Exhibiting the “Former East”: Identity Politics and Curatorial Practices after 1989, 2013
edited by Cătălin Gheorghe and Cristian Nae, designed by: Lavinia German Published by Universitat... more edited by Cătălin Gheorghe and Cristian Nae, designed by: Lavinia German Published by Universitatea de Arte "George Enescu" Iasi, 2013 With the financial support of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, Romania Texts: Cătălin Gheorghe: Argument; Cristian Nae: The Practice of Art History ‒ Art Exhibitions, Between Cultural Geography and Identity Politics; Zoran Erić: Globalisation And Art Exhibitions; Louisa Avgita: The rewriting of Art History as Art: Mapping the “East”; Svetla Kazalarska: Re-drawing the Art Map of “New Europe”; Raluca Voinea: Geographically Defined Exhibitions. The Balkans, Between Eastern Europe and the New Europe; Jens Kastner: Exciting and New: European identity or the artistic field and the production of a concept of “friend”; Edit András: The Ex-eastern Bloc’s Position in the New Critical Theories and in the Recent Curatorial Practice; Marina Gržinić: Critical Exhibitions as Neo-colonial Strategies: Gender Check and the Politics of Inclusion; Cristian Nae: What’s New on the Eastern Front? Performance Art and the Nostalgia for Cultural Resistance; Milena Tomic: Rearview Mirror: New Art From Central and Eastern Europe; Sándor Hornyik: Alternative Time Travelers – Post-Communism, Figurativeness And Decolonization; Kelly Presutti: Les Promesses du Passé: Shaping Art History via the Exhibition
Mikić, H. & Mickov, B. (ur.) Nova paradigma kreativne ekonomije, Novi Sad: Kulturni centar Milos Crnjanski & Institut za kreativno preduzetnistvo i inovacije, 2022
Rad se bavi problemima ekologije i globalne eko-socijalne krize kao posledice rasta i mutacija ka... more Rad se bavi problemima ekologije i globalne eko-socijalne krize kao posledice rasta i mutacija kapitalističkih proizvodnih odnosa. Kroz novo čitanje marksističke teorije, razmatraju se pitanja društvene i potom ekološke pravde, kao i potencijal kritičkog diskursa koji bi ukazao na neophodnost drugačijih ekonomskih i društvenih modela, dekolonizovanja prirode i pomaka od antropocentričnog pogleda na svet. Analizom nekoliko primera umetničkih pozicija ispituju se mogući kreativni odgovori na brojne aktuelne ekološke probleme, poput kontinuirane politike ekonomskog rasta i razvoja koja proizvodi i sve više otpada; ekstraktivnog kapitalizma koji transnacionalne korporacije koriste za podjarmljivanje siromašnih zemalja Globalnog juga i crpljenje njihovih resursa, što dovodi do nove globalne preraspodele zagađenja; ili uspostavljanja drugačijih odnosa između ljudskog i ne-ljudskog sveta uz uvažavanje biodiverziteta i shvatanja da istrebljenje brojnih vrsta živog sveta utiče i na celokupni ekosistem planete i ubrzava klimatske promene. U zaključku, ističe se značajan doprinos koji umetnici, transverzalno se povezujući sa stručnjacima drugih profila i ekološkim aktivistima, mogu da ostvare u redefinisanju postojećih, i iznalaženju niša za nove i drugačije društvene odnose, zasnovane na principima solidarnosti, društvene pravde u posthumanom, postantropocentričnom svetu, koji će se izboriti sa problemima eko-socijalne krize.
Page 1. ART AS THE CRITICAL REFLECTION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE: The Production of Social Space in Se... more Page 1. ART AS THE CRITICAL REFLECTION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE: The Production of Social Space in Serbia in the Milo??evi??'s Era Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorw??rde der Fakult??t Medien der Bauhaus-Universit??t Weimar ...
Der spezifische sozio-politische Rahmen sowie der Kontext in der Bundes-republik Jugoslawien (SRJ... more Der spezifische sozio-politische Rahmen sowie der Kontext in der Bundes-republik Jugoslawien (SRJ) war nach mehreren Merkmalen einzigartig in Europa. Die Art wie der soziale Raum seit der Mitte der Achtziger Jahre in der ehemaligen Sozialistischen Foederativen Republik Jugoslawien (SFRJ) zur Zeit der stark ausgepraegten oekonomischen und politischen Krise, und auch spaeter in den nach ihrem Zerfall entstandenen unabhaengigen Republiken erzeugt wurde, war ausser-ordentlich krass. Die neue Bundesrepublik (SRJ) entwickelte sich in einem ganz spezifischen Kontext, bedingt durch die Sanktionen der UN, eingefuehrt im Jahre 1992, waehrend der feindlichen Zusammenstoessen in Bosnien und Berichten von Faellen der ethnischen Saeuberung. Einer von den Gruenden fuer die Erzeugung eines so krassen sozialen Raumes koennte man in der staerkesten Welle des Ethnonationalismus in der neueren Geschichte Europas, begleitet von einer aehnlich intensiven Welle des Populismus, suchen. Interessant dabei is...
The production of neighborhoods is always historically grounded and thus contextual. That is, nei... more The production of neighborhoods is always historically grounded and thus contextual. That is, neighborhoods are what they are because they are opposed to something else and derive from other, already produced neighborhoods ... . [The] context-generative dimension of neighborhoods is an important matter because it provides the beginnings of a theoretical angle on the relationship between local and global realities. ––ARJUN APPADURAI
Ilija ŠOŠKIĆ: Akcione Forme / Action Forms, MSU - MSUV, Beograd - Novi Sad , 2018
ACTION FORMS
Retrospective exhibition of Ilija Šoškić
Exhibition curators: dr Zoran Erić, Nebojša... more ACTION FORMS Retrospective exhibition of Ilija Šoškić Exhibition curators: dr Zoran Erić, Nebojša Milenković
Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Dunavska 37, Novi Sad From 12th October to 16th December 2018
Museum of Contemporary Art, Ušće 10, Beograd From 13th October to 24th December 2018
The exhibition ACTION FORMS is the first retrospective of Ilija Šoškić to be held in the entire post-Yugoslav cultural space. Also, it is the first exhibition to be jointly organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade and the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, and is to run in Belgrade and Novi Sad at the same time. The curators Zoran Erić and Nebojša Milenković conceived and adapted the idea for the exhibition to the particular spaces of both museums.
In the Novi Sad segment of the exhibition the focus is put on works involving the body, Šoškić’s ideologically loaded actions in the public sphere. It deals with the early performances, actions and tableau vivants which the artist carried out in the first half of the seventies in Italy, but also during his frequent appearances at the Students’ Cultural Centre in Belgrade. Particularly accentuated are the activities which ultimately lead to the embodiment of the well-known avantgarde principle by which the artist himself becomes his own artwork. This stage culminates in the most radical and certainly most famous of Šoškić’s works Maximum Energy – Minimum Time (1975), in the performative gesture involving the firing of a revolver into the wall of the gallery L’Attico, which represented at that time the global epicentre of the avantgarde. The antithesis to this act is the artist’s many-year withdrawal from art and utter commitment to motorcyclism, which also embodies one of the key philosophical principles of Šoškić’s art and life: the principle of uninterrupted movement and nomadism.
In the Belgrade part of the exhibition emphasis is put on the conceptual series SATOR, Traphos, Parallels, as well as the individual works of elementary but also complex geometric forms. These works are the product of Šoškić’s interest in mathematical axioms and problems, as well as the philosophical postulates to whose research he dedicated himself during the eighties. Moving between mathematics, philosophy and mythology, Šoškić contemplates in a specific way man’s relation to nature, which also becomes a thread running through a series of works (Mourning and Drought, Zygote, Square Circle, etc.). Holding back from art as “a great narrative”, Šoškić finds in this creative period “small niches” in which to formulate different artistic positions, so that the experience gained from the tableau vivants and the performances starts to be inscribed spatially and in ambient in the installations which remain as artefacts after the artistic actions. The conceptual layout of these works adheres to the process of artistic deliberation ─ starting from sketches, points of embarkation for works with textual artistic expositions, through photo documentation of actions and performances all the way to the realised objects and installations themselves.
Through a dialogue between the two segments constituting the exhibition which itself isn’t chronologically ordered but rather follows the conceptual lines in the development of the artist’s work, the syntagm for the name of the exhibition Action Forms is extracted. The origin of this is Mario Diacono’s term “forms in action” from which is derived the polysemic formulation which at one possible plane of reading joins the two key words denoting the exhibition segments, in Novi Sad action, and in Belgrade form.
Ilija Šoškić is a unique creative figure and is personally characterised by numerous identities: athlete, artist, performer, “sixty-eighter”, radical left-winger, theoretician and motorbiker. Belonging and being active in different cultural spheres at the same time (European, Italian, Yugoslav, Montenegrin, Croatian, Serbian), Šoškić succeeded in staying true to the ideas with which he embarked on his career – a radical (neo)avantgardist, a guerrilla artist, but also a metaphysicist who, even though he didn’t manage to change society, through his work and engagement moved the borders of the perception of art not only as a space of political struggle, but also of the philosophical contemplation of meaning as a precondition for social and artistic survival.
Šoškić (Dečani, 1935) is a member of the first generation of Yugoslav artists who worked in the spirit of the new artistic practices. Before entering art, he was an athlete and was the state champion and representative of SFRY in the hammer throw. He attended the art school in Herceg Novi, the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade and the Art Academy in Bologna (Accademia di belle arti). From 1969 until 1972, he lived in Bologna and from 1972 in Rome. He gained world attention through his cooperation with the legendary Gallery L’Attico in Rome where he exhibited together with Jannis Kounellis, Luigi Ontani, Michelangelo Pistoletto and others. Famous critics such as Emilio Villa, Achille Bonito Oliva, Mario Diacono have written about him. He exhibited at the most important international and Yugoslav art manifestations (Venice Biennial, Trigon, the Yugoslav Documents, April Meetings, etc.) He has lectured at the most eminent European art academies (Düsseldorf, Rome, etc.). Ilija Šoškić’s artistic practice spans more than five decades and his work encompasses performance, tableau vivant, the art of behaviour, guerrilla art, cultural and political mythology, mathematics and the metaphysics of nature.
Exhibiting the “Former East”: Identity Politics and Curatorial Practices after 1989, 2013
edited by Cătălin Gheorghe and Cristian Nae, designed by: Lavinia German Published by Universitat... more edited by Cătălin Gheorghe and Cristian Nae, designed by: Lavinia German Published by Universitatea de Arte "George Enescu" Iasi, 2013 With the financial support of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, Romania Texts: Cătălin Gheorghe: Argument; Cristian Nae: The Practice of Art History ‒ Art Exhibitions, Between Cultural Geography and Identity Politics; Zoran Erić: Globalisation And Art Exhibitions; Louisa Avgita: The rewriting of Art History as Art: Mapping the “East”; Svetla Kazalarska: Re-drawing the Art Map of “New Europe”; Raluca Voinea: Geographically Defined Exhibitions. The Balkans, Between Eastern Europe and the New Europe; Jens Kastner: Exciting and New: European identity or the artistic field and the production of a concept of “friend”; Edit András: The Ex-eastern Bloc’s Position in the New Critical Theories and in the Recent Curatorial Practice; Marina Gržinić: Critical Exhibitions as Neo-colonial Strategies: Gender Check and the Politics of Inclusion; Cristian Nae: What’s New on the Eastern Front? Performance Art and the Nostalgia for Cultural Resistance; Milena Tomic: Rearview Mirror: New Art From Central and Eastern Europe; Sándor Hornyik: Alternative Time Travelers – Post-Communism, Figurativeness And Decolonization; Kelly Presutti: Les Promesses du Passé: Shaping Art History via the Exhibition
Mikić, H. & Mickov, B. (ur.) Nova paradigma kreativne ekonomije, Novi Sad: Kulturni centar Milos Crnjanski & Institut za kreativno preduzetnistvo i inovacije, 2022
Rad se bavi problemima ekologije i globalne eko-socijalne krize kao posledice rasta i mutacija ka... more Rad se bavi problemima ekologije i globalne eko-socijalne krize kao posledice rasta i mutacija kapitalističkih proizvodnih odnosa. Kroz novo čitanje marksističke teorije, razmatraju se pitanja društvene i potom ekološke pravde, kao i potencijal kritičkog diskursa koji bi ukazao na neophodnost drugačijih ekonomskih i društvenih modela, dekolonizovanja prirode i pomaka od antropocentričnog pogleda na svet. Analizom nekoliko primera umetničkih pozicija ispituju se mogući kreativni odgovori na brojne aktuelne ekološke probleme, poput kontinuirane politike ekonomskog rasta i razvoja koja proizvodi i sve više otpada; ekstraktivnog kapitalizma koji transnacionalne korporacije koriste za podjarmljivanje siromašnih zemalja Globalnog juga i crpljenje njihovih resursa, što dovodi do nove globalne preraspodele zagađenja; ili uspostavljanja drugačijih odnosa između ljudskog i ne-ljudskog sveta uz uvažavanje biodiverziteta i shvatanja da istrebljenje brojnih vrsta živog sveta utiče i na celokupni ekosistem planete i ubrzava klimatske promene. U zaključku, ističe se značajan doprinos koji umetnici, transverzalno se povezujući sa stručnjacima drugih profila i ekološkim aktivistima, mogu da ostvare u redefinisanju postojećih, i iznalaženju niša za nove i drugačije društvene odnose, zasnovane na principima solidarnosti, društvene pravde u posthumanom, postantropocentričnom svetu, koji će se izboriti sa problemima eko-socijalne krize.
Page 1. ART AS THE CRITICAL REFLECTION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE: The Production of Social Space in Se... more Page 1. ART AS THE CRITICAL REFLECTION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE: The Production of Social Space in Serbia in the Milo??evi??'s Era Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorw??rde der Fakult??t Medien der Bauhaus-Universit??t Weimar ...
Der spezifische sozio-politische Rahmen sowie der Kontext in der Bundes-republik Jugoslawien (SRJ... more Der spezifische sozio-politische Rahmen sowie der Kontext in der Bundes-republik Jugoslawien (SRJ) war nach mehreren Merkmalen einzigartig in Europa. Die Art wie der soziale Raum seit der Mitte der Achtziger Jahre in der ehemaligen Sozialistischen Foederativen Republik Jugoslawien (SFRJ) zur Zeit der stark ausgepraegten oekonomischen und politischen Krise, und auch spaeter in den nach ihrem Zerfall entstandenen unabhaengigen Republiken erzeugt wurde, war ausser-ordentlich krass. Die neue Bundesrepublik (SRJ) entwickelte sich in einem ganz spezifischen Kontext, bedingt durch die Sanktionen der UN, eingefuehrt im Jahre 1992, waehrend der feindlichen Zusammenstoessen in Bosnien und Berichten von Faellen der ethnischen Saeuberung. Einer von den Gruenden fuer die Erzeugung eines so krassen sozialen Raumes koennte man in der staerkesten Welle des Ethnonationalismus in der neueren Geschichte Europas, begleitet von einer aehnlich intensiven Welle des Populismus, suchen. Interessant dabei is...
The production of neighborhoods is always historically grounded and thus contextual. That is, nei... more The production of neighborhoods is always historically grounded and thus contextual. That is, neighborhoods are what they are because they are opposed to something else and derive from other, already produced neighborhoods ... . [The] context-generative dimension of neighborhoods is an important matter because it provides the beginnings of a theoretical angle on the relationship between local and global realities. ––ARJUN APPADURAI
Ilija ŠOŠKIĆ: Akcione Forme / Action Forms, MSU - MSUV, Beograd - Novi Sad , 2018
ACTION FORMS
Retrospective exhibition of Ilija Šoškić
Exhibition curators: dr Zoran Erić, Nebojša... more ACTION FORMS Retrospective exhibition of Ilija Šoškić Exhibition curators: dr Zoran Erić, Nebojša Milenković
Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Dunavska 37, Novi Sad From 12th October to 16th December 2018
Museum of Contemporary Art, Ušće 10, Beograd From 13th October to 24th December 2018
The exhibition ACTION FORMS is the first retrospective of Ilija Šoškić to be held in the entire post-Yugoslav cultural space. Also, it is the first exhibition to be jointly organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade and the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, and is to run in Belgrade and Novi Sad at the same time. The curators Zoran Erić and Nebojša Milenković conceived and adapted the idea for the exhibition to the particular spaces of both museums.
In the Novi Sad segment of the exhibition the focus is put on works involving the body, Šoškić’s ideologically loaded actions in the public sphere. It deals with the early performances, actions and tableau vivants which the artist carried out in the first half of the seventies in Italy, but also during his frequent appearances at the Students’ Cultural Centre in Belgrade. Particularly accentuated are the activities which ultimately lead to the embodiment of the well-known avantgarde principle by which the artist himself becomes his own artwork. This stage culminates in the most radical and certainly most famous of Šoškić’s works Maximum Energy – Minimum Time (1975), in the performative gesture involving the firing of a revolver into the wall of the gallery L’Attico, which represented at that time the global epicentre of the avantgarde. The antithesis to this act is the artist’s many-year withdrawal from art and utter commitment to motorcyclism, which also embodies one of the key philosophical principles of Šoškić’s art and life: the principle of uninterrupted movement and nomadism.
In the Belgrade part of the exhibition emphasis is put on the conceptual series SATOR, Traphos, Parallels, as well as the individual works of elementary but also complex geometric forms. These works are the product of Šoškić’s interest in mathematical axioms and problems, as well as the philosophical postulates to whose research he dedicated himself during the eighties. Moving between mathematics, philosophy and mythology, Šoškić contemplates in a specific way man’s relation to nature, which also becomes a thread running through a series of works (Mourning and Drought, Zygote, Square Circle, etc.). Holding back from art as “a great narrative”, Šoškić finds in this creative period “small niches” in which to formulate different artistic positions, so that the experience gained from the tableau vivants and the performances starts to be inscribed spatially and in ambient in the installations which remain as artefacts after the artistic actions. The conceptual layout of these works adheres to the process of artistic deliberation ─ starting from sketches, points of embarkation for works with textual artistic expositions, through photo documentation of actions and performances all the way to the realised objects and installations themselves.
Through a dialogue between the two segments constituting the exhibition which itself isn’t chronologically ordered but rather follows the conceptual lines in the development of the artist’s work, the syntagm for the name of the exhibition Action Forms is extracted. The origin of this is Mario Diacono’s term “forms in action” from which is derived the polysemic formulation which at one possible plane of reading joins the two key words denoting the exhibition segments, in Novi Sad action, and in Belgrade form.
Ilija Šoškić is a unique creative figure and is personally characterised by numerous identities: athlete, artist, performer, “sixty-eighter”, radical left-winger, theoretician and motorbiker. Belonging and being active in different cultural spheres at the same time (European, Italian, Yugoslav, Montenegrin, Croatian, Serbian), Šoškić succeeded in staying true to the ideas with which he embarked on his career – a radical (neo)avantgardist, a guerrilla artist, but also a metaphysicist who, even though he didn’t manage to change society, through his work and engagement moved the borders of the perception of art not only as a space of political struggle, but also of the philosophical contemplation of meaning as a precondition for social and artistic survival.
Šoškić (Dečani, 1935) is a member of the first generation of Yugoslav artists who worked in the spirit of the new artistic practices. Before entering art, he was an athlete and was the state champion and representative of SFRY in the hammer throw. He attended the art school in Herceg Novi, the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade and the Art Academy in Bologna (Accademia di belle arti). From 1969 until 1972, he lived in Bologna and from 1972 in Rome. He gained world attention through his cooperation with the legendary Gallery L’Attico in Rome where he exhibited together with Jannis Kounellis, Luigi Ontani, Michelangelo Pistoletto and others. Famous critics such as Emilio Villa, Achille Bonito Oliva, Mario Diacono have written about him. He exhibited at the most important international and Yugoslav art manifestations (Venice Biennial, Trigon, the Yugoslav Documents, April Meetings, etc.) He has lectured at the most eminent European art academies (Düsseldorf, Rome, etc.). Ilija Šoškić’s artistic practice spans more than five decades and his work encompasses performance, tableau vivant, the art of behaviour, guerrilla art, cultural and political mythology, mathematics and the metaphysics of nature.
Exhibiting the “Former East”: Identity Politics and Curatorial Practices after 1989, 2013
edited by Cătălin Gheorghe and Cristian Nae, designed by: Lavinia German
Published by Universita... more edited by Cătălin Gheorghe and Cristian Nae, designed by: Lavinia German
Published by Universitatea de Arte "George Enescu" Iasi, 2013 With the financial support of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, Romania
Texts: Cătălin Gheorghe: Argument; Cristian Nae: The Practice of Art History ‒ Art Exhibitions, Between Cultural Geography and Identity Politics; Zoran Erić: Globalisation And Art Exhibitions; Louisa Avgita: The rewriting of Art History as Art: Mapping the “East”; Svetla Kazalarska: Re-drawing the Art Map of “New Europe”; Raluca Voinea: Geographically Defined Exhibitions. The Balkans, Between Eastern Europe and the New Europe; Jens Kastner: Exciting and New: European identity or the artistic field and the production of a concept of “friend”; Edit András: The Ex-eastern Bloc’s Position in the New Critical Theories and in the Recent Curatorial Practice; Marina Gržinić: Critical Exhibitions as Neo-colonial Strategies: Gender Check and the Politics of Inclusion; Cristian Nae: What’s New on the Eastern Front? Performance Art and the Nostalgia for Cultural Resistance; Milena Tomic: Rearview Mirror: New Art From Central and Eastern Europe; Sándor Hornyik: Alternative Time Travelers – Post-Communism, Figurativeness And Decolonization; Kelly Presutti: Les Promesses du Passé: Shaping Art History via the Exhibition
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istrebljenje brojnih vrsta živog sveta utiče i na celokupni ekosistem planete i ubrzava klimatske promene. U zaključku, ističe se značajan doprinos koji umetnici, transverzalno se povezujući sa stručnjacima drugih profila i ekološkim aktivistima, mogu da ostvare u redefinisanju postojećih, i iznalaženju niša za nove i drugačije društvene odnose, zasnovane na principima solidarnosti, društvene pravde u posthumanom, postantropocentričnom svetu, koji će se izboriti sa problemima
eko-socijalne krize.
Retrospective exhibition of Ilija Šoškić
Exhibition curators: dr Zoran Erić, Nebojša Milenković
Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Dunavska 37, Novi Sad
From 12th October to 16th December 2018
Museum of Contemporary Art, Ušće 10, Beograd
From 13th October to 24th December 2018
The exhibition ACTION FORMS is the first retrospective of Ilija Šoškić to be held in the entire post-Yugoslav cultural space. Also, it is the first exhibition to be jointly organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade and the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, and is to run in Belgrade and Novi Sad at the same time. The curators Zoran Erić and Nebojša Milenković conceived and adapted the idea for the exhibition to the particular spaces of both museums.
In the Novi Sad segment of the exhibition the focus is put on works involving the body, Šoškić’s ideologically loaded actions in the public sphere. It deals with the early performances, actions and tableau vivants which the artist carried out in the first half of the seventies in Italy, but also during his frequent appearances at the Students’ Cultural Centre in Belgrade. Particularly accentuated are the activities which ultimately lead to the embodiment of the well-known avantgarde principle by which the artist himself becomes his own artwork. This stage culminates in the most radical and certainly most famous of Šoškić’s works Maximum Energy – Minimum Time (1975), in the performative gesture involving the firing of a revolver into the wall of the gallery L’Attico, which represented at that time the global epicentre of the avantgarde. The antithesis to this act is the artist’s many-year withdrawal from art and utter commitment to motorcyclism, which also embodies one of the key philosophical principles of Šoškić’s art and life: the principle of uninterrupted movement and nomadism.
In the Belgrade part of the exhibition emphasis is put on the conceptual series SATOR, Traphos, Parallels, as well as the individual works of elementary but also complex geometric forms. These works are the product of Šoškić’s interest in mathematical axioms and problems, as well as the philosophical postulates to whose research he dedicated himself during the eighties. Moving between mathematics, philosophy and mythology, Šoškić contemplates in a specific way man’s relation to nature, which also becomes a thread running through a series of works (Mourning and Drought, Zygote, Square Circle, etc.). Holding back from art as “a great narrative”, Šoškić finds in this creative period “small niches” in which to formulate different artistic positions, so that the experience gained from the tableau vivants and the performances starts to be inscribed spatially and in ambient in the installations which remain as artefacts after the artistic actions. The conceptual layout of these works adheres to the process of artistic deliberation ─ starting from sketches, points of embarkation for works with textual artistic expositions, through photo documentation of actions and performances all the way to the realised objects and installations themselves.
Through a dialogue between the two segments constituting the exhibition which itself isn’t chronologically ordered but rather follows the conceptual lines in the development of the artist’s work, the syntagm for the name of the exhibition Action Forms is extracted. The origin of this is Mario Diacono’s term “forms in action” from which is derived the polysemic formulation which at one possible plane of reading joins the two key words denoting the exhibition segments, in Novi Sad action, and in Belgrade form.
Ilija Šoškić is a unique creative figure and is personally characterised by numerous identities: athlete, artist, performer, “sixty-eighter”, radical left-winger, theoretician and motorbiker. Belonging and being active in different cultural spheres at the same time (European, Italian, Yugoslav, Montenegrin, Croatian, Serbian), Šoškić succeeded in staying true to the ideas with which he embarked on his career – a radical (neo)avantgardist, a guerrilla artist, but also a metaphysicist who, even though he didn’t manage to change society, through his work and engagement moved the borders of the perception of art not only as a space of political struggle, but also of the philosophical contemplation of meaning as a precondition for social and artistic survival.
Šoškić (Dečani, 1935) is a member of the first generation of Yugoslav artists who worked in the spirit of the new artistic practices. Before entering art, he was an athlete and was the state champion and representative of SFRY in the hammer throw. He attended the art school in Herceg Novi, the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade and the Art Academy in Bologna (Accademia di belle arti). From 1969 until 1972, he lived in Bologna and from 1972 in Rome. He gained world attention through his cooperation with the legendary Gallery L’Attico in Rome where he exhibited together with Jannis Kounellis, Luigi Ontani, Michelangelo Pistoletto and others. Famous critics such as Emilio Villa, Achille Bonito Oliva, Mario Diacono have written about him. He exhibited at the most important international and Yugoslav art manifestations (Venice Biennial, Trigon, the Yugoslav Documents, April Meetings, etc.) He has lectured at the most eminent European art academies (Düsseldorf, Rome, etc.). Ilija Šoškić’s artistic practice spans more than five decades and his work encompasses performance, tableau vivant, the art of behaviour, guerrilla art, cultural and political mythology, mathematics and the metaphysics of nature.
istrebljenje brojnih vrsta živog sveta utiče i na celokupni ekosistem planete i ubrzava klimatske promene. U zaključku, ističe se značajan doprinos koji umetnici, transverzalno se povezujući sa stručnjacima drugih profila i ekološkim aktivistima, mogu da ostvare u redefinisanju postojećih, i iznalaženju niša za nove i drugačije društvene odnose, zasnovane na principima solidarnosti, društvene pravde u posthumanom, postantropocentričnom svetu, koji će se izboriti sa problemima
eko-socijalne krize.
Retrospective exhibition of Ilija Šoškić
Exhibition curators: dr Zoran Erić, Nebojša Milenković
Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Dunavska 37, Novi Sad
From 12th October to 16th December 2018
Museum of Contemporary Art, Ušće 10, Beograd
From 13th October to 24th December 2018
The exhibition ACTION FORMS is the first retrospective of Ilija Šoškić to be held in the entire post-Yugoslav cultural space. Also, it is the first exhibition to be jointly organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade and the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, and is to run in Belgrade and Novi Sad at the same time. The curators Zoran Erić and Nebojša Milenković conceived and adapted the idea for the exhibition to the particular spaces of both museums.
In the Novi Sad segment of the exhibition the focus is put on works involving the body, Šoškić’s ideologically loaded actions in the public sphere. It deals with the early performances, actions and tableau vivants which the artist carried out in the first half of the seventies in Italy, but also during his frequent appearances at the Students’ Cultural Centre in Belgrade. Particularly accentuated are the activities which ultimately lead to the embodiment of the well-known avantgarde principle by which the artist himself becomes his own artwork. This stage culminates in the most radical and certainly most famous of Šoškić’s works Maximum Energy – Minimum Time (1975), in the performative gesture involving the firing of a revolver into the wall of the gallery L’Attico, which represented at that time the global epicentre of the avantgarde. The antithesis to this act is the artist’s many-year withdrawal from art and utter commitment to motorcyclism, which also embodies one of the key philosophical principles of Šoškić’s art and life: the principle of uninterrupted movement and nomadism.
In the Belgrade part of the exhibition emphasis is put on the conceptual series SATOR, Traphos, Parallels, as well as the individual works of elementary but also complex geometric forms. These works are the product of Šoškić’s interest in mathematical axioms and problems, as well as the philosophical postulates to whose research he dedicated himself during the eighties. Moving between mathematics, philosophy and mythology, Šoškić contemplates in a specific way man’s relation to nature, which also becomes a thread running through a series of works (Mourning and Drought, Zygote, Square Circle, etc.). Holding back from art as “a great narrative”, Šoškić finds in this creative period “small niches” in which to formulate different artistic positions, so that the experience gained from the tableau vivants and the performances starts to be inscribed spatially and in ambient in the installations which remain as artefacts after the artistic actions. The conceptual layout of these works adheres to the process of artistic deliberation ─ starting from sketches, points of embarkation for works with textual artistic expositions, through photo documentation of actions and performances all the way to the realised objects and installations themselves.
Through a dialogue between the two segments constituting the exhibition which itself isn’t chronologically ordered but rather follows the conceptual lines in the development of the artist’s work, the syntagm for the name of the exhibition Action Forms is extracted. The origin of this is Mario Diacono’s term “forms in action” from which is derived the polysemic formulation which at one possible plane of reading joins the two key words denoting the exhibition segments, in Novi Sad action, and in Belgrade form.
Ilija Šoškić is a unique creative figure and is personally characterised by numerous identities: athlete, artist, performer, “sixty-eighter”, radical left-winger, theoretician and motorbiker. Belonging and being active in different cultural spheres at the same time (European, Italian, Yugoslav, Montenegrin, Croatian, Serbian), Šoškić succeeded in staying true to the ideas with which he embarked on his career – a radical (neo)avantgardist, a guerrilla artist, but also a metaphysicist who, even though he didn’t manage to change society, through his work and engagement moved the borders of the perception of art not only as a space of political struggle, but also of the philosophical contemplation of meaning as a precondition for social and artistic survival.
Šoškić (Dečani, 1935) is a member of the first generation of Yugoslav artists who worked in the spirit of the new artistic practices. Before entering art, he was an athlete and was the state champion and representative of SFRY in the hammer throw. He attended the art school in Herceg Novi, the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade and the Art Academy in Bologna (Accademia di belle arti). From 1969 until 1972, he lived in Bologna and from 1972 in Rome. He gained world attention through his cooperation with the legendary Gallery L’Attico in Rome where he exhibited together with Jannis Kounellis, Luigi Ontani, Michelangelo Pistoletto and others. Famous critics such as Emilio Villa, Achille Bonito Oliva, Mario Diacono have written about him. He exhibited at the most important international and Yugoslav art manifestations (Venice Biennial, Trigon, the Yugoslav Documents, April Meetings, etc.) He has lectured at the most eminent European art academies (Düsseldorf, Rome, etc.). Ilija Šoškić’s artistic practice spans more than five decades and his work encompasses performance, tableau vivant, the art of behaviour, guerrilla art, cultural and political mythology, mathematics and the metaphysics of nature.
Published by Universitatea de Arte "George Enescu" Iasi, 2013
With the financial support of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, Romania
Texts: Cătălin Gheorghe: Argument; Cristian Nae: The Practice of Art History ‒ Art Exhibitions, Between Cultural Geography and Identity Politics; Zoran Erić: Globalisation And Art Exhibitions; Louisa Avgita: The rewriting of Art History as Art: Mapping the “East”; Svetla Kazalarska: Re-drawing the Art Map of “New Europe”; Raluca Voinea: Geographically Defined Exhibitions. The Balkans, Between Eastern Europe and the New Europe; Jens Kastner: Exciting and New: European identity or the artistic field and the production of a concept of “friend”; Edit András: The Ex-eastern Bloc’s Position in the New Critical Theories and in the Recent Curatorial Practice; Marina Gržinić: Critical Exhibitions as Neo-colonial Strategies: Gender Check and the Politics of Inclusion; Cristian Nae: What’s New on the Eastern Front? Performance Art and the Nostalgia for Cultural Resistance; Milena Tomic: Rearview Mirror: New Art From Central and Eastern Europe; Sándor Hornyik: Alternative Time Travelers – Post-Communism, Figurativeness And Decolonization; Kelly Presutti: Les Promesses du Passé: Shaping Art History via the Exhibition