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 galma dedicated to the Macedonian government’s project “Skopje 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 çgalma: 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 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMore than ninety years ago, in a kind of a manifesto of anti-monumental architectural and artistic revolution, Vladimir Tatlin challenged 4 Great, and 1 both the “bourgeois” Eiffel Tower and the Statue 0 2 of Liberty with his unbuilt tower Monument to the e j p Third International (1919–25). Since then, Other Excesses o k S discourses on contemporary monuments have f o flourished elsewhere in Europe (“anti- s of Skopje 2014 e monuments,” “counter-monuments,” “low- s s e budget monuments,” “invisible monuments,” c x E “monument in waiting,” “participatory r 3 e monuments” ) but this debate has completely h t O a bypassed the Macedonian establishment. k d s n v ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe government’s promise that the Skopje a e l , i t 2014 project would attract tourists and a M e a r journalists to Macedonia has been realized, but n G a e z for all the wrong reasons – in many articles, h u t S r Ê Skopje’s city center is depicted as a kind of e 4 d 1 “theme park,” and some of the newly built n 0 a 2 x r museums are referred to as “chambers of e l e 4 b A horrors.” In short, Skopje 2014 has become a m ” , e a t laughing stock for the foreign press. According to t p i t e critics, the city’s abundance of public sculptures, s e P t — monuments, administrative buildings, and e j 7 5 b museums has surpassed, in terms of # O l ‟ preposterousness and pompousness, both Las a e n h r T Vegas and the Neutrality Arch, an oversized u : o j a monument built by Turkmenistan’s leader x m l u l a f Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov from 1985 to g - e ç 2006.5 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe 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 11.20.14 / 17:55:37 EST 02/09 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 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn 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 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAccording 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 galma 4 and public sculptures can be seen as an attempt 1 that has “adorned” the main Skopje square since 0 2 to use ultranationalism to compensate for the 2011? What were the real reasons for building a e j incomplete and faulty national identity of the p monument so obviously dedicated to Alexander o k “rogue” state, an outlaw nation that does not S the Great, yet generically titled Warrior on a f 13 o comply with the international laws accepted by Horse? s most other states.9 After the dissolution of e s s Yugoslavia, Macedonia – one of the states that e çgalma and Collective Enjoyment in the c x was proclaimed independent in 1991 – began E Void r having problems with its neighbor Greece. e To build a monument is by definition to attempt h t O ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe main source of conflict emerged when a to represent the sublime – that which is k d s n the first post-Yugoslav government in Macedonia v incomprehensible, bigger than us. Any a e l , i decided to keep the name of the previously t monument offers a remembrance of a certain a M e a existing “Republic of Macedonia.” More fuel was r unperceivable and unrepresentable sublime. It n G a e added to the fire when the Macedonian z commemorates incommensurability and h u t S r government decided to use symbols, such as a Ê incomprehensibility, as stated by the e 4 d flag with sixteen sun rays, that were associated 1 philosophers who contributed most to our n 0 a 2 x with Ancient Macedonia, even though Greece r understanding of the sublime, Immanuel Kant e l e 14 b A claimed to have the sole historic right to these and Edmund Burke. By definition, a monument m ” , e a symbols. Then in 1993, under pressure from the t is something negative – marking absence, the t p i t Greek government, the UN officially designated e past, death, and above all a certain loss. In s e P t Macedonia as “the Former Yugoslav Republic of — Skopje 2014, the celebration of unrecognized e j 7 5 Macedonia.” This was later replaced by the b and incomplete identities, marginal heroes, and # O l ‟ unrecognizable acronym “F.Y.R.O.M.” exaggerated victories from the past were used as a e n h r Negotiations with internationally appointed T strategies for inducing collective enjoyment, and u : o j a mediators ensued. During these negotiations, ultimately self-delusion. x m l u l a the Greek government proposed names like f ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊOne of the most obvious historical g - “Northern Macedonia” and “New Macedonia” for e ç 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 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe 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.ÊPresented 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 jouissance.”19 wing neoliberal elites.