EDITED BY CHRISTIAN HÖLLER A PUBLICATION OF L’INTERNATIONALE BOOKS L’INTERNATIONALE POST-WAR AVANT-GARDES BETWEEN 1957 AND 1986 EDITED BY CHRISTIAN HÖLLER TABLE OF CONTENTS 13 63 162 OPEN Approaching Art through Ensembles Should Ilya Kabakov Bart de Baere Be Awakened? 14 Viktor Misiano Museum of Parallel Narratives, 85 Museu d’Art Contemporani An Exercise in Affects 177 de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona (2011) Bojana Piškur Forgotten in the Folds of History Zdenka Badovinac Wim Van Mulders 95 31 What if the Universe 192 Museum of Affects, Started Here and Elsewhere Is Spain Really Different? Moderna galerija, Ljubljana (2011 / 12) Steven ten Thije Teresa Grandas Bart de Baere, Bartomeu Marí, with Leen De Backer, 106 203 Teresa Grandas and Bojana Piškur Age of Change CASE STUDIES Christian Höller 37 204 Prologue: L’Internationale 119 A. ARTISTS Zdenka Badovinac, CIRCUMSCRibiNG Bart De Baere, Charles Esche, THE PERIOD 205 Bartomeu Marí and KwieKulik / Form is a Fact of Society Georg Schöllhammer 120 Georg Schöllhamer Connect Whom? Connect What? 42 Why Connect? 215 METHODOLOGY The World System after 1945 Július Koller / Dialectics Immanuel Wallerstein of Self-Identification 43 Daniel Grún Writing History Without 134 a Prior Canon Recycling the R-waste 224 Bartomeu Marí (R is for Revolution) Gorgona / Beyond Aesthetic Reality Boris Buden Branka Stipancic 52 Histories and 145 230 Their Different Art as Mousetrap: OHO / An Experimental Microcosm Narrators The Case of Laibach on the Edge of East and West Zdenka Badovinac Eda Čufer Ksenya Gurshtein POST-WAR AVANT-GARDES BETWEEN 1957 And 1986 – 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 239 306 365 Jef Geys and Marinus Boezem / The Avant-Garde, Sots-Art and CLOSE Taking Care of the Frame the Bulldozer Exhibition of 1974 Steven ten Thije Vitaly Komar 366 Spirits of Internationalism, 250 316 Van Abbemuseum, Paul De Vree and Toon Tersas / Works and Words (1979) Eindhoven / Museum Hysteria Makes History in the Shadow of I AM (1978) van Hedendaagse Kunst Lars Bang Larsen Marga van Mechelen Antwerpen, Antwerpen Charles Esche, Steven 257 324 ten Thije, Bart De Baere, Grup de Treball and Vídeo-Nou / A European Jan De Vree and Anders Two Collective Projects in 1970s Spain Institutional Effort / Kreuger Teresa Grandas Art in Europe after ‘68 (1980) and 403 266 Chambres d’Amis (1986) CONTRIBUTORS Retroavantgarde Jan Hoet Inke Arns 330 273 ARRAYS OF B. MONUMENTS INTERNATIONALISM 274 331 “A HugeAmusement-Park Southern–Eastern Exhibition” / Vision in Motion (1959) Contact Zones Jan Ceuleers Cristina Freire 285 342 Overcoming Alienation / From the New Tendencies (1961–1973) International Armin Medosch to the Cosmopolitan Piotr Piotrowski 297 The Furor of the Festival / 351 Los Encuentros de Pamplona (1972) “Global” Art José Días Cuyás Nancy Adajania POST-WAR AVANT-GARDES BETWEEN 1957 And 1986 – 4 Museum of Parallell Narratives. In the Framework of L’Internationale exhibition, POST-WAR AVANT-GARDES BETWEEN 1957 And 1986 – 5 MACBA, 2011, Photo by Rafael Vargas. Museum of Parallell Narratives. In the Framework of L’Internationale exhibition, POST-WAR AVANT-GARDES BETWEEN 1957 And 1986 – 6 MACBA, 2011, Photo by Rafael Vargas. Museum of Parallell Narratives. In the Framework of L’Internationale exhibition, POST-WAR AVANT-GARDES BETWEEN 1957 And 1986 – 7 MACBA, 2011, Photo by Rafael Vargas. Museum of Parallell Narratives. In the Framework of L’Internationale exhibition, POST-WAR AVANT-GARDES BETWEEN 1957 And 1986 – 8 MACBA, 2011, Photo by Rafael Vargas. Museum of Affects MG+ MSUM 2011, Photo by Dejan Habicht. POST-WAR AVANT-GARDES BETWEEN 1957 And 1986 – 9 Museum of Affects MG+ MSUM 2011, Photo by Dejan Habicht. POST-WAR AVANT-GARDES BETWEEN 1957 And 1986 – 10 Museum of Affects MG+ MSUM 2011, Photo by Dejan Habicht. POST-WAR AVANT-GARDES BETWEEN 1957 And 1986 – 11 Museum of Affects MG+ MSUM 2011, Photo by Dejan Habicht. POST-WAR AVANT-GARDES BETWEEN 1957 And 1986 – 12 OPEN POST-WAR AVANT-GARDES BETWEEN 1957 And 1986 – 13 OPEN MUseUM OF PARALLEL NARRatives, MUSEU d’ART CONTEMPORANI DE BARCELONa (MACBA), BARCELONa (2011) ZDENKA BADOVINAC POST-WAR AVANT-GARDES BETWEEN 1957 And 1986 – 14 MUSEUM of Parallell Narratives – ZdeNKA BADOVINAC The exhibition Museum of Parallel Narratives pres- postwar avant-garde art in Eastern Europe, Museum ents a selection of works from the Arteast 2000+ of Parallel Narratives also sets itself the task of pre- Collection of the Moderna galerija in Ljubljana, the senting new knowledge about the region. The exhi- first-ever collection of postwar avant-garde Eastern bition draws attention to the fact that museum European art, and seeks to discover what sort of art collections are tools for producing new knowledge system, if any, accompanied the production, presen- and new working methods, and are not only a means tation and musealization of these artworks. Museum for consolidating that which is already known. In this of Parallel Narratives speaks of artists who worked on way, museums increasingly acquire, along with their the edges of a well-ordered world and its art system, representative function, a performative role as well. and, indeed, addresses its own position at the edge Let us look first at the kind of art that is presented of an era that has seen an acceleration in the estab- in the exhibition and then at how the micro-politics of lishment of an art system in the space that can still this art influences the logic behind what the museum be justifiably called “Eastern Europe”. The exhibition collection does. The exhibition presents sixty-two is also connected with the principal idea behind the artists and eight artist groups representing most wide-ranging project, L’Internationale, of which it Eastern Europe countries: it includes more than a forms a part. hundred works, mostly originating between 1961 and With all of these elements, the exhibition goes 1986, but also several more recent items. The rep- beyond the usual attempts to present Eastern resented period is in keeping with that of the long- European art, which in the main have sought only to term research program of L’Internationale, which offer a condensed version of the art of the region, addresses postwar avant-garde art between 1956 without engaging with the complexities of its con- and 1986. This was a time when dictatorial regimes of text. While providing a comprehensive overview of various kinds presided over a large part of the world, POST-WAR AVANT-GARDES BETWEEN 1957 And 1986 – 15 MUSEUM of Parallell Narratives – ZdeNKA BADOVINAC but it was also a period marked by the postwar belief The second group (Sano Filko, Alex Mlynarčik, in a new modern era, one in which advanced technol- and Vlasta Delimar and Željko Jerman) presents ogies played an increasingly dominant role, the world unique forms of happenings and rituals that were was better connected by new transportation and based on appropriating the socio-political reality communication systems, and the mass media was and its phenomena. These artists were not trying to gaining power: a time of both politically and econom- change the environment in which they lived; rather, ically isolated spaces and expanding globalization. they used it as a kind of ‘found society’. Such happen- While it is true that the postwar avant-garde ings represent, essentially, real-time excerpts from movements presented here were opposed to the the found society, within which the artists directly existing regimes, this opposition was not always observed various relationships, including them- expressed through an explicitly political con- selves, trapped in different social contradictions. tent. What made them political was the fact that In the third group (Josip Vaništa [Gorgona], Neue they employed various gestures to create certain Slowenische Kunst groups [IRWIN, Laibach, Scipion micro-political situations. In this regard, the works Nasice Theatre], the OHO Group, Walter de Maria in the exhibition may be divided into a number of and Andrei Monastyrsky) we find group art actions separate groups. in which the collective methods of the work became The first group (Marina Abramović, Geta Brătescu, the central theme of the art. In these works, the Ion Grigorescu, Tibor Hajas, Sanja Iveković, KwieKulik, micro-political situations, which acted as a counter- Jan Mlčoch, Karel Miler, Petr Štembera, Ilja Šoškić, and weight to the macro-political environment, become Raša Todosijević) presents body art and other forms foregrounded. Through these actions a method of of performance art. In this kind of creative practice, group working was developed that offered an alter- the artists intensified the experience of social isola- native to the dominant ideology of collectivism. Here, tion, marginalization, and vulnerability. In their per- too, belong various self-organized working methods formance work these artists consciously relived that filled some of the gaps in the still-undeveloped everything that characterized the grey, everyday life art system. of socialism, thus making visible the lack of freedom While under socialism the authorities might tol- in society and various forms of social pressure. erate the presentation of so-called unofficial art in POST-WAR AVANT-GARDES BETWEEN 1957 And 1986 – 16 MUSEUM of Parallell Narratives – ZdeNKA BADOVINAC marginal spaces such as youth clubs, student centers, film ribbon, they underscored the independence and artists’ studios or private apartments, a much stricter non-ideological nature of things in themselves. attitude was taken toward events in the public space. Socialist reality was dominated by the imagi- As a result, all the actions in the public space that nary of a drab and mundane existence touched by are presented in the fourth group (Braco Dimitrijević, signs of Western consumerism. In the sixth group Tomislav Gotovac, Jiří Kovanda, Milan Knižák, Paul (OM Production, Natalia LL, Tomislav Gotovac, Josef Neagu, the OHO Movement [Naško Križnar, Milenko Robakowski, and Sanja Iveković and Dalibor Martinis) Matanović, David Nez, and Drago Dellabernardina] can be found works that are based on the use of pho- and Goran Trbuljak) instantly acquired a political, tography, film and video in an investigation of the anti-institutional and anti-ideological marking.