suzana milevska internalisation ljubljana

8/7/2019 Suzana Milevska Internalisation Ljubljana

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/suzana-milevska-internalisation-ljubljana 1/57



Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje, 1967



• The Museum of Contemporary Art was

established in1964 as a political decisionput forward with an Act of the Skopje City

Assembly, in order to host the collection of

the art works that hundreds of international

artists donated to the city immediatelyafter the catastrophic 1963 Skopje

earthquake.



• With an exhibition area of over 3500 m2 and

total area of 5000 m2 with depots, cinema,

archives, library and other rooms serving thepurpose of this exceptionally important cultural

institution the new Museum building opened in

1970 as one of few museums of contemporary

art in the region.

• The project of the Museum building itself was

also a donation to the city by the Polisharchitects: J. Mokrzynski, E. Wierzbicki and W.

Klyzewski.



• Today the fund of donated works consists of around 4600 art works by several hundreds of artists in various media but the acquisitions are

rare and incidental.

• The works of the internationally well-known artistsare of special importance, but most of the worksthat are now in the museum depot either belong tothe early modernism and Czech Cubism (JanŠtursa, Václav Spála, Emil Filla, František Muzika,Jindrich Stýrský, Vojtech Preissig) or date from1950s -1970s: Fernand Léger, André Masson,

Pablo Picasso, Hans Hartung, Victor Vasarely,Alexander Calder, Pierre Soulages, HenrykStaževski, Alberto Burri, Christo, Enrico Bay,Robert Jacobsen, Etienne Hajdu, Zoltan Kemeny,Robert Adams, Emilio Vedova, Antoni Clavé,

Georg Baselitz...



http://www.msuskopje.org.mk/img/page/118.jpg



A polemic between Suzana Milevska and Viktorija Vasev Dimeska,

consisted of 7 texts published from 10 September – 16 October, 1990 that

was triggered by the text “The Perfectionism of the Obedient – or why the 2

Youth Biennial looks so classical”, Republika, 10 September 1990



Gallery 7, a tea shop,

hangout of ZERO group



Aleksandar Stankoski, The Last Supper, 1996



The statement "Hierarchies do not exist" offers an

example of performative contradiction referring to the very

capacity of making a statement, because the statement

itself is a hierarchy of semiotic relations of letters (as

symbols) formed into words (as signifiers) formed into a

sentence (as a statement).



• The vicious circle of institutional critique stems

out of its dichotomic nature. It inevitably entails a

certain position that exists out of or beyond anyinstitution in contrast to the criticised

institutional position.

• It implies a severe critique of the supposedlyautocratic (powerful) institutions and their

governance, in contrast to preferred democratic

(weak) institutions that by all accounts are

expected to deal with art and cultural production

in a more creative and liberal way.



• I want to argue that because of this

dichotomy any institutional critique‟sdiscourse paradoxically becomes

dangerously internalised, similarly to the

biopower and biopolitics that are initially itstargets. [i]

•

[i] Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri,Empire, London: Harvard University Press,

23-27.



• I am interested in tackling the set of questions that derive from such intrinsicdichotomic split within the institutional critique

that as its result has “unhappyconsciousness.” Such divided mode of consciousness Hegel called the "unhappyconsciousness" because the self is in conflictwith itself when there is no unity between self and other. [ii]

•[ii] Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich,Phenomenology of Spirit, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1979, 119-139.



• This "unhappy consciousness" of

the institutional critique is the

institutional consciousness that isconscious of itself as being

divided internally and as not being

able to reconcile itself with its"other" – the institutional system.



• On the other hand, the undivided

consciousness would be a dual self-consciousness which brings unity to the

self and the "other." In this text want to

argue that what stands behind the“unhappy consciousness” of theinstitutional critique is the performative

contradiction of contemporary societytoday that prevents such unity to take

place.



• the question to be asked here is what if sucha completely independent position of

institutional critique (beyond any institution)can not exist; what if one can utter relevantstatements only when there is a certaininstitutional framework (weak or strong) from

which position one speaks. Does this indicatethat the position of any institutional critique isthat of a double dialectics, always alreadysimultaneously self-legitimising and self-

legitimated and therefore strong butquestionable in implying the oppositionalshortcomings exactly because of relying onself-legitimated strength?



• The main paradox of the institutional critique is that atfirst sight it seems as if such position implies thatbecause of such performative contradiction anyinstitutional critique is always already impossible, aposited contradiction within itself in which theinterlocutors are entrapped since they deny thepossibility for communication and understanding. [iii]However, even if it were so, it would be relevant to

discuss the potentialities for other possible directions intransitional institutional critique in the context of thecountries of South East Europe.

•[iii] Habermas, Jürgen, “Discourse Ethics: Notes on a

Program of Philosophical Justification” in Habermas,Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans.C. Lenhardt and S.W. Nicholsen (Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press, 1990), 89.



• However what could be more evident

that the institutional critique is stillpossible and very much alive than that

individuals and communities still step

aside from the society, pass judgmenton it, and break free from the bonds of

ideology. By questioning and pursuing

truth these “rebels” could hope toachieve a kind of institutional

emancipation.



• If we try to recuperate the need for

institutional critique in post-socialistcontext from this perspective, despite of allcontradictions, the question from whichpolitical or social position such institutional

critique would speak becomes crucial(much more relevant than any professionalposition). Because of the crisis of legitimation and state authority in thetransitional period the institutional critiquebecame possible in more general andpolitical terms, and not only in terms of art

or cultural institutions.



• Therefore, it makes a big difference whether theinstitutional critique is:

• a singular position of an artist or culture producer

• a position of self-organised but not formalisedcommunity of art and culture producers

• a neo-liberal governmental position

• a conservative (nationalist) critique, or

• a non-governmental – democratic civic societyorganisation



• It is important to emphasise that even

though each of the above mentionedpositions entails different starting point

some of the objectives of these different

positions overlap and intertwine. Only if the agents of the institutional critique are

aware that their questions are formulated

from a certain institutional platform there

can be any relevant impact of the

institutional critique on the overall society.



• Self-consciousness of the institutional

critique is contradictory because it is

conscious of both sameness and otherness.The contradictions of governmentality, self-

governance and self-organisation are only

few of these contradictions.

• The fundamental challenge of each

government is how to govern but not toomuch or as Michel Foucault famously put it:



• „The suspicion that one always risks governing

too much is inhabited by the question: Why, infact one must govern?...In other words, what

makes it necessary for there to be a

government, and what ends should it pursue

with regard to society in order to justify itsexistence?‟ [iv]

• [iv] Foucault, Michael, Ethics, Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Editor: Paul Rabinow, New

York: The New Press, 1997, 74-75.



• The “art of government” for Foucault isactually something that does not entail any

universalised distinction between differentgoverning systems.

• „Instead of making the distinction betweenstate and civil society into a historicaluniversal that allows us to examine all theconcrete systems, we can try to see it as aform of schematization characteristic of aparticular technology of government.‟ [v]

• [v] Foucault 75.



• According to Gerald Raunig „not only resistiveindividuals, but also progressive institutions andcivil society NGOs operate on the same plane of

governmentality.‟ [vi]• The main attribute of parrhesia is not the

possession of truth, which is made public in acertain situation, but the taking of the risk, the „factthat a speaker says something dangerous -something other than what the majority believes.‟[vii]

• [vi] Raunig, Gerald, „The Double Criticism of parrhesia:Answering the Question "What is a Progressive (Art)Institution?"‟ 18 September 2007<http://www.republicart.net/disc/institution/raunig04_en.pgf > 1.

• [vii] Raunig, „The Double Criticism‟ 2.



• Raunig actually refers to Foucault‟s statementthat makes difference between “classical Greekconception of parrhesia” - constituted by the one

who dare “to tell the truth to other people” and anew truth game which entails being “courageousenough to disclose the truth about oneself ." [viii]

• The activity of uttering truth is much moreimportant than truth put in opposition to the lie or to something "false."

•

• [viii] Michel Foucault, Diskurs und Wahrheit,Berlin 1996, p.14 (cf. discussion of parrhesia inEnglish:<http://foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/>, 150,quoted according to Raunig, „The Double

Criticism of parrhesia‟ 2.

http://foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/

http://foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/



• According to Raunig a productive game

emerges through the relationship betweenactivists and institution so that the socialcriticism and institutional criticismintertwine the political and personalparrhesia. It is only by linking the twoparrhesia techniques that a one-sidedinstrumentalization can be avoided, that

the institutional machine is saved fromclosing itself off, that the flow betweenmovement and institution can bemaintained.



• Instead assuming that the institution internalisedthe power through the instruments of governing

only because it is an institution that standshigher on the hierarchy, perhaps it would bemore constructive to remember that theinstitutions of power are all around us and thatbiopolitics reaches much further than only in itsown institution. The acknowledgment of thiscomplex entanglement of the power, itsinstitutions and its critique could bring us closer to a sober and refined critical position that would

be up to the job of institutional critique of todayin which process different institutions couldcontribute with both critiquing of the others‟practices but also with self-critical approach.



• Therefore, in addition to Raunig‟s proposal for applying of parrhesia as a double strategy (as

an attempt of engagement in a process of refutation, and as self-questioning) I wouldsuggest that the dialogical critique offers a moreappropriate model of institutional critique in

terms of positive agency of action. I suggest thata kind of deconstruction of the one-way critiqueinherited by the 70s and 90s institutional critiquemodels would entail collaborative policy thatcould engage both state and independentinstitutions on the same critical projects in order to suggest and promote institutional activity asconstructive institutional self-developingcriticality.



• In particularly the shift in the institutional critique can bediscussed by taking into consideration the shift of the

role of the contemporary art museums in SEE and thechange of their monopoly position in the regional artscene that occurred because of some new criticalcuratorial practices and of the appearance of smallindependent but very active art institutions such as kuda-

Novi Sad, p74 – Ljubljana, WHW-Zagreb, Remont-Belgrade, press to exit project space – Skopje, Stacion –Prishtina, etc.

• Especially relevant are some recent collaborationsbetween the state and non-governmental initiatives andprojects that tend to overcome the performativecontradiction in institutional critique and its unhappy consciousness or some projects that deal with the

institutional critique in a more positive and visionary way.



• From 2004 dates a series of ten digital

photographs “Legend About the “legen”(Mac. bucket) that the artist SašoStanojkoviќ took in the upper floor of theMuseum of Contemporary Art. The

photographs show the colourful plasticbucket installation that instead of the

collection was “hosted” by the Museum for

almost fifteen years (reproduced inContemporary, London, Nu.70, 2005, 20.)



Saso Stanojkovik, The Legend about Legen (bucket), 2004



• Taking into account that floods of dirty

„rivers‟ are frequent sights in the Museum

after each rainy day some projects

exhibited in the Museum (such as theMozart’s Boat by Antoni Maznevski

consisting of a 6.5 m wooden boat that

was also presented in Venice), soundedas a critique even when they were not

meant to be.



Yane Calovski and Hristina Ivanoska │ Oskar Hansen’s Museum of Modern Art │

a series of 12 original posters in limited edition

(in close collaboration with the German designer: Ariane Spanier)



The project presents a hypothetical program of the “lost”

museum designed by Oskar Hansen in 1966 for the

competition for the contemporary art museum in Skopje.

The competition for the best design of a new art institution

was organized by the Polish government as a gesture of

solidarity with the earthquake tragedy on 26th of July 1963,

and was open exclusively to architects from Poland and

other Eastern Block countries.



Oskar Hansen‟s proposal was based on peculiar

assumptions: the museum was to consist of “a

transformable exhibition space, able to fold completely and

then unfold into various combinations, with hexagonal

elements lifted by hydraulically-powered rotating

telescopes.” In this way the structure would transform in

horizontal and vertical dimensions at the same time.



In the proposal the architect wrote:

“Art in its development is unpredictable.

We have assumed that a contemporary gallery should

pursue the unknown in art.

It shouldn’t only aim at exhibiting artworks, but also

encouraging and provoking their birth.”



Hansen‟s design was not implemented.

The jury finally selected a design submitted

by a team of three Polish architects:

W. Klyzewski, J. Mokrzynski and E. Wierzbicki

and the Museum of Contemporary Art that was

established with the collection of donated works

already in 1964 was built according to their project in 1967.





http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4420138&id=81726680105



• Reconstruction of the Museum buildingMarch - October 2007

•• With the financial support of the Decentralization Programme in the Fields

of Education and Culture of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it ispossible to approach this year to the project for reconstruction of the roof of the Skopje Museum of Contemporary Art, and to solve the problem that isfor several years a serious obstacle in the work of the Museum.

•• The reconstruction project was made to repair structurally damaged parts of

the roof and to stop its leaking and threatening devastation of the building.

•• The project will bring back to use the entire museum space, and most

importantly it will enable regular exhibition program with the preciousmuseum collection, which was closed for several years due to badconditions. The project also considers complete interior reconstruction andredesigning of one of the main rooms for temporary exhibitions, and in order to enable better security, lighting and climate conditions.

•• The works started in March and were completed in October 2007. The total

value of investment is around € 350.000. The management of the overallprogramme has been entrusted to the International Management Group(IMG).



today



today

New investments in culture:- obvious preferences for antiquity and

archaeology rather than for contemporary

art

- an attempt to stage a context for a newly

constructed continuity in the Macedonian

identity since antiquity with renaming of

streets and institutions, commissions of public monuments of personalities from

antic history, etc.



The building of the Government Republic of Macedonia, since 2007



Alexander the Great, 12 m,

suzana milevska internalisation ljubljana

Documents