Everything we see could also be otherwise ( My sweet little lamb ) 20 September — 11 November 2017 Open: Wednesday — Saturday • 12 – 6 pm The Showroom

Associated events at The Showroom Preview with performance of Work Files (Showroom) by Tim Etchells Tuesday • 19 September 2017 • 6:30 – 8:30 pm

Ashley Hans Scheirl in conversation with artist Oreet Ashery Wednesday • 20 September 2017 • 6:30 – 8:30 pm

Screening of Lutz Becker’s Film Notes / Kino Beleške followed by a discussion between Lutz Becker and curator Lina Džuverović Thursday • 9 November 2017 • 7 – 9 pm fter six exhibitions, tak- 1960s and 1970s from a contemporary ing place from Novem- perspective. With the artistic anti-sys- ber 2016 to May 2017 in temic and anti-commodity strategies of independent art spac- the past, now largely commodified and es, artists’ studios and assimilated in the market, the epilogue private apartments in stages a search for available gestures , My Sweet Little of their revival by using a wide range Lamb (Everything we see could also be oth- of artistic strategies, personal systems Aerwise) is settling down at The Show- and self-contextualizing filters. room, London, for the project’s poetic The exhibition at The Showroom is epilogue. Based on the Kontakt Art not a final word as much an attempt to Collection, which includes seminal look at the collection through differ- works by artists from Central, Eastern ent lenses. It proposes guidelines for and South-East Europe from 1960s a decolonization of the imaginary of to the present, in Zagreb the project margins and peripheries, and revival worked as an ongoing ‘display machine’. of anti-systemic artistic modalities in It juxtaposed the collection’s canoni- the present. cal works with a number of historical In a dense spatial configuration, the and contemporary works in order to works inhabit the interior and exterior address and reframe some of the recur- of The Showroom’s building, confront- ring themes that stem from the collec- ing its architecture with an installa- tion, such as radical utopianism, the tion resembling a temporary occupa- figure of dissident artist, questions of tion or the moving into a new space. gendered bodies, political subjectivi- The gesture of occupying the space is ties and engagement, and the status imbued with an attempt towards the of public space. de-musealisation of the collection as a Titled after a work by Croatian art- wholesome entity and interrupts fixed ist Mladen Stilinović (1947–2016), to modes of presenting historical works whom the project is dedicated, the pro- with more disorderly and experimen- ject is inspired by Stilinović’s life-long tal arrangements. anti-systemic artistic approach that The exhibition in London expands searched for more autonomous ways the project’s context with the inclu- of artistic production through what sion of several London-based artists he called ‘poor art’. For the exhibition of different generations. The project’s at The Showroom, the title My sweet epilogue staged in Brexit London is little lamb (Everything we see could also be haunted by the post-communist transi- otherwise) is reversed to Everything we tion and its suppressed lessons, asking see could also be otherwise (My sweet little how this experience can be related to lamb) as a marker of translation of the our common future. project’s specificities from one locality In spring 2018 a publication con- to another. The exhibition includes textualizing the whole project will be works by Stilinović that look at rela- published by WHW and Kontakt. l tions between economy, money and ideology, and attempts as a whole to look into artistic anti-approaches from

2 | Everything we see could also be otherwise ( My sweet little lamb ) Lutz Becker stuck over her eyes and mouth; this Born 1941, lives and works in London. same censorship is simultaneously de- nied, however, in that the strips bear Film Notes / Kino Beleške images of what lies beneath – namely 1975 her mouth and her eyes. Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection Lutz Becker’s film Film Notes / Kino Josef Dabernig Beleške was made in collaboration with Born 1956, lives and works in . a group of artists who, at the time, WARS met regularly at the Student Cultural 2001 Centre of . It includes verbal Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection statements and performative gestures of protagonists of the New Artistic Josef Dabernig’s films address orderli- Practice in former Yugoslavia, refer- ness and late modernist logics through ring to the role of art in society and thoroughly planned plots that lead to re-thinking of the concepts ‘form’, ‘au- moments of absurdity. They often refer tonomy’, ‘economy’, ‘politicality’ and to an immediate socialist past, where ‘institutionalization’ of contemporary moments of modernity prevail, yet art. in a seemingly Fordist manner. The The film will be screened on filmWARS shows businessmen in the Thursday 9 November 2017, dining car of a long-distance train: 7–9pm at The Showroom, waitress, waiter and cook sit back and followed by a discussion with wait, conveying indifferent fatigue and Lina Džuverović. below capacity employment. They are lolling in the disquieting train, staged Geta Brătescu almost as if they were the crew of a Born 1926, lives and works in Bucharest. ship basking in the blazing heat of the sun. Devoid of communication, they Censored Self-Portrait / represent nothing more than an ex- Autoportret cenzurat tension of the train’s interiors. 1978 Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection Nika Dubrovsky Geta Brătescu began her work as an Born 1967, lives and works in Berlin. artist in the provocative intellectual Anthropology for Kids milieu of 1940s , where she 2017 later experienced the political upheav- Courtesy: the artist als of socialism and its collapse in 1989. The Censored Self-Portrait Nika Dubrovsky’s practice has evolved interweaves her criticism of the po- from visual art, journalism, Internet litical system with a critical analy- culture and publishing. After an artis- sis of the photographic medium, the tic career in Israel in the early 1990s, manipulative possibilities of which Dubrovsky was among the pioneers she visibly orchestrates in her com- of Russia’s new media start-up scene, position. Censorship of the gaze and specializing in social media and open of language are symbolized by strips source culture. Moving to New York

Everything we see could also be otherwise ( My sweet little lamb ) | 3 in 2001, she became a significant voice The performance will take place in Russian blogging. Her critical po- at the preview of the exhibition, sition on educational regimes led to on Tuesday 19 September, 6:30– the development and publishing of 8:30 pm. doodle books for children. Her cur- rent project Anthropology For Kids aims VALIE EXPORT at reframing crucial aspects of human Born 1940, lives and works in Vienna. life – family, money, health, beauty – Breath Text: Love Poem / to deconstruct conditioned notions of Hauchtext: Liebesgedicht how we (should) live, demonstrating 1970/1973 the diversity of perspectives and pos- Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection sibilities that exist in different cultures. The book Privacy contains examples VALIE EXPORT is one of the protag- of relationships between the public onists of conceptual media art, per- and private in art, individuality and formance and film. She often creates collectivity, and technology and con- experimental ‘short circuits’ between temporary society, conceived as inter- technical media and the body-as-medi- active material for workshops with um, using the body as an active figure children aged 8–18 with the aim of and a passive surface for projections, discussing these themes in relation a carrier of information. In the video to artworks within the Kontakt col- Breath Text: Love Poem, she speaks to the lection and beyond. screen: her voice is the main event and the ‘love-poem’ appearing as second- ary. The focus is on not saying some- Tim Etchells thing out loud: only by following the Born 1962, lives and works in London. letters breathed onto the glass pane Work Files (Showroom) and the performer’s head movements 2017 does the sentence become decipher- Courtesy: the artist able as ‘I love you.’ Work Files (Showroom) is an improvised Stano Filko performance by artist Tim Etchells, 1937–2015. Lived and worked in made as part of his ongoing Work . Files series which explores language as a stream of consciousness and as Associations III. / Asociácie III an archive of performative potential. 1960 Described by Etchells as a ‘chaotic ac- COSMOS / KOZMOS cumulating Word file’, the source for 1968–1969 these solo performances is the artist’s growing collection of gathered frag- Reality of Cosmos–A / Realita Kozmu–A ments of text, overheard conversations, 1968–1969 cut-and-paste excerpts and quotations. Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection Dynamic, comical and unsettling, Work Files explores language in its seman- Stano Filko’s works constitute an open tic, musical and textural possibilities. invitation to travel through time. The

4 | Everything we see could also be otherwise ( My sweet little lamb ) unity and simultaneous diversity of his 1962/2013 oeuvre stem from the following modes Courtesy: Tomislav Gotovac Institute of constant change: relocation, rewrit- Tomislav Gotovac, who later changed ing and rearranging. In the late 1960s his name to Antonio Lauer, was a film he connected with new constructivist director, conceptual artist and per- tendencies celebrating earthly space, former. In the early 1960s he devel- technical advances and civilization’s oped a radical formal attitude that was expansion into the universe. Through emancipatory, libertine and anarchic. his leaning towards project-art, a cer- Gotovac authored the first happen- tain shift in working with cosmic vi- ing in Zagreb in 1967, and the first sions became evident. The change has instance of streaking in Belgrade in been documented in Filko’s print cy- 1971. Gotovac’s iconic series Inhaling cle and perforated aluminium plates Air jubilantly affirmed the transforma- titled Associations, which epitomized tive sensuality of living. Made during the legend of American astronauts. the same trip to the Sljeme mountain as his more famous work Showing Elle, Marcus Geiger Inhaling Air depicts the simple act of Born 1957, lives and works in Vienna. breathing as a joyous action bursting Untitled with life, which, as such, on the most 2013/2014 (2017) basic physical level, already danger- Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection ously and subversively stands in op- position to social normativity. Marcus Geiger often uses everyday materials of domestic use that reduce Ion Grigorescu visual arts to their basic parameters. Born 1945, lives and works in Bucharest. They become bearers of conceptual strategies, foreign bodies that reveal Electoral Meeting the orders constituting the art system. 1975 For Untitled Geiger covers the floor Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection of the exhibition space with mask- Ion Grigorescu has been recording ing paper and masking tape, which his pursuit of anti-art, where life and is traditionally used by painters and artistic practice are intertwined as one, decorators to protect the interiors of since the early 1970s, making critical building sites. Untitled critiques the examinations of social realities. For sanitizing dictates of museum conser- Electoral Meeting the camera was clan- vation that isolate artworks from their destinely hidden at hip level during environments but, at the same time, a sham electoral meeting, which was prevents visitors from leaving traces organized by the Communist Party of interfering with the actual building and strictly supervised by members and its designated spaces. of the secret police, most of whom infiltrated the meeting disguised as Tomislav Gotovac union leaders. Despite being taken 1937–2010. Lived and worked in Zagreb. under pressure, the photos are not Breathing the Air / Udisanje zraka mere illustrations of an episode from

Everything we see could also be otherwise ( My sweet little lamb ) | 5 the history of Romanian oppression, upon the lives of people caught up in but rather punctual observations of its midst. Horvat creates holes, open- the inner mechanisms of its evilness. ings and interruptions in the historical source material, pointing to the acts of Vlatka Horvat erasure, removal and revision as well Born 1974, lives and works in London. as to the malleability and fickleness of memory. With the Sky on Their Shoulders 2011 Sanja Iveković The Past Is Another Country Born 1949, lives and works in Zagreb. 2015 New Star / Nova Zvijezda Reinforcements, 2016 1983 Courtesy: the artist Personal Cuts / Osobni rezovi 1982 Vlatka Horvat’s projects often recon- figure physical space, found objects Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection and images, placing them in new spa- Sanja Iveković uses the performative tial and social relations. Reinforcements potential of mass media such as tel- continues a strand of her recent sculp- evision, magazines, newspapers, ad- tural works which put objects and ma- vertising, and both public and private terials in a state of precarious balance, photography, in order to bring her own temporarily held in place with ten- person into play in the broad field of sion and counterpoise. Evoking both representation. In New Star, Iveković human-made support structures and used colour paper in the colours of an impoverished natural landscape, the national flag of former Yugoslavia, Horvat jams her fragile contraptions replacing the red star in the middle between the floor and the ceiling, in- with stubble from a man’s beard, and terrupting the cavity of the room with thus breaking the law against tamper- jagged verticals whilst drawing atten- ing with the symbols on the nation- tion to the physical edges of the room’s al flag. In the video Personal Cuts, the architecture and the confining nature protagonist (the artist) appears before of the built space. her audience with a black stocking With the Sky on Their Shoulders and over her head. The terrorist act that The Past Is Another Country use family Iveković links to this image associates photographs from the late 60s/early the real violence represented by the 70s featuring the artist’s parents as cutting of the mask with the structural young adults in socialist Yugoslavia. violence represented by the relation- By modifying photographs from a par- ship between the individual and the ticular historical moment associated television medium, which itself is a with idealism and optimism, Hor- political power. vat reimagines the time ‘before eve- rything’ with the knowledge of the Běla Kolářová consequences, injustices and cruelty 1923–2010. Lived and worked in Prague. that a large systemic change brought

6 | Everything we see could also be otherwise ( My sweet little lamb ) Lesbos, from Hair cycle / cultural situation’. The works from his Lesbos, z cyklu Vlasy archive dating back to the early 1960s 1964 document how Koller responded sys- tematically to the world around him, Hair, from Hair cycle / using real objects, the real world and Vlasy, z cyklu Vlasy everyday life as a given programme 1964 for displacement. For Koller, the en- Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection tire arsenal of mass communication or media was suitable for portrayal Běla Kolářová belongs to the gen- as they are part of contemporary life eration that sparked an iconoclastic which are ‘more real, numerous, and revolution and rearmament in Czech more blatant than anything ever before art during the 1960s, proclaiming that in human history’. Koller’s archive is art could exist as a process, concept, a record of his artistic practice and is method, experiment and language, or inextricably linked and interwoven as something concrete, such as a found with the theories manifested in his object. Kolářová appropriated assem- various works. blages of material fragments as pho- tograms. The series Hair bore strong Jiří Kovanda literary associations for her, uniting Born 1953, lives and works in Prague. the distinctively feminine, archetypal and personal material of her own hair November 18th, 1976, Prague, and the hair of her closest friends un- Waiting for someone to call me… / der a feminine theme, recalling places 18. listopadu 1976, Praha, or stories associated with women in Cekám až mi nekdo zavolá… classical Greek literature including 1976/2009 Lesbos, Ariadne’s Crown, and Sadness November 19th, 1976, Wenceslas on Naxos, and the feminist lyric poetry Square, Prague / 19. listopadu 1976, of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Praha, Václavské námestí 1976/2009 Július Koller 1939–2007. Lived and worked in January 23rd, 1978, Prague, Staromest- Bratislava. ské námestí, I arranged to meet a few friends… we were standing in a small Junk Culture, Pop Culture group on the square, talking… sud- 1966–1977 denly, I started running; I raced across Kontakt (Antihappening) the square and disappeared into Mel- 1969/2017 antrich Street… / 23. ledna 1978 Praha, Staromestské námestí, Dal jsem si sraz Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection s nekolika práteli…stáli jsme v hloucku Július Koller worked with radical ar- na námestí a hovorili…náhle jsem se tistic methods that distanced his work rozbehl, utíkal jsem pres námestí a from art’s formalisms. His artistic strat- zmizel v Melantrichové ulici… egy intended to put an end to aesthet- 1978/2009 ics and to create, as he coined it, a ‘new Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection

Everything we see could also be otherwise ( My sweet little lamb ) | 7 Jiří Kovanda’s minimalist actions and Forma Otwarta – Gra na twarzy aktorki interventions of the 1970s were often 1972 so subtle they were almost impercep- Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection tible. Simple actions like gazing into ‘This scene from Open Form, titled Game the eyes of people encountered on an on an Actress’s Face, presents a multi- escalator or intentionally and unin- layered reflection on processuality, tentionally touching chance passers- participation, media and mediatisation. by on the street can be understood as Using the public face of an actress as attempts to make contact. Although if it was a neutral surface for a collec- political interpretations would have tive and collaborative artistic act, this been unacceptable to him, his actions first example of a processual Visual did have a subtle political dimension. Game instructed participants to per- They stand at an aesthetic distance form successive moves on this premise. from official institutional art and take Given that each move, each utterance a political, anti-metaphysical stance influenced the next one and modified against the morality of unofficial art. the original situation, the rule was to react to others’ moves, opening new Edward Krasiński possibilities for others to express. The 1925–2004. Lived and worked in Warsaw. collective Activity established a form Retrospective / Retrospektywa of visual language. The camera shows 1984 a close-up of the actress’s face, the Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection ‘players’ remain outside the frame. The actress, Ewa Lemańska, became very Edward Krasiński is known for works popular in the early 1970s as Maryna, incorporating found objects and com- the fiancée of the main hero in the mon materials, such as rubber, wire and film series Janosik.’ string, as well as installations and hap- KwieKulik: form is a fact of society, ed. penings. In the late 1960s blue Scotch Zofia Kulik, Łukasz Ronduda (War- tape became his trademark material. saw: BWA Wroclaw – Galleries of The artist then used the blue stripe in Contemporary Art, 2009), 38. his ‘axonometric drawings’ and ‘inter- ventions’ during the 1970s and 1980s. Katalin Ladik Krasiński’s installations utilize three- Born 1942, lives and works in . dimensional spatial forms (labyrinths, cubes, pedestals, walls, floors and pil- Selected Folk Songs / lars), often as a background for black- Ausgewählte Volkslieder and-white photographic reproductions 1973–1975/2017 of other artists’ work. Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection Selected Folk Song no. 3 KwieKulik 1973–1975/2015 Zofia Kulik, born in 1947, lives and works Courtesy: the artist in Warsaw; Przemysław Kwiek, born in 1945, lives and works in Łomianki. Katalin Ladik is a poet, actress, visual artist and performer. Her work often Open Form – Game on an Actress’s Face / stretches the limits of poetry, testing

8 | Everything we see could also be otherwise ( My sweet little lamb ) its phonic and visual possibilities. The 1972 in Ladik’s Selected Folk Songs Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection collection are visual poetry composed Dóra Maurer’s Street Action was a per- of letters, music paper, sewing pattern formative gesture that she let passers- paper and clippings from women’s by carry out in a public space in Bu- magazines, which also serve as the dapest. In socialist times, public space score for the artist’s sound poetry. was less a meeting place than a space Recently, she has started to record for passing through. Maurer took three the visual scores in a form that trans- large white paper strips and placed lates the works on paper into sound them on the ground in a parallel ar- collages. Selected Folk Song no. 3 is a sound rangement, reminiscent of a crossroad. poem that mixes the artist’s voice with Over the course of an hour passers-by manipulated fragments of the Yugo- trampled on the strips, causing them to slav national anthem to create sound move apart. With 25 black-and-white poetry. photos, Maurer documented how the action played out and how a happen- David Maljković stance event could enable a symbolic Born 1973, lives and works in Zagreb. change of signification within a state- Missing Colours controlled socialist system. 2010 Courtesy: Annet Gelink Gallery, Oscar Murillo Born 1986, lives and works in various David Maljković’s installations inves- locations. tigate interrupted modernities stuck in a timeless gap between the past The Institute of Reconciliation and the future. Based on collective 2017 experiences of the transition from Courtesy: the artist communism to capitalism in recent Oscar Murillo’s black paintings are an Croatian history, his place of residence ongoing series of canvases painted in Novi (New) Zagreb, planned and built thick layers of black oil paint that are under socialist rule, is the point of de- burnished into a heavily compressed parture for Missing Colours. Inspired by material. Unstretched, they have a key scene in the Yugoslav comedy been presented in many formations: Balkan Spy, 1984, in which an artist is stacked, folded, slung over structures, arrested for throwing coloured paint and hanging like curtains or banners. against the walls of grey apartment Their density produces a kind of radical blocks, Maljković sets up a minimal negativity. At The Showroom, Murillo sculpture with four primary colour has installed the works on a scaffold- filters and photographs it in front of ing structure on the outside of the various locations of Novi Zagreb. building, creating a heavy presence that covers parts of the exterior. The Dóra Maurer structure is both a framework for the Born 1937, lives and works in Budapest. paintings and for works by other artists, Street Action, Budapest including Július Koller and Mladen

Everything we see could also be otherwise ( My sweet little lamb ) | 9 Stilinović, the latter of whom is well the natural and manmade and over- known for his use of banners. coming all kinds of obstacles in order to follow his chosen trajectory. Us- Paul Neagu ing only his own body he navigates 1938–2004. Lived and worked in London. through Belgrade’s outdoor spaces and roofs without use of subways or Going Tornado other underground means. The act of 1976 geometrically mapping this terrain Homeostasis serves to demarcate the cityscape as a 1973 locus for concise mental and physical explorations. Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection Before studying, Paul Neagu worked Ewa Partum as a topographer and draughtsman Born 1945, lives and works in Berlin. in Timişoara. This influenced his re- Self-Identification / Samoidentyfikacja lationship with drawing, which often 1980 contains numerical notations and the Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection rigorous process of deconstruction and reconstitution of the human form. Ewa Partum’s Self-Identification epito- The recurrent, iconic representation mizes her artistic approach, which was of the human hand in Homeostasis is developed through 15 years of pioneer- presented as a structure of variable ing feminist praxis in . Public numbers of cells. Going Tornado is one space operates as the prime signifier of the most complex of Neagu’s per- for the artist’s actions, where, instead formances, connecting to his inves- of appearing in public herself, she ar- tigation of anthropocosmos. Enacted ranges cut-outs of her own naked body. several times during his career, Going These were photographed in various Tornado is a symbolic transposition of places and situations in Warsaw, with the artist’s own body into a spinning some actions (such as the artist pos- ritual that transcends life-physical ing in front of the Polish government facts in order to produce art-spiritual building) censored at the time. For suggestions. Partum, the series was an important tool with which to address the absence Neša Paripović of women in public perception and of Born 1942, lives and works in Belgrade. female art in general. N.P. 1977 Manuel Pelmuş 1977 Born 1974, lives and works in Bucharest Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection and Oslo. Since the early 1970s Neša Paripović Two Times after Mladen Stilinović has developed a meta-visual language 2017 about the nature of art and the status Courtesy: the artist with Jonathan of the artist. In his film N.P.1977 the Burrows artist walks a straight line through the city of Belgrade, cutting through

10 | Everything we see could also be otherwise ( My sweet little lamb ) Manuel Pelmuş’ background is in cho- Pongracz’s camera. Nevertheless, the reography. His work, Two Times adds a viewer remains uncertain of these sub- live, ‘immaterial’ piece to the collec- jects’ context, gaining insight into the tion, literally questioning the Kon- life of someone who remains unknown. takt Art Collection’s future and the idea of a physical collection in gen- Ashley Hans Scheirl eral. His starting point is the work of Born 1956, lives and works in Vienna. Mladen Stilinović, in particular his Business excrement re/distribution work Two Times / Dva Vremena, which 2010 Pelmuş transfers to the living body through a collaboration with London- Hairy Deals based dancer Jonathan Burrows, who 2016 will perform periodically through- Mumbling tales of investor’s confidence out the course of the exhibition, each 2015 time producing the work anew. Two Times playfully begins from the same Street Images / Strassenbilder sleeping position assumed by Mladen 1979 Stilinovic in his famous photography Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection series Artist at Work (1977), actualis- ing questions of labour, time and the Since the 1960s and 70s, Ashley Hans economy of ‘the new performative Scheirl’s work has crossed between ex- turn’ in the arts. perimental film, public-space actions, The ongoing action will take place performance, painting, photographs, unannounced throughout the ex- music and other forms of expressing hibition. lesbian and queer sexuality. Scheirl’s early Super-8 films revolve around is- Cora Pongracz sues of gender performance in public 1943–2003. Lived and worked in Vienna. space and how individuals adapt to everyday environments. Street Images Untitled / Ohne Titel starts with the gauging of the grid of 1974–1975/1996 a sewer grate. Her recent paintings Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection playfully explore as she states ‘the Cora Pongracz primarily dealt with question of whether the economic the portrayal of individuals from her libido system of neoliberal capitalism personal surroundings, document- is comparable to actions and identi- ing each of them in multiple photos, ty markers of what used to be called creating unstaged exchanges between “perversions”’– for her they are to be those being photographed and the seen as ‘prostheses of body-thinking photographer. Untitled displays the in- and its libidinal motivation’. teriors of wardrobes and cupboards in an apartment or house, private areas Petr Štembera that are usually hidden. Personal be- Born 1945, lives and works in Prague. longings such as clothes and tableware, 3 elements / 3 prvky as well as the orderliness or disorder- 1977 liness of their owner, are exposed by

Everything we see could also be otherwise ( My sweet little lamb ) | 11 Grafting/ Štěpování Bread / Tito 1975 1996/2017 Sleeping in a tree / Spaní na stromě Courtesy: Branka Stipančić 1975 Red – Pink / Crveno – Roza Connection (with Tom Marioni) / 1975/1976 Spojení (s Tonem Marionim) 1975 Smile / Osmijeh 1975 Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection Queen (1 ) / Kraljica (1 ) In the 1970s, Petr Štembera’s interest 1976 in physical and psychological experi- ences led to extreme body art pieces, Queen (2 ) / Kraljica (2 ) some of which dealt with the rela- 1976 tionship between the human body Two Times / Dva Vremena and nature, such as Grafting where he 1978/2015 grafted a bush sprig into his arm, and Sleeping in a Tree when, after three sleep- Mladen – My sweet little lamb! less nights, he spent the fourth night 2013 in a tree. In 3 Elements he dealt with Courtesy: Kontakt Art Collection light and heat, glass and the human body, applying a putty to his body and Through a life-long anti-systemic ap- holding a glass plate to his torso, onto proach, a quiet but shrewd rebellion which a lamp on the table radiated its against social conventions and the light and warmth. For Connection (with conventions of art, Stilinović’s artis- Tom Marioni) they joined bodies to tic practice trenchantly and humor- create two circles, the first made from ously engaged with complex themes. condensed milk, the second from con- His works are characterized by simple densed cocoa, shaking out some hun- execution, the use of found material gry ants from a glass into the middle and texts in a technique of collage and of the circles. handwritten texts. They often engage with fundamental questions of artistic Mladen Stilinovic responsibility and existential anxiety 1947–2016. Lived and worked in Zagreb. and key concerns about the status of images, both those circulating in the Money – Draws – Money Death, (I–III), media and directly appropriated, and 1990s those produced by recycling and re- Save White Money for Black Rainy composing fragments of images taken Days / Čuvaj bijele novce za crne dane from the media. Recurring subjects 1996 running through his work – poverty, pain, labour, art and responsibility – Mobile are often interconnected with seem- approx. 1996 ingly absurd and banal statements, For Marie Antoinette ’68 and sometimes even resolved through 2000/2017 them. By using clumsy, uneven hand-

12 | Everything we see could also be otherwise ( My sweet little lamb ) writing and cheap, readily available or exploration, imagination and propa- organic materials, such as food, which ganda in the socialist utopia, regard- he often places in dialogue with the ing the post-communist condition as space and context of the exhibition, liberal colonisation. In the interview, the artist is underlining fragility and philosopher Tichindeleanu departs the vulnerability of existence. from the unstable nature of today’s ruins. He addresses the mechanisms Goran Trbuljak of how socialism attempted to write a Born in 1948, lives and works in Zagreb. history divergent from that of Western modernity with the belief in a trans- Untitled (This…) formative potential, and the dream to 1971–1981/2017 bring people together and to create Courtesy: the artist another history in the future. Goran Trbuljak started writing sim- ple one-line sentences devoid of any Stephen Willats personal expression, typed on a type- Born 1943, lives and works in London. writer, in the early 1970s. He left these Human Right unsigned papers with photographs in 2016–1917 various places around town. The texts Courtesy: the artist and MIMA, Middles- written mainly referred to the per- brough ception of viewing art, intended for people on the street or visitors to gal- Since the late 1950s Stephen Willats leries and museums. The first text was has consistently worked on the func- left hanging in a gallery in Belgrade tion and meaning of art in society and for years, while the other for only a questions of social transformation. His few days on the door of a building in recent work Human Right was produced downtown Zagreb, and another at the by MIMA, Middlesbrough, in response Paris Youth Biennale. He would often to an invitation to create a work that make hundreds of copies of a sentence changes the relationship of the insti- and leave them for exhibition visitors tution to local people. Willats worked to take away. with four residents of Middlesbrough, each of whom had in their own way Mona Vătămanu and Florin Tudor self-organised a community facility to Florin Tudor, born in 1974, lives and transform how a group of people in the works in Bucharest. local environment can relate to each Mona Vătămanu, born in 1968, lives other and to contemporary society. l and works in Bucharest. Gagarin’s Tree. An Interview with Ovidiu Tichindeleanu 2016 Courtesy: the artists Mona Vătămanu and Florin Tudor’s film,Gagarin’s Tree. An Interview with Ovid- iu Tichindeleanu tackles issues of space

Everything we see could also be otherwise ( My sweet little lamb ) | 13 The Kontakt Art Collection was ini- What, How & for Whom/WHW (es- tiated in 2004 in Vienna. It includes tablished 1999) is a curatorial collec- seminal works by a number of the most tive whose members are Ivet Ćurlin, prominent artists from Central, East- Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić and Sabina ern and South-East Europe since the Sabolović, along with designer and 1960s, over the years selected by the publicist Dejan Kršić. WHW organises members of its advisory committee production, exhibition and publish- that includes Silvia Eiblmayr, Georg ing projects and directs city-owned Schöllhammer, Jiří Ševčík, Branka Gallery Nova in Zagreb. Since its first Stipančić and Adam Szymczyk. As exhibition titled What, How & for Whom, such, it is a crucial source for research on the occasion of 152nd anniversary of the pertaining to the art history of the re- Communist Manifesto, that took place in gion, but also a suitable starting point Zagreb in 2000, WHW has curated nu- to critically approach the very notion merous international projects, among of Eastern European Art as a short- which are Collective Creativity, Kunsthalle hand for the geopolitical paradigm and Fridericianum, Kassel (2005); the 11th ideological framework in which it is Istanbul Biennial What Keeps Mankind contained, as well as the mechanisms Alive? (2009); One Needs to Live Self-Con- of filtering local material to interna- fidently ... Watching, Croatian pavilion at tional prominence. l the 54th Venice Biennial (2011); Ten thousand wiles and a hundred thousand tricks – festival Meeting Points 7 (2013/2014) held in Zagreb, Antwerp, Cairo, Hong Kong, Beirut, Vienna and Moscow; Re- ally Useful Knowledge, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2014); So You Want to See, e-flux, New York (2015); and the David Maljković retrospective Again and Again, Museum of Contemporary Art Meletkova, Lju- bljana (2016). l

Authors: Anamarija Batista • Nada Beroš • Cosmin Costinaș • Hephzibah Druml • Silvia Eiblmayr • Daniel Grúň • Marie Klimešová • Pavlína Morganová • Emily Pethick • Kathrin Rhomberg • Ashley Hans Scheirl • Georg Schöllham- mer • Johanna Schwanberg • Walter Seidl • Alina Şerban • Jiří Ševčík, Branka Stipančić • Adam Szymczyk • Eva Row- son • Natasha Tebbs • WHW l

14 | Everything we see could also be otherwise ( My sweet little lamb ) Kathrin Rhomberg is an independ- Emily Pethick is the director of The ent curator. She was among others Showroom, London. Previously she director of the Kölnische Kunstver- was director of Casco, Office for Art, ein and curator of the Slovak Pavilion Design and Theory, in Utrecht, The (Roman Ondák) at the 53rd Venice Bi- (2005–2008) and the cu- ennial (2009); of the 6th Berlin Bien- rator at Cubitt, London (2003–2004). nial (2010); and of the Pavilion of the She teaches at the Dutch Art Institute Republic of Kosovo (Petrit Halilaj) at and has contributed to catalogues and the 55th Venice Biennial (2013). She magazines, including Artforum, Frieze, co-curated Manifesta 3, Ljubljana (2000); Afterall and The Exhibitionist, and has Projekt Migration, Cologne (2002–2006); edited numerous books, including Former West, HKW, Berlin (2012); The Wendelien van Oldenborgh’s mono- Bauhaus in Calcutta, Bauhaus Dessau graph Amateur (2016), Circular Facts (2011, (2013); and Július Koller, Museum of with Mai Abu EIDahab and Binna Modern Art in Warsaw and Vienna Choi) and Cluster: Dialectionary (2014, (2015–2017). She is currently a lecturer with Binna Choi, Maria Lind and Na- at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna tasa Petresin-Bachelez) (all Sternberg and since 2014 chairwoman and artis- Press). She is a member of the jury for tic director of the Kontakt Art Col- the 2017 Turner Prize. l lection. l

Everything we see could also be otherwise ( My sweet little lamb ) | 15 The project is a cooperation with the Kontakt Art Collection and is supported by Bank AG and ERSTE Foundation.

Arts Council England

Kontakt Art Collection

Erste Group Bank AG

ERSTE Foundation

The Showroom

Austrian Cultural Forum London

Croatian Ministry of Culture

www.kontakt-collection.net www.theshowroom.org www.whw.hr