She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you? – Norman Bates in Psycho

This essay is an ágalma dedicated to the Macedonian government’s project “ 2014,”

01/09 which recently turned Skopje, the capital of the Republic, into a memorial park of “false memories.”1 Over the last five years, a series of unskillfully casted figurative monuments have appeared throughout Skopje, installed over the night, as if brought into public space by the animated hand from the opening credits of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.2 Figures from the Suzana Milevska national past (some relevant, some marginal), buildings with obvious references to Westernized aesthetic regimes (mere imitations of styles from Ágalma: The periods atypical for the local architecture), and sexist public sculptures have transformed the ‟Objet Petit a,” once socialist-modernist city square into a theatrical backdrop. Alexander the đđđđđđđđđđMore than ninety years ago, in a kind of a manifesto of anti-monumental architectural and artistic revolution, Vladimir Tatlin challenged Great, and both the “bourgeois” Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty with his unbuilt tower Monument to the Other Excesses Third International (1919–25). Since then, discourses on contemporary monuments have flourished elsewhere in Europe (“anti- of Skopje 2014 monuments,” “counter-monuments,” “low- budget monuments,” “invisible monuments,” “monument in waiting,” “participatory monuments”3) but this debate has completely bypassed the Macedonian establishment. đđđđđđđđđđThe government’s promise that the Skopje 2014 project would attract tourists and journalists to has been realized, but for all the wrong reasons – in many articles, Skopje’s city center is depicted as a kind of “theme park,” and some of the newly built museums are referred to as “chambers of horrors.”4 In short, Skopje 2014 has become a laughing stock for the foreign press. According to critics, the city’s abundance of public sculptures, monuments, administrative buildings, and museums has surpassed, in terms of preposterousness and pompousness, both Las Vegas and the Neutrality Arch, an oversized monument built by Turkmenistan’s leader Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov from 1985 to

e - f l u x j o r n a # 5 7 — s p t m b 2 0 1 4 đ S z M i v k Á g a l m : T h e ‟ O b j t P i , ” A x n d r G E c s o f S k p 2 0 1 4 2006.5 đđđđđđđđđđThe citizens of Macedonia became aware of the scope of this large-scale urban project in 2010, only after it was announced, without any public deliberation, by the state-financed promotional video “Macedonia Timeless.”6 When the rudimentary animated video portraying the planned buildings and statues was first broadcast in February 2010, hardly anybody took

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Warrior on a Horse, by sculptor Valentina Stevanovska, is cleaned in the Macedonian Sculpture Park Skopje 2014.

11.20.14 / 17:55:37 EST it seriously because it resembled a kind of stage discussed by Derrida, and “states of exception,” set (and was even accompanied by dramatic as theorized by Giorgio Agamben, derives from music). In the midst of this adoration for the two different interpretations of the “force of imaginary national past, there is hardly any law.” The concept of a “rogue state” deals with space left for a consideration of the present, and the possibility that one state declares another none left for future generations’ monuments. state unlawful according to international How was it possible to carry out such a massive standards and intervenes in its internal affairs. building project in one of the smallest and 03/09 The phenomenon of “states of exception,” on the poorest countries in Europe without ever other hand, has more to do with the declaration consulting the public? The project, which was by a sovereign power that the conditions within funded by taxpayers, cost over Û500 million.7 that country are so far beyond the possibility of governing according to constitutional law that The Name Issue: “State of Exception” and exceptional rules need to be applied. A “state of “Rogue State” exception” must be officially declared.11 Official attempts to explain the purpose behind đđđđđđđđđđIn the case of the postponement of a Skopje 2014 were unconvincing, as when the resolution of the “name issue,” both the “state of mayor of Skopje stated that the project was exception” and the “rogue state” enabled a long- meant to serve as a kind of 3D history textbook term vacuum. The rule of law was bypassed, and that could compensate for the city’s lack of Skopje 2014 (one of many questionable projects) history books. This is in complete contrast to became possible, first as an exception and Viktor Shklovsky’s parable about historical excess, but soon as the norm. monuments in post-revolutionary Russia; he đđđđđđđđđđAccording to Derrida, monuments, like wrote that they functioned “as a strange alibi for tombs, inevitably announce “the death of the not telling the whole truth” or even “a quarter of tyrant.”12 But what kind of void is filled by Warrior the truth.”8Skopje’s abundance of monuments on a Horse, the twenty-five-meter tall ágalma and public sculptures can be seen as an attempt that has “adorned” the main Skopje square since to use ultranationalism to compensate for the 2011? What were the real reasons for building a incomplete and faulty national identity of the monument so obviously dedicated to Alexander “rogue” state, an outlaw nation that does not the Great, yet generically titled Warrior on a comply with the international laws accepted by Horse?13 most other states.9 After the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Macedonia – one of the states that Ágalma and Collective Enjoyment in the was proclaimed independent in 1991 – began Void having problems with its neighbor . To build a monument is by definition to attempt đđđđđđđđđđThe main source of conflict emerged when to represent the sublime – that which is the first post-Yugoslav government in Macedonia incomprehensible, bigger than us. Any decided to keep the name of the previously monument offers a remembrance of a certain existing “Republic of Macedonia.” More fuel was unperceivable and unrepresentable sublime. It added to the fire when the Macedonian commemorates incommensurability and government decided to use symbols, such as a incomprehensibility, as stated by the flag with sixteen sun rays, that were associated philosophers who contributed most to our with Ancient Macedonia, even though Greece understanding of the sublime, Immanuel Kant claimed to have the sole historic right to these and Edmund Burke.14 By definition, a monument symbols. Then in 1993, under pressure from the is something negative – marking absence, the Greek government, the UN officially designated past, death, and above all a certain loss. In Macedonia as “the Former Yugoslav Republic of Skopje 2014, the celebration of unrecognized Macedonia.” This was later replaced by the and incomplete identities, marginal heroes, and unrecognizable acronym “F.Y.R.O.M.” exaggerated victories from the past were used as Negotiations with internationally appointed strategies for inducing collective enjoyment, and mediators ensued. During these negotiations, ultimately self-delusion. the Greek government proposed names like đđđđđđđđđđOne of the most obvious historical

“Northern Macedonia” and “New Macedonia” for e - f l u x j o r n a # 5 7 — s p t m b 2 0 1 4 đ S z M i v k Á g a l m : T h e ‟ O b j t P i , ” A x n d r G E c s o f S k p 2 0 1 4 interventions in Skopje 2014 is the erection of its neighbor to the north. The territory and the monument Gemidžii, which celebrates the culture of Ancient Macedonia, however, does not nationalist organization the Boatmen of completely overlap with either contemporary Thessaloniki, also known as the Assassins of Greece or Macedonia. For more than twenty Salonica. This was an anarchist group active in years, this name dispute put Macedonia in limbo the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the twentieth (e.g., waiting to be accessioned into the EU) – an century. It did not shy away from murder or ongoing, normalized “state of exception.”10 terrorist attacks. But rather than analyze the đđđđđđđđđđThe difference between “rogue states,” as stylistic and aesthetic aspects of such built

11.20.14 / 17:55:37 EST Crowd protests against high electricity bills at Skopje 2014's triumphal arch Porta Macedonia, October 2012. Photo: Saso Stanojkovik

11.20.14 / 17:55:37 EST Saso Stanojkovik, Let them Eat Monuments, 2014. Participatory project with a chocolate multiple of warrior on a horse.đPresented in the framework of the workshop Participatory Monuments, with Chto Delat, Face to Face with Monument, Schwarzenbergplatz, Wiener Festwochen, Vienna.

11.20.14 / 17:55:37 EST objects, more insight might be gained by “the remnant left behind by the introduction of formulating a psychoanalytical interpretation of the Symbolic in the Real.” It “becomes the the ultranationalist cultural policy of the right- ultimate .”19 wing neoliberal elites. This policy functions as a đđđđđđđđđđAccording to Slavoj Žižek, the objet petit a kind of ongoing election campaign – relates to unfortunately a very successful one.15 đđđđđđđđđđJacques Lacan used the term ágalma in his the lack, the remainder of the Real that psychoanalytical discussion of the pursuit of 06/09 sets in motion the symbolic movement of truth. The ágalma was imagined as a certain interpretation, a hole at the centre of the unconscious truth that we seek and wish to find symbolic order, the mere appearance of in analysis, and as a kind of agency, endowed some secret to be explained, interpreted, with certain magical powers, intended to please etc.20 the gods and thus to secure certain favors for its bearer. Lacan used the term in connection with When it comes to Skopje 2014, the introduction the object-cause of desire: “Just as the ágalma is of the Symbolic – the identity – in the Real is the a precious object hidden in a worthless box, so secret that needs interpretation through the the objet petit a is the object of desire which we monuments. This becomes the ultimate truth of seek in the Other.”16 the political reason behind the government’s đđđđđđđđđđLikewise, the monuments of Skopje 2014, populist posturing, as was profoundly discussed although expensive, are creatively and by Ernesto Laclau in his On Populist Reason: “But aesthetically worthless objects, yet they stand the presence of the Real within the Symbolic for something much more important: they involves unevenness: objets petit a presuppose a become the empty signifiers of the sought-after differential cathexis, and it is this cathexis that identity that can complete Macedonia’s we call affect.”21 incomplete contemporary identity. In a compensatory move, they reach back to The Triumph of Excessive Power and antiquity, a time when Macedonia was praised Surplus and revered. When the pro-governmental journalists and đđđđđđđđđđHowever, it is important to state that the other supporters of Skopje 2014 praise the objet petit a in Lacan’s writing is the cause of project for quantity of built objects (e.g. by desire, not its aim. For Lacan, what one saying: “At least they built a lot”) Žižek’s possesses is not necessarily related to what the explanation of the constitutive role of neoliberal other lacks. The phallus emerges as “the only enjoyment comes to mind: signifier that deserves the role of symbol,” sometimes the ágalma, and sometimes “an It is this paradox which defines surplus- operating libidinal reserve that saves the subject enjoyment: it is not a surplus which simply from the fascination of the part object. Hence, attaches itself to some “normal,” the importance granted to symbolic castration, a fundamental enjoyment, because castration at the origin of the law.”17 Lacan based enjoyment as such emerges only in this the concept of the objet petit a on Freud’s surplus, because it is constitutively an concept of the “object” and on concepts “excess.” If we subtract the surplus, we developed by a number of renowned British lose enjoyment itself, just as capitalism, psychoanalysts, such as and her which can survive only by incessantly “partial object,” and and his revolutionizing its own material conditions, “transitional object.” ceases to exist if it “stays the same,” if it đđđđđđđđđđFor Winnicott, the “transitional object” (a achieves an internal balance. This, then, is term he coined in 1951) denotes any particular the homology between surplus-value – the object to which an infant becomes attached and “cause” which sets in motion the capitalist attributes a special value. Transitional objects, process of production – and surplus- such as a piece of cloth or a teddy bear, originate enjoyment, the object-cause of desire.22 when the infant is four to twelve months old – during the phase of the infant’s development e - f l u x j o r n a # 5 7 — s p t m b 2 0 1 4 đ S z M i v k Á g a l m : T h e ‟ O b j t P i , ” A x n d r G E c s o f S k p 2 0 1 4 Žižek’s conclusion wittily draws the connection when the first distinctions between inner and between the Lacanian objet petit a, lack, and outer reality become evident. According to surplus in the context of capitalism’s excessive Winnicott, partial objects come to include the power: entire sphere of culture because they straddle subjective inner reality and shared external Is not the paradoxical topology of the reality.18For Lacan, the objet petit a is the object- movement of capital, the fundamental cause of desire, the imaginary part-object that, blockage which resolves and reproduces as a kind of leftover or surplus of meaning, is itself through frenetic activity, excessive

11.20.14 / 17:55:37 EST power as the very form of appearance of a Macedonia being represented at international fundamental impotence – this immediate contemporary art events such as the Venice passage, this coincidence of limit and Biennale.25 excess, of lack and surplus – precisely that đđđđđđđđđđBut today’s monument is tomorrow’s ruin. of the Lacanian objet petit a, of the leftover We have already seen so many neglected and which embodies the fundamental, destroyed monuments from the socialist past. constitutive lack?23 While Skopje 2014 claimed to address a lack of

07/09 Macedonian identity in European cultural history, The iconoclastic radicality of such a “void,” a it has compensated for this lack by building the desiring machine that doesn’t produce anything brand new triumphal arch. By adding ornaments except the absence or lack behind such an and columns in neoclassicist and Baroque styles emptied-out representation, is particularly to existing socialist-modernist and brutalist important in the context of Macedonia’s architectural objects, Skopje 2014 has erased inferiority complex. Among many embarrassing other memory fragments, such as Macedonia’s diplomatic blunders of late, the most famous antifascist past. was committed by former minister of foreign đđđđđđđđđđThe Skopje 2014 project does not bear the affairs Antonio Milososki. In a 2010 interview signature of one individual artistic or with the Guardian, he stated that Warrior on a architectural creator or a team. Instead, it feels Horse was a way of “saying [up yours] to them!” like it emerged from one of the prime minster’s This statement provoked ridicule from the local nightmarish fantasies. In his speeches, he even press, as well as calls for a new sculpture – of refers to it as his project. The government and the minister’s middle finger.24 the prime minister have thus reimagined đđđđđđđđđđOne of the most symptomatic of all the themselves as chief “curators” in charge of the monuments built as a part of this mega- object petit a, but the ugly box is still empty, celebration of failed, impotent diplomacy is the devoid of the ultimate object-cause of desire. triumphal arch titled “the Gate of Macedonia.” đđđđđđđđđđ× Usually, a triumphal arch is intended to both This text was written during Suzana Milevska's term as Endowed Professor for Central and South Eastern Art memorialize a past victorious event, and Histories at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, a co-operation anticipate and enable future victorious events. A between the Academy and ERSTE Foundation. triumphal arch is a monument that supposedly has the power to collapse the time before and after the event that it celebrates; in a way, it consists of an open multitude of events – a list that can be endlessly rewritten. But the few events that have been marked by public gatherings at the Gate of Macedonia have not been so glorious: in 2011, the Macedonian national basketball team celebrated its fourth- place finish in the European Championship under the gate, and in 2012 the organization Aman gathered there to protest high electricity bills. đđđđđđđđđđRecently, the triumphal arch and the other monuments in Skopje have been placed in spatial rivalry with a newly installed merry-go- round in the city’s central square. The sculptures on the merry-go-round – of beggars, frivolous women with bare breasts (no female heroes were given monumental representation), bulls, fish, dancers, and trees turned into human beings – sit alongside militaristic historic figures, most of whom are riding horses and holding weapons. As capital investment flows into such problematic e - f l u x j o r n a # 5 7 — s p t m b 2 0 1 4 đ S z M i v k Á g a l m : T h e ‟ O b j t P i , ” A x n d r G E c s o f S k p 2 0 1 4 projects, art and cultural institutions are deteriorating. Artistic leadership is entirely overridden by the ruling party’s taste, which is driven by political interests, ignorance, and an admiration for traditional values (read: figurative and representational art). Such a hypocritical situation is paralleled by frequent claims of a lack of funds – for example, when it comes to

11.20.14 / 17:55:37 EST Dr. Suzana Milevska is a theorist and curator of visual đđđđđđ1 php art and culture from Macedonia. In 2013-2015 she was In ancient Greek,đágalma means “ornament” or “gift.” It refers to đđđđđđ9 appointed the first Endowed Professor for Central and images and statues that were Jacques Derrida,đRogues: Two South Eastern European Art Histories at the Academy used in temples as votive Essays on Reason, trans. of Fine Art in Vienna. She holds a PhD in visual culture offerings to gods.đ“False Pascale-Anne Brault and from Goldsmiths College London and was a Fulbright memories,” a well-known Michael Naas (Stanford, CA: phenomenon from Stanford University Press, 2005), Senior Research Scholar (2004). She lectured at psychopathology, refers to 97. Derrida cites several authors various universities and museums worldwide such are trauma-driven, imagined events who have examined the use of Columbia University-New York, Oxford University- that show as real in the subject’s the expression “rogue state” in 08/09 memory. foreign policy, including Noam Oxford, Alvar Aalto University-Helsinki, IUAV –Venice, Chomsky, Robert S. Litwak, and The School of Art Institute – Chicago, TATE Modern đđđđđđ2 William Blum. London, KIASMA Helsinki, MUMOK Vienna, Moderna Monty Python’s Flying Circus, opening credits series 1- đđđđđđ10 Museet Stockholm, and so on. Her texts have been 4đhttp://www.youtube.com/w For a discussion of the published in various academic and art journals. In atch?v=Tq37WSg9ESg theoretical and philosophical 2010 she published the book Gender Difference in the interpretations of this dispute, Balkans and edited The Renaming Machine: The Book. đđđđđđ3 seeđThe Renaming Machine: The See, for example,đThe Book, ed. Suzana Milevska In 2012 Milevska received the Igor Zabel Award for Contemporary Art of Trusting (Ljubljana:đP.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Culture and Theory. Uncertainties and Unfolding Institute,2010). This book is Dialogues, ed. Esther Shalev- based on a cross-disciplinary Gerz (Stockholm: Art and Theory, curatorial project comprised of 2013); andđKatarzyna ten different events (exhibitions, Murwaska-Muthesius, “Oskar conferences, and seminars) that Hansen and the Auschwitz took place in Ljubljana, Skopje, ‘Countermemorial,’ Pristina, Zagreb, and Vienna in 1958–59,”đARTMargins Online, 2008–2010. The book examines May 20, the arbitrariness of names, the 2002đhttp://www.artmargins.c problematic issue of equating om/index.php/2-articles/311- names with identity, and the oskar-hansen-and-the-auschwi implications of the erasure of tz-qcountermemorialq-1958-59 memory through renaming.đIn addition, for extensive research đđđđđđ4 into the political arguments See, for example,đAdelheid involved in the dispute between Wölfl,đ“Im mazedonischen Macedonia and Greece, see Geschichtsgruselkabinett,”đD er Zlatko Kovach, “Macedonia: Standard,đMay 14, Reaching Out To Win L. American 2014đhttp://derstandard.at/1 Hearts,”đScoop World, Feb. 26, 399507404886/Besuch-im- 2008đhttp://www.scoop.co.nz/ mazed onischen- stories/WO0802/S00363.htm Geschichtsgruselkab inett đđđđđđ11 đđđđđđ5 Giorgio Agamben,đState of The Neutrality Arch is a seventy- Exception, trans. Kevin Attell five-meter-tall monument (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, topped with a rotating, gold- 2005), 23. According to plated statue ofđNiyazov. It cost Agamben, the emergence of anestimated $12 million to build. camps in the Nazi period Recently, it was built even taller. signaled that the state of See Richard Orange, exception had become the rule, “Turkmenistan rebuilds giant transforming society into an rotating golden statue,đThe unbounded and dislocated Telegraph, May 24, biopolitical space. See also 2011đhttp://www.telegraph.co Giorgio Agamben,đHomo Sacer: .uk/news/worldnews/asia/turk Sovereign Power and Bare Life, menistan/8533427/Turkmenista trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen n-rebuilds-giant-rotating-go (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, lden-statue.html 1998), 166.

đđđđđđ6 đđđđđđ12 Seeđhttp://www.youtube.com/w Jacques Derrida,đMargins of atch?v=iybmt-iLysU Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (London: Prentice Hall, 1982), 4. đđđđđđ7 The project’s finances are far đđđđđđ13 from transparent, so the exact See Jasna Koteska, “Troubles cost is difficult to confirm. But with History: Skopje one statue,đWarrior on a Horse, is 2014,”ARTMargins Online, Dec. estimated to have cost Û7.5 29, 2011 million alone. Most of the http://www.artmargins.com/in statues and buildings were dex.php/2-articles/655-troub claimed to be of local les-with-history-skopje-2014 significance, and since it was officially initiated by the đđđđđđ14

e - f l u x j o r n a # 5 7 — s p t m b 2 0 1 4 đ S z M i v k Á g a l m : T h e ‟ O b j t P i , ” A x n d r G E c s o f S k p 2 0 1 4 municipal government of Skopje, In his “Analytic of the Sublime” the project could bypass any (1790) fromđThe Critique of parliamentary discussion. Judgment, Immanuel Kant locates examples of the sublime đđđđđđ8 not only in nature but also in the Viktor Shklovsky,đThe Knight’s human condition. He famously Move (1919–21), written in argued that the sublime, unlike Petrograd, Moscow, and Berlin, the beautiful, “cannot be quoted inđSvetlana Boym, contained in any sensible form “Tatlin, or Ruinophilia,”đCabinet but concerns only ideas of 28 (Winter reason.” Kant,đCritique of 2007–08)đhttp://www.cabinetm Judgment, trans. Walter S. agazine.org/issues/28/boym2. Pluhar (Indiana: Hackett

11.20.14 / 17:55:37 EST Publishing, 1987), 99. the Discourse of Institutional Critique and the ‘Unhappy đđđđđđ15 Consciousness,’” inđEvaluating The ruling coalition that has and Formative Goals of Art been in power since 2008 (and Criticism in Recent that was recently reelected in (De)territorialized parliamentary and presidential Contexts(Paris: AICA Press, elections in April 2014) is formed 2009),đ2–6đhttp://www.aica-i by two major right-wing parties, nt.org/IMG/pdf/SKOPJEcomplet the VMRO-DPMNE (consisting .pdf [PDF] primary of officials of Christian-

Macedonian descent) and DUI 09/09 (consisting primarily of officials from the Muslim-Albanian minority).

đđđđđđ16 The concept ofđágalma was introduced by Lacan in the context of his writing about Socrates’s “Symposium” in hisđSeminar VIII (1960–1961).đSee Lacan,đLe séminaire, Livre VIII: Le transfert (Paris: Seuil, 1991)đhttp://lacan.com/semin ars2.htm Lacan always insisted that the termđobject petit a should remain untranslated because the “a” inđobjet petit a stands for “autre” (other).

đđđđđđ17 Lacan,đLe séminaire, Livre X: L’angoisse [1962–1963] (Paris: Seuil, 2004).

đđđđđđ18 Donald W. Winnicott, “Transitional objects and transitional phenomena: A study of the first not-me possession,”đInternational Journal of Psycho-Analysis 34 (1953): 89–97. See also Winnicott’sđPlaying and Reality (London: Tavistock,đ1971).

đđđđđđ19 Lacan, quoted in Dylan Evans,đAn Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian (London: Routledge, 2006), 129.

đđđđđđ20 Slavoj Žižek,đThe Sublime Object of Ideology (New York; Verso, 1989), 54.

đđđđđđ21 Ernesto Laclau,đOn Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005), 118–119. For a complex discussion of names, empty signifiers, and populist rule, see the chapter entitled “The People and the Production of Emptiness,” 67–124.

đđđđđđ22 Žižek,đThe Sublime Object of Ideology, 54.

đđđđđđ23 Ibid.

đđđđđđ24

Helena Smith, “Macedonian e - f l u x j o r n a # 5 7 — s p t m b 2 0 1 4 đ S z M i v k Á g a l m : T h e ‟ O b j t P i , ” A x n d r G E c s o f S k p 2 0 1 4 statue: or a warrior on a horse?,”đTheđGuardian, August 14, 2011đhttp://www.theguardian. com/world/2011/aug/14/alexan der-great-macedonia-warrior- horse

đđđđđđ25 See Suzana Milevska,đ“TheđInternalisati on of

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