The exhibition “Minute of silence” results from an appeal to the artists to react to the moments in their lives/experience when they had to, by their own will or decision or forced by circumstances, draw away from the past, go on, leave something behind. Connotations that we discussed varied from the intimate, sometimes even tragic moments, to the social context of our lives that we would like to put in the past tense. The title “Minute of silence” also stands for the social convention of commemorating the deceased, as well as the moments in lives when we bare farewell to something external and stay in our own world. This imposed the situation in which the artists’works bear elevated individuality or intimacy.
The choice of artists presumed that those who are already mature, grown up persons, with personal as well as professional experience, would respond with more ease. Thus the trendy younger generation of artists was skipped by.
At the same time, the choice was very personal. I invited those artists with whom I collaborated rarely or never in the past, but whose work is very close to me and which I know very well, without being always and completely intimate.
I have invited Damir Babic, Alen Floricic, Zlatko Kopljar, Ksenija Turcic and Vlado Zrnic, not succeeding to fulfill my own wish to keep the equal count of female and male artists. They all accepted the invitation, except Damir Babic who gave up and who did not reveal his “minute of silence”.
The result of the exhibition is somewhat unexpected. However, exhibited works contain mostly the life, the physical and bodily manifestations. Is it because in the end life always overcomes or because in those most difficult separations only physical reaction confirms that contemplation is not sufficient?
Vlado Zrnic expresses his minute of silence immaterially and invisibly. He conjures it up in a manner that audience can experience physically. He uses the sound to provoke the vibrations of every membrane in our organism that quivers with frequencies that we try to escape in that transitional process of separation from what we were and how we lived. In fact, he interpolates into our bodies the physical reflexes that we know from the most difficult moments we have lived through. Zrnic, master of associations and provocations with details, is not engaged for the first time in his oeuvre with physical reaction and body. With this sublime sound installation he compresses the “minute” into even shorter time sector, the very one in which we experience the climax of feelings, the flash of cognition that we cannot withstand.
Constant repetition, spell, mantra of the same acoustic and physical rhythm gives us time to rationalize our feelings, decide. It offers us the possibility to really experience our feelings, to give time to the spirit, not to be the body alone. It still remains unknown if this is about tragic, difficult and puzzling or exhausting moment. It is sure that we are going to experience that moment again and the experience of this work will probably be remembered and not surprising component in our future minutes of silence.
With the multicomponent work K8 Zlatko Kopljar also, and quite literally, brings the physical aspect into his part of the exhibition. Performance that initiates the work and during which letting of Kopljar’s blood is performed, could be explained as sacrifice, pain, way to death, but also healing. Installation of the object, transparent and clean in which the blood remains exhibited during the exhibition as well as after it, gives the silence a monumental duration, more lasting than a minute. Components of pureness, sterility and conservation of blood in a hermetically closed vessel bring additional spirituality into the whole procedure.
It is not less important to bear in mind that Kopljar has already used blood in his works, previously animal blood and now his own. The title of this work, K8 (engraved into the lid of the vessel) also follows the line of continuity and, although we might find many more elements that we know from the earlier Kopljar’s work, this time he does not speak only through himself, but also about himself, but not only about himself personally, but himself as an artist and about his role, intimate feeling, as well as social position. He also speaks about the artists’temptations today, society today, which is also important, and the audience today, that, as I write this, I don’t know how will react to the performance. These Kopljar’s works originate from very different times, the earlier ones were created during the war and today’s work in the times of life. This time it is not the role of an individual in sense of “humanity” on test, but above all the role of human-artist-Kopljar. We witness the intimate and personal act of exposure of the most important body liquid as it evolves in front of us in not conventional space, in the gallery, but in a conventional manner, very similar to the convention that we take part of when we pay our tribute in public space with the minute of silence. Then, as here, we participate in a social event that is actually meant for our intimate contemplation.
Although he also expresses himself physically, Alen Floricic actually deals with (ir)rational reaction, mental and not physical reflex. He lays the scene of his video in a restroom, regarding it as pithy and rich place for encounters with self, connecting it rather with its cleanliness than with its dirt. Here Floricic comes closer to more lively and more conscious experience of transitional moments, those “between” the past and the future and right now he is offering us the possibility to participate. Besides, Floricic is in his work, as well as Kopljar, dealing with position of the artist on scene, which he considers a bit superfluous, a bit frustrating, a bit tragicomic, but his own and intimate. For Floricic-the artist, in his own words: “the art itself, as a process, becomes the only sustainable reality – the source and the aim of artistic practice.” By this alone, he participates in the minute of silence personally, mocking as usual, entertaining the audience and seemingly eluding a serious discourse. However, meanings that he successfully submits are not trifling at all. Minute of silence is an encounter with self indeed, it could be placed anywhere at anytime, which does not at all influence the dimension of the situation or decisions that we make at the time. Claustrophobic space where we recognize all its elements, and where the same repeated movements are reproduced, this time is more complex then in earlier Floricic’s videos. Actions are developed in three separated spaces, on the edge of toilet seat, in the sink and on the floor, mutually interfering, creating horror vacui in himself, in his activities, in his life, but also in his contemplation and silence. The exit definitely cannot be seen; but we are offered a tool, a red stick, that we do not know how to use, but since it is already here, we should anyway lean on it or at least focus our attention, it will help for sure.
Ksenija Turcic gave the exhibition a kind of vital force that we rarely encounter in Croatian art. As the only woman artist participating in “Minute of silence”, she shows a completely female work, where, by showing all those small, unimportant events of her own life, she deals with a manner in which minute of silence helps us to survive even the worst event we could possibly imagine.
Different from all here previous works, “Residency” is really about her few months long artistic residency in USA, in conditions way above any of our life possibilities. The return to her own life thrusts itself as a curse. The minute of silence is dedicated not only to the good or bad that we parted with, but it also gives us the opportunity to separate in joy, although it is not less painful. The silence lasts, but we do not have to last in silence.
With female impulse she doesn’t show anything that could anticipate the place and time of tragedy, but she shows us enough to know that tragedy is “in the air”. Passing through all rooms of her own residence, shooting the Twin Towers before their tragedy, with stressed presence, we actually do not know if the minute of silence terminated or Turcic placed us right into its core. The fact that video is full of real life, but with addition of fictitious characters, that video is in fact a documentary film, but turned into a fiction, that the border between real and imagined is elusive, maybe most directly indicates that every minute as well as the minute of silence has to be lived.
Because minutes have no defined duration and silence really isn’t life. Imagination, that’s life!
Janka Vukmir
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
kopljar / K8 :
WHAT IS THE PRICE OF ARTIST’S BLOOD?
Every year in the first week of May and on the 19th of September the eyes of Napolitans are fixed upon a small transparent vessel. In the dramatic scenery of the cathedral, in the midst of improbable crowd of believers and curious observers, the priests bring out the monstrance containing the blood of St. Januarius (San Gennaro), the patron of the city. They bring it to the reliquary containing saint’s bones. If the coagulated martyr’s blood becomes liquid in the vicinity of his bones, grateful cries burst throughout the cathedral: Miracle! Miracle! The suspense of expectation subsides into contrite piety, few witnesses usually faint or get into hysteric ecstasy, but the rest of them disperse satisfied because St. Januarius answered their prayers again, thus assuring his miraculous protection over the city. Although The Second Vatican Council limited this ancient Neapolitan ritual to strict local usage and put St. Januarius in the second league of saints, the popular custom is still held. After the Roman verdict on the walls of Naples appeared the intimate entry to encourage the saint: San Genna futtetenne! (meaning: St. Januarius, what do you care, but the strict translation is not decent).
Martyr’s blood that rises the temperature of the Mediterranean city is part of a powerful metaphoric of blood that appears with blend of horror and ecstasy in Christianity (Christ’s redeeming blood sacrifice, Eucharist trans-substantiation of wine in blood, saint’s blood…), folk wisdom (blood is thicker than water) and customs (blood feud), idioms (blue blood, strong blood, to make bad blood…), strong poetic images… Sometimes the horror and ecstasy are not diminished by the scientific discoveries and possibilities – blood tests that reveal diseases, blood containing information on everything and anything – ancestors, quantity of consumed alcohol or cakes, liver condition and inflammatory processes on joints, sorting us by A, B, 0 or AB type, defining our Rhesus-factor as positive or negative, opens to eugenics, proves fatherhood, divides, connects, identifies… all of that in the drops of precious liquid. The blood-banks are always discussed in urged tones, the donators of the precious drops are requested, the hospitals dramatically summoning, using propaganda to entice the consciousness…
Zlatko Kopljar’s performance and installation refer to multilayered symbolic charge of blood, this most impressively colored fluid that human being is able to produce. The emphasis on verity of blood-letting – directly, in front of the audience (witnesses) polemically discusses with foggy hagiographic information on methods of putting saints’blood into monstrances (St. Januarius is not, of course, the only saint whose blood is preserved, not even the only one whose blood transforms from coagulated matter into liquid). Visual piety of Neapolitan believers who breathlessly follow the events in the ampoule opposes the mixed emotions and impressions of the gallery audience. Resistance, disgust, incredulity, indifference? The artist’s blood is not analyzed after the performance, although the specialized person performs the blood-letting. The artist puts the ampoule with his blood into the crystal cube (of serenity?) and leaves it as an exhibit. This Kopljar’s work focuses on the problem connected to dominant repertory of motifs that powerfully mark his performing expression and which he uses to build installations (pills, transparent chalice, altar, multiplied holy images applied on canvas as foundation for painting intervention, metal heart, prayers written on small pieces of paper inserted in walls, washing, metaphor of water). As in procession through some imaginary consecrated space (of art?) that appropriates the characteristics of church interior, Kopljar often ventures into the recognizable complex of meaning: baptismal basin (washing, 1992.), apse (altar, chalice, 1995.), chapel (triptych – video, 2001.) and now treasury (monstrance, 2002.). Appropriation is enlarging – with strong consciousness and impulse to question social roles, Kopljar emphasizes artist as a giver, sometimes as a sacrifice and martyr, sometimes as a healer, then a rebel or at least a critic of communication noise and knots in human relationships. Strained and difficult relation between an artist and his immediate environment (gallery audience, institutions, critics, media) afflicts a new neuralgic spot in every work. On the other side, he shackles polemically charged expression to strictly directed, almost mechanical movements, and his installations are emphatically pure in form, classic symmetry, flawless polished surfaces. The cube of transparent monstrance functionally adopts the role of liturgical vessel, but entirely denying its form. The artist’s blood becomes dramaturgically parallel to the saint’s blood and, following the same process, gallery space becomes the consecrated church treasury. Aggressive assault and physical destruction of the institutional gallery space that Kopljar used to discuss in recent years (performance of pulling down the gallery walls – Ostrava, Split, Ljubljana) is now going the other way around – the way of consecration. But could the doubtful space be consecrated? Wouldn’t its bareness become even more powerful? Could institutional forms of cult and culture overlap leaving enough space to each other?
Sanja Cvetnic
The prize question in the end is critic’s supplement to the polemic part of Kopljar s work: If intellectual’s brain is worth two Deutsch marks, what is the price of artist’s blood? Correct answers expressed in Euro to be written on post-card and sent to: San Gennaro, Cappella del tesoro, Duomo di Napoli, Via Duomo, 80100 Napoli, Italia.
U artist’futtetenne!
