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Museum of the city Skopje, April / May 2005 Alien Body or Rough Nuances
Photo: Jovan Balov
Alien Body or Rough Nuances Lazo Plavevski
One's feeling of one's own foreignness, wherever this may be, is a universal condition – it is probably a symbol; somewhere it is a sign (even a “brand”) of the modern circumstances. In short, for quite some time now, it has been a universal place that has codified the relationships between life and the life of art – which is at the same time so banal and proverbial, and so real and insolvable. The environment of the Macedonian artists who take part in the “Foreign Body” project is indicative in the context of the motive for this exhibition. It is in the midst of an active turmoil of accepting the other in all the segments of life: in politics, media, institutions.... in mutual relationships. There is a tectonic change that, due to the decades-long respite, may bring about or is already bringing about unwanted distortions. If we perceive identity as a relation, and if the relation is undergoing change, then this uncertainty may bring about, or is already bringing about, a period in which identity perceives itself as a “Foreign Body”. Accepting the other and otherness must give rise to changes in whoever accepts. Basically, this position is neither new nor unknown to this environment. It has become used to this position and it may be that underneath all those anxieties and uncertainties there are merely nuances that the “Foreign Body” finds rough. But these allusions to individual elements and their separation from the sum of events may be, or may be perceived as, a sort of a superficial and one-dimensional layer that can slip into banality outside the context of other facts. The three Macedonian artists (Slavica Janešlieva, Vana Urošević and Jovan Šumkovski) were neither pushed into stepping out of the horizon of their artistic thought nor did they intend to do so when they contributed to this project. Reflections of reality are inevitable anyway, and “Foreign Body” is a faithful devotee to reality. Janešlieva’s work “The Game” is an object with which she enters the dimension of a live broadcast of her own perception of international political events. It is a kind of a “three-dimensional poster” – a chessboard that is at the same time a world map where the chess pieces have been aligned in a way that suggests a massive sacrifice of pawns. Each piece, depending on its value, bears the symbol of a given country. The big players in international politics are personified by the “strong” pieces, while the small ones are the pawns. “Chess is a game that requires one to take account of many combinations and matches, and to predict results,” Janešlieva remarks. Her interest is focused on the victim, on the small pieces that may be sacrificed by logic unknown or unclear to them or – as it usually happens – because of circumstances that they cannot influence and which inevitably put them in a subordinate role. When the position you are in is potentially one of being a victim, the legitimacy of the community begins to assume the form of an oxymoron; it perceives itself as a “rough nuance” in the line of delicately nuanced diplomatic moves. “The Game” is a work without nuances; it does not have “rough nuances” either; it is a black-and-white manifestation of the being that seeks to perceive itself in realistic dimensions. Urošević’s installation is in a similar search of certain real dimensions of the views she has had, but which constantly change their specific value. “Phobias” is a motif through which she constantly seeks to find solutions to her own fascinations, but the works she creates continue to wash her up on unknown shores. In this attempt, she builds a textual story rooted in the past, in her parents and close relatives, and in the sequence of this story fact, fiction, logical chronicles and absurd events entwine. The starting point for the conflict that is to be resolved is the fiction that a family, having left its native (former country) Bessarabia, has taken the insects from that region as a precious memento of the life spent in it. The bugs symbolise fear and the way it is handled, which should be some sort of a way of overcoming it... but from here everything gets more complicated. In the context of a similar project, Urošević hinted of an element that could apply to this work as well – ‘fear of memories, but also fear of the loss of those memories...” The circular flow of these phobias produces works with a somatic effect. In these real phenomena from her own works, within herself or in her audience, she looks for the way to her own body. For quite some time now Šumkovski has been focused on the social motives for his urban solutions. Essentially, his work for this exhibition, entitled “Paralympics – Skopje 2052”, draws on, or extends the course of, the context from his installations/ambiences “Night Visions” from 1998/99 and R=1:2 R=1:200 from 2004. In the former he challenges the Olympic circles, while the latter deals with his early childhood friend Novica Kostovski-None, a disabled person whose ratio in comparison to other people is 1:2. A number of rough metaphors could be discerned in the project which was intended to veil, dim or entirely eliminate the basic motive for the exhibition – that is, the real care for this man who, in a renowned fine arts institution, was presented with an entire city of truly vast proportions and an “appropriate” ratio. My guess is that the humour and the wittiness, partly existing in the previous projects, will be clearly visible in this work – a number of people will be asked what they think about this evidently infeasible event (the footage from the survey will be shown behind the great model of the stadium envisaged for the event). If the presumption is accepted that the main forms of humour – the rough metaphors used in R=1:2 R=1:200 – are only a screen needed to conceal the reality of the care for the disabled, then in this case too the main purpose is to draw attention to this group of people. Projects of this kind, partially close to relational aesthetics, constitute not only a tendency to accept otherness but also a concrete step in overcoming conditions partially akin and close to the “Foreign Body”. It is a form of care for the other expressed in concrete action.
Lazo Plavevski |
2006
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