Olga Majcen Linn The Chronotopical Overview of Croatian Performance

Suzana Marjanić. The Chronotopical Overview of Croatian Performance Art – from the Traveller to the Present. : Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, Udruga Bijeli val, 2013.

Suzana Marjanić has made a major contri- ing an overview of all the events during the bution to Croatian with her book period in question, various chapters that The Chronotopical Overview of Croatian analyse individual phenomena related to Performance Art – from the Traveller to the performance art, and their geographic clas- Present. On more than 2,000 pages, she has sification according to various towns and systematized and analysed a treasury of cities – centres in which the performing hitherto unpublished information on the scenes developed. One should also men- subject of Croatian performance art. tion two prefaces, one of them written by The author began researching on this the Croatian theoretician and editor Žarko topic more than ten years ago, when she Paić, who has focused on the philosophical wrote an appendix to the Croatian trans- understanding of performance as a notion, lation of the book Performance Art: From and the other by the prominent to the Present by RoseLee Gold- historian and globally renowned author berg, one of the seminal works dedicated Miško Šuvaković, who has explained in an to performance art on a global level. The encyclopaedic form the evolution of per- translation was published by Test! ‒ Thea- formance in the global setting. tre to the Students and URK ‒ Association In the meantime, the original idea of for Cultural Development, and although a brief overview has grown into a gigantic the publication of a locally written appen- version of itself: partly owing to the author’s dix proved to be against the copyright, this passionate enthusiasm for the topic, and moment was crucial for triggering an idea partly to the flow of time. One should also 02 about publishing a similar book that would thank the publishers – Bijeli Val and the In- 2014 be dedicated to the Croatian perform- stitute for Ethnology and Folklore, which ance. The book was originally envisioned observed the growth and development of as merely identifying the key events in the the book with great excitement. Without history of Croatian performance, but with their support, I believe that the topic would time and after a huge number of encounters have to be dealt with in an ‘economy’ ver- and talks with artists (which were published sion, which would deprive the readers of on a regular basis in the form of interviews various significant elements that they can in the cultural biweekly Zarez), the idea be- now enjoy. hind the book gradually expanded. Today, The size of the edition is also due to the in its completed form, this mega-edition approach of its quartet of graphic designers consists not only of these interviews, but (Damir Bralić, Lana Grahek, Marko Hras- also includes a chronotopical strip offer- tovec, and Luka Reicher), who decided to

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give it more emphasis by dividing the book From our contemporary , as we into separate volumes, equipped with a hard live in the time of an endlessly prolonged cover, and granting an optimum of space to adolescence, it may seem odd to include the the large quantity of illustrations, various performances of secondary-school students appendices, and so on. in such a publication, but we should recall that all great artists from the period of mod- ernism had produced an important part of From the Traveller to the present their oeuvres by the age of 25. Likewise, it is therefore perfectly clear that these young How does one begin and how does one end people were considered adults and that their various questions that plague the author artistic actions left a corresponding trace in who decides to write a history on a topic the media. that has never been systematically treated It is here where we come to another prob- before? Performance art is nowadays de- lem vexing all art historians: namely, the fined as a practice that originated in the fact that this history of performance has visual of the 1950s and 1960s, but most been written for a very young country. The authors of such comprehensive histories of book focuses on the past century when the performance art have made recourse to the region’s political climate changed more than Dadaist, Futurist, or other modernist move- once. And herein lies the challenge. As for ments. Regarding the fact that the the period in which Zenithism emerged, one emerged through various disciplines, with should consider the context of the Kingdom some of the artists it expressed itself in an of Serbs, , and Slovenes. The move- interdisciplinary form. It is thus in the con- ment emerged in Zagreb, yet shifted the text of the that we may speak of centre of its activity to Belgrade after a few the first public ‘performances’ in which the years. At that time, both cities belonged to artist became an integral part of his own the same political structure, but seen from artwork. The artist’s body began to serve as today’s perspective, it may seem that the 02 a natural screen for the artificial images of movement changed the country. The same cultural production, ideology, politics, and 2014 problem emerges regarding the period be- economy. tween the 1950s and the 1990s, since during A distinctly Croatian form of Dadaism the time of Socialist Yugoslavia, one might called Zenithism, was defined by its main say that the urban settings in the capitals of protagonist, Ljubomir Micić, as the “ab- its republics were culturally closer to each stract, meta-cosmic .” In the other than various settings within the same introduction to her book, Suzana Marjanić republic – particularly when speaking of explained which elements of Dadaist ac- Zagreb and Belgrade. tions were present in performances by the Suzana Marjanić has solved this prob- group of secondary-school students called lem by including only Croatian authors and the Travellers as well as which Zenithist artworks created in the territory of . actions she considers as the germane to That is most evident in her Chronotopical the development of performace in Croatia. Strip – an extremely important element of

234 Olga Majcen Linn The Chronotopical Overview of Croatian Performance Art her book, which graphically, yet straightfor- From kynicism to activism wardly presents the most crucial events in Croatian performance art, with brief expla- In the book’s fifteen chapters, Marjanić has nations of their historical contexts. More on evolved and analyzed various notions of per- these contexts can be read in other parts of formance art. In the first chapter, “Perform- the book. ance Art and Kynicism and/or Performing The next issue an author of such a book Resistance”, she has raised the issue of de- must decide upon is where to stop – what is fining performance art, commenting upon the ‘today’ that can serve as an adequate end various theories. However, the very subtitle to such an enterprise? It is significant that of the chapter – “Performing Resistance” the author has chosen a performance that – focuses on the author’s main interest in marked the entry of Croatia into the Euro- performance. The key theories of perform- pean Union, namely that of the recently de- ance and their definitions offered in the text ceased artist Željko Zorica Šiš. An audio-vid- lead to a single conclusion: performance art eo installation, coupled with the serving of must be interpreted in a broader context food and drinks, fuelled this controlled hap- that includes all ‘live art’ – including hap- pening titled KroaTisch-eu Freundschaft. The penings, actions, theatre shows that contain happening took place over the period of 22 elements of non-role acting, and even activ- hours, from June 30 until 1:00 a.m. on July 1, ism in some of its permutations. as an alternative to the political festivities cel- Such a democratic approach makes it ebrating the entry of Croatia into the EU. Šiš’s possible to include artists from very differ- work took place in the Square of the French ent fields of art – such as the punk star Satan Republic, simultaneous to the official events Panonski, who anatomically reads his own in Zagreb’s main square. The artist’s alterna- body with the help of a scalpel, or the group tive comment on Croatia’s passage stemmed Grč, whose members shocked the spectators from the need to criticize the political system. by spilling blood over the audience. It also The same can be said towards all the actions, includes various actors and directors on the happenings, and performances that appear verge of theatre (Montažstroj, Bacači sjenki, 02 on Suzana’s Chronotopical Strip. What does Kugla, etc.), and even fashion performances 2014 it tell us of the book in general? It tells of that overstep the boundaries of clothing the way in which performance art has been in order to explore different issues (Silvio defined: this history of performance is a his- Vujičić, Ivana Popović) – in short, anything tory of anarchistic, antiwar, anti-nationalist, that has to do with performance. underground, alternative, freedom-loving, What follows is a series of historically nihilistic ideas that originated in self-pro- and geographically structured chapters. claimed and temporary autonomous zones. The author starts with the aforementioned An explanation of that hypothesis is offered movement of Zenithism and continues in the following paragraphs, which are dedi- with various early actions in Zagreb (Za- cated to the book’s structure, going through it greb as a performance platform for actions, chapter by chapter. interactions, and reactions). The whole of

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Chapter 4 is thus dedicated to the most text and through her interviews with many consistent performance artist in Croatia, of its participants, Suzana Marjanić has Tomislav Gotovac, and his impact on the taken us on a journey through the perform- Croatian performance art scene. ance scenes of , , Rijeka, Vlasta Delimar, Vlasta Žanić, Sanja and Baranja, and Varaždin. The final Iveković, Ivana Popović, Ksenija Kordić, chapter, titled “Performing the Protest, or: Dunja Knebl, Kristina Leko, Milijana Babić, The Only Real Option is a General Strike”, Ana Franjić and Maja Kovač, Ksenija Turčić, introduces us to the issue of absolute activ- and Gloria Oreb are only some among the ism. The first subject in this category is “Per- female artists in the chapter dedicated to forming Varšavska Street”, the first major performing women. The position of wom- protest that the independent scene, led by an in art and public discourse is outspo- the movements Green Action and Right to kenly defined in the very title of the chap- the City, organized in Zagreb as a planned ter: “Licensed to Perform,” which implies uprising against the non-transparent meth- a marginal social role and requires struggle ods of privatizing collective goods in the on a fundamental level. These women (al- very centre of Zagreb. The rebellion thus though few of them would call themselves included a series of creative actions. One feminist artists) used their bodies to come may say that, between the first chapter on out and fight. performing resistance, and the last one on In 1975, members of the Student Satirical performing protest as the only viable op- Theatre, active in the Student Centre in Za- tion, there are a series of chapters that ex- greb, decided to rename their group to “Kug- press the author’s main interest in perform- la glumište” (The Spherical Theatre), thus re- ance art. This could be surmised as follows: jecting the theatre as a ‘cube’, as they termed to develop a mode of resistance against it, with its strictly defined roles for specta- hierarchy, repression, xenophobia, the pa- tors, performers, and so on. In 1985, Kugla triarchal society, and ideology through the glumište split into several fractions, some of liberating acts of subversion, which uncover 02 which are still active today, such as Kugla of various social, political, media, gender, and 2014 Damir Bartol Indoš. The differences between sex-related conspiracies. this Kugla and Kugla glumište, as well as their significance in the history of performance art, are the subject of Chapter 6. What now? The chapter titled “The Action Book of Myths, or: The Interventionist Corrections The book is written in an essayistic style (Red, Green, Black, and Yellow Peristyle)” and has an intriguing structure, since the focuses on an informal artist group active in author’s own analyses are interspersed with Split, known under the name of their most numerous interviews which introduce vari- significant action: Red Peristyle, which has ous ‘living’ viewpoints to the long text and been reinterpreted a number of times as an transform the book into a reading experi- articulation of the notion of rebellion. In her ence that can captivate you like some of the

236 Olga Majcen Linn The Chronotopical Overview of Croatian Performance Art best novels. Despite being encyclopaedic in say. However, as is the case with many well its scope, virtually no artist has been omit- written historical overviews, this book only ted. Nevertheless this reflects a subjective opens up the discussion on the subject. All position, which has neither the measured future researchers of performance will have style nor the detachment of an encyclo- their work greatly facilitated by the exhaus- paedic overview. Some theoreticians, crit- tive factual record herein, such as historical ics, historians, or simply fans of perform- context and key events. The field where the ance were afraid that, once this tome of discourse can evolve has been set up – and performance encompassing thousands of the glove of interpretation thrown down! pages is published, nothing would be left to

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