platformaSCCA No.4

WHAT IS TO BE DONE WITH "BALKAN ART"?

Introduction

What you see before you in this special edition of PlatformaSCCA, an occasional publication for contemporary arts, is the three-years work on the research project What Is to Be Done with "Balkan Art"?. SCCA, Centre for Contemporary Arts - Ljubljana has conceived with its team/editors a research project with the initial objective to reflect upon and interpret an increased interest in the art coming from the Balkans. The Balkan region had become especially interesting for curators and art institutions at the end of the 90"s. That was also the time when the Balkan Art Network (BAN) was established at the "Initial Conference on Reconstructing the Cultural Production in the Balkans", in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1999. Since then, numerous projects, events, conferences and exhibitions have been organised and publications made in South-Eastern Europe as well as in other European countries on the subject of the Balkans and "Balkan art" or related topics.

The intense interest in reinventing and (re)defining the Balkans and "Balkan art" has become an appealing issue worth exploring. Within the research process i.e. the process of preparing this publication, we were following the questions whether a notion such as "Balkan" and consequently "Balkan art" can exist and on what grounds; what we mean, understand and presume when we speak about the Balkans, and especially, about the so-called Balkan art; what are the connotations and criteria used to identify certain art practice and production as specific for the "Balkan art"? Furthermore, our aim was to analyse the elements and motives that engender the recent orientation towards the Balkan region, as well as to reconsider the need for reinterpretation of art practices and production within the Balkan historical framework and contemporary context and, finally, to ask how and by whom the (hi)story of "Balkan contemporary art" is (re)written.

At the same time, the topic of this publication is connected with the (prevalent) operations of the contemporary art system, its alternating dominants, focuses and interests, as well as with its constructed trends. It is also connected to the system"s influence on the local and regional milieu. Parallel to that, our aim was to analyse the processes of integration of the art production from South-Eastern Europe into the international art system and to compare this process with the integration, which is taking place on the political level within the SEE countries, which have already become EU members. We were reflecting on whether the relation between the centre and the periphery within the contemporary art system in Europe has changed in any sense during the last fifteen years. Last but not least, we were interested whether all these events have left any trace in the build-up and operation of the art system and infrastructure within South-Eastern Europe.

The three members of the editorial team (Barbara Borčić, Director of SCCA-Ljubljana, Urška Jurman, collaborator of SCCA-Ljubljana, both editors of PlatformaSCCA, and guest editor Robert Alagjozovski from the partner institution Cultural Center Točka in Skopje with its magazine Margina) have worked on the research project for more than three years; visiting the three most prominent exhibitions devoted to the art from the Balkans (In Search of Balkania, Graz; Blood and Honey - Future"s in the Balkan, Klosterneuburg; In the Gorges of the Balkans - A Report, Kassel) as well as some other events (Symposium: The Reinvention of the Balkans; Geopolitics, Art and Culture in South-East Europe in Kassel). We have travelled to several Balkan countries having conversations and interviews with more than thirty artists, curators, art historians, philosophers and sociologists, along with making several telephone and e-mail questionnaires and exchange of opinions. The research also included a study of different catalogues, leaflets, readers, studies, thematic issues and various other publications on the theme "Balkan art", "East European Art" and the Balkans in general. Sometimes, our contacts with people from other countries resulted merely in dissemination of our project ideas. But also, new projects of some organisations or institutions that were possibly stirred also by our concept were developed and even finalised before the end of our project. Although our research travels and residences were supported by several grant programs , we faced considerable difficulties in providing generous support for the publication.

At an early stage of our research, we organised a public discussion on What Is to Be Done with "Balkan Art"? in Ljubljana (December 15, 2003), giving the opportunity to prominent speakers (Rastko Močnik, Alen Ožbolt, Mitja Velikonja, Borut Vogelnik and Igor Zabel) to express their views on the initial questions of our research project (mentioned above) but also to confront their ideas with a broader audience. This publication includes a contribution by Alen Ožbolt as well as short summaries by other participants.

Due to the format of the publication, we could not afford to include all the interviews we have made; still, all of them were of big help in getting closer to the issues of our research and in conceptualising the publication. We were also compelled to do a selection of the authors invited to write an original essay for our publication. In order to offer a most precise insight (since the Balkanism or the topic of "Balkan Art" is still a vortex that involves a number of projects, initiatives and views), we strove to focus on three recently most interesting and most influential exhibitions organised by prominent curators (In Search of Balkania, curated by P. Weibl, E. Čufer, R. Conover, Neue Galerie Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, 2002; Blood and Honey - Future"s in the Balkans, curated by H. Szeemann, Sammlung Essl in Klosterneuburg, 2003; In the Gorges of the Balkans - A Report, curated by R. Block, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, 2003).

In our interviews, we tried to pose a set of standardised questions in order to get answers and views that would cover different aspects of the same phenomena. Our methodology of preparation of this publication was not to take a stance or to choose one aspect in approaching the topic. We wanted to interrogate the topic, to pose critical questions, and to give space to people involved directly in this "process" (artists, curators, theoreticians, art critics) as well as to those who were standing aside to express their views.

In the following lines, we shall try to summarise some of our findings and to pay attention to some of the views that - even though not included in the publication as special texts - reveal interesting standpoints.

The first step into the issue of "Balkan Art" leads to the discourse of Balkanism, or Balkanology. In strict academic sense, this discourse is actually a meta-discourse. It has been constructed at the end of 1990s by three milestone books: Maria Todorova"s Imagining the Balkans (Oxford University Press, 1997); Vesna Goldsworthy"s Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination (Yale University Press, 1998); and Balkan as Metaphor. Between Globalization and Fragmentation, ed. D. I. Bjelić & O. Savić (The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002). This is a discourse of reaction, a discourse that tries to liberate the notion of the Balkans from its misrepresentations, misinterpretations, stereotypes and essentialisation. Similar to the way that the so-called Third World or Postcolonial authors are trying to demystify the way the West is seeing the Other, the Non-West, the Orient, the authors of this meta-discourse about the Balkans are trying to reveal the mechanisms through which the Balkans is constructed as an opposite, the unconscious, Mr. Hyde"s image of the West(ern Europe). Yet, paradoxically, what is striking is that there is no academic discourse upon which this meta-discourse is built, at least not in the domain of contemporary theory. The frame of reference of this meta-discourse are the numerous texts that appear in everyday life, in the discourse of high or everyday politics, especially in the 90"s, during the wars following the dissolution of Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, and also in the travelogues, or the novels from the 19th and early 20st century, in history books, in different media texts (the media are perceived as the most influential in spreading the negative and vulgar stereotypes about the Balkans) and in the oral cultures of the Balkans as well as of other European countries.

If we go further and try to capture the outlines that constitute the notion of the Balkans in its academic appearance we would certainly fall into a classical postmodernistic trap. Thanks to the vigilance of so many academics coming from the Balkans or in one way or another connected to the region, we face "a thousand flowers" defensive guard spreading into the spectrum of all today"s ideological stances: the psychoanalytic approach (the Balkans as the unconscious of Europe); the discourse of Otherness (the Balkans as the Other of Europe); the postcolonial approach (the Balkans constructed by Western view); leftist stance (the Balkans as the place for Capitalist expansion); geopolitical view (the importance of the Balkans as the border region); or the epistemological one (the Balkans needs a new paradigm for understanding besides the Western models) etc.

Many of these stances echo in the reflections of the authors contemplating on the "Balkan Art". Yet, surprisingly (or not?), many of the authors are supportive of the view, which we might ironically call mercantile-pragmatic: "Make use of it!". Boris Buden finds the Balkan Art a terminus technicus: a tool for establishing relations with the art market, something that the artists themselves are aware of. Nebojša Vilić says that the term "Balkan Art" means nothing; it has no essence behind it, but that is precisely why it is very appropriate for use by the artists. Lef Kreft is assured that the cultural policy should sell the Balkans to Europe as a cultural notion. The French theoretician of Bulgarian origin Dostena Angelova says that regionalisation plays an important role in creating a new political space, and that the Grand Region of the Balkans fulfils the condition to become such a region: economic and social interest, traditional and historical ties, common political orientation; and that building the regional cultural identity is of interest to local cultural and intellectual elites. Rastko Močnik claims that the Balkans has an art production that could offer to Europe the model of Italian Renaissance for intelligent living on the periphery: the blooming of art in a socio-economical decadence. Lev Kreft says that "Balkan Art" is one of rare well-elaborated critics of Europe - something that is impossible in Europe itself. In his view, a distinctive feature of "Balkan Art" is the possibility for tragedy since the utopia still inhabits the Balkans. He finds paradoxical the situation in which the Balkan artist who wants to succeed in Europe has to remain in the Balkans.

In the following lines, we are summarising the texts which are published in the publication.

In her text "Balkanian, atten-tion!" Branka Stipančić gives a brief but well-cut analysis into how the notion of the Balkans and the discourse about Balkanism emerged and developed. She informs about the highly varied circulation of the term, with predominantly negative stereotyping, but also gives insight into the views of leading thinkers who oppose the tendency to stigmatise the Balkans, such as Marija Todorova, Slavoj Žižek and Boris Buden. Reflecting on the three already mentioned exhibitions, she thinks that all the exhibitions stressed the Western view and stereotypes manifest in the exhibitions" titles. She finds that the curators included authors who dealt with ethnographic aspects of their surrounding thus supporting the peculiar and exoticist reception among the Western public. Yet, as Stipančić notes, not all artists dealt with themes necessarily connected with the so-called Balkan themes. She estimates that the inclusion of such artists provided width, complexity and refinement of the exhibitions. She finds that exhibitions helped mutual acquainting, although some of the authors were already familiar to the Western public. In the end, she hopes that these exhibitions will improve the structuring of the art scene today, give impetus to the artistic production in this region, provide artists with the future and, finally, change the shape of history of modern and contemporary art.

Igor Zabel detects several reasons for the increased interest in the so-called Balkan art: new connections, establishing multicultural collaboration, ways of resolving traumas, crossing borders, resistance to nationalist discourse and the narrowly defined national identity as well as the interest of the international world of contemporary art. He assesses that seeking for new phenomena is the way the world of contemporary art functions. For Zabel, it is the old utopia of exhausted high art to go searching for some exotic primary energies on the periphery, in realms where the art world is not yet entirely shaped and professionalised. In his opinion, the insiders accept this interest and acquire the identity in order to penetrate the international art market. Besides different kinds of reduction and exclusion that follow its construction, he is still positive that this is a chance for creating stronger bonds between art systems and their protagonists in the region. Beyond colonial fears, he finds the view of the other significant - it often reflects back one"s own image revealing it as something else.

Eda Čufer, co-curator of the exhibition In Search of Balkania, well explained the idea of their exhibition. The curators used the notion of "the Balkans", "burdened with old and new traumatic history". Through organising the exhibition, their aim was to deal with the question of transcending that trauma: the imperative of denial and aggressive proving of cultural diversity and specificity of the Balkans, without reducing to exotics but finding in it a certain critical dialectic, a quality born out of that disproportion.

Raša Todosijević sees a cynical reason behind the interest for the Balkan region: the whole odium of the Balkans that saturated the world media in the last ten years proved to be a negative but still solid basis for the appeal of such exhibitions. Yet he reminds us that the three exhibitions were based on some earlier experiences i.e. exhibitions presenting the contemporary art production from Eastern Europe. He distinguishes two different, conflicting opinions in the phenomenon. The first - the positive one - is the outer perspective that doesn"t stick to existing hierarchies. The second version is the paranoid theory of conspiracy talking about political manipulations with those exhibitions: who, where and why organises such shows.

In "Balkan Revamp(iris)ed: Good-buy, Mr. Harker! Welcome aboard, Mr. bauMax!", Nebojša Jovanović connects the old most exploited Balkan myth on Dracula with the recent dominant Western political discourse on the post-Socialist European East: the discourse of "transitology" from Socialist authoritarianism to liberal democracy. He defines this discourse as quasi-scientific discourse on transition, embedded in the doxa about the Western neo-liberal Capitalism being the only solution for post-Socialist maladies. He poses the question whether transitology, like orientalism, functions through establishing the distance toward the Other.

In "Four Patches for the World Game: Game Theory and Art Practice in the Balkans"
Suzana Milevska proposes a kind of preliminary mapping of artworks created by Balkan artists that mime various games. She examines how some of these artists stretch the "rules of the game" to suit their needs and how the game metaphor functions in the actual political situation. She uses the Lacanian/postcolonial notions of "gift" and "unequal exchange" to stimulate a debate about the dangers of fetishising electronic arts in the Balkan region. She assesses that the artists from Eastern Europe use high technology to demonstrate that there is little difference between the artworks they produce and the work of artists from more developed countries.

Miško Šuvaković states that the analysed exhibitions have explicit political function in constructing and performing the new European identity in the still-not definitely established European space. Šuvaković sees a new strategic shift in cultural policy that abandons the binary opposition periphery/centre and introduces a model of integration of plural and/or hybrid artistic maps. But what Šuvaković finds problematic is the lack of auto-reflexive and auto-critical problematisation of the European cultural policy platform as social mechanism in realisation of a new, non-conflicting and positive empire where appear hybrid relationships between the global and the local. He sees "different identification matrices flying in these exhibitions": traditional modernist exoticism (Balkans as other, authentic and original), postmodernist eclecticism (Balkans as potentiality of quotations archive), Brazilianization (neo-liberal regulation of Balkan cultures), archaeological evaluation of discovered places, of oblivion and censorship of modernist progress, etc. For Šuvaković, the crucial critical question is not whether Balkan art exists and how to present it but how to confront the political structurations of cultural and aesthetic criteria in creating synchronously and diachronously insights of contemporary global and local art.

In his essay "Efficient Global Cleansing", Alen Ožbolt finds the art system of the 90"s dominated by curators, and states that through exhibitions on the art from the Balkans, the Balkans became a label, a trademark. He considers the Balkans erased through globalisation so that what is left from it are merely stereotypes and clichés on the Balkans. He claims that it is the West that establishes its own discourse, its own terms; it is the "Western perspective" that determines the criteria and the "usability". His thesis is that even though exhibitions on "Balkan art" represent the symbolical and material exploitation of the Balkans, the profit is not exclusively in the hands of "the Western perspective" - the curators and organisers. For Ožbolt, the profit also goes to those artists who exhibit-market their works on the Western market under the label of the Balkans.

Erden Kosova and Vasif Kortun make a detailed insight into visual art interest over Istanbul following attention directed at Turkey during the critical decision phase about its possible accession to the EU. The information they provide in their text speaks a great deal on the construction of the European cultural policy; how new regions come into interest and the focus is increasingly shifting towards the most remote borders of what is called Europe. However, their conversation, having the experience of the Balkan art interest, effortlessly finds all the faults that the bracketing of artistic practice within the confines of a territory, region, country, or geography shows. They express a utopian vision of how regionality should be established: as a discussion between equal partners; a mode of building networks, not city- or border-dependent; not aligned with the policies of governments and nations.

Viktor Misiano follows the line of some left-oriented thinkers who opt for a new universal dimension. He agrees with Žižek that multicultural ideology is a tool of the neo-liberal political and economic centre to keep the control in the world. For him the Balkan shows do not derive out of the internal motivations of the art system, but external - political and geopolitical - interests. He maintains Foucault"s view that it is the power, which wants to control the region through the knowledge of phenomenon. He is certain that if something is analysed and systematised, it means that it is under control.

At the end of our publication, we are presenting summaries of the panellists that participated in the public discussion What Is to Be Done with "Balkan art"?.

Mitja Velikonja talks about how mass culture (especially movies and music) is making use from prevalent stereotypes on the Balkans; it reproduces them and makes them stronger through this. Igor Zabel talks about the three mentioned exhibitions as examples of a complex reaction on being caught into the stereotypes about the Balkans (which are, on the one side, negative and, on the other side, they show the romanticising of the Balkans and the longing for some traits, which the West has already lost). According to Zabel, all three exhibitions were aware of the phantasmal nature of the Balkanistic stereotypes but, at the same time, they were also aware of the fact that they could not escape them. What makes them complex is their self-reflective position; they try to make this paradox explicit. According to Rastko Močnik, the Balkans is the product of geopolitical discourse, which is currently the predominant discourse of globalisation. Močnik talks about the strategic possibilities of the art practices, that declare to be Balkan. Thus the art practices take upon themselves the stigma of stereotypes on the Balkans, which were produced in the first phase of Balkanism. In this manoeuvre, what was produced by the geopolitical ideology as an object in utterance, the art practices take upon themselves as an uttering position. Borut Vogelnik claims that it is the whole segment of the East and specially Russian art for which the international art system is lately demonstrating an increased interest. Exhibitions presenting art from the Balkans are, according to him, necessary phase of surpassing the borders of local art systems. As "this space" is not capable of self-articulation, this is being done by the West.

Editorial team: Robert Alagjozovski, Barbara Borčić and Urška Jurman