THE ROLE OF ARTIST IN THE WORLD (R)EVOLUTION

Revolution Now&Forever, VN Gallery and SC Gallery, Zagreb, May 9^th – 19^th 2012

By: Milena Milojević

The word revolution seems to be a worn-out word – it has practically become banal due to its over-usage.  It has become the prey of thriving consumerism and of the commercial industry, causing it to be neutralized to the point that it has become void of any subversive content.  From the Arab Spring and student and workers’ protests, to the “Occupy Wall Street” protests and the economic crisis in Greece.  The above-mentioned not only deny today’s atrophy of the idea of revolution, but they also emphasize the demand for a central change in the neoliberal capitalist movement which is, without a doubt, in a crisis itself.

With the above-mentioned protests, it became clear that the word revolution essentially needed to be rearticulated.  In this context, the recently held exhibition titled Revolution Now&Forever in Zagreb, pointed to the urgency and, above all, to the current new idea of a revolution.  This international, new-media exhibition was organized by curator-pair Boris and Natasha Kadin.  More than 20 artists, primarily form Croatia, but also from Bosnia, the U.S. and England, exhibited their artwork in two gallery spaces.  Individual artists such as Alan Bigelov, Joseph Delape, and Paul Beck, who are also the authors of numerous music videos in the domain of pop culture, presented themselves to the Zagreb audience for the first time.  Their art installations, video artwork, recorded performances, and interactive Internet projects were presented at the exhibition, all of which revealed the numerous deficiencies of society.  In order to achieve their wanted “invasion into society,” that is, in order for the impact of the exhibition to be felt outside of the gallery space itself, activities such as speeches, musical performances, and lectures were organized in the public space.

The careful and thought-out selection of artwork, offered the Zagreb audience insight into the most various activist and/or artistic strategies regarding the existing movement.  It can thus be said that the exhibited works of art were the result of a very precisely oriented revolt, and the success of the exhibition lies in the fact that the artists presented raw, non-filtered, controversial works of art that were thematically focused on revolutionary ideas, with which they, without a doubt, managed to provoke the audience.

The concept of the exhibition was based on the quote from the surrealistic manifesto, and the organizers dealt with the numerous consequences of the relationship between art and society.  Judging by the artwork that was exhibited, we can say that the artists as “revolutionized individuals” really nourish the revolutionary spirit, alongside which their practices and opinions evolved towards their new forms of symbolic opposition.  Thus, art is a privileged sphere for expressing one’s disagreement, for opposing the discourse of the authorities.  This in itself is a kind of “conflict space” in which the authors use various resources to symbolically violate the existing social order.

Thus, in the framework of this exhibition, the performance titled Political Breathing by Marijan Crtalic from Croatia, depicts the limitations of the individual’s political activity, whose nominal right is that of freedom of speech.  Crtalic expresses his disagreement with political and social injustices by wearing a plastic bag on his head, which symbolizes the position of marginal, negatively characterized individuals, and he is soon left breathless and suffocating beneath the plastic.  In this way, he reveals the unpleasant fact that the expression of dissatisfaction in today’s society is short-lived.  However, despite these disagreeable conditions, it is possible to obtain a certain kind of power, even if it is temporary.  Gildo Bavcevic is another Croatian artist who, like Crtalic, deals with the issue of the local theme, that is, with the attack on “the known goal.”  He deals with the current bankruptcy of the company from Split called Dalmacijavino (“Dalmatia Wine”), whose workers have been protesting since the beginning of this year because they haven’t been receiving their wages.  Bavcevic exhibits the trademark product of this company, the soft drink “Pipi,” as the Molotov cocktail, which signifies the fierce resistance towards the oppression of the poor, and suggests that this may be one of the extreme ways of opposition.  Bavcevic also exhibited another work of art at the exhibition, a multimedia installation titled March, which is made up of a video in which animated human characters made of coins march endlessly.  This is a very well conceptualized and realized critique of reified relations, of a world in which only the perspective of goods and money exists as the base of any activity and relationships.

In contrast to the above-mentioned works of art which deal with the position of the individual in modern society, a large number of artwork was exhibited at the VN and SC galleries, which deal with the issue of the role of the media in transferring and reporting on protests around the world in various ways.  The artists’ awareness regarding the orchestration of the media that plays an important role in defining the revolt and its significance, produced a broad diapason of artistic practices and experiments regarding famous television recordings of recent events.  Recordings of the Occupy protest and the London riots in which the artists skillfully intervened, were presented at the exhibition.  One of the works of art which establishes entirely new semantic relationships between two completely different videos is the work of art by Dalibor Matinis from Croatia who mixed Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, which talks about the beginning of the October Revolution, with Facebook videos of the Egyptian revolution, which practically takes place in real-time.  These amateur Facebook videos were of great significance in the communication of those who partook in the protest as well as in the further development of events.

Based on the above-mentioned interventions that deal with mass media, we can conclude that all the exhibited works of art were the products of a combination of art and reality.  The artists encompassed reality in their artistic creation.  However, although the intentions of the organized exhibition are clear, the question “What was its range?” remains.  One gets the impression that what took place at the galleries was the reexamination, reevaluation, and the reinterpretation of the dominant symbols of the official movement, by which the artists confirmed their critical maturity, but that it is impossible to confirm the kind of feedback these subversively potent works of art will obtain.  Boris Kadin, one of the organizers and exhibitors, is also aware of this when he calls for the audience to enter his “terrorist cube,” a fenced annex inside the gallery, that allows them to reenact the revolt, to play the role of the protestors, while, in the end, becoming yet again who they once were and going back to their established habits.

Thus, it becomes clear that art cannot directly lead to social change.  It can raise awareness or deconstruct various problematic aspects of life in modern society, but it cannot solve them.  However, although this exhibition doesn’t offer solutions to problems regarding modern society, it successfully points out the numerous dimensions of the problems, which we are often unaware of, and in this way confirms the fact that art can induce critical awareness.  This is where the revolution begins.