[spectre] Venice Biennial - Pavilion "Yugoslavia"

[Andreas Broeckmann]

La Biennale di Venezia - 50th International Art Exhibition
"Dreams and Conflicts: The Viewer's Dictatorship"
Preview: 12 (Press)-13-14 June, 2003
June 15 - November 2, Opening hours 10.00 - 18.00, Closed on Mondays


Serbia and Montenegro
Pavilion "Yugoslavia", Giardini di Castello


In the Pavilion:
INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART
featuring Alfred Barr's MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK
On the façade:
NATIONAL PAVILION by Milica Tomic



Inauguration cocktail at
the Pavilion "Yugoslavia"
Giardini di Castello, Venezia
June 14 at 14h!




Commissioner and Curator: Branislava Andjelkovic
Curators: Branislav Dimitrijevic, Dejan Sretenovic
Organized by: Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade
Co-organized by: Centre for Contemporary Art - Belgrade
Technical Director: Maja Gavric
Coordination: Lola Joksimovic
Technical Assistant: Goran Djordjevic


Under the auspices of:
Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Serbia
Supported by:
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Serbia and Montenegro;
Arstrans Bernik&Sin - Fine Art Service, Ljubljana; Charim Gallery,
Vienna; Erste Bank, Vienna; Sutton Vane Associates, London; Ursula
Blickle Foundation, Kraichtal-Unteröwisheim; BAWAG, Vienna;
Idols & Friends, Belgrade

1.

INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART
featuring ALFRED BARR'S MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK


Works exhibited:

International Exhibition of Modern Art, 2013
(installation, dimensions variable, private collection)
Alfred Barr: Museum of Modern Art, 1936
(mixed media, 200x200x50cm, courtesy of Karl Ernst-Osthaus Museum, Hagen)

(N.B.: The author(s) of the project is/are anonymous, and information
on him/her/them is not available.)

Project "The International Exhibition of Modern Art (Armory Show)"
was staged for the first time in 1986 (in Belgrade and Ljubljana). As
a project dealing with the status of modern art, re-examining the
relation between the original and the copy, historization and
chronology, authorization and anonymity, centre and periphery,
painting and conceptual art, this project has provoked considerable
interest in some art circles, although it remains largely unknown to
the broader international audience. The re-articulation of this
artistic and theoretical project may open space for re-reading it in
the »high profile« context of the Venice Biennial where it addresses
existing models of "international art events", national presentations
and relations between ideologies of "new art" and ideologies of
narratives of art history.
The exhibition will present a crowded display of paintings/copies
by/of Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns,
Kandinsky and many other enthroned names of Modern art. The
exhibition was originally accompanied by a lecture of "Walter
Benjamin" on series of paintings by Piet Mondrian that astonishingly
appeared one day in a Belgrade lecture theatre. In his lecture
"Benjamin" positioned some fundamental theses on copies and copying,
such as the one that the copy is a much richer theoretical object
then the original since it had "both qualities of the copy and of the
original, whereas the original is just an original". Finally, in
relation to its "original" version of 1986 this project will be
enriched by new contributions. The main addition is work entitled
Alfred Barr: Museum of Modern Art, New York 1936, that will appear as
the guest at the Armory Show. Its subject matter is the origin of the
MoMA narrative formulated by its founding director Alfred H. Barr,
Jr. The work is one of the projects of the Salon de Fleurus, New York
based institution dedicated to assembling and preserving memories on
modern art since 1992. It was for the first time exhibited at the
Museutopia show organized by the Karl Ernst-Osthaus Museum in Hagen
2002.


Catalogue editors: Branislav Dimitrijevic, Dejan Sretenovic
Contributors: Branislava Andjelkovic, Stephen Bann, Walter Benjamin,
Branislav Dimitrijevic, Boris Groys, Slobodan Mijuskovic, Astrit
Schmidt-Burkhardt,  Dejan Sretenovic
Design&Layout: Borut Vild
Published by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade

2.

NATIONAL PAVILION
Artist: Milica Tomic


Works exhibited:

National Pavilion, 2003, (Light installation on a building façade:
surface 160m2. On the façade of the »Yugoslavia« pavilion, 400
interconnected flashbulbs have been placed - in equal distance from
each other - to cover the surface. The bulbs are set to flash
simultaneously and in regular intervals. Consequently, the dazzle of
the flashes causes "damage" in the scopic field of the observer. This
temporary blindness lasts until the eye recovers. This prevents the
eye from seeing the object/pavilion. The accompanying text is
situated on the steps of the stairway in front of the pavilion.)

Having in mind that this year is the last when the name 'Yugoslavia'
is used on the international political scene, and at the same time
considering the conceptual framework of the Biennial, suggested by
its art director Francesco Bonami as »Dreams and Conflicts«, this
significant historical moment must be marked. The building of the
"Yugoslavia" National Pavilion appears to be an unavoidable
symbolical knot for the historical role and all invested phantasms in
the idea and character of Yugoslavia; its international reputation
and the subsequent loss of that reputation in the disastrous conflict
that left people dead, tortured, deranged and ashamed.
In her project for the façade of the »Yugoslavia« Pavilion, Milica
Tomic seeks to rethink the previous existence of Yugoslavia and to
confirm one of its emancipatory political projects, the anti-fascist
People's Liberation Struggle. However, she seeks to abandon its
worn-out iconography. The artist's utopian desire for unmediated
human connections discards iconography that romanticises the role of
Nation and Nations, and conceptualises an abstract statement that
romanticises human desire to emancipate and be emancipated. When
throwing some "Light" on the existence of this country of
»Enlightened Socialism«, we notice/imply an observer who sees more
when looking aside. When light flashes the eye is blinded, when the
eye moves to the left or right one can still see the shape and the
entrance but the very object, the National Pavilion, merges with the
sunny Venetian sky. An optical trick, one might say, but that would
be true only if the focused object magically disappears, but it does
not. It is the proximity (spatial and temporal) of the observer which
conditions the acceptance of this installation; the question to be
asked is not what, when and how do you see it. The question would be
who is mediating what is not seen?

Catalogue editor: Branimir Stojanovic
Contributors: Branislava Andjelkovic, Ljiljana Blagojevic, Kendell
Geers, Sinisa Mitrovic, Irit Rogoff, Branimir Stojanovic
Design&Layout: Borut Vild
Published by the Centre for Contemporary Art-Belgrade

INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART

BIOGRAPHY

1986  International Exhibition of Modern Art.
	New York 1993.
	Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, YU
	SKUC Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2000	Fiction Reconstructed: The Last Futurist Show, Last Futurist
Exhibition, Armory Show, Salon de Fleurus
	SKUC Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2001	Gallery of Contemporary Art, Celje, Slovenia
	Gallery Media Nox, Maribor, Slovenia
	Mücsarnok/Kunsthalle, Budapest, Hungary
2001	Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, YU

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1986	Alen Ozbolt, "The King's Two Bodies", Mladina, No. 41,
Ljubljana, 12. 12. 1986, p 37
Aleksandar Bassin, "Ob razstavah v beograjskem Muzeju Sodobne
umetnosti in njegovem salonu", Na{i razgledi, Summer XXXV, No. 20
(835), Ljubljana, 24. 10. 1986, p 594
1987	Slobodan Mijuskovic, "Govor u neodre|enom licu", Moment, No.
8, Belgrade, pp 27-30.
1994	Peter Weibel (ed.), Kontext Kunst, Katalog zur Ausstellung
"Trigon '93", Köln, (DuMont Buchverlag), pp 409-421
Marina Grzinic, Rekonstruirana fikcija. Novi Mediji, (Video)
Umetnost, Postsocializem in Retroavantgarda. Theorija, Politika,
Estetika, 1997-1985, Koda, Ljubljana
1998	Kim Levin, "Das Ende der Geschichte", u: Michael Fehr (Ed.),
open box. Künstlerische und wissenschaftliche Reflexionen des
Museumsbegriffs, Köln, pp 162-165
2000	Marina Grzinic, Fiction Reconstructed: Eastern  Europe,
Postsocialism and The Retro-avant-garde, Wien: Edition
Selene/Springerin
2001	Marina Grzinic, »W. Benjamin, Kasimir Malevich, Mondrian and
other Contemporary Spectral Figures and Icons - Thesis«, in: The Last
Futurist Show: Salon de Fleurus, K. Malevich, Armory Show,
Globalization, Politics, New Media Technology, Maska, Ljubljana, pp
20-26
Marina Grzinic, "Benjamin, Kazimir Maljevic. Mondrian i druge
savremene spektralne figure i ikone - teze", u Rekonstruisana
fikcija: poslednja futuristicka izlozba, Museum of Contemporary Art,
Belgrade, pp 12-22

ALFRED BARR'S MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK

BIOGRAPHY
Museutopia, Karl-Ernst-Osthaus Museum, Hagen, Germany

BIBLIOGRAPHY
2003	Michael Fehr, "Salon de Fleurus: Museum of Modern Art", in:
Michael Fehr, Thomas W. Rieger schritte in andere Welten. eine
Documentation, Hagen, pp 75-76


MILICA TOMIC

BIOGRAPHY
Born in Belgrade (Yugoslavia), 1960
Academy of Fine Arts Belgrade (MA), 1990
Lives and works in Belgrade.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS AND PROJECTS
2002	Bild Museet, Umea, Sweden
2000	Artist Statement, Facade Project, Secession, Vienna
	Museum of Modern Art, Arnheim, Netherlands
	Kunsthalle Wien, Project space, Vienna, Austria
1999	Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, Austria
	i am milica tomic (web project)
	CYGNET/Shiseido Virtual Gallery, Japan

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2003	Serious Play/Metaphorical Gesture, Österreichsiches
Kulturforum, New York
2002	Politik-um, Prague Castle courtyards and the Teresian Wing
Gallery in the Old Royal Palace, Prague, Czech Republic
	Belief, South London Gallery, Great Britain
2001	ARS 01, KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art,
	Helsinki, Finland
	Konverzacija, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Yugoslavia
	du bist die welt, Künstlerhaus Wien, Wiener Festwochen, Vienna, Austria
	2000 + Arteast Collection, Modern Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
	After the Wall, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
1998	Roteiros, Roteiros, RoteirosŠ XXIV Biennial Sao Paulo, Brasil
1997	Zones of Disturbance, Steirischer Herbst 97, Graz, Austria

AWARDS
1995/96 What Happened to my Friends, Film festivals Monte Carlo and
Clermont-Ferrand, coauthor, France
1997   xy ungelöst-reconstruction of the crime, Second Annual
Exhibition of the Centre for Contemporary Arts Belgrade, Yugoslavia
1998   xy ungelöst-reconstruction of the crime, award for the video-
installation on the Second international video summit Video Medeja,
Yugoslavia
	Portrait of my Mother, 41 October Salon, Belgrade, Yugoslavia
           Young Artist Award of the Ursula Blickle and Blickle
Foundation, Germany

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
2003	Gerald Matt, Interviews, Triton Verlag, Vienna, Austria
2002	Paco Varragan, El arte que viene/The art to come, Subastas
siglo XXI, Madrid, Spain
2000	Elizabeth Cowie, "Perceiving Memory and Tales of the Other.
The Video Art of Milica Tomic", Camera Austria International, Vienna,
Austria, No. 72, pp. 14 - 16
1999	Georg Schoellhammer, "Wunden der Identitaet", Springerin,
Haefte fuer  Gegenwartkunst, Vienna, Austria, No.4, pp 42-43
1998	Bart De Baere and Maaretta Jaukkuri, "A - Antropophagy", XXIV
Biennale de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brasil


For further information:

Museum of Contemporary Art
Usce Save bb, 11070 Novi Beograd, Serbia and Montenegro
Phone: (+ 381 11) 3115 713, Fax: (+ 381 11) 3112 955
e-mail: msub at msub.org.yu; www.msub.org.yu

Centre for Contemporary Art-Belgrade
Sarajevska 3/VI, 11000 Beograd, Serbia and Montenegro
Phone/fax: (+ 381 11) 361 3584
e-mail: cca at dijafragma.com; www.dijafragma.com

Downloads:
WWW.MSUB.ORG.YU/VENICE