Parallel Slalom A Lexicona lexiconof of non-aligned poetics editors Non-aligned Bojana Cvejić Poetics Goran Sergej Pristaš Parallel Slalom A Lexicon of Non-aligned Poetics published by Walking Theory ‒ TkH 4 Kraljevića Marka, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia www.tkh-generator.net and CDU – Centre for Drama Art 6 Gaje Alage, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia www.cdu.hr in collaboration with Academy of Dramatic Art University of Zagreb 5 Trg Maršala Tita, 10000 Zagreb www.adu.hr on behalf of the publisher for walking theory: Ana Vujanović for cdu: Marko Kostanić editors Bojana Cvejić Goran Sergej Pristaš Parallel researchers Jelena Knežević Jasna Žmak coordination Dragana Jovović Slalom translation Žarko Cvejić copyediting and proofreading Žarko Cvejić and William Wheeler A Lexicon of Non-aligned Poetics graphic design and layout Dejan Dragosavac Ruta prepress Katarina Popović printing Akademija, Belgrade print run 400 copies The book was realised as a part of the activities within the project TIMeSCAPES, an editors artistic research and production platform initiated by BADco. (HR), Maska (SI), Bojana Cvejić Walking Theory (RS), Science Communications Research (A), and Film-protufilm Goran Sergej Pristaš (HR), with the support of the Culture programme of the European Union. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication (communication) reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. with the support of the Culture programme of the European Union, Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Serbia, Zagreb City Council for Education, Culture and Sport; Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, Ministry of Science and Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia Belgrade and Zagreb March, 2013 ISBN 978-86-905899-6-8 Contents 10 Introductory Note ≈ Bojana Cvejić and Goran Sergej Pristaš 16 east-dance-academy ≈ Janez Janša, Bojana Kunst, Aldo Milohnić, and Goran Sergej Pristaš I Historicize, or Else 34 Reconstructions ≈ Marko Kostanić 43 Operation, Re-Enactment, Reconstruction ≈ Goran Sergej Pristaš 54 Reconstruction 2, On Reconstructing Pupilija, Papa Pupilo, and the Pupilčeks ≈ Janez Janša 76 Tiger’s Leap: A Method of Reloading the History of Local Scenes ≈ Ana Vujanović 89 Generations ≈ Miško Šuvaković II The Lapse of Knowledge 104 Radical Amateurism ≈ Aldo Milohnić 114 Unlearned, Terminally ≈ Terminally Unschooled 120 Second-hand Knowledge ≈ Ana Vujanović III Cinematic Modes of Action 132 Whilst Watching a Movie ≈ Tomislav Gotovac 136 We cannot promise to do anything more than to experiment, On Yugoslav Experimental Film and Cinema Clubs of the 1960s and ’70s ≈ Ana Janevski 154 Americanism and Chaplinism, Comedy and Defamiliarisation in Theatre and Film, 1919‒27 ≈ Owen Hatherley 189 Slideshow ≈ Isabel de Naverán IV Passion for Procedures 204 Eastern European Contextual Art: Approaching, Diagnosing, and Treating the Problems ≈ Deschooling Classroom (o^o), Terms study group 215 Artivism ≈ Aldo Milohnić 236 Proceduralism ≈ Bojana Cvejić V Tactical Poetics 250 Prvi broj (The First issue) / Acting Without Publicising / Delayed Audience ≈ Ivana Bago and Antonia Majača 276 Why Do We Produce Ourselves, Promote Ourselves, Distribute Ourselves, Explain Ourselves and Why Are We “As Well” Around? ≈ Goran Sergej Pristaš 284 Notes on Spaces and Intervals ≈ Goran Sergej Parallel Pristaš 297 Protocol ≈ Ivana Ivković 304 A Shift of Attention ≈ Ric Allsopp Slalom 312 Notes on Temporary Zones, Shelters, and Project Spaces ≈ Ric Allsopp A Lexicon of Non-aligned Poetics VI Dramaturgies of the Non-Aligned 322 Problems that Aesthetically “Unburden” Us ≈ Bojana Cvejić 335 In Praise of Laziness ≈ Mladen Stilinović 341 Politics of Affection and Uneasiness≈ Bojana Kunst editors 352 Delay ≈ Bojana Kunst Bojana Cvejić 354 The Festival as a “Microphysics of Power” (Foucault) Goran Sergej Pristaš in the Region of the Former Yugoslavia ≈ Deschooling Classroom (o^o), Terms study group 368 18 Paragraphs for a Metaphysics of Movement ≈ Mårten Spångberg 374 Better Group Sex Better Life ≈ Mårten Spångberg 390 Digitality and the Shattering of Tradition ≈ Jonathan Beller 404 Authors Parallel Slalom A Lexicon of Non-aligned Poetics where. What distinguishes the artists, dramaturges, theo- 11 Introductory Note rists, editors, writers and “cultural workers” who write or are written about in this volume isn’t the same historical, geopo- litical, and cultural framework of belonging they are sup- ≈ Bojana Cvejić and Goran Sergej Pristaš posed to represent here – also because a considerable number of writers come from contexts other than those in Eastern Europe – but rather a kind of thought that arises from with- in, or close to, artistic practice that in turn becomes an in- strument of looking past art. We account for it by “poetics”, using the term to emphasise the productive power of thought as opposed to the genre of interpretation that classifies spec- imens of kinds: a body, or a language, or an idea of this or that kind. Many of the notions explored in these essays have ei- ther emerged in reflection on principles, procedures, man- ners, moods or modes of art production, or served to cross- check, re-cut, or recompose art works, movements, tenden- cies, contexts and lived, experiences according to poetical and political problems that may not have been foregrounded as identifying features. What makes them non-aligned is that hat does it take to create one’s own they are neither curatorial nor technical terms, nor do they concepts? What does it mean to effectively represent what is essentially Yugoslav, East-Euro- own a concept? These questions pean, or for that matter exclusively of artistic or theoretical are posed from the viewpoint of a provenance. The reason why “artists’ pages” presenting per- distinctive set of artistic and theo- formance artists from the Yugoslav context are “empty” while retical practices that have been de- theorists from the East continue to rehearse discourses on Wveloping since the 1960s, and subsequent to the breakup of Western art (Pristaš) lies in the peculiar position of both this Yugoslavia in 1991 into – to borrow curator Ješa Denegri's apt thought and these art practices that cannot be adequately ac- phrase – the “common Yugoslav cultural space”,1 and else- counted for by post-colonial theory and other academic vari- ants for representing difference and otherness in culturalist 1 This poetical term was proposed by Ješa Denegri, for the title of the exhi- bition he curated at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade (“Jedin- logic. It is equally dissatisfying to regard them by the aesthet- stveni jugoslovenski kulturni prostor”, 2000). The common Yugoslav cul- ic criteria of a hegemonic view of modernity, for which many tural space is, as Borislav Mikulić has interpreted Denegri, the artistic artists, works, concepts, and tendencies discussed here would and intellectual world determined by historical polycentredness and de- centralisation in the organisation of the state, whereby the “common” appear not (individualist, pure or original, disinterested or isn’t given or assigned, but is an effect of the dynamics of individual and radical, crafted or savage, and above all, recognisable) enough. institutional connections between the actors of this scene, being also the By contrast, they often qualify as too (collectivist or contextu- effect of the artistic production (collectives, groups, movements) and its autonomous constitution. Cf. Branislav Mikulić, “Poietički pojam prakse al (the Terms study group), bungled or “second-hand” (Vuja- i njegov kulturni kontekst”, Anagram, vol. 18, available at http://www.hr- nović), over-informed but “unschooled”, hybrid or bricolé) to vatskiplus.org/prilozi/dokumenti/anagram/Mikulic_Poieticki.pdf, merit special theoretical attention. They might pass as aes- accessed in January 2013. 12 thetically unnoticed or dull because they are radically ama- tive power of recasting the future from the unfulfilled prom- 13 teur (Milohnić) or aesthetically “unburdened” (Cvejić), that is, ises of the past. Thus, the piercing of modern-dance move- indifferent to the imperative of branding themselves through ment through the visual arts, poetry, and theatre helped the genealogy of medium-specificity or style. Kunst, Pristaš, Milohnić, and Janša to argue for contempo- To answer the opening questions, we can say that mak- rary dance as a “non-disciplinary form of expression”, and as ing concepts and claiming them as one’s own here isn’t about a parable for a non-identitarian type of education in the open- finding autonomy in conceptual self-determination, akin to a ing essay of this collection (“East-Dance-Academy”). defence of minoritarian voices against co-optations of hege- “Piercing through” exemplifies a poetical concept with monic positions. It is rather about investing common no- an operation that we deemed comparable to “parallel slalom”. tions with historically and politically specific meanings, as in The metaphor of a sloping ride underlines the swift parallel Stilinović’s apology of laziness, for instance, or in Šuvaković’s connections between artistic conceptual imagination and notion of “generation”, or in Kunst’s exegesis of the judge- critical insight into history as the agency of the political un- ment of belatedness. On the one hand, devising new words – conscious, conjoining the poetical and political registers in a such as Milohnić’s “artivism” or Cvejić’s “proceduralism”