editorial
UNBEARABLE? LIGHTNESS? WEIGHT? OF ARTISTIC? FREEDOM?
Artistic practices are now directly confronted with political operations, are structurally induced to "compete" with them, but artistic "competition" with politics is, sit venia verbo, disloyal: the arts cheat in their endeavour to occupy the same structural place as politics - since the operation they are to perform from this point is an exact inversion of the totalising political gesture; hence the familiar confusion of conflict and misunderstanding between arts and politics in post-revolutionary situations. (Rastko Močnik)
The failed encounter between theory/ criticism/ institutional framework and contemporary art in Slovenia occured precisely in the field of resistance. Or, to put this differently, their - theory/ criticism/ official institutions - common denominator which they happily share is creativity, but without resistance! (Marina Gržinić)
The question is not whether I like what I see or not; the crucial thing is rather how I am seen. This is a much more profound question, and every artist, every person writing about art, should ask himself this question. It is also related to another question: what is my relationship to the mode of looking that I cannot appropriate, that must remain entirely alien to me for systemic reasons, since it is a mode of looking at me? (Boris Groys)
The so-called aesthetic and artistic pluralism of the nineties and the present day is by no means a consequence of the knowledge of the pros and cons of the liberal-capitalist democratic model, but rather a symptom of the postmodern egosystem in which the subject as a total work of art must perform his own existential authenticity in various fixed or neologistic forms of identity. To sum up: pluralism and variation today do not manifest themselves in content, but rather in a myriad of producing entities, institutes, that the artist founds like private businesses or trademarks and then - in exactly the same way as trade companies - subject to market logic, without questioning the whole process in any way. (Rok Vevar)
Artistic practices are now directly confronted with political operations, are structurally induced to "compete" with them, but artistic "competition" with politics is, sit venia verbo, disloyal: the arts cheat in their endeavour to occupy the same structural place as politics - since the operation they are to perform from this point is an exact inversion of the totalising political gesture; hence the familiar confusion of conflict and misunderstanding between arts and politics in post-revolutionary situations. (Rastko Močnik)
The failed encounter between theory/ criticism/ institutional framework and contemporary art in Slovenia occured precisely in the field of resistance. Or, to put this differently, their - theory/ criticism/ official institutions - common denominator which they happily share is creativity, but without resistance! (Marina Gržinić)
The question is not whether I like what I see or not; the crucial thing is rather how I am seen. This is a much more profound question, and every artist, every person writing about art, should ask himself this question. It is also related to another question: what is my relationship to the mode of looking that I cannot appropriate, that must remain entirely alien to me for systemic reasons, since it is a mode of looking at me? (Boris Groys)
The so-called aesthetic and artistic pluralism of the nineties and the present day is by no means a consequence of the knowledge of the pros and cons of the liberal-capitalist democratic model, but rather a symptom of the postmodern egosystem in which the subject as a total work of art must perform his own existential authenticity in various fixed or neologistic forms of identity. To sum up: pluralism and variation today do not manifest themselves in content, but rather in a myriad of producing entities, institutes, that the artist founds like private businesses or trademarks and then - in exactly the same way as trade companies - subject to market logic, without questioning the whole process in any way. (Rok Vevar)
Maska, Institute for Publishing, Production and Education
Metelkova 6
SI-1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia
Europe
Tel.: + 386 1 431 31 22
+ 386 1 431 53 48
Fax.: + 386 1 431 31 22
info@maska.si
©..maska 2003. All rights reserved