Alexander Alberro, Blake Stimson (eds.): Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings (2009)

“‘Institutional critique’ is an artistic practice that reflects critically on its own place within galleries and museums and on the concept and social function of art itself. Such concerns have always been a part of modern art but took on new urgency at the end of the 1960s, when—driven by the social upheaval of the time and enabled by the tools and techniques of conceptual art—institutional critique emerged as a genre. This anthology traces the development of institutional critique as an artistic concern from the 1960s to the present, gathering writings and representative art projects of artists who developed and extended the genre. The artists come from across Europe and throughout North America. The texts and artworks included are notable for the range of perspectives and positions they reflect, and for their influence in pushing the boundaries of what is meant by institutional critique.

Like Alberro and Stimson’s Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology, this volume will shed new light on its subject through its critical and historical framing. Even readers already familiar with institutional critique will come away from this book with a greater and often redirected understanding of its significance.”

Artists represented include: Wieslaw Borowski, Daniel Buren, Marcel Broodthaers, Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel, Hans Haacke, Robert Smithson, John Knight, Graciela Carnevale, Osvaldo Mateo Boglione, Guerilla Art Action Group, Art Workers’ Coalition, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Michael Asher, Mel Ramsden, Adrian Piper, The Guerrilla Girls, Laibach, Silvia Kolbowski, Andrea Fraser, Fred Wilson, Mark Dion, Maria Eichhorn, Critical Art Ensemble, Bureau d’Études, WochenKlausur, The Yes Men, Hito Steyerl, Andreas Siekmann

Publisher MIT Press, 2009
ISBN 0262013169, 9780262013161
492 pages

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Anti-Jargon: Terms of Deschooling Classroom (2009-) [English, Serbian, Macedonian]

“Terms is a group that studies terms in the field of contemporary artistic, theoretical, cultural and educational practice from the perspective of practitioners active on the independent cultural scenes of Skopje and Belgrade through the process of self-education. The aim of the group work was not to create yet another glossary, vocabulary or lexicon, but rather to establish a relational web of concepts in most frequent use. We either comprehend them differently or are, simply, unaware of the different readings according to one’s assumed theoretical (or ideological) position. Investigating the origin, epistemology and the politics of a term, we come to a non-implied, non-colloquial – anti-jargon term platform. By jargon we imply fast, specialized communication, with implied meaning but is actually completely empty. There is no implied meaning behind used terms, instead they only represent an affiliation to the moment, profession, ideology… This position is not a result of some kind of idealistic search for ‘authentic’, ‘original’ meaning of the word. On the contrary, it is a search to establish the term and the politicality of its use in the contextual, historically-materialistic sense. In addition, our intention is not only to detect and demonstrate the mechanism of jargon or to claim that we are excluded from it. The work on de-jargonisation we also view as affirmation of new terms. The new terms can be subjected to de-jargnisation as a prevention.

In this publication we offer the registry as a format for de-jargonisation – it is a simple table that is also one of the algorithms for using this publication. Origin, history, utilization, references and ‘description’ are determined for terms used in this table. ‘Description’ can be a note, artistic statement, a list of other terms, or something close to a lexicon entry. The entries in the table link to texts in the publication and outside of it – and thus create relational network of terms and definitions, virtually unlimited hypertextual structure. Publication is open in content and structure, and its real purpose is achieved if the users – editors/authors/readers – continue to work on it: filling in, adding, reediting and using it. That’s why we leave the registry unfinished, demonstrating the possible ways and formats of its use, and invite you to cooperate with is on making it grow.”

Terms: Artistic Immunity, Contexterin, Contextual art in the countries of Eastern Europe: Approaches, diagnoses and treatments of the problems, Festivals Classification, The Festivals (in the ex-Yugoslavia region) as a “microphysics of power” (Foucault), How my Life Turned into a Festival, Potentiality, Soros Realism

Working group: Milena Bogavac, Dragana Bulut, Bojan Đorđev, Anđela Ćirović, Siniša Ilić, Aleksandra Jančevska, Boris Krmov, Milan Marković, Katarina Popović, Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski, Ljiljana Tasić, Ivana Vaseva, Elena Veljanovska, Dragana Zarevska.

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From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010) (2011) [multiling]

The publication explores practices of critical contemporary fine arts – practices of research, progressive and experimental actions by contemporary fine artists from the 1990s to the present, in four countries in the region – Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia. These are practices which focus on issues such as identity aspects (national, cultural, religious, ethnic), workers’ rights, social integration of minorities, global market fluctuation trends and its impact in the local context, unscrupulousness of capital, the position of women, spatial devastation, art institution system issues, and many others.

The publication maps out and theoretically reviews critical and research practices, and contemporary fine arts practices oriented towards the contemporary civilization moment, which have been active in the context of the independent cultural scene since the 1990s, but which have also been present in the institutional frame. The authors provide only drafts of the political, social, economic and cultural changes of the local contexts, through four segments, due to a lack of space. Each segment focuses on the practices and context of a given country, i.e. the capital as the primary focus, and in addition to the introductory word by the authors, it includes interviews (with authors, theorists, curators, organizers…) who contribute to the recording of these artistic practices based on their experience, work and knowledge.

The segments deal with the Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, and Zagreb scenes. All the authors devised their approaches in an effort to present the fruitful and creative production of these cities, to the greatest extent possible.

Contemporary visual art is discussed through the works and experiences of Igor Grubić, Sanja Iveković, Andreja Kulunčić and Darko Šimičić (Croatia), Stevan Vuković, Milica Tomić, Danilo Prnjat and Živko Grozdanić Gera (Serbia), Neven Korda, Marko Peljhan, Marija Mojca Pungerčar and Maja Smrekar (Slovenia), and Bojan Ivanov, Zoran Poposki, Mira Gakina and Žaneta Vangeli (Macedonia).

The book was conceived as a multilingual publication in English, in addition to the local languages (Croatia, Macedonian, Serbian and Slovenian).

Realized as part of the project Let’s Talk Critic Arts.

Editorial Board: Dušan Dovč, Vesna Milosavljević, Jasna Soptrajanova and Dea Vidović
Authors: Jasna Jakšić – in cooperation with Tihana Bertek, Maja Gujinović, Ana Kovačić, Srđan Latreza, Petra Novak, Tina Novak, Tamara Sertić and Leda Sutlović (Croatia); Nebojša Vilić (Macedonia); Miha Colner and Nika Grabar (Slovenia); Vesna Tašić – in cooperation with Vesna Milosavljević and Miroljub Marjanović (Serbia)
Publishers: SEEcult.org in cooperation with ForumSkopje; Kurziv – Platform for Matters of Culture, Media and Society; SCCA, Center for Contemporary Arts – Ljubljana / Artservis; The Association of NGOs Clubture
Published in April 2011, Belgrade, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Skopje
611 pages
This work is made available by the Creative Commons Licence Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported unless not stated differently.

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