Inauguration
Jochen Gerz
Let me say some words about travelling. Before I came
here, I went to Dublin. The seats of Aer Lingus airplanes
are covered with writing quotes from books of the Irish
writer's up to the 20th centuries: Synge, Behan, Swift,
O'Cassey, Shaw, Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett and others.
Most of them had travelled in the sense that they left
behind their country. In the JAT plane for Belgrade the
seats were used as advertising for Pepsi Cola.
Continental Breakfast means you are not at home. In many
places it means something else: you can choose. It may
mean something else as well: to have time to sit down.
Travelling to an art exhibition can mean the worst is
over. Or it can mean: the worst is yet to come.
Continental Breakfast is an art exhibition. This means
we settle for the ordinary life in peace, which art is
a part of. Imagine the JAT seats with the manuscripts
and the signatures of the artists from this exhibition.
Imagine the passengers in the JAT plans finding out, reading,
understanding, or not understanding the thoughts of the
living artists from here, from Croatia, from Europe and
the other places in the world. What would it change? Maybe
not a lot. Maybe it means that as long as these planes
are flying, and artists are travelling to international
exhibitions for contemporary art the worst is over, or,
the worst is yet to come.
Belgrade was a well-known centre for contemporary art
since the sixties. In the sixties, seventies, eighties
in Belgrade and all over former Yugoslavia there were
many workshops, symposiums, meetings, performances, international
art exhibitions. After this Belgrade disappeared. We know
why. It is up to the Serbian people, artists or not, to
speak about this. They can and they must do this. So today
the opening of Continental Breakfast is a return to Belgrade.
Thank you for having us here, thank you for inviting us
back.
In the names of the artists - I think this is what I
was asked to do - I want to thank Anda Rottenberg. She
did here what she did before in Warsaw. She did it for
the first time. And I want to thank Dunja Blažević, Biljana
Tonić, Bojana Pejić and Ida Briard. They did not (take
part in?) do this exhibition, but they are part of the
reason why we are here today.
