Catalogue Text for Andrej Derkovic’s Exhibition for the missing

people of Serebrenica Colegium Artisticum on 12 July 2004, Sarajevo

TRUTH ON THE FAULT-LINE When writing an essay on the works of artists, I tend to try to have a sense of their world. Because I believe that creative act as an intense encounter between the artist and the world outside, in order to develope an understanding of a work, it is necessary to use the artist’s worldiew, her private as well as socio-political background

as a part of the interpretative code. This does not mean that artists with an undisturbed and peaceful background are uninteresting, but it is a fact that traumatic experiences, political turmoils provoke the artist to radikal and profound works. This rich variety of contemporary artistic production shows that artists observe the world from different vantage points but with a shared intention of mining into the triviality of the daily life in order to disrupt the pervasive indifference towards world affairs. Most of the time, an association initiates the encounter between the artist and the world outside; an association that ignites unconsicious, deep memories or traumas. According to Rollo May, in his book The Courage to Create (1):

The world is the pattern of meaningful relations in which a person exists and in the design of which he or she participates. It has objective reality, to be sure, but it is not simply that. World is interrelated with the person at every moment. A continual dialectical process goes on between world and self and self and world; one implies the other, and neither can be understood if we omit the other. This is why one can never localize creativity as a

subjective phenomenon; one can never study it simply in terms of what goes on within the person. The pole of world is an inseparable part of the creativity of an individual. What occurs is always a process, a doing - specifically a

process interrelating the person and his or her world.

We tend to think that genuine artists are destined to question or scrutinize their world and that the political and economic context within which they are inserted conditions their creativity. Although one can argue that the artists have always been responsible for being vigilantly attentive to the shifting historical conditions, I would like to argue that, because the contemporary conjuncture is shifting almost too quickly, to be able to adequately understand and develop clever and novel reactions to the incomparable state of affairs of our time the contemporary artists has to be even more vigilant. Therefore, to be creative—which is the most rewarding way of expression of human thought—one has to be acutely attentive towards and critically conscious of the complexity of world affairs.

Chomsky in his article “Kosova in Retrospect II” indicates that the

world faces two choices with regard to the use of force: 1. some semblance of world order, either the Charter or something better if it can gain a degree of legitimacy; or 2. the powerful states do as they wish unless constrained from within, guided by interests of power and profit, as in the past. It makes good sense to struggle for a better world, but not to indulge in pretence and illusion about the one in which we live. (2)

Most people have pretences that we can see better ways soon, even if they do not participate, or contribute to the debate or interfere and protest the atrocities. In these times, the omnipresent mass media and the suffocating commodity culture that it shamelessly celebrates present us with a serious danger of falling into conformity and apathy. People of different origins and cultures are forced to view/consume contemporaneously the exact same things/objects/images at a speed that robs them from their ability to even pass a judgment on any of them. The artists, however, by giving form to the unconscious, the unsaid, the repressed of these images, can assume the role of the saboteurs of these systems of pacification. In reaction, the conformists, because they (correctly) perceive this as a threat to their “orderly functioning system,” repudiate contemporary art.

The electronic images immediately transmit the tragedies to the stupefied audiences all over the world, but almost immediately after their transmission the impact of these images evaporate. Today, a tragedy could be comprehended not through the electronic image stream of the news media but only when it is mediated through art. And it is precisely in this sense that art, today more forcefully than ever, can take on the analytical role of encircling the traumas and tragedies of the History that the conformists are so worried to make us forget (3). In the aftermath of what we have endured in the last two decades of the last century, we can revise our opinion on the famous war paintings of Modernism. I am thinking of the works of Otto Dix, Picasso, and Giacometti. Despite being very political, I cannot but help seeing them too artistic, too aestheticized, and too naive. Even Beuys’ and Kiefer’s way of dealing with war and its after-effects and consequences seem to be rather eclectic and romantic. After the Balkan Crisis, the September 11, 2001 attacks on the WTC, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the electronic images have emotionally burdened the human mind and soul in such an extremity that the artist faces a different challenge to create a work. Most of the time the strategy has been either to follow derivative images or events related to the main theme or to use the ambiguity of the language as an element of artistic manipulation.

Andrej Derkovic also follows this strategy. His work is minimalist in its form, but complicated in its content. Contemporary art is full of examples of “empty spaces,” white on white paintings or boards, starting from Rauschenberg and reaching to its post-modern interpretations in monochrome installations. Evidently, these types of work had their perceptual effects and spiritual persuasions on the viewer. Squarely situated within the tradition of Modernism, they had the intention to create alienating environments that distance the viewer from the artwork as the sublimated object. Later in Postmodernism, they have begun to serve as the objects of ambiguous desire. Seven hundred white sheets of Brail alphabet that Derkovic offers us, however, lend themselves for a different reading. These look more like icons or intelligible tablets of knowledge than sublimated objects of spatial perception—although they do require or instigate the perceptual capabilities of the

viewer. In this case the perceptual capability becomes the prerequisite of civil participation in a human drama. A drama that is not easy to grasp and digest. Derkovic approaches with a subdued interference, an act that encircles the incapability to overcome the impact of the reality and memory. Rather than directly attacking with a representative image, he prefers to retreat into a concealed image. In an age of trans-gressive post-human images that invites the attention of the media-corrupted viewer, this work elevates the gaze to an introvert and abstract journey.

In order to penetrate the pitch of human evil—undeniably and paradoxically omnipresent in this age of information—Derkovic makes metaphoric use of the white alphabet as that which illuminates darkness. The work proposes a reading with fingers rather than with eyes, as eyes are polluted by electronic images and repeatedly manipulated by assorted ideologies. In the quest for truth, performative abilities of humankind are preferred to the optical in the quest for truth.

The iconic and tablet-like form of the work, both archaic and profound, is pitched against the actuality and obscenity of the horrible incident that it is signifying—an intentional juxtaposition, no doubt. The tablet-like form gives the work a museum depth, implicating the inevitable melting of the ethnic cleansing into the disastrous history of the Balkans.

The Balkan War, also referred as the Balkan Crisis, is mainly described as the collision of religious ideologies—Orthodox Christianity, Western Christianity, and Islam — with extreme nationalism creating a fault-line within this social formation. This fault-line indicates the fatal ambiguities endured with and through faith. Believers might insist that religion is the indispensable part of all civilisations, but for many other the current world events makes it difficult to follow this pattern. Derkovic’s works deal with the dilemmas, paradoxes, and abject situations happening precisely on this fault-line. For the last decade, his works have taken the form of interactive and perceptual installations and chronicles, whose structure and form reflect a representative

approach related to his experience during and after the Balkan War. In recent years however, the emphasis have shifted to a more specific perspective into the events and traumas of the war, reaching to a point in this exhibition where he directly indicates the names of the disappeared people.

His previous work also elevates the human drama in this region into a political statement with inquiring, scrutinizing and challenging content.

“ImageNATION” which he conceived and produced for ARS AEVI in June 2002 is based on the ambiguity that is at the core of the concept of nation. It is a simple board game, commonly called “Don’t be angry, Man” where the colours of blue red, green and yellow are associated with the four peoples of Bosnia & Herzegovina. The board features four state flags, and in certain combinations resembles the one in the original game. The main idea is to find a fit between the game (as an expression of social and mental status) and the political game, whose result in the Balkan case has been the displacement of peoples and their classification according their national and religious affiliation. Asja Mandic, the curator of the Contemporary Art Museum ARS AEVI, reminds us that Derkovic provides sharp social critique, without explicit theorizing. The problems of statehood and the questions of ethnic and cultural identity that render our poverty-stricken country vulnerable to colonizing influences of foreign powers, are all embodied in the board game in a humorous yet sarcastic manner.

In his work “9/11” for Fine Arts Academy Sarajevo on September 11, 2002, Derkovic draws an analogy between the attacks on the Twin Towers of Manhattan and the period of the siege of Sarajevo 1992- 1995. The photo series consists of eleven portraits of twins, citizens of Sarajevo, who lived under the siege and survived its hell. Two pairs of twins didn’t survived the siege complete. All photographed persons have masks on the faces. At one level, this is homage to the people of New York, who had to wear masks in the weeks that followed the attacks—in order to evade not only being poisoned by the dust in the air but also smelling the stench of the rotting

body parts. However, a second reason is to encircle the eyes, the only place that betrays the similarity of the twins who are not looking the same anymore. Finally, the third reason is for protection—to be able to remain clean after trauma.

His other work for the ARS AEVI exhibition “Between” bears no title. It is an original table-tennis table with a net shaped liked the Dayton line that dividing Bosnia into political cantons. Around the table, there are 100 balls, which are representing refugees. They are out of the table or out of Bosnia as consequence of the Dayton line, and they will never come back in their homeland.

“DVD” is an autobiographical work, a barbed wire dividing the exhibition space, which Derkovic has produced as homage to his deceased father Dr. Branislav Djerkovic (1994) in the National Gallery of Bosnia & Herzegovina (24.July 2003). “DVD” is analogous to “divide” and as Maja Bobar indicates he deals explicitly with issues of physical division and opposes the Dayton line, which he calls “anomaly”. This explicit ready-made is also a metaphor for a hopeless reunion.

Again, in an interview Noam Chomsky says “Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It’s something you have to find out for yourself”. (4) Yet, what artists like Derkovic are doing is to show the ways of how to find out; because for example, the truth about Srebrenica is still concealed and needs to be unearthed.

Beral Madra, June 2004

Bibliography

1. Rollo May, The Courage to Create, Peter Smith Pub Inc, 1994, p. 112 on

2. Slavoj Zizek, Sublime Object of Ideology, London: Verso, 1989

   3. From the Afterword to the French translation of The New Military

      Humanism (Common Courage, 1999
   4. David Barsamian , Lİberating the Mind from Orthodoxies, An interview

with Noam Chomsky

OPENING SPEECH

I think this exhibition has the potential to make us sad.
I am saying this, because it has become more and more difficult to become sad.
The political state of affairs of this world does not allow us to feel sad. Because of the continuous and violent stream of tragedies and catastrophes there is no time left for sadness.
We are forced to keep our mental sanity by forgetting what has happened a few hours ago, even if it is the most unforgettable incident.
Forgetting has become a way of registering. We are registering by forgetting.
Yet, in this exhibition, we can allow ourselves to be sad and to remember. This is a significant reason for why we should believe in the power of art. A convincing reason why we should esteem the artist, who indicate and show people how to look into the realities of life without loosing their mental sanity.
I am very proud and extremely grateful to be here.
When Andrej invited me to be the curator of this exhibition, I asked myself, what did I do to deserve this honour?
I think, it is my sincere and maybe naïve faith in art.
Yet, I must tell you that a few months ago I have curated a show with 15 women artists from our region, to protest the women abuse, killings and moral crimes in Turkey and to remember nameless victims.
In no doubt, at this moment in many cities all over the world exhibitions dealing with the political state of affairs, with political violence and crime and other issues that are destroying the body and soul of humankind, attract audiences to join in the club of awareness and responsiveness.
I expressed all my ideas about this exhibition in the text I have written. I would like to repeat the last paragraph:
In an interview Noam Chomsky says “Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It’s something you have to find out for yourself”.
Yet, what artists like Derkovic are doing is to show the ways of how to find out; because for example, the truth about Srebrenica is still concealed and needs to be unearthed.