stuart Hall) ★ Any attempt to clearly understand the term “margin” encounters some resistance, as it is not easy to define. Anyone who accepts the term, whether consciously or unconsciously, makes use of various components both for theoretical discourse and for performative self-representation. Understanding the contradictory nature of “margin” as a concept illustrates the problematic nature of modes of rep-

resentation, and thus of documentaries, the contradictions being reflected in the juxtaposition of personal experience and abstract conceptualization of the term. These two aspects form two sides of the same coin and yet appear in very different forms. ★ The experience of being “other” or “on the margin” generally precedes the term itself, or the term only makes sense after the very personal experience of otherness. The margin does not exist for the subject, since the individual only learns the borders (of the margin) with time; indeed it does not assume that it will encounter any particular borders. Nevertheless, the abstract idea of the “margin” can certainly precede the experience, which then means that we unintentionally assess the world with a predetermined term, a stereotype, and must expect an unknown variable. At the same time, there does exist a world beyond language, which is indeed set by boundaries. Who established the term “difference” and how is “real” difference maintained? It is both a construct and a reality which is based on otherness, just as Trinh T. Minh-ha describes in her essay “Other than myself / my other self.” Here she writes about the experience of the “other” in the context of traveling, quoting Christoph Wulf: “I can’t produce by myself the stranger’s strangeness: it is born (at least) from two looks.” This alterity dissolves within inherent power systems, as it is clear who is looking and which interests are represented within the dominant culture. ★ In the works of the artists participating in Küba: Journey Against the Current questions about presentation modes, representations of the “other” and self-representations are achieved in many different ways and by means of various artistic strategies, sometimes reflected explicitly and sometimes incorporated into the work as an integral part of the artist’s identity. Some of the works cast doubt on the authority of authorship and politics of representation as well as the uneven power relationship by and through representation. While each work conveys a specific temporal or spatial content, the methods and modes of representation are viewed critically. ★ In Küba those interviewed do not define themselves within their community primarily by their Kurdishness; rather, they all have quite different concerns, which are caused by their lives with and in relation to each other. However, the marginalization of the whole group by the dominant culture effects the structures of the community itself, as the people of Küba are dependent on their (imposed or self-imposed) environment. The representation of a person cannot thus be reduced to one determinant, although analysis can reveal which effect or which significance one determinant has on this person in her specific situation. Kutlug Ataman gives each person the chance to invent her own story, whereby it is of no concern whether their narratives are real or invented; what matters is that the stories are created by the protagonists themselves.

The microcosm of Küba ★ In Kutlug Ataman’s Küba forty individuals speak of their lives and narrate the stories of their existence within a tiny territory in the heart of Istanbul. They speak to us, speak of their pasts and presents, of how a community was built in the 1960s out of nothing, in the middle of nowhere. How a few men had settled with nowhere to go, in a place that seemed to be just there. Küba has a president, some eighty houses,

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shacks, but the people have no deeds to their land, no title. Parts of Küba have been destroyed and the land converted to an industrial area. There is mother Hatun, a kind of spiritual leader, who holds things together, still a point of reference for many. Neighbors respect each other and hold together. There is a solidarity that radiates beyond the limits of the neighborhood. And yet, what they have built is precarious, endangered, houses were knocked down, the people moved into apartment houses. Even the name Küba is mythical and cannot be clearly associated with a founding episode.

“They named this place Küba. To tell the truth, I don’t know this name.

Who named it? Why? How? I really don’t know.” Bahri.

“When I came to Küba, I found a community that was like a village, a family, where no one took account of language, religion or race.” Ekrem.

And yet, Küba is mainly Kurdish, and this identity is the source of much suffering, a suffering that is transmitted from fathers to sons, from mothers to daughters, but also the source of pride and tradition. Beyond their status as a minority, there are numerous testimonies of the people vis-à-vis an overwhelming political system, which is deemed corrupt, inefficient and heartless. Some speak of their experience with the police, being arrested for their activism, for alleged terrorist activity. Others speak of the loss of their language, reverting to broken Turkish, which impedes their ability to communicate intelligibly. In many testimonies, there is reference to a place of origin, some villages in the “East”, untouched by the metropolitan culture of Istanbul. An archaic home, where traditional rules and systems regulate life. But Küba has become the new home to most of its inhabitants. Women speak of marriage, of the difficulties of raising children in a very unstable environment.

Men report of their working lives, their dissatisfactions and lack of integration. ★ Küba is constructed by the over-layering of a multiplicity of testimonies, in the attempt of individuals to represent their lives, in their own logic and words. It’s a statement of their personal experiences, an attempt to define who they are and what makes them a community. In some sense, one is not confronted with a series of “confessions”, but rather with “fabulations”, to use the terminology developed by Gilles Deleuze to describe the creation of lasting and persisting “legends” in the sense of self-conscious articulations of language that are presented either as the expression of a minority, or as the expression of a certain distance which is created with respect to the language of the majority. What is presented here is neither a comprehensive “history” nor a unifying linear form, as is usually practiced in film. Rather, the individual stories form fragments, shards, singular readings of individual pasts.

“In the end, you’re on your own ground in Küba. Even if I could live in a better place, I wouldn’t.” Arif.

“Our neighborhood is called Küba. They love freedom.” Avni.

“There was a film. A film about Cuba. A poor place where there were a lot of fights.

Because of that film, the young people, they spread that name around and it stuck.” Zubeyde.

“Küba may not have been demolished, but it was shaken. Küba adapted itself

to the progress of the system. One part of Küba resists. Another part was demolished.

But Küba still has the distinction of rebelliousness. The distinction of resistance.

But Küba is no longer Küba. In Küba... Castro’s winds no longer blow. Fidel’s.

You don’t hear the story of his life.

A desert conversation has begun in Küba. The desert has become Küba’s philosophy.” Dogan.

“When you are from Küba, you look and act bigger. When you go places, people don’t dare to bother you. ‘I’ll beat you up’, he says, ‘I’m from Küba.

If you mess with me, I have a lot of people behind me’.” Arafat.

“Raising girls in Küba is not easy. I don’t even know how I’m going to raise the boys.

It’s even harder to raise boys. Because here... What can I say? When boys turn fourteen, fifteen, it’s not a very good place. I don’t see it as a good place.” Vesile.

“Above all for Kurds it’s very hard. Us Kurds, we don’t comply easily.

Whatever you do, that’s how they are. They won’t say, ‘I’m a woman, I have rights.’

I’m a woman. I’ll be like this one.’ Kurds, whatever you do, they say, ‘Let’s not bother’.” Dilsah.

“Some houses were wrecked and rebuilt as many as five times.” Arife.

“Only the ruins remain. Only the name remains.” Mehmet.

The “Other” ★ “‘Documentary’ suggests fullness and completion, knowledge and fact, explanations of the social world and its motivating mechanisms. More recently, though, documentary has come to suggest incompleteness and uncertainty, recollection and impression, images of personal worlds and their subjective construction. Documentary has its troubles and opportunities, which these changes reflect. Both trouble and opportunity have to do with the politics of epistemology and representation. How do we come to know others and the worlds they inhabit? If knowledge arises, in large part, from subjective, embodied experience, to what extent can it be represented by impersonal and disembodied language? What strategies are available to us for the representation of people, their experience, and the encounters we wish to have of them?” (Bill Nichols) ★ In the history of documentaries and of the artist as ethnographer, the agenda of representation is expressed in diverse languages, not least due to the differing extent to which people themselves are affected. Not only is the question posed: How do I talk about the experiences or concerns of another person or another group? But also: Does talking about personal experience or the specific story of another person or group relate to more general stories and issues? ★ The two projects Agár by Lászlo Csáki & Szabolcs Pálfi and After the Order by Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkáčová both offer such critical assessments of the realities in question. In the art works the respective social stratifications of Hungarian and Slovakian society are examined and analyzed, and, in the case of After the Order, enacted and commented upon. In contrast to a sociological study, the

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video installation Agár does not offer given results of an investigation presented in linear form; rather, through the way the material is exhibited, the spectator can select for himself the filmed documentaries and their order by means of thirty available channels; this gives him the chance to form his own history and opinion on what is shown. Direct commentary is avoided. In this case, too, what counts is rather the recording and gathering of documentary material and not a conscious statement on the part of the artist by means of final editing. ★ In After the Order, Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkáčová represent the Slovakian society by means of a (sociological) pyramid, which not only turns the social hierarchy into subject matter, but also puts it on public display. In so doing, they employ a language that refers on the one hand to real political manifestations, and on the other hand draws on various artistic means of expression. In their research they encountered the problem that their concern could not be conveyed in just one, but in many different statistics of social hierarchy, which was above all a question of categorization. The problem of limiting complex facts through simple forms of depiction, which they have tried to solve by means of various color shading within a particular social stratum, is thus distinctly inscribed on their social sculpture. ★ The problem of categorization is also inscribed on the project entitled Minority Logbox: multiple degrees of representation by Emanuel Danesch & David Rych. Stuart Hall, in his discourse “The West and the Rest”, quotes Edward Said who writes, “that the Orient in a certain sense was a library or an information archive which was generally and in some aspects uniformly owned. The archive was held together by a group of ideas and by a unifying system of values which had proven effective on various occasions.” Minority Logbox could be understood as an inversion of this kind of archive. Even though a survey also precedes this archive, it seeks to reveal complex social and political realities, and to analyze without excluding contrasts and contradictions. The archive collects and stores all that is excluded from the archives of “common sense”, the under-represented or the not-presented in non-linear form. And so the artists become ethnographers, mapping the space from Turkey along the Danube toward Vienna, searching for film material by and about “minorities” in the widest sense.

Self-representations ★ Placing the subject in the center is a method whereby a story as well as complex concerns can be specifically located. Simple categories dissolve as the subject per se is marked by several components key to its identity. From the outset it is made clear that a person is not defined by one identity alone—such as nationality or gender—, but rather that several different identities overlap at any one time. Who decides which components of identity are key for depicting oneself or being depicted by others? ★ In her video installation All One Knows, Renata Poljak allows the boundaries between the personal and the fictional to merge, and thus creates for herself a position in which she can develop and tackle conflicts, which perhaps had not been expressed, or which had been suppressed. She suddenly and unexpectedly discovers herself as “Croatian”. In this new role, in this emphasized part of her identity, the artist can express feelings such as

anger and impotence. Variety and role games allow for the extension of the boundaries in terms of what can be shown and expressed. ★ Želimir Žilnik locates Soap in Danube Opera in his immediate environment and so directly addresses the question of “Who is looking?” Having in most cases known the youths with whom he has worked for years, Žilnik has no need to try to put himself ‘at their level’ because he does not need to invent a connection. In Soap in Danube Opera, tragic-comedy is one of the most important stylistic methods, allowing the youths to cast a filtered look at his and their surroundings and interactions, without the spectator being called upon to act. Rather, he shows the youngsters’ projected image, and the deliberate staging of their own stories. ★ Cultural products and artistic productions cannot contain meaning in themselves, not even if they carry various connotations and narratives. Rather, they only alter, lose or gain meaning within the socio-political and cultural contexts in which they are read, and remain arbitrary, or are actualized only in the specifics of a situation. In just the same way, artistic forms of language and practices have formed a canon or reference system. Thus Trinh T. Minh-ha describes the cinema and the traditions by which it is given shape, in her essay “The Totalizing Quest of Meaning”: “Its (cinema) knowledge can constitute its destruction, unless the game keeps on changing its rules, never convinced of its closure, and always eager to outplay itself in its own principles. On the one hand, truth is produced, induced, and extended according to the regime in power. On the other, truth lies in between all regimes of truth. As the fable goes, What I Tell You Three Times Is True.” ★ In Nedko Solakov’s A BG Bar, seemingly a succinct comment on the history of Bulgaria, the stylistic method of arbitrariness plays an important role in the representation and self-presentation of the artist. He analyzes the psychology of Bulgaria and its history, developing the theme of the regressive and passive attitude of its inhabitants and its authorities. But are we really concerned here with a simple interpretation and the cliché of Bulgarian history and mentality, or rather with a self-ironic and critical comment on a putatively homogenous Bulgarian history, the lack of subversion and resistance, its presentation to outsiders or a view from without?

E la nave va ★ Whereas the linear and geographically determined direction of the river journey at the heart of Küba: Journey Against the Current seems to project a trajectory of mobile interventions in various locales, it is in fact the notion of layering and the idea of coexistence that has informed the structure of the project and its catalog. The journey de-territorializes the notion of the coherently curated exhibition by extending through time and across geography, beyond the traditional site-and time-specific locale, one which lies well beyond the grasp of any single viewer. ★ It creates, at its best, a polyphonic discussion about what artists, critics, filmmakers and curators can contribute today in de-mystifying and de-essentializing the discourses on identities, minorities, ethnicities, center / periphery. Artistic production touches upon the discussion of the political as the “art of the local and singular construction of cases of universality”, as Jacques Rancière

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argues and as reflected in the increasing tendency of artists to develop their work around long narrative cycles, temporal density, engaging complex subjects and the foregrounding of such forms as video projection and installation, which are best suited to address the social concern underlying the different contributions. By creating the spatial and temporal possibility to confront the limits of any exhibition model, at the risk of total disintegration, the journey projects a possible alternative to simply appropriating the term “minorities / identities” without a rigorous review of what the term actually is in relation to different spaces of production. ★ All the texts that have been especially commissioned for this catalog in the course of Küba: Journey Against the Current offer different entries and a variety of readings. Some essays focus on or reference the artworks presented in this exhibition and others propose a discursive parallel reading to certain topics and the historical as well as geographical situations in which they are situated. A certain kind of exception to this approach - marked with red margins - is Sezgin Boynik’s reprint of his recently published critique of Boris Buden’s Yugoslavia Unconscious of 1990, as well as Boris Buden’s reply, whom we invited to react on Boynik’s criticism. The controversion between the two authors functions quasi as hypertextual inserts which illustrate, through their format and language of debate the possibilities and limits of representation of specific historical events in relation to different grades and forms of personal involvement. ★ By juxtaposing the particularities, as formulated in the seven projects developed for the purpose of this project and each focusing on the specifics of a locale, the project does not confine itself to a single meaning nor rest on simple correlations but “open(s) new possibilities for analyzing discursive productions of social and political reality as complex, contradictory processes.” (Joan W. Scott) ★ Thus, small things, marginal stories and seemingly irrelevant events unfold into alternative paths through the past and present, opening gaps in monolithic memories, reversing our perspectives represented by hegemonic narratives, valorizing a return to the personal and lyrical encounter with the everyday over the discursive and critical investigations of an apparently obsolete postmodernism. “The question today is how to produce, discuss, debate, and circulate to various audiences a certain number of ideas and formal articulations proposed by author(s).” asserts Catherine David. By seriously addressing the change of traditional trajectories, we wish to create these sites of enlightened debate on what contemporary art means today, and may perhaps give direction to how we think of, write about, and exhibit contemporary art.

Daniela Zyman was born in 1964 in Vienna, Austria.

She lives and works in Vienna.

Gabrielle Cram was born in 1978 in Falkirk, Great Britain.

She lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

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Biographies

Konstantin Akinsha Born in 1960 in Kiev, Ukraine. Lives and works in Washington, D.C., USA. ★ Konstantin Akinsha is an art historian and contributing editor to ARTnews magazine. He was deputy research director of the Art and Cultural Property section of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States. He is coauthor (with Nancy H. Yeide and Amy L. Walsh) of The AAM Guide to Provenance Research, published by the American Association of Museums.

Sorin Antohi Born in 1957 in Targu-Ocna, Romania. Lives and works in Budapest. ★ Sorin Antohi is a historian of ideas and historical theorist. He teaches at the Central European University, Budapest, where he is also Head of the School of History and Interdisciplinary Historical Studies. He is Secretary General of the International Commission for the Theory and History of Historiography, and a member of the Board of the International Committee of Historical Sciences. ★ His major fields of research are intellectual history, modern and recent Romanian history in Central and Eastern European contexts, historical theory and the history of historiography. His many books deal, among others, with: Utopianism (Utopica. Studii asupra imaginarului social, 1991); modern Romanian intellectual history, focusing on Romanian-Western linkages and transfers (Civitas imaginalis. Istorie si utopie in cultura romana, 1994); theories and methods in the humanities and the social sciences (Exercitiul distantei. Discursuri, societati, metode, 1997); modern Romania’s culture and politics (Imaginaire culturel et réalité politique dans la Roumanie moderne, 1999); “the third discourse” (Al treilea discurs. Cultura, ideologie si politica in Romania, with Adrian Marino, 2001), Romanian visions of the future (Mai avem un viitor? Romania la inceput de mileniu, with Mihai Sora, 2001), memory and history in Romania (Oglinzi retrovizoare. Istorie, memorie si morala in Romania, with Alexandru Zub, 2002).

Kutlug Ataman Born in 1961 in Istanbul, Turkey. Lives and works in Buenos Aires and Istanbul. ★ Kutlug Ataman studied film at UCLA, where he graduated with the short La Fuga. He has pursued a career both as a film-maker and as an artist, continually crossing the border between the cinema and the museum, the past and the present, the virtual and the politically relevant and, finally, between reality and fiction. In 2004, Ataman was short-listed for the Turner Prize at the Tate Britain, London, and he participated in the 54th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, where he was awarded its prestigious Carnegie Prize for his project Küba. ★ Selected solo exhibitions: “De-Regulation with the work of Kutlug Ataman”, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerp, Belgium (2006); “Perfect Strangers”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia; “The Four Seasons of Veronica Read”, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany (2005); “Long Streams”, Serpentine Gallery, London, England, and GEM, Museum Voor Actuele Kunst, The Hague, Netherlands (both 2003); “Long Streams”, Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; “Women Who Wear Wigs”, Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum, Istanbul, Turkey; “A Rose Blooms in the Garden of Sorrow”, BAWAG Foundation, Vienna, Austria (all 2002). ★ Selected group exhibitions: “Without Boundaries. Seventeen Ways of Looking”, MOMA, New York, NY, USA; “Nature Attitudes”, T-B A21, Vienna, Austria; “SNAFU – Medien, Mythen, Mind Control”, Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany

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(all 2006); “Fast Forward. Media Art de la Coleçión Goetz”, Museo Municipal de Arte Contemporaneo de Madrid/Centro Cultural del Conde Duque, Madrid, Spain (2005); “Documentary Fictions”, CaixaForum, Barcelona, Spain (2004); Neue Kunsthalle III, Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany; 8th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey; “Witness”, Barbican Art Gallery, London, England; “Days Like These”, Tate Triennial Exhibition of British Art, Tate Britain, London, England (all 2003); Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (2002); The Berlin Biennial, Berlin, Germany (2001); The 48th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (1999).

Matei Bejenaru Born in 1963 in Suceava, Romania. Lives and works in Iași, Romania. ★ Matei Bejenaru studied at the Politechnical Institute and at the Arts Academy, both in Iași, Romania. Since 1997, he is professor of photography and video at the Art University of Iași, director of the “Periferic” Biennial, Iași, and, since 2003, of the Vector Gallery in the same city. As an artist and curator living in Iași, he operates to construct a climate where contemporary art can be produced, experienced and sustained, in a city that he says lost everything in the last century. Bejenaru works tirelessly to deliver contemporary art on this local stage as well as internationally. ★ Selected solo exhibitions: “INTER”, R O O M Gallery Bristol and Vector Gallery Iași; “Strawberry Fields Forever”, Galeria Noua, Bucharest (both 2005); “Salut/Ave Bachtalo”, Offspace Gallery, Vienna (2003); “Mehr Chancen für unsere Jugend”, Kulturkontakt Gastatelier, Vienna (2002). ★ Selected group exhibitions: “Situated Self ”, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, and Helsinki City Art Museum (2005); “We are what we are – Aspects of Roma Life in Contemporary Art”, Minoriten Gallery Graz, Jana Koniarka Gallery Trnava, and Skuc Gallery Ljubljana (2004/05); “Ich bin hier und du bist dort …”, GFZK Leipzig, Germany (2004); “U-Topos”, Tirana Biennial 2, Albania (2003); 49th Venice Biennial; “Never Stop the Action”, ROTOR Association, Graz, Austria (2001).

Iara Boubnova Born in Moscow, Russia. Lives and works in Sofia, Bulgaria. ★ Curator and art critic Iara Boubnova graduated from the State University in Moscow in 1986. She was Junior Editor at the “Soviet Artist” Publishing House, Moscow, and, as of 1984, is working at the National Gallery for Foreign Art in Sofia, Bulgaria. Since 2003, she is head of the Visual Seminar multidisciplinary project dedicated to the urban environment of neo-capitalism. Iara Boubnova is founding Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art Sofia. She curated and organized Bulgarian national participations at the 48th Biennale di Venezia (1999), the 3rd Biennial in Cetinje, Montenegro, Yugoslavia (1997), the 4th St. Petersburg Biennial (1996), the 4th Istanbul Biennial (1995) and the 22nd São Paulo Biennial (1994). ★ Selected projects as independent curator: “Joy”, Casino Luxembourg; 1st Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art (both 2005); Manifesta 4, Frankfurt am Main (2002) – all in teams; “Talk with the Man on the Street”, 4th Biennial in Cetinje, Montenegro; “Double-Bind” (co-curator, 2003); “Locally Interested” (1999), both in Sofia.

Sezgin Boynik Born in 1977 in Prizren, Kosovo. Lives and works in Kosovo. ★ Sezgin Boynik graduated from the Mimar Sinan Univesity in Istanbul.

He is writer and editor for contemporary art magazines like art-ist and Siyahi (both Istanbul), Arta (Prishtina) and Prelom (Belgrade), his topics focusing on the avant-garde, radical political movements, and subversive thinking. Recently, he has been concentrating on nationalism and its connection with kitsch and aesthetics. He is preparing his doctoral thesis entitled “Modernization and Nationalization of Yugoslav Turks during the Socialist Period”. Boynik teaches Sociology at the Department of Turkology and Orientalistic Studies at Prishtina University and works at the “Gani Bobi” Institute for Humanitarian Studies, also in Prishtina.

Boris Buden Born in 1958 in Croatia. Lives and works in Zagreb and Vienna. ★ Boris Buden is a writer and cultural critic. He received his PhD in cultural theory from Humboldt University in Berlin. In the 1990s, he was editor of the magazine Arkzin, Zagreb. He has contributed regularly to a variety of newspapers, magazines and cultural journals in former Yugoslavia, Europe and in the USA. His essays and articles cover topics of philosophy, politics, cultural and art criticism. Among his translations into Croatian are two books by Sigmund Freud. He has participated in various conferences and art exhibitions in Western and Eastern Europe, Asia and the USA, such as Documenta XI, Kassel, and Wiener Festwochen, Vienna. Recently, he took part in the project “The Post-Communist Condition”, organized by ZKM, Karlsruhe.

Buden is author of “Barikade”, Zagreb 1996/1997; “Kaptolski Kolodvor”, Belgrade 2001; “Der Schacht von Babel”, Berlin 2004.

Gabrielle Cram Born in 1978 in Falkirk, Great Britain. Lives and works in Vienna, Austria. ★ Gabrielle Cram studied semiotics and film theory with a focus on postcolonial questions, popular culture as well as sex-gender related issues at Vienna University, graduating in 2001.

In 2005, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where she studied conceptual art practice. ★ Working on several theatre and performance productions, as dramaturge in dietheater in Vienna, as artist on photographic works and documentary essays such as Kung Fu Fighting (2000), The Distant Island (2001) and X: Memory Loss (2003), exploring modes of display and representations, she seeks to combine artistic and cultural practice with theoretic approaches. She is currently working at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary.

László Csáki Born in 1977 in Mosonmagyaróvár, Hungary. Lives and works in Budapest. ★ László Csáki graduated from the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts in Budapest, Department of Visual Communication, in 2002. He is member of the Hungarian Independent Film and Video Association and of the Young Artists’ Association. He won several national as well as international awards. ★ Selected works: Egerszalók (documentary 2006); Fluxus-Tainer; Wasps, Gees and Pear (both 2004); Days that Were Filled with Sense by Fear / Napok, melyeknek értelmet adott a félelem; Hubertus Card; Tee / Tea (all 2003); Deathimitator / Halottimitátor (2002); The Youth Eases / Az ifjúság megnyugtat; Captain Vrungel / Vrungel kapitány (both 2001).

Emanuel Danesch Born in 1976 in Innsbruck, Austria. Lives and works in Vienna. ★ Emanuel Danesch studied at the University of Applied Arts and at the Academy of Fine Arts, both in Vienna. As a poly-media artist in the broadest sense, his projects and documentary films cover issues of cultural, economical and political transformation. He collaborates with David Rych in many projects, but also works independently and with other artists. In 2004, Danesch received the Austrian National Grant for Art. ★ Selected solo exhibitions (all with David Rych): “Alterity Displays”, Lawrence O’ Hanna Gallery, London (2004); “Beyond the Map – Constructing Narratives”, Gallery La Box, Bourges, France (2003); “Utopia Travel” (award-winning international project, 2000–2004); “Das Experiment 3 – Utopia Travel”, Vienna Secession (2001). ★ Selected group exhibitions: “It is hard to touch the real”, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz; “ECONOMY CLASS”, Alliance Française, Nairobi, Kenya (both 2006); “Utopie Freiheit”, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna (2005); “DEAF04 V2”, Dutch Electronic Art Festival, Rotterdam; “Hilchot Shchenim”, The Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon, Israel; “It is Hard to Touch the Real”, film festival, Kunstverein Munich; “Fly Utopia”, Transmediale, Berlin (all 2004). ★ Film Screenings: Documentary film CSR Promise Responsibility at GREEN WAVE – 21ST CENTURY EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENT FESTIVAL, Dolna Banya, Sofia City Region, Bulgaria, and Normale 06 @Enlazando Alternativas 2, Vienna (all 2006).

Branislav Dimitrijević Born in 1967 in Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro. Lives and works in Belgrade. ★ Branislav Dimitrijević is art historian, writer and curator. He is Senior Lecturer at the School for Art and Design (VSLPUb) in Belgrade and the Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade. In 1999, he co-founded the School for History and Theory of Images, an independent educational project in Belgrade. He has been publishing essays on contemporary art and theory of art, film and visual culture. Most recent publications include International Exhibition of Modern Art feat. A. Barr’s Museum of Modern Art (ed.; Belgrade, MOCAb 2003); On Normality: Art in Serbia 1989–2001 (ed.; Belgrade, MOCAb 2005). Most recent curatorial projects include “Situated Self: Confused Compassionate, Conflictual”, Tennis Art Museum, Helsinki (with M. Hannula, 2005/06) and the Yugoslavian Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia (with B. Andjelković and D. Sretenović, 2003). He has been working on a PhD thesis on “Consumer Culture in Socialist Yugoslavia” with Professor Milena Dragičević Šešić at the University of Arts in Belgrade, and collaborated on the research project “Post-Communist Condition” with Boris Groys.

Ivaylo Ditchev Born 1955 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Lives and works in Sofia. ★ Ivaylo Ditchev is professor of Anthropology at Sofia University. He also has appointments abroad, mostly in France and in the USA. ★ He is writer and columnist for Sega, Sofia, and lettre international, Berlin. His recent research fields focus on Balkan cities in transition, the impact of the EU enlargement on national political cultures, the (re-)invention of identities in the global world and on communism and after: symbols, rituals, propaganda, power. He has published extensively, his latest book being Spaces of Desire, Desires of Space.

Studies in Urban Anthropology (Sofia, LIK 2005). www.ivayloditchev.cult.bg

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Marina Gržinić Born in 1958 in Rijeka, Croatia. Lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and works in Ljubljana and Vienna. ★ Marina Gržinić is researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at the Scientific and Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She also works as freelance media theorist, art critic and curator. Since 1982, Gržinić has been involved with video art. Porno codes, thriller situations and overtly formulated political catastrophes are the basic elements of her work. ★ Recent publications: “Une fiction reconstruite. Europe de l’Est, post-socialisme et rètro-avant-garde [Fiction Reconstructed. Eastern Europe, Post-Socialism and the Retro-AvantGarde], L’Harmattan, Paris; “AVANGARDA I POLITIKA: istocnoevropska paradigma i rat na Balkanu” [Avant-Garde and Politics: The Eastern European Paradigm and the War in the Balkans], Beogradski krug, Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro; “Estetika kibersvijeta i ucinci derealizacije” [Aesthetics of Cyberspace and the Effects of De-Realization], Multimedijalni institut mi – MaMa, Zagreb, Croatia and Kosnica – centar za komunikaciju i kulturu, Sarajevo, Bih (all 2005).

Francesca von Habsburg Born in 1958 in Lugano, Switzerland. Lives and works in Vienna. ★ Francesca von Habsburg was born in Switzerland and began her studies there. Later, in London, she studied at St. Martin’s School of Art and ICA, where she read History of Modern Art. After working in London, New York and Los Angeles, in 1989 von Habsburg became Chief Curator of special exhibitions of the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection at the Villa Favorita in Lugano. In 1995, she founded ARCH Foundation, which is dedicated to the preservation and restoration of cultural heritage. In 2002, she also founded T-B A21 – Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary foundation in Vienna, Austria.

Nataša Ilić Born in 1970 in Zagreb, Croatia. Lives and works in Zagreb. ★ Nataša Ilić is a free-lance critic and curator. She is a founding member of “What, How & for Whom / WHW”, an independent curatorial collective that organizes different production, exhibition and publishing projects and also directs Galerija Nova, Zagreb. She cocurated a number of international exhibitions in Zagreb and abroad, including “Collective Creativity”, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (2005), Cetinje Biennial 5, Montenegro (2004), “Looking Awry”, apexart, New York (2003), “Project: Broadcasting”, The Technical Museum, Zagreb (2002). As an art critic, she contributed to numerous catalogs and magazines.

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Kristian Lukić Lives and works in Novi Sad. ★ Writer, computer game researcher, new media artist and curator Kristian Lukić is working as program manager in the New Media Center kuda.org in Novi Sad. He is guest lecturer at Academy of Fine Arts, Audio-visual Media Department, also in Novi Sad. Within kuda.org, he was co-curating exhibitions and managed numerous projects such as the WorldInformation.Org, exhibitions in collaboration with Public Netbase in Novi Sad and Belgrade in 2003. ★ He is founder of Eastwood – Real Time Strategy Group with whom he has been exhibiting from 2002 onwards. Eastwood group creates and uses computer games as a tool for new visions of art and cultural practice. Exhibitions and presentations of Eastwood include: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Ars Electronica Linz, Austria; International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands; Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool, UK; ISEA 2004 Helsinki, Finland; Free Cultures Vienna, Austria; Werkleitz Biennial, Halle an der Saale, Germany.

Anetta Mona Chisa Born in 1975 in Nadlac, Romania. Lives and works in Prague and Bratislava. ★ Anetta Mona Chisa studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia. In 2001/2002, she was curator at the Synagoge – Center of Contemporary Arts Trnava. Since 2002, she has been working as assistant teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts Prague, New Media Department. Her recent artistic works, based on personal stories, play with the concept of access to different forms of power: professional, political, ideological, and geographical. ★ Selected solo exhibitions (all with Lucia Tkáčová): “Ortografio de Potenco”, Futura Gallery, Prague (2006); “Nonstrategic Scenarios: The Red Library”, Jeleni Gallery, Prague (2005); “A Room on Their Own”, Medium Gallery, Bratislava (2003). ★ Selected group exhibitions: “Office art”, C2C Gallery, Prague; “Shadows of Humor”, BWA Awangarda, Wroclaw (2006); “The Artist With Two Brains”, NAB Birmingham; “Kaleidoskop. Fiktionen von Kunst und Wissenschaft”, Oktogon, Dresden; Prague Biennale 2, IBCA, National gallery Prague; “Iconoclash”, Spitz Gallery, London (2005); “E.U. positive”, Akademie der Künste Berlin (2004); “The Last East European Show”, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; “Stadt in Sicht. Neue Kunst aus Bratislava”, Künstlerhaus, Vienna (2003).

Boris Ondreicka Born in 1969 in Zlaté Moravce, Slovakia. Lives and works in Bratislava and Bernolakovo, Slovakia. ★ Boris Ondreicka is artist and leader of the art-initiative tranzit.sk. His works were exhibited at Manifesta 2 in Luxembourg and the Venice Biennale, at PS1 NYC, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Magazin4 Bregenz, MUMOK and Secession Vienna, BAK Utrecht, W139 and De Appel Amsterdam, Kiasma Helsinki, Transmission Glasgow, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Turin. He also participated in the e-flux project “Next Director of Documenta should be an Artist”. Since 2002, tranzit.sk has organized lectures and projects of/with Rene Block, Catherine David, Maria Hlavajova, Robert Fleck, Thomas Hirschhorn, Jun Yang, Franz Pomassl, Kathrin Rhomberg, Igor Zabel, Clemetine Deliss, Julius Koller, Stano Filko, Martin Creed, Johanna Billing, Lise Harlev, Allan Curall, Radek Community, Carl Michael von Hausswolff and many others.

Szabolcs Pálfi Born in 1974 in Budapest, Hungary. Lives and works in Budapest. ★ Szabolcs Pálfi studied animation film at the Hungarian University of Crafts and Design in Budapest, Department of Visual Communication. With his diploma film The Bus he won several national prizes and the Jameson Short Film Award in 2004. Under the name of Hipokaloric Group, he has been working with László Csáki on several projects. ★ Selected works: Egerszalók (documentary, 2006); The Bus (animation, 2004); Stone; Hubertus Card (animation, all 2003); Sport; Tea (animation, all 2002); Madagascar (wildlife documentary, 1998).

Zoran Pantelić Born in 1966 in Novi Sad, Serbia and Montenegro. Lives and works in Novi Sad. ★ Zoran Pantelić studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Novi Sad, Serbia and Montenegro, and at the School of Media Education, Faculty of Social Sciences, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He teaches Media Communication at the Academy of Fine Arts, Novi Sad, and is director of the New Media Center kuda.org, also in Novi Sad, which he founded in 2000—a content providing platform for new cultural practices, media art production and social layout, exploring critical approaches towards (mis-)using ICT and emphasizing creative rethinking in the network society. In 1993, Pantelić founded the association APSOLUTNO in Novi Sad, a collective dealing with interdisciplinary artwork and media pluralism. ★ His work has been featured, among other places, at festivals and galleries in Berlin, Paris, Budapest, Vienna, Frankfurt, Wroclaw, Hiroshima, and San Francisco. In 2001, he curated the New Media Section of the Belgrade October Exhibition, and most recently co-curated the New Media Festival in Belgrade. In 2003, he co-produced the World-Information.Org exhibition, an international project by Public Netbase, Vienna, in Novi Sad and Belgrade.

Renata Poljak Born in 1974 in Split, Croatia. Lives and works between France, Vienna and Split. ★ Renata Poljak studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Split and absolved a postgraduate program in Nantes, France. In 2002, she was visiting artist at the San Francisco Art Institute and in 2004 artist in residence at MuseumsQuartier, Vienna. ★ With a very personal approach to questions that the artist is concerned with, Poljak is using a fragmented poetic filmic language that is dealing with essayistic documentarist elements. The artist as a subject takes an important role as a narrator within the films. The works are translated via media mostly through video and recently also in 16 mm. They can be seen on film festivals as well as in gallery spaces as photographic or installation works. ★ Selected solo exhibitions: “The View”, Galery SC, Zagreb, Croatia (2005); “Emergency Tensions”, Daniel Azoulay Gallery, Miami, Florida (with D.Figarella, 2003); Wonderland, Galerie Soardi, Nice, France (2002). ★ Selected group exhibitions: “Normalization”, Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art, Malmö, Sweden; “Insert”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Rijeka, Croatia (both 2006); “Landscape in Contemporary Visual Art and Culture Between Fetishes and Ideology”, 34th Split Salon, Split, Croatia; “Binder, Milunović, Poljak”, Gallery Ernst Hilger, Vienna (both 2005); “Passage d’Europe”, Musée d’Art Moderne de St-Etienne, France (2004).

Irit Rogoff Irit Rogoff holds a university chair in Visual Culture at Goldsmiths College, London University, and is director of an AHRB-funded international research project “Cross Cultural Contemporary Arts”. She writes extensively on conjunctions of critical theory and contemporary arts with particular interest in issues of geography, location, performativity and cultural difference. Rogoff is the author of “Terra Infirma – Geography’s Visual Culture” (2001) and is presently working on a study of the participatory entitled “Looking Away – Participating Singularities and Ontological Communities”. She is currently curating “De-Regulation with the work of Kutlug Ataman” (Antwerp, Herzylia, Berlin 2006/7) and “Academy – Learning and Teaching” (Hamburg, Eindhoven, Antwerp 2005/6).

David Rych Born in 1975 in Innsbruck, Austria. Lives and works in Berlin. ★ David Rych studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. As a polymedia artist in the broadest sense, his projects and documentary films cover issues of cultural, economical and political transformation. He collaborates with Emanuel Danesch in many projects, but also works independently and with other artists. ★ Selected solo exhibitions: “The War Room”, Galerie 35, Berlin (2005); “Alterity Displays”, Lawrence O’Hanna Gallery, London (with Emanuel Danesch, 2004); “Beyond the Map – Constructing Narratives”, Gallery La Box, Bourges, France (with Emanuel Danesch, 2003); “Utopia Travel” (with Emanuel Danesch, award-winning international project, 2000–2004); “Das Experiment 3 – Utopia Travel”, Vienna Secession (with Emanuel Danesch, 2001). ★ Selected group exhibitions: “e-flux Rental”, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; “ID Troubles – US Visit”, NURTUREart Gallery, New York (both 2005); “DEAF04” V2, Dutch Electronic Art Festival, Rotterdam; “Hilchot Shchenim”, The Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon; “It is Hard to Touch the Real”, film festival, Kunstverein Munich; “Fly Utopia” Transmediale, Berlin (all 2004).

Zoltán Sebők Born in 1958 in Subotica, Serbia and Montenegro. Lives and works in Budapest, Hungary. ★ Zoltán Sebők studied literature in Novi Sad and art history and philosophy in Belgrade. In 1991, he emigrated to Hungary, where, as from 1997, he is professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Budapest. Since 1976, he has worked as an editor for magazines such as Új Symposion, Novi Sad, Magyar Műhely, Vienna/Paris, and Balkon, Budapest, for the publishing company Kijárat, Budapest, as well as for Radio Novi Sad and Radio Free Europe. Besides, he has written extensively in the field of modern and contemporary art. His publications include “A mémek titokzatos élete. Németh Gábor és Sebők Zoltán beszélgetése”, Bratislava, 2004; “Élősködő kultúra” [Parasitic Culture], Bratislava, 2003; “Az új művészet fogalomtára 1945-től napjainkig” [Dictionary of New Art from 1945 to Today], Budapest, 1996. Also, he translated books by authors such as Vilém Flusser and Boris Groys.

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Nedko Solakov Born in 1957 in Tcherven Briag, Bulgaria. Lives and works in Sofia, Bulgaria. ★ Since the beginning of the 1990s, Nedko Solakov has exhibited extensively in Europe and the United States. His work was featured in Aperto 93 (Venice Biennial); the 48th, 49th and 50th Venice Biennial; the 3rd, 4th and 9th Istanbul Biennial; São Paulo 94; Manifesta 1, Rotterdam; the 2nd and 4th Gwangju Biennial; the 5th Lyon Biennial, Sonsbeek 9, Arnhem, the 4th and 5th Cetinje Biennial, the 1st Lodz Biennial; the 7th Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates; and the 3rd Tirana Biennial. Recently, he had solo shows at Museu do Chiado, Lisbon; Stichting De Appel, Amsterdam; CCA Kitakyushu, Japan; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Centre d’Art Santa Monica, Barcelona and Kunsthaus Zurich. In 2003–2005 an extensive mid-career “A 12 1/3 (and even more) Year Survey” was presented at Casino Luxembourg, Rooseum Malmoe and O.K Centrum Linz.

Lucia Tkáčová Born in 1977 in Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia. Lives and works in Bratislava, Slovakia. ★ Lucia Tkáčová studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia, where, as from 2005, she is assistant teacher at the Department of Painting. In 2003 she founded Gallery HIT in Bratislava, a space focused on the young generation of contemporary artists, and worked as its director for three years. Her recent artistic works, based on personal stories, play with the concept of access to different forms of power: professional, political, ideological, and geographical. ★ Selected solo exhibitions: “Magical recipies for love, happiness and health”, Open Gallery, Bratislava; “Ortografio de Potenco”, Futura Gallery, Prague (both 2006, with A. M. Chisa); “Nonstrategic Scenarios: The Red Library”, Jeleni Gallery, Prague; “Videosomic: We Would Prefer to Sleep With Roman Ondak”, Space Gallery, Bratislava (both 2005, with A. M. Chisa); “Casting”, Space Gallery, Bratislava (2004); “A Room of Their Own”, Medium Gallery, Bratislava (with A. M. Chisa); “Pretty guys”, Gallery HIT, Bratislava (2003). ★ Selected group exhibitions: “Re-shuffle: Notions of an Itinerant Museum”, Art in General, New York; “Les Beaux Ideals”, Synagogue Centre for Contemporary Art, Trnava; “Innenansicht Prag 06”, Kunstraum NOE, Vienna; “Shades of Humor”, BWA Awangarda, Wroclaw; “My Love is Dead”, Galerie Oelfrueh, Hamburg (all 2006); “The Artist With Two Brains”, NAB – Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham; “Iconoclash”, Spitz Gallery, London; Prague Biennale 2 (all 2005).

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Želimir Žilnik Born in 1942 in Novi Sad, Serbia and Montenegro. Based in Novi Sad. ★ From the late 1960s, his socially engaged films and documentaries in former Yugoslavia and his unique visual style earned him critical accolade (The Unemployed, 1968, Best Documentary at the Oberhausen festival, 1968; Early Works, 1969, Best Film at Berlin Film Festival), but also censorship in the 1970s for his unflinching criticism of the government apparatus. Low budget filmmaking and challenging political themes mark Žilnik’s prolific career that includes over 40 feature and documentary films and shorts. Since the 1980s, he has been developing his unique docu-drama language, which he used throughout 1990s to reflect on political tensions, including EU sanctions, the NATO bombings, and Milošević’s regime. His power to observe and unleash compelling narratives out of the lives of ordinary people is the common thread throughout his documentary and docu-drama work, including 1994’s Tito’s Second Time Amongst the Serbs. More recently, his focus has shifted beyond the divided Balkans to question its relationship with the tightening controls of European borders, delving into the heart of issues of refugees and migrants in Fortress Europe (2000), and Kenedi Goes back Home (2003) and Kenedi: Lost and Found (2005).

For more information, visit www.zelimirzilnik.com Daniela Zyman Born in 1964 in Vienna, Austria. Lives and works in Vienna. ★ Daniela Zyman is currently curator of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna – a foundation established in 2002 by Francesca von Habsburg. She has been chief curator at the MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art in Vienna between 1995 and 2001 and was fundamental in the creation of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House in Los Angeles, which she has directed for some years. Zyman has earned her MA in art history at the University of Vienna and her MFA at New York’s Columbia University. She held teaching positions at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, and has authored numerous essays for catalogs and international magazines.

List of Works

Kutlug Ataman Küba, 2004 40-channel video installation each video approx. 50 min, color, sound Edition 2/5 Commissioned by Artangel, London, co-produced by Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; Theater der Welt, Stuttgart; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Film production by Yalan Dünya, Istanbul Producer: Gülen Güler Assistant editors: Can Deniz Șahin, Burcu Baki Translations: Brendan Freely, Irfan Öksüz Subtitling: Altan Sebüktekin Office coordinator: Nükhet Karvanlı Runner: Emre Güler Yalan Dünya would like to thank: Doğan Albayrak, Nihal Bașibüyük, Gürel Güler, Güray Güler, Martin Fryer, Juliet Gray, C¸ igdem Göymen, Özkan Cangüven, Bilkom Ill. pp. 22, 24, 25, 32, 33 © Artangel, London (exhibition view the Sorting Office, London); Michael Strasser/T-B A 21 (installation view Negrelli barge)

Matei Bejenaru Travelling Guide, 2005/06 Public art project, brochures and billboards Brochures distributed throughout Romania Poster 50 x 70 cm, folded Billboards in Constanta and Vienna Commissioned and published by IDEA arts+society magazine, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 2005 Commissioned as a public art project by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, in 2006 Ill. pp. 40–51 © Matei Bejenaru

Nedko Solakov A BG Bar, 2006 Installation Metal, paint, oak wood, refrigerator, glasses, non-alcoholic beverages, white permanent felt-tip pen, texts and drawings over black painted metal 121 x 443 x 295,5 cm Commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna Ill. pp. 58/59, 60, 61, 64, 65 © Nedko Solakov, Jasper Sharp (p. 64)

Želimir Žilnik Soap in Danube Opera, 2006 Workshops and single-channel video projection approx. 45 min., color, sound Commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna Workshops held by Želimir Žilnik in Novi Sad, January to June 2006, with the final result of the 45-min. video Soap in Danube Opera Concept and artistic director: Želimir Žilnik Workshop assistance lecturing editing: Marin Malešević and Branislav Klasnja Workshop assistance lecturing camera: Bojan Djurišić and Pedja Radosavljević Camera, editing, sound: Ljilja Dinić, Sofija Petaković, Zdravko Pranjić, Ljubiša Stepanović, Muhamed Eljsani, Vitomir Pucar, Salji Hasani, Zoran Borovac, Fjurim Eljsani, Vladimir Savčić, Aljus Heljsani, Muhamed Maroti, Bojan Grčić, Senad Mutapi, Milan Janić Production manager: Petar Čehov Assistant production manager: Robert Radić Production: Terra Film, Novi Sad Ill. pp. 70–74, 85 © Želimir Žilnik

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All One Knows, 2006 2-channel film and sound installation filmed on 16 mm and DV-cam, transferred to DVD Part 1: 10 min., part 2: 9 min., color, sound soundscape by Ramuntcho Matta Edition 1/3 Commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna

Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová After the Order, 2006 Performance, photograph Freedom Square, Namestie Slobody, Bratislava, May 14, 2006

Writer/director: Renata Poljak

Ca. 100 participants forming a human pyramid

Part 1 Director of photography: Paul Brettschuh Voice-over: Renata Poljak, Paul Brettschuh Voice recordings: Frederic Cousan Developed and digitalized at Synchro Film & Video, Vienna

Commissioned as a public art project by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna

Part 2 Cast: Sanja Vejnović and Darko Milas Director of photography: Goran Mećava Editor: Vesna Biljan Assistant cameraman: Mario Vargović Gaffer: Dejan Brkić Sound engineer: Ivica Slivalić Color grading: Goran Rukavina, studio Guberović, Zagreb English translation: Susan Jakopec Special thanks: Mercy Bona Pavelić, studio Guberović, Zagreb Thanks to: Vanja Hraste, Mato Ilijić Ill. pp. 92–95, 98 © Renata Poljak

László Csáki & Szabolcs Pálfi Agár – The Hungarian Greyhound Project, 2006 30-channel video installation 60-min. loop, color, sound Edition 1/3 Commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna Ill. pp. 116–119, 123, 124, 130 © László Csáki & Szabolcs Pálfi

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Emanuel Danesch & David Rych Minority Logbox: multiple degrees of representation logged 0106-0506: TR-RO-BG-YU-HR-H-SK-A, 2006 Video installation in “Nagetusch Brillant” caravan Dresden (built 1960) Digitalized video archive in self-service video jukebox (metal) / variable site specific setting with one or several monitors Commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna Ill. pp. 150, 151, 156, 157 © Emanuel Danesch & David Rych

Schedule and Venues

May 1 – 7, 2006: Constanta, Romania* Matei Bejenaru: Travelling Guide Tomis Tourist Harbor, Constanta / Public space, Bucharest May 13 – 18, 2006: Rousse, Bulgaria Nedko Solakov: A BG Bar Curator: Iara Boubnova Negrelli barge / Canetti House, Slavyanska Street 12, Rousse www.ica.cult.bg May 23 – 26, 2006: Novi Sad, Serbia & Montenegro Želimir Žilnik: Soap in Danube Opera Curator: Zoran Pantelić Negrelli barge / Museum of Contemporary Art, St. Dunavska 37, Novi Sad www.kuda.org May 27 – 30, 2006: Vukovar, Croatia Renata Poljak: All One Knows Curator: Branko Franceschi Negrelli barge / Vukovar City Museum, Eltz Castle, Županijska 2, Vukovar www.mmsu.hr June 2 – 11, 2006: Budapest, Hungary László Czáki & Szabolcs Pálfi: Agár – The Hungarian Greyhound Project Curator: Janós Szoboszlai Negrelli barge / Ethnographic Museum, Kossuth Lajos tér 12, Budapest www.acbgaleria.hu June 14 – 20, 2006: Bratislava, Slovakia Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová: After the Order Curator: Boris Ondreicka Negrelli barge / Freedom Square, Námestie Slobody, Bratislava www.tranzit.org June 21, 2006: Küba arrives in Vienna, Austria June 24 – Sept 9, 2006: Exhibition in Vienna Nestroyhof, Nestroyplatz 2, and T-B A21, Himmelpfortgasse 13, Vienna www.tba21.org * Due to the flooding of the lower Danube region and its ensuing humanitarian crisis, the opening launch and the presentation of Küba: Journey Against the Current had to be postponed to May 13 in Rousse, Bulgaria.

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Küba: Journey Against the Current Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna

Project director: Francesca von Habsburg T-B A21 curatorial team: Daniela Zyman, Gabrielle Cram, Jasper Sharp Project architect, technical coordination: Philipp Krummel T-B A21 project team: Samaela Bilic-Eric, Eva Ebersberger, Barbara Horvath, Alexandra Hennig, Mischi Pakesch, Gioia Zwack, Catharina Coreth, Carola Annoni Press and PR: Astrid Bader / BSX – Bader & Schmölzer GmbH, Vienna Ben Rawlingson Plant / Brunswick Arts Consulting, London Sara Fitzmaurice / Fitz & Co, New York Our special thanks go to: Kutlug Ataman, the people of Küba, Penka Angelova, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Emil Brix, Matei Caltia, Cosmina Chituc, Peter Forgács, Martin Gabriel, Gülen Güler, Nathalie Hoyos, Klaus Hundsbichler, ICA – Sofia, Andreas Kieninger, Timo Koester, James Lingwood, Boris Marte, Sarita Matijević, Biljana Mickov, Ruža Marić, Vladiya Mihaylova, Michael Morris, Kiril Prashkov, Elsa Prochazka, Walter Seidl, Manfred Seitz, Kalin Serapionov, Sava Stepanov, Attila Tordai-S. and IDEA magazine, Elena Velikova, and to all those silent helpers and voices who helped to realize this voyage.

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Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary The language that Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary has chosen to use in contextualizing the Küba project has a great deal in common with the effort being made to change things for the better.

Küba has itself overcome the categorization of “breaking boundaries” with the resonance of its honesty, the infinite richness and lyricism, which is Kutlug Ataman’s signature. It is Küba itself that led to the enlargement of this project from being a simple one-way journey up the Danube to Vienna, to it becoming a catalyst of parallel positions from the whole Danube region. As enlargement of the EU is the subject of great debate amongst member nations, it is all the more relevant that we remind ourselves of our common humanity.

(Francesca von Habsburg) A new foundation for contemporary art, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary – T-B A21 was founded by Francesca von Habsburg in Vienna, Austria. Its mission is to support through co-productions and unique commissions the creation of new works from artists that contribute important positions to the contemporary art practice. T-B A21 seeks to achieve this through multi-disciplinary projects that break down the traditional boundaries that define and categorize artistic expression in its different forms, whilst at the same time empowering the audiences with a living experience of contemporary artistic expression. The work of the foundation brings innovation to the core of the Thyssen-Bornemisza fourth generation’s approach to collecting and patronizing the arts.

Chairman Francesca von Habsburg, Vienna Trustees Norman Rosenthal, Royal Academy, London Peter Pakesch, Kunsthaus, Graz Advisory board Peter Weibel, ZKM, Karlsruhe Olafur Eliasson, artist, Denmark/Iceland Diana Thater, artist, California Simon de Pury, Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, Zurich Curator Daniela Zyman, Vienna

T-B A21 Himmelpfortgasse 13 1010 Vienna, Austria T +43 1 513 98 56, F + 43 1 513 98 56-22 office@tba21.org www.TBA21.org

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This project is taking place during Auria’s Presidency to the EU and is generously supported by:

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This catalog was published on occasion of the project Küba: Journey Against the Current, May 1 – June 21, 2006, and the exhibition of the same title, June 25 – September 9, 2006, Nestroyhof, Nestroyplatz 1, 1020 Vienna, and T-B A21, Himmelpfortgasse 13, 1010 Vienna Published by: Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna Concept and editors: Gabrielle Cram, Daniela Zyman / T-B A21, Vienna Graphic design: Thees Dohrn, Philipp von Rohden / Zitromat, Berlin Typesetting: Christian Schienerl / PixelPan Media Design, Vienna Copyediting: Sonja Illa-Paschen Proofreading: Elio Karamatić, Duncan Larkin, Andrew Horsfield Translations: Ida Cerne (pp. 75, 80–84), Gábor Csillag (pp. 120–125), Filip Hochel (pp. 144–147), Andrew Horsfield (pp. 76–78, 160–169), Alex Moldovan (pp. 40–51), Goran Vujasinović (pp. 96–101) Printed by: REMAprint, Vienna

ISBN 3-9502064-0-X © 2006 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any form of media, neither technical nor electronic, including photocopies and digital storage, etc. All text copyrights lie with the authors. © Images by the artists, except: p. 10 (AP, Frankfurt); p. 13 (Timo Köster, International Canetti Society, Rousse); pp. 17 bottom, 32, 33 (Michael Strasser/T-B A21); p. 17 top (courtesy of via donau); pp. 24, 25 (courtesy of Artangel, London); pp. 54, 64 (Jasper Sharp); p. 78 top (Biljana Mickov); p. 78 bottom (Ivan Bavcević).

Cover: Zitromat, Berlin

T-B A 21 Himmelpfortgasse 13 1010 Vienna, Austria T +43 1 513 98 56, F + 43 1 513 98 56-22 office@tba21.org, www.TBA21.org

Konstantin Akinsha Sorin Antohi Iara Boubnova Sezgin Boynik Boris Buden Gabrielle Cram Branislav Dimitrijević Ivaylo Ditchev Marina Gržinić Francesca von Habsburg Nataša Ilić Kristian Lukić Boris Ondreicka Zoran Pantelić Irit Rogoff Zoltan Sebők Daniela Zyman

T-B A21 www.tba21.org