Anda Rottenberg
Continental Breakfast
Coffee, cream, juice, a croissant, butter and jam - this
typically French breakfast, known throughout the world
as the "continental" breakfast, has become a
concept strictly associated with European identity and
culture.
Characteristically, other meals that today are fully
international (pizza being one example) continue to be
associated with their countries of origin - so this is
not a question of their popularity, but rather one of
cultural rootedness. The concept of the continental breakfast
is the product of an era when France dictated the standards
which defined the cultural level of Western civilization.
Much has changed since then, but certain concepts and
their underlying stereotypes continue to determine standards
of thinking applied to the Old Continent. The art of today,
which focuses in an unprecedented manner on the observation
of social behavior and on political discourse, testifies
to the continued life of these outdated stereotypes in
the "new Europe".
These observations ring particularly true in a Balkan
cultural context that seems out of character with the
image of the Old World which history has shaped.
MEMORY
LEVEL OF CONSUMPTION
AROUND THE TABLE
TRADITION IN
TRANSITION
COMMUNICATION
IDENTITY
MEMORY
A sense of identity is delineated and constructed through
consolidation of collective memory concerning mainly two
spheres of spiritual life: custom and trauma - which are
most often strongly linked. Mimesis - memory
- builds tradition and social bonds based on a projection
of history shaped by subjective experience.
This projection produces a different image of events
than that provided by History, but it also applies to
a more limited scope of areas, covers a narrow set of
people and matters - most often of the painful kind. Marked
by strong emotion, this type of memory is of little value
as a source material for historians, who feed on facts.
However, facts very often result directly and precisely
from the pressures of emotion.
Though rather obvious, these interdependencies are easily
effaced in our minds, especially when our experience is
limited to a reality that is superficial, familiar, "current".
However, a slight disruption of societal equilibrium is
enough to activate a sequence of causes and effects, a
sequence accelerated by memories of trauma within which
local reasoning has little to do with rationality.
The confrontation of "longer" and "shorter"
memory can be seen in much of the exhibition. Discernable
are "objective" stances that involve analyzing
historical facts from the World War II period while remaining
immersed in a context of traumatic testimonies of more
recent military interventions aimed at "securing
the peace" in a corner of Europe forgotten by the
world - a corner that did not, in cultural terms, match
the stereotype based on the French breakfast.
Let us note that Yugoslavia appeared on the map of Europe
as a consequence of World War I, a conflict sparked by
an assassination in Sarajevo. However, the few years of
World War II were enough to provoke hostility among the
recently liberated nations and to generate a hatred between
neighbors more enduring than their memory of centuries
of enslavement. Milica Tomic reminds us of this in her
interview with former members of guerilla units that fought
under Josip Tito's command.
Their attitude to the war remains passionate, their belief
in the cause - unchanged. This testimony contrasts strongly
with the "Nazis" series of Piotr Uklanski, which
explores the over-aestheticized "second-hand memory"
that the media, and above all the film world, have superimposed
on our image of historical facts. The artist's indicting
demonstration of a process that has trivialized wartime
horrors through surrogate, visually attractive narratives
of recent history has not elicited rational reactions
everywhere. Polish society, which cultivates a traumatic
memory of the war, continues to react more strongly to
the sight of an enemy uniform than to the context in which
it appears.
Yet the image held of Nazis today is more fraught with
consequences for the future of Europe than is any blurred
knowledge of historical truth.
Displacement of historical memory results in tragedies
that occupy current memory, which focuses on recent events.
The Yugoslavia of Josip Tito, maintained in ostensible
unity for almost half a century, disintegrated when Communism
collapsed. Local animosities, suppressed for years, exploded
with surprising force that brought new state organisms
to life and added new sources of trauma. This is confirmed
in a number of works devoted to the shock of a painful
transition: the aircraft overhead in Milena Gordic's passageway;
the ruined hangar whose walls Nenad Kostic decorated during
his recent military service; the photographs of sites
of oppression by Maria Jankovic; finally, Lidija Antanasijevic's
"egalitarian monument" of ordered bullet-casings,
dedicated to the victims of the NATO intervention in Serbia
- which contrasts so strongly with Ana Pocuca's "generalized"
tombstone of those who died a common death.
The experience of dealing with "peacekeeping forces"
is imposing a new matrix on the hard-drive of Serbian
collective memory. The children who experienced the recent
intervention will be the carriers of this memory, and
a harbinger of the image that will dominate this generation's
memory is contained in the new work by Marina Abramovic,
mockingly titled "Count on Us". Marked by the
shock of civil war, all these pieces acquire a special
meaning in the context of Vladislav Scepanovic's portrait
series, which depicts the new "heroes of our times"
and is displayed in a building designed to commemorate
the enlightened rule of Marshall Tito, that is, the museum
bearing his name.
Christian Boltanski reveals, and distributes post cards
of, a handful of the more than ten thousand gifts that
Tito received and the museum now stores. The prosthesis
of memory, designed to make past glory last a moment longer.
Models of once modern machines, trains, ships and factories,
medals bestowed by the leaders of other nations, finally,
artworks, furniture and folk art - today, they have the
charm of antiques and are reminiscent of votive offerings
left in a shrine. Perhaps the sole exception is the majestic
Rolls Royce, which retains its former value. Dragan Srdic's
small installation contributes to this aura of a style
long past and a system long dismantled, pointing out the
course of ideological change, expressed through two cult
objects - the red star and Madonna.
Memory carries trauma, but it may also involve guilt
and elicit the reconciliatory behavior that derives from
this: apologies and pleas for forgiveness, that is, proposals
to forget. Bogna Burska and Nikoleta Markovic show us
conciliatory ceremonies involving the supreme dignitaries
of this world. The ritualistic, tribal principles that
are the source of the criminal behavior of entire nations
are also embodied in expiatory actions leading to catharsis.
Yet this can only be achieved through magical faith in
salvation by the power of the word, which must offset
the burden of the crime. Indeed, the Ancients were naďve
to believe the proverb "Historia est vitae magister".
We have learned very little through several thousand years
of human civilization - and we continue to live more by
the Code of Hammurabi than by the Decalogue.
LEVEL OF CONSUMPTION
Today's Europe cannot be divided classically into a Catholic
West and an Orthodox East, nor into a wealthy North and
a poor South. Forgotten are the historical reasons that
saw this continent's civilization as deriving from the
Middle East and the Mediterranean basin. Today's Europe
is divided into Old and New according to entirely new
economic criteria shaped by post-war political divisions.
The conferences at Teheran and Yalta determined the living
standards of hundreds of millions of people for the next
half-century. We need not add that the Old Europe benefited
from this arrangement. It was also where the concept of
consumerism appeared - a concept that implies both a level
of consumption and a style thereof.
Consumerism became an important factor of social life
and custom, which was reduced to the imperative: buy more
- spend less. In recording an assault en masse on a supermarket
offering every product at a mere 99 cents, Andreas Gursky
indicates not only the power of consumer gambling but
also the demoralizing nature of the overproduction of
goods. Overproduction in turn requires goods to be visually
attractive; no one will ever eat the same kind of sausage
every day.
In Belgium, Wim Delvoye found deli meats in such a variety
that he was able use them to arrange a fantastic, many-shaded
pattern that from a distance evokes a carefully arrayed
marble floor - a symbol of luxury. It is only logical
that marble floors should be trod upon in the appropriate
footwear. The best shoes cannot be crowded, they must
be isolated - just as those whose expensive solitude Andreas
Gursky illustrates in another photograph (Prada).
From his or her position, the discriminating consumer
cannot see the zones of poverty, where no one considers
choosing between different shoes and sausages, where there
are no 99 cent offers, and where consumption is downgraded
to the level of excretion. Borys Mikhailov explores these
zones in his photo portraits of the homeless of Kharkov
(Ukraine), who are ready to be humiliated in exchange
for a small fee. Once the most fertile in Europe, it was
in this region that Joseph Stalin caused millions to die
by famine. The consumption of human flesh was thus neither
a question of taste nor a reversion to tribal ritual.
Human hunger is an effective tool of oppression, one
experienced by the millions confined to labor camps. Unlike
literature, art has thus far failed to tackle this thorny
topic, though the issue of an oppressive level of consumption
- defined as the "shitting level" - was examined
by Miroslaw Balka in one of his early works. In some circumstances,
oppression might entail being forced to travel an ordained
path, an idea implied by the work the artist has created
for this exhibition. A slight adjustment of function,
a light shift in emphasis are enough to turn a swimming
pool - something that serves athletic and recreational
purposes - into the vestibule of hell.
Less radical but more common was another oppressive
invention, one made popular solely in the Soviet Union:
the communal kitchen (and bathroom). The site of the everyday,
private dramas of millions of citizens, a field of endless
battles over priority to burners and pot positions, a
terrain of unceasing discussions about how potato peelings
should be disposed of and about who will rinse the sink,
they were the reason for hundreds of thousands of emotional
denunciations that resulted, more frequently than we might
imagine, in entire families being "resettled,"
i.e. banished, to distant republics. Ilya Kabakov and
his wife Emilia - both of whom possess an intimate knowledge
of the phenomenon - show these kitchens in their entire
complexity.
How innocent by comparison seems the lovely backside
of Michelangelo Pistolettos model - protruding towards
us, the consumers of European civilization.
AROUND THE TABLE
Along with the throne and the bed, the table belongs
to those objects which possess a universally understood
symbolism, one that is above all Christian in nature and
that is highlighted and has been popularized by canonical
works of European art - and by Leonardo above all. No
wonder that artists today refer to his "Last Supper"
in exploring issues of the ideologization of everyday
life. Dalibor Martinis does just that in offering us a
virtual supper that transports the table service and apostolic
tasks into the fictional realm; the projection of the
painting becomes a projection of our wishful dreams, distant
from reality.
By contrast, Andrey Filippov brings us down to a hard
reality in which, instead of the bread and wine of the
Eucharist, the table is set with the hammer and sickle,
symbols of a completely dissimilar faith and an entirely
different "transfiguration" - one considered
miraculous by the ideologues of Communism. A literally
internal metamorphosis occurs before our eyes in another
symbol: the ominous Serbian eagle, which Raša Todosijević
has been citing in various configurations since the 1970s.
For the first time, it "contains" an omen of
peace and prosperity. The optimistic message, however,
seems contradicted by the eagle's "coffered"
form: angular and predatory. Apart from its symbolic role,
the table continues to have a practical one: it is used
in consuming meals. The canonical continental breakfast
of a civilized man requires the appropriate settings and
the morning paper. Kader Attia presents a model of such
a table on the day when the occupying armies in Iraq discovered
Saddam Hussein in his hideout.
A new image of the Iraqi tyrant appeared on the front
pages of the world's newspapers: his confused gaze, tangled
beard and crumpled clothing rendered him a pursued, terrified
human. While drinking our morning coffee, we participated
in this global hunt. Does the concept of the "continental
breakfast" have any meaning? Can we escape soulless
globalization by reverting to local customs?
Vlatko Gilić has filmed preparations for the slaughter
of cattle by traditional, manual methods, in a small slaughterhouse
that is certainly not far from Belgrade. The men sharpen
their knives. We do not see the slaughter, but there is
blood that will fertilize the soil and bring a better
harvest. The cleaning is also traditional: a woman with
a bucket of water and a rag. From beginning to end, all
this is "inhumane," "unhygienic" and
contradictory to European standards - it has no chance
of surviving in the New Europe.
Franc Purg examines local cattle slaughtering traditions
without sparing us the sight of an animal being slain
and its carcass being carved. Why spoil peoples appetite?
In civilized society, a veil of social hypocrisy conceals
the process of the slaughter. Any revelation thereof could
result in an explosion of aggression from animal rights
defenders. Katarzyna Kozyra learned this when she filmed
and publicly showed the process of slaughtering and stuffing
a horse.
The idea, however, is not to leave animals in peace and
to feed solely on plants, but to prevent nicely packaged
veal cuts from evoking any thoughts of the living animal
or scenes from the slaughterhouse. Similarly, we isolate
the dying from society and force ourselves to deal only
with the elegantly decorated coffin. We live in a civilization
that thrives on euphemisms. Purg, however, proves that
the sight of slaughter does little to spoil the diners'
appetites; rather, it agrees with the order of things:
if you want to eat an animal, you must first kill it.
Only then can a meal be made. Anri Sala patiently observes
the painstaking preparation of the traditional Albanian
dish called byrek (known in Serbia as bourek), strictly
according to a recipe mailed to the artist by his grandmother.
Though old and worn, the hands of the cook are skillful.
Beyond the kitchen window, jets incessantly land and take
off, constituting a clear reminder: time has accelerated
and might run out before the ceremony can be repeated.
TRADITION IN TRANSITION
Grandmother's recipe will not win out against time; byrek
will never replace pizza. In any culture other than its
own, its presence is sentimental; it is like the dance
to no music in Danica Dakic's astonishing video. Local
tradition transforms with political and financial systems;
strong money displaces weak money, though in some cases
this takes a long time. In his photographic series, Cosmin
Gradinaru shows the Roma of Romania already using automobiles,
though for the time being merely as tops for their horse-drawn
wagons; taken over by western capital, local factories
adopt a new style - machinery and staff work to techno
beats (Petar Vukoičić, Radoš Antonijević, Sreten Stajković,
Nebojša Simić) and workers have a brighter future (Deimantas
Narkevicius).
The new is invading sites seemingly immune to fashion
-cemeteries. People still observe the custom of bringing
the deceased their favorite consumables, but gifts today
are no longer limited to homemade wine and local tobacco
goods. These have been replaced by Marlboro cigarettes
and Coca-Cola, which for peace of mind are carved in marble
and served as in a café, i.e. on a table (Mileta Prodanović).
But Coca-Cola itself has been transformed. For instance,
it marches in tight ranks to the lively melody of "Katyusha"
(Davor Dzalto); thus a state monopoly based on ideology
is transformed into a private monopoly... based on vast
capital.
Young designers respond to European norms by devising
sanitary containers for the standard continental breakfast
("Prepack" by Biljana Milenović and Rastko Lazić).
Traditional alcohols are Europeanized (Antea Arizanović's
"Elixir of Transition" is half local rakiya
and half "Ginco Bilobil," a medicinal plant
extract of Chinese provenance) as are popular board games
from the USA ("Europoly" by Dejan Kaluđjerović),
central to which are the light-weight, voluminous bags
commonly used by illegally employed "tourists"
from Eastern Europe. A game might also determine the shape
given to broken porcelain when repaired or even whether
the porcelain should be glued back together (Srdjan Vukajlović).
Gambling and alcohol - enduring plagues of public life
that continue to be tolerated under law - evoke a well-known
proverb: "Easy come, easy go," which refers
to the supra-national recklessness that deserves at least
one term in purgatory if we are to judge by Dante's criteria.
Jochen Gerz draws on "The Divine Comedy" when
he encourages those who live in luxury to take up the
morally ambiguous activity of begging in an effort to
gather something they can share with friends in need.
Dante's story, carved as a reminder and warning into
the wall of a building in Siena, remains applicable to
many other morally vague actions that are more common
than they seem - here and now, anywhere else and at any
other time. Gerz tests us, offering to rent a stool that
will keep us comfortable as we balance at honestyćs edge.
Clearly, Italy of Dante's time had no monopoly on the
tendency to find moral niches and on creative approaches
to the Decalogue.
The weaknesses named above still look quite innocent
compared to drug addiction. Every few years an aggressive,
global underground offers a new generation of opiates
and synthetics. Their use no longer resembles the archaic
procedures involved in smoking opium, while their addicts
look like any one of us - at least for some time. This
is the story Johannes Kahrs recounts in his series of
paintings and drawings, and Milan Kilibard and Ivan Krstanovski
tell in their video titled "Movement," which
is very short and lasts the few minutes required to prepare
a "hit."
What we have is the movement of a fluid - from syringe
into vein. Veins might also be penetrated for a different
purpose - to extract blood, save lives, as evoked in the
actions of Roza El Hassan. Sometimes, life and death are
determined by the directional flow of fluids. Thus, we
arrive at the realm of the body and its physiology along
with the entire market - European and global, upon which
genetically unmodified foods are becoming ever more rare.
In the spirit of the times, Joanna Rajkowska has devised
a "production line" for health drinks based
on body fluids. We share our bodies with others, and if
need be, we can buy any organ we might require (though
for now, only on the black market). No wonder that in
Maja Rakočević's sugar heart a symbolic aesthetic yields
to a realism which reminds us that this object, too, is
an organ.
COMMUNICAITION
This concept's 20th century development has been impressive.
A look at its etymology shows that - in its deepest sense
- it pertains to the spiritual sphere of community. We
say komuna to denote both the recently abandoned political
system as well as a group of hippies adhering to anarchy;
communication is means of transportation - i.e. public
transportation that brings many people together at one
time, but also systems of conveying information.
Communiqué is another word for a publicized piece of
information; komunikant (in the Christian religions) is
the symbolic product of the transfiguration of body and
blood into bread and wine consumed during the liturgy,
but it also means a participant of the liturgical ceremony.
Vladan Radovanović seeks to reveal the true meaning of
the term "communion," which becomes clear in
the context of the "culturally foreign" architecture
of the Turkish seray. Egle Rakauskaite also draws on the
concept of communion in producing chocolate crucifixes
- a tastier and more nutritious product of transfiguration.
Today, yet another meaning of this concept is of key
importance: understanding. This might occur when different
people have identical things in mind in uttering the same
words. Perhaps this is what Wittgenstein had in mind when
he stated that the meaning of a word is its substance.
Nebojsa Milikic's and Nathalie Waldbaum's "European"
English lesson demonstrates that understanding can be
a very difficult task; we seldom understand ourselves
and even more rarely understand others, especially if
they use a different language.
Any attempt to comprehend an unknown language is a heroic
effort at achieving understanding, a gesture towards another
(Dragana Žarevac). Perhaps we find this difficult because
we exist within established patterns and conceptual clichés?
Esra Ersen reveals the emptiness of concepts like "Europe"
and "Asia," whose absurdity becomes obvious
on the bridge that links the two shores of the Bosphorus
and creates a single city once called Constantinople and
known today as Istanbul, a city that bears traces of a
magnificent culture that shaped European tastes for centuries.
To escape the established, at times we try to convey
silent messages and seek understanding looks - as do Jelena
Martinović and Nenad Glišić. The eyes may also become
an interactive field - we know how to read codes linked
to shape and iris color. Luckily, the "eye of the
camera" and electronic sensors have no personality
traits. They react to signals altogether different from
those to which our own genetic code reacts.
Emil Mirazchiev has constructed an "early warning
system" which activates aggressive virtual dogs that
bark at the observer from television screens. This may
indeed be a vision of the future: advanced technology
against deeply atavistic feelings of fear.
IDENTITY
The number of factors determining identity is almost
unlimited today. Officially, documents and cards that
bear our photograph serve to identify us. These are ever
increasing in number, especially if we travel - for citizens
of certain parts of Europe (the continent in question)
need passports and often a valid visa to travel to other
parts. The status of these people becomes their identity.
This may be why Ivana Jaksic painstakingly reproduces
on canvas the artful patterns and representations that
adorn travel documents. Visas are inserted into passports
that underline our affiliation to a specific state. The
affiliation is by agreement and imposes a similar artificial
identity that carries limitations on freedom linked to
the status of a citizen. With his abstract design composed
of the flags of various countries, Milan Aleksić proposes
an equally artificial effacement of manmade borders and
their symbols.
Though national flags may indeed become an abstract composition
one day, this is not likely to occur with the symbols
of football teams, whose colors, transferred to the scarves
of fans, become the symbols of yet another identity, symbols
that are often more widely recognized than national flags
(Zdravko Joksimović). Given such an extensive code of
affiliations, privacy becomes a difficult matter. Those
wishing to remain anonymous might, like Vladimir Vinkić,
adopt protective coloring.
We inherit another identity from our place of birth
and where we live. These places themselves have an identity,
one that is sometimes programmed. This was the case throughout
the entire Socialist block, where the 1960s witnessed
the introduction of a limited modernism in architecture
and design, a program that was to demonstrate the humanitarian
dimension of the socio-political system. It is reflected
in the architecture of the 25 May Museum, the Museum of
Tito in Belgrade - as impersonal as many residential blocks
in this part of Europe. Zdenka Badovinac in recent research
identified this as the intention underlying the "appropriation"
of modernism, and Eva Maria Wilde does similarly in her
project.
The identity of a place is not always perceptible and
is diluted in times of transition, when the outmoded,
previously shaped framework is overlaid with the makeup
of a novel style and new customs. Filipa Cesar seeks to
pinpoint Belgrade's identity by photographing places entirely
different from those which the city's inhabitants have
identified as their favorites to Paula Miklošević. Jelica
Radovanović and Dejan Anđelković restore the identity
of a decaying Turkish bathhouse by re-enacting forgotten
ceremonies. These gestures are essential in an age when
the new supersedes the old quickly and in every sphere
of life - which is particularly true of this part of Europe.
The rate of change is not identical for all spheres.
We change what we wear most frequently, because that is
what fashion demands. If we cannot afford original, brand
name clothing, we can still get it second hand. Though
somewhat less fashionable, it is nevertheless a source
of pride, as we see in the photographs of Aleksandrija
Ajduković. We may also go the way of counterfeits, and
Žana Poliakov shows us a vast array.
Both imitations and original goods are manufactured where
labor is cheap, for example, in India (as we see in the
work of Lada Cerar and Sašo Sedlaček). There is no difference
in how they are made. The label determines the price.
Are we not slaves to emblems? Practically everything we
have and do defines us; even our manner of tying our shawl
can have serious consequences (Maja Radanović). There
is no such thing as a "man without features"
-that would be Musil's dream scenario. The sole exception
is the worldwide, completely universal, imperceptible
identity of the homemaker. Except where, like Vlasta Delimar,
she appears in a window display to show the world what
a woman does in the kitchen.
Art in Europe focuses on reality. Reality is not the
same all over Europe. As a result, art varies, as do breakfasts.
The French-style breakfast is not consumed throughout
the continent. Yet artists still refer to the good, old
Renaissance tradition - even if, like Dušan Otašević,
they live in Serbia. It is uncertain if it is good or
bad that no one in the Old Europe knows this.
