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Power
Play - The Spectacle of Invisible
by Suzana Milevska
TAKING IN ACCOUNT THE RELATION ARTIST/AUDIENCE AS ONE
OF THE MAIN CONDITIONS FOR A PERFORMANCE THE ARTIST TANJA
OSTOJIC TURNS EXACTLY THIS DICHOTOMY IN PARODY.
During the 49th Venice Biennial, in contrast to the enormous
proliferation of events: plays, concerts and performances
that were taking place simultaneously and thus remained
inexperienced by many, there was one performance that
was accessible to only one chosen visitor. The project
in question was conceived as un-accessible and invisible
to anybody else but Harald Szeemann - the main selector
of the Venice Biennial and the work itself consisted of
the "Venus Hill" of Tanja Ostojic shaved in
a shape of a square instead of the natural triangle.
The project "Black Square on White" (2001),
is difficult to be defined as performance, installation,
object or any other medium in the usual sense of these
terms, as applied by art criticism and theory. Several
conditions for a performance are to be questioned here
in order to clarify why the presumption that this work
expands the field of the medium of performance was made
at first place. Namely, the actual moment when the only
visitor was allowed to "visit", to see the "work",
was not announced within the agenda of the Biennial. The
"hidden agenda" raises many doubts about the
actual event: whether it really happened, when and under
what circumstances and whether the work really exists
at all. The narrativity of invisible and possible instead
of the narrativity of transparent and vulgar provoked
the equillibristics between the secret and obscenity that
continuously amuzes the audience, even after the three
days of the official uncertainty.
The selector was forced to select the work without seeing
it - only as a proposal. But what was there to be seen,
anyway? The scene, the image referring to the famous Malevich's
paining with the same title is one of the most radical
appropriation, a blasphemous parody of the icon of modernism.
Simultaneously, the parody touches upon the stereotype
of the gender symbolization. This complex play between
the minimalism and contextualism, between the public and
the private space of the artist and between the appropriation
as affirmation and the feminist critique of modernism
as parody, are only few of the important vantage points
of this work.
The spectacle of the invisibility, the secrecy of the
performance, re-enforced the obscenity of the hypothetical
event of "apocalyptic" execution of the work:
the "revelation of truth". This hypothetical
moment of "stripping the clothes off" has attacked
the position of the curator/selector as the main authority
of the most prestigious world art institution in a very
weird fashion. The power of the curator in the art scene
hierarchy is disturbed by the simple fact that the objectivity
in selection is based on the personal ethics and any hint
for a personal relation between the artist and the curator
is usually a starting point for such ambivalence.
The mere fact that Harald Szeemann has selected and allowed
the project as it was originally conceived gives way to
interpret his readiness to accept to play this tricky
power-game with field of phantasmatic either as an act
of arrogance of the "untouchable" or, more likely,
as a desire to remain open to all possible provocations
that could come from the young artists, doesn't matter
whatever problems they might cause. In both cases Ostojic
succeeded in her courageous "challenge to a duel".
Anyway, it was no accident that two projects by Ostojic
were realized in Venice this year. It was clear even in
June 25-26, 1998, when in the elevator in the Museum of
History of the City of Luxembourg ("Manifesta 2",
Young European Biennial) the shaved body of Tanja Ostojic
was firstly exposed in front of the international audience
that her energy is irresistable. She stood there upright
and completely static, shaved from the heels to the scull,
and covered with white marble powder so that she became
a museum exponate herself: a possible antique sculpture
put in the center of the elevator. The space of the life
sculpture was limited by the white square made on the
floor by the same marble powder. The one-hour performance
"Personal Space" was a public journey on which
all visitors were invited to enter and drive up or down
in the elevator, together with the artist but without
disturbing her personal space.
The idea to discuss the problem of intrusion of someone's
privacy and personal life
coincided with the very restrictive local politics of
the Yugoslav government under Milosevic but the fact that
at that time it was almost impossible to preserve "the
room of One's own" was not the only motivation
for Ostojic's project. It was the complex references to
art, questions of form, material and visual ambiguity
at the same time with the questions of the individual
body semiotics that interested this young artist more
than the politics and political action. The passive resistance
was to be expected as a more realistic response
by her to any political and social turbulence. Still,
the making spectacle of her own body (in the best tradition
of the life sculpture by Gilbert and George, Abramovic
and Ulay) was a courageous commitment witnessed by the
visitors that were surrounding her body. There was a "side
effect" during the performance: while the body/sculpture
was not moving and did not stare back and any unexpected
sign of response did not happen, the viewers were "watched
while watching" by the other viewers. A very complex
net of interwoven gazes was established on the each of
the inter-level journeys and the viewers became "objects
of interest" to themselves as any artifact. Moreover,
the whole scene was possible to be perceived as a group
life sculpture, lifting up and descending in the transparent
elevator. The issues of private and public, of collective
and individual, got intertwined and pointed out to the
main tendency in Tanja Ostojic's work to re-examine the
established dichotomies of social and cultural behavior.
Only several months later it was clear that the "personal
space" in Yugoslavia was disordered and endangered
not only by the local regime, but also by the irrational
NATO bombarding. In spite of all warnings by Serbian activists
and intellectuals Milosevic did not accept the demands
of NATO to reduce the army and police forces on Kosovo
that lead to the NATO operation "Strike Against Yugoslavia"
and, therefore at that time he was already offended to
be the main culprit in this very unusual trial.
The project "I Want You to Demand Your Government
Responsibility for the Consequences of Bombing Yugoslavia"
that Tanja Ostojic has realized in 1999 was a very simple
but, at the same time, a strong and ironic reaction to
all these political events. She made postcards and posters
that she unofficially distributed in Venice during the
48th Venice Biennial: in the very well known pose of Uncle
Sam from the historic poster from the WW2 Tanja Ostojic
provokes the citizens of the USA to act against their
government.
The moment of interpolation by any authority as the main
condition for the subjectification (to use the Judith
Butler's application of L. Althusser's theory) was taken
in account by Tanja Ostojic and in this project she tested
the limits of its application. When she simulated to be
this authority she actually turned upside down the whole
theory of interpollation since she laphed to the source
of power and took its role.
Already in the framework of this work it was obvious that
Ostojic considered the issues of political correctness
as important to deal with and interpret them in her own
way. The discussions about political correctness always
entail two sides, two parties. Whenever we try to define
what is and what is not politically correct there are
two conflictual opinions that do not share the same reasoning
and interest. The carnevalesque parody of Ostojic disguised
in Uncle Sam reveals the ironic and anticipatory truth
about the world monopoly of power and the topsy-turvey
of the global politics.
While using her own body within different cultural and
social contexts as a retort to various power-games Ostojic
inevitably entered the realm of "gender troubles".
Her reflection on gender issues is focused on the economic
and political phenomena that accompany the phantasm of
European Community that is shared by many Eastern European
countries. In her project "Looking for a Husband
with a EU Passport" she reveals and ironizes the
truth about the traffic with women, prostitution, pragmatic
marriages and all other "side effects" of transition.
In such conditions the economy of gendering is inevitably
the economy of power over the body. The self-irony of
this project is contained in the intentional aesthetics
of artist's usage of her own image for the Internet add:
her skinny shaved body without any traces of sensuality
and seducing gaze or gesture conveys completely opposite
visual message. From this conflict of the textual invitation
with the visual repulsion was born the gap of ambiguity
between attraction and abjection.
The situation got changed in Skopje when within the framework
of the group public art project "Perfect Match"
in the City Shopping Mall she was distributing flyers
to accidental visitors. She received real proposals since
the visual message from the posters and flyers was "up-dated"
by the artist's appearance. The commodification of the
body offered in exchange for a Shengen passport got intermixed
with the commodification of communication (many of the
e-mail messages that Ostojic has received in the context
of this project is still on her interactive web page).
The obviously self-ironic and self-referential model that
Ostojic uses while conceptualizing her projects makes
them humorous in spite of their social and political commitment.
The performance "I'll Be Your Angel", (also
realized during the 49th Venice Biennial, 2001), confirmed
once more the controversial, but firmly controlled bodily
strategy and politics of this young artist. It emphasize
the fact that the proteic artist's body that was considered
to be artistic material can take any shape the artist
wants, but only if the concept and all procedures were
executed carefully. "I'll Be Your Angel" was
imagined as a four day performance during which the artist
was to accompany Harald Szeemann at all his official obligatory
commitements: thus it aimed to question the artist/curator
relations and the power of the curatorial profession in
the context of the international art scene.
The deconstruction of cultural and gender politics was
released through thematizing of the power game between
the artist and curator as one of the main intrinsic problems
that inevitably take place during the processes of selection,
preparation, realization and promotion of solo or group
exhibitions. The Venice Biennial is not by any means excluded
from this rule.
Tanja Ostojic used the opportunity to work with Szeemann
as an opportunity to subject him to an experiment: she
picked the famous curator, still attractive man in his
seventies, communicative, and not a single, in order to
question the most of the cultural stereotypes of the international
art scene. The rituals of seducing, jealousy, exoticism,
age difference, and man/wife/mistress triangle, were the
main "blind spots" to be tempted. Most of these
themes are still taboos and preserved only for the gossiping
seances but not for public discussion and interpretation.
The everyday lascive scene of Tanja Ostojic dressed glamourously
in the Lacroix (main sponsor) models, especially chosen
and ordered by the artist for this occasion, walking side
by side to Harald Szeemann on his dayli duties during
the preview for critics (press conferences, interviews,
business meetings, openings, cocktails, concerts), provoked
many unique questions.
The issue of privacy was one of the most important: the
performance intrude the private lives of the both, the
famous curator and the emerging artist, linking them in
a very weird unseparable couple due to the strict conditions
of the concept - a kind of situation that many curators
and artists would have desired at that moment. The questions
of economy and politics, of success and glamour, not that
easily accessible to the visual artists as to the movie
stars, were emphasized with irony by the artist who smiled
artificially most of the time during the performance,
acting the hypocrisy of the famous.
The wearing of the beautiful but uncomfortable tight corsets
and shoes under the unmerciful Mediterranean sun were
only few of the sacrifices that Ostojic was forced to
make in order to complete the performance as originally
imagined.
Also, although meeting all VIP's in Venice through her
companion, she unabled herself to make spontaneous contacts
(the main privilege and benefit of any similar participation
at a mega project) since she was continuously exposed
to the doubtful examination whether this concept is only
a good career move without any critical point. Thus, her
strictly controlled and survailed body was intentionally
instrumentalized in the context of power-games strategies
and structures but it became an instrument of such power-games
itself: it turned from the curator's angel in his demon.
All power-games strategic actions of the curator were
also surveyed by the artist herself. The sweet girl that
simulated "a'la dolce vita" genre scenes at
the same time was manipulating with the power of the suspense
initiated by the McGaffin - the invisible extravagant
pubic "hair cut" that implied the possible event
of its visit as a moment of re-establishing and re-distributing
of the power on the art scene.
Making spectacles out of her own body became a specialty
in her short but prodigious career. In her work the body
is not only a signifier of gender difference or an obscene
trace of some other symbolic investment. The body of Tanja
Ostojic is her main instrument for vivisection of the
complex relations in the spheres of private and public
space, hierarchy and marginalization, subjectivization
and commodification.
All relations that are established in the realm of social,
economical and political dynamics of the overnight globalized
structures on East, as nation-state, market, internet,
stock exchange etc., are of Ostojic's critical interest.
Beside of the medium of performance, she mainly
uses the procedures and materials of advertising (posters,
flyers, internet add) and thus enters the world of multiplication
without any fear about the originality, uniqueness or
exclusiveness of her work that is never constrained by
the materiality of produced objects. It is the genome
of her body annd her courageous personality that guarantee
the authenticity of her ideas and the success in their
realisation.
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