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