Andrea
Feldman starts her collection of interviews with historians “Looking
Historically“ with a sentence of George Malcolm Young: “In order
to understand a certain period, we have to read until we hear
people speaking to us”(1).
It seems to me that the same sentence might be placed at the beginning
of an essay about the work of Andreja Kulunčić. It is as if the
British historian had summarised in it the artist’s point of view
and strategies. Indeed, whatever she does, whatever problem she
delves into, Andreja Kulunčić carefully reads off the strata that
have accumulated around the object of her interest and handles
and resolves it always in relation to people. One of her artistic
strategies is listening to people talking. She quite often dons
camouflage to slink in to everyday situations and in conversation
with people illuminates a problem, empowers them so that they
can see it, shift their perspective and think critically.
The
Commercialisation of History was a five-day-long action during
which at the entrance of the old town of Korčula, among the existing
stalls, she sold souvenirs to holidaymakers. These were souvenirs
that she had made herself by appliquéing Articles from the old
Korčula Statute in Croatian, English, Czech, French and German
to cheap items from China (hour glasses, little wooden houses
on wheels, blow-up maces, angels, beach-bags, T-shirts and the
like). The price of a souvenir was expressed not in money but
in the number of questions a potential buyer had to answer, that
is, in the time spent in thinking and in conversation with the
artist about the commercialisation of history, about mass-market
tourism and the attitude of Korčula people to their city and community,
now and once.
This
work is grounded on a consideration of how history is represented
when it is yoked to needs of the tourist industry. Is the historical
heritage a part of the equity of that industry? What kind of an
image of the self – of the town, the city, the nation – is offered
to the rivers of curious tourists, inquisitive travellers and
leisured trippers under whose travelling shoes the image of the
world is being transformed?
History is a shattered mirror the fragments of which have to be
put together. This reassembly opens up the chances for manipulation.
It can be assumed that tourists desirous of pleasure and a well-deserved
holiday are an excuse for constructions of history and innovations
of tradition that tend towards the attractive and the acceptable.
Meetings of cultures, that is, follow the principles of congruence
and convergence (2). What attracts people
of differing cultures to each other is recognizability and similarity
in difference. This generates an effective recipe for mass tourism:
the interests that are available, the amusing details from national
history are supposed to maintain the general good temper on which
the tourists are going to spend their cash. The investment must
not be betrayed, and the host milieu should not founder on the
shoals of uninteresting history and indistinguishable identity.
And so the holidaymakers are provided with stylised tales based
on stereotypes that will be as close as possible and hence the
more acceptable to the current system of values in their own culture.
The good tourist will be rewarded by getting the chance to buy
a souvenir and take it home as pars pro toto. The supply of souvenirs
follows the same principle of slipshod generalisation and constructed
historicity. The souvenir is its imprint. It sums up history and
tradition, draws out the specificity of a people or region that
legitimates it in turn and makes it competitive on the tourist
market. What does not satisfy the taste of the tourists will be
deleted from the array. Perhaps it will also vanish from the image
of history.
Does the refusal to have certain events symbolised by souvenir
or offered in the historical construction of the tourist repertoire
inevitably mean their real consignment to oblivion? And vice versa,
are invented or souped-up tales of the reigning identity being
built? And at the end, what of those travellers whose searches
are not satisfied by the itineraries or tales that are on the
counter?
Running
down the answers to such questions, Andreja Kulunčić talks with
her purchasers – the inhabitants and guests of holiday-making
Korčula. She asks whether they feel welcome in the town; what
irritates them, what makes them feel good; what they think about
the tourist product; what about the hosts; what Korčula people
think about their town and relationships with their fellow townspeople,
what kind of attitude they have to the tradition and so on. As
point of departure for the conversation, the artist provides a
souvenir inspired by a Korčula heritage item of outstanding merit:
the old Statute of the town and the island, the oldest legal monument
on the Adriatic, and chronologically the second among the Slav
people at all. It was most likely written in 1214, the main body
of it deriving from 1265 together with statutory provisions, editions
and reforms from at the latest 1455. Andreja Kulunčić wrote out
some of the articles of the Statute on appropriate objects
(3). Reading them, in the legal dispositions we discover
the forms of sociality and the manner of life in medieval Korčula
that today tell of the care for tradition and the community. We
can easily imagine the preoccupations and concerns of the forebears
of the Korčula people. And we are a little jealous for from the
perspective of our own time and space marked by morality so severely
vitiated at the institutional level, we can recognise the ethics
of the medieval Korčula man as something that we have lost, and
that is yet peremptorily needful for us. The speeches of our medieval
ancestors and our contemporaries – local people and tourists merge
in the harbour; they all speak of their own time, of the relations
with other people and places in which they live and through which
they pass. The old Korčula people speak through the articles of
their law; the tourists talk of their habits of travelling and
comment on the hosts, their kindness, the expense, what is available;
the locals speak about themselves, the tourists, the impact of
mass tourism on the life of the city, the mistakes and the potentials,
as well as of their predecessors, whose life, and their heritage,
can be read off from the parts of the Statute presented.
The choice of cheapjack items produced in China – from beach bags
through blow-up maces to wine stands – does not curry favour with
the average tourist nor is it a matter of sound business reckoning,
rather a reference to the absurdities of the globalising reality
in which we live. To a large extent, world industrial production
has moved to China and other Asian lands. Made in China labels
can be found on objects that symbolise particular cultures but
that have no connection whatsoever with China, just like plastic
Christmas creches complete with the Holy Family. But the story
goes on. Not only are the souvenirs produced in the same country,
but the provision of souvenirs has become generalised and, mostly
from China, a whole series of objects are being imported that
take over their function. In this work, China is a sign, a figure
of speech for the globalised world in which cheap labour is used,
identity is homogenised, in which mass tourism and the commercialisation
of history are segments of the same process of the liberalisation
of the market for capital.
Cities
along the coast are dotted with stands with series of the same
sunglasses, beach towels, T shirts, slippers, decorative candles,
plastic jewellery, light-up toys around which the tourists flock
during their evening promenades. Set up in despite of the planning
principles of the old city centres (for the sake of rapid filling
of the city cashbox) they regularly abbreviate the vistas and
take away the views of the historical facades and features of
interest. Andreja Kulunčić inserts herself into this situation
for five evenings, during which she sells souvenirs and talks
with the people. The stalls under the city walls are a natural
stage setting for her work, a place of reference that she is going
to lay bare. But she doesn’t labour the point, rather amusingly
joins objects and articles from the Statute. For example, written
on a stand for wine with a bottle of wine from the island is a
provision forbidding the import of wine from foreign parts under
pain of a 25 perper (4) fine, though for
household use the amount of one firkin may be imported. A little
angel tells of blasphemy, the punishment for which is being tied
a whole day to a pillar, while on a jack-in-a-box it says that
a house in the city that is abandoned can be given to anyone who
wants to live in it and reconstruct it, and so on. In this dual
articulation of content, the subtlety that marks the tactics of
Andreja Kulunčić is limned. The serious business of drawing attention
to history, people and tradition is channelled here through the
casual chat on the scale of a summer pastime. This makes the work
fun and easy to get through, and confirms the author of it as
an artist whose ego always discreetly withdraws so as to leave
space for the people who are talking to be heard.
(1)
Andrea Feldman, Looking Historically, Zagreb, 2007
(2) Peter Burke, What is Cultural History?, Zagreb, 2006
(3) We refer to only some of the articles used in the piece: We
decree that, in the future, we shall treat our neighbours as they
treat us, without influencing in any way the established position
of all other communities.
We
determine and decree that no leader... or any other official...
shall dare receive a gift... as bribery, under the threat of paying
a monetary fee.
We
decree that no person shall give loans with interests, and those
who do shall lose all the interest they promised and half of the
principal; those who receive a loan with interest shall lose 1
perper.
All
those who clean their houses... shall not throw out the garbage
at any public location or block it with it, especially not in
the port... or else they shall pay the fine in the amount of 5
perpers... moreover, all garbage shall be removed at the expense
of the person who left it there.
And
all those who live on the island of Korčula and possess any real
estate here shall be considered residents of Korčula and shall
be treated as residents of Korčula.
(4)
One perper had a high value and 10 were sufficient to the average
monthly expenses in 15th century Dubrovnik.
Irena
Bekić