Promo Booklet WHW, 2004

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2

What, how & for whom - Zagreb/Vienna ................................................................. 5

Project: Broadcasting......................................................................................................... 12

Gallery Nova ............................................................................................................................... 21

SIde-effects, Looking Awry, Repetition: Pride & Prejudice ................. 24

Zagreb Cultural Kapital 3000 ....................................................................................... 26

Collective Creativity.......................................................................................................... 29

contents:

WHAT, HOW AND FOR WHOM

curators: Ana DEVIĆ | Ivet ĆURLIN | Nataša ILIĆ | Sabina SABOLOVIĆ

design: Dejan Kršić [arkzin]

fonts: Filosofi a [emigre], Eunuverse [Barry Deck], Bliss [Jeremy

Tankard]

Zagreb, 2004

What, How and for Whom/WHW

Baruna Trenka 4/IV

HR-10000 Zagreb | Croatia

[email protected]

contact:

IMPRESSUM

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The sense of time has been rather disturbed in

Croatia during the last decade. On the one hand, it was a

long decade that started in the processes deeply rooted

in the Eighties. But on the other hand, the war and

intellectual repression that had been following it had

shortened the decade to short periods of nightmarish

awakenings from the autistic and mute dream of

fulfillment of 1000 years of nation’s longings.�Sure

enough, the lines when things had started and ended

are especially hard to draw when one is dealing with a

war that was never officially announced or proclaimed

over. �The lack of any intellectual contextualization

has disabled the reflection on things that have been

happening to us, therefore hitting us like sleepwalkers.

Short acts of awakenings had barely left traces in the

self-assured, non-commu�ni�cative dream that the

nation had been dreaming out with brutal energy. Those

performing ‘the social function of intellectuals’ have

mobilized extreme right-wing ideologies that were to

strengthen the ‘big sleep’ from which history always

starts anew with sick optimism. �It is the decade in which

the Croatian version of the democratic revolution [or

better to say, contra-revolution] has been finalized with

the triumph of the capital and rediscovery of market

economy as the tool of resource distribution. �The

pathos of the human rights revolution reached “broader

society” through the filter of nationalistic ideologies,

maybe because the revolution in the Yugoslav version

was very ‘politically correct’ and decently enlightening.

The lack of revolutionary pathos on

which enjoyment-in-the-process

is based, enjoyment in the wasting of

revolutionary activity that necessarily

by far outreaches its instrumentality and

purpose1, has been compensated by

encompassing passionate nationalism.

The struggle for uniqueness of

national culture fought by right-wing

intellectuals has been realized as the

struggle against left cultural hegemony,

interpreted as the foreign, external

element that threatens the purity of

national culture/national identity.

�An important part of the project of

cleaning the national culture has been

removing the important part of the

history and producing silent collective

amnesia.

Background informa tion

1] Slavoj Žižek, Znak/označitelj/pismo [prilog materijalističkoj teoriji označiteljske prakse, NIP mladost, Beograd, 1976.

COM.MANIFESTO

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The Communist Manifesto is still alive,

perhaps more than ever, since the

predicament it describes is heightened

today to a new level of unbearable tension.[Slavoj ŽIŽEK, Spectre is Still Roaming Around]

w06

COM.MANIFESTO

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What, How and for Whomon the occasion of 150th anniversary of Com munist Manifesto

If it were a single, it would be Satisfaction

Mark SIMPSON

Independent on Sunday

Constant revolutionizing of productions,

uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions,

everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish

the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed,

fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and

venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away,

all new-formed ones become antiquated before they

can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is

holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face

with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his

relations with his kind

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels: The Communist Manifesto

- A Modern Edition, london, verso 1998, pg 38-39.

COM.MANIFESTO

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Many years ago, in some other times,

Communist Manifesto used to be a

very dangerous book. The world was

at that time divided into those who

trusted the words of this book and

followed its revolutionary spirit, and

those who, equally fascinated by the

book, hated it and feared its rebellious

cry. But nobody dared to ignore

the significance of the Communist

Manifesto. Its historical impact was

obvious and its practical political

effects were changing the world. It

seemed for the moment that this book

could even decide the destiny of the

mankind. These were the times when

the world was still young and has not

only its history going on but also an

open future.

Everything has changed since than.

Today is the Manifesto nothing but

a small booklet among other books

of the world’s cultural heritage,

which provokes no political action

and of which nobody is afraid any

more. Once a wild political pamphlet,

the Manifesto seems to be finally

domesticated and turned into a

harmless cultural artifact. Not a

revolutionary politics, but culture is

today the only message of this medium.

Boris BUDENIt is about the society that mistook

culture for politics

COM.MANIFESTO

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�WHW as an independent curator’s collective

acts at the sliding area negotiated between

different models of a non-formal institution,

a creative group, an organizational team, an

‘institutionalised friendship’ and activism,

including in its activities different partners and

initiatives. Our actions are based on synergy that

appropriates and redefi nes different models of

representation and systems and simultaneously

is coexisting within them.

�WHW was initiated in Zagreb in late

90’s as the informal network between activist

orga�ni�za�tion/publishing house Arkzin,

net.cultural club Mama and the team of

independent curators [Ivet ∆urlin, Ana DeviÊ,

Nataπa IliÊ, Sabina SaboloviÊ] that started to work

on the international exhibition on the occasion of

150th anniversary of Communist Mani�festo. Since

this model of collaboration be�t�ween cultural

organizations of different back�grounds and know-

how proved very successful, at the beginning of

2001 we became a legal subject, registering as

non-for-profit non-governmental institution,

which is presently the only available legislative

model in Croatia that enables us to intervene in

cultural scene the way we do.

The three basic questions of every economic

organization - what, how and for whom - are

operative in almost all segments of life. What,

COM.MANIFESTO

the problem how many of every possible goods

and services will be produced with limited

resources and social input, how, the choice

of certain technology according to which each

good, chosen by answering the question what,

will be produced, and question for whom, that

concerns distribution of goods among members

of the society - these are the questions that also

concern the planning, concept and realization

of the exhibition, as well as the production and

distribution of artworks or artists’ position at the

labor market. The circumstances surrounding

development of What, How and for Whom project, which has been developing since 1998

when the republishing of Marx’s Communist Manifesto on the occasion of book’s 150th anni�versary served as the impetus, have been

imposing the concept whose logic developed

together with increased ambitions and wishes of

the organizers. The answer to the question how to

deal with anni�versary of the book of such powerful

ideological and political potential in the society

that has imposed collective mystification and

oblivion to the archive of politics, economy and

style of the failed project of socialist society, took

its shape in the area in which the considerations about possibilities of political and artistic engagement were interlocked with issues of local daily politics.

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Economy studies how societies utilize scarce

resources in order to produce valuable commodities

and distribute them among people. Therefore,

scarcity lies within the very essence of the economy.

Scarcity law says: resorces and goods are �limited,

while wishes seem to be unlimited. Economizing as

the leading motto of contemporary life implicates

optimization as the way of doing business - how

with smallest input the greatest economic results

are achieved. As What, How & for Whom project has

been planned within extremely limited production

resources, optimization pri�n�ciple has become the

COM.MANIFESTO

leit-motive of exhibition concept and method.

In other words, the basic ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the

project were getting closer and closer to each

other and finally have overlapped.�Instrumentality

of social capital in constituting the social post-

socialist reality becomes a scheme, a matrix for

the exhibition development and its internal and

external operations. ��By facing the recent production

of artists who emerged on the Croatian art scene

in the late 80’s, at the time of rapid deterioration

of socialist regime, with artists who have been

forming the strong current of socially engaged

art since the late 60’s, the exhi�bition had attempted to intervene in contemporary art scene stressing continuity rather than breaks.

On the other hand, the exhibition established international context for local art production,

greatly missing during the last decade. It is

important to stress that Communist Manifesto as

exhibitions �starting point does not operate as a

visual leit-motive of the exhibition, but as the

referential point in which different approaches,

opinions and visua�lizations are intersecting. The

exhibition does not aspire to shape the complete

image on the subject of communism as ideology,

political regime or utopian endeavor. Rather, by

encouraging individual approaches and personal

points of view, the exhibition has been attempting

to break down monolith, unified perception of

art scenes, “socialist praxis” or present “transitional” situation.

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The Manifesto has lost its political meaning

as a consequence of so-called democratic

revolutions of 1989. It felt down together with

the fall of Communism in the Eastern Europe

that has been celebrated as the final victory of the

modern democracy over its totalitarian enemies.

�According to the understanding of the communist

totalitarianism that has become dominant within the political mind of the liberal democratic West, the communist political movement was first

of all a conservative reaction against modernity,

particularly against the modern Western culture

as culture of human rights and freedoms, i.e., an

intrinsically anti-modern political phenomenon.

In that respect, the political process of transition

from communism to democracy, which has started

after 1989 in the East European post-communist

countries, is nothing but some sort of a cultural

reconquista, the re-westernization of Eastern

Europe. That is the reason why culture and civil society are so closely allied in the strategies of transition in today’s Eastern Europe, or in the

ongoing process of the so called enlargement of

the European Union. It is mainly culture, as the true content of civil society - and not politics!

- that has to do the job of democratization.�

Becoming ultimately a cultural artifact,

Communist Manifesto had been deprived of its last

critical capacity and of all its political meaning

and importance. Once an expression of the

deepest historical contradictions of the Western

industrial society, the book has finally become a

cultural symbol of the East. Anyone who still tries

to grasp its political meaning will find nothing but

an obscure, intrinsically non-European cultural

content in his hands. The Manifesto today is the

cultural Other of the West.

COM.MANIFESTO

�Vienna project What, How and for Whom,

dedicated to 153rd anniversary of Communist Manifesto

opposes the view that equals Eastern Europe with

communism or identifies cultural with political

identity. Today, the Manifesto is not an issue more

on the East, than it is on the West, and its message

is global, just as the functioning of the capital, as described by Marx, is global.

Focus on economy, capital and capitalism

seeks to return to the West its own message /on

transition from so called tota�litarism to so clled

democracy/ in its reversed, i.e. true meaning - as

the return into the real capitalism. ��

��

� �In its heroic period of 1970s and 1980s, the

alternative cultural movements in Yugo�slavia

acted against official institutions or at least apart

from them. Self-organizing and acti�vism were

politically engaged, but not as “battle against the

darkness of Communist tota�litarianism”, but,

paradoxically for the state whose official ide�ology

was “self-mana�ge�ment”, as the fight for complete

self-realization of individuals and culture, against

real bureaucratic limitations. Alternative cultural

movement was indeed taking socialist ideology more

seriously than the cynical political élite in power

did. Paradoxically, deeply politicized, alternative,

sub-cultural movements of 1970s and 1980s in

the East actually disintegrated at the moment of

their supposed triumph - with the introduction

of parliamentary democracy and the “return of capitalism”.�

��

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3] Autonomous Cultural Factory-Attack, Zagreb; Arkzin DTP & Pre-press studio, Zagreb; Močvara club, Zagreb; net.cultural klub MAMA, Zagreb; Art Workshop Lazareti, Dubrovnik…

2] Projects like Anti-war Campaign Croatia, pop-political magazine Arkzin, Zagreb Anarchistic movement, Autonomous Cultural Factory - Attack, festival of alternative street theater FAKI, and many other feminist, ecological, anti-war, anarchistic organizations, groups, initiatives and movements.

COM.MANIFESTO

In regard to cultural production, the term

‘alternative’ is usually linked to notions

such as anti-art, avant-garde, neo-avant-garde, contra-culture, to that

which is different in form and content,

progressive, radical, that which gets out of

the mainstream and opposes establishment,

traditional high culture that is generally

bourgeois. But in today’s circumstances of

culturalization of everything, in situation

when every ‘avant-garde’ or ‘subversive’

act is immediately absorbed as a fashion,

exclusively cultural and temporary

alter�native, there is no alternative culture.

Alternative culture existed when there

still were alternative ideas about order of society, ideas of alternative politics.

Or better to say, the alternative culture is

to be articulated only if there is a politics

that articulates the alternative to really existent capitalism. Cultural and artistic

production in current situation can still

be alternative not by virtues of its new,

different, unusual form or way of expression,

but exclusively in a political sense.

��

��Within independent Cro�atian civil scene

in the ‘90s, often called the alternative

scene2, the notion of alternative was used

differently in two broad periods.�

The first one, in accor�dance to general

regression, as characteristic of the period

of Croatian Democratic Unit party’s rule,

is actually a continuation of ‘70s ideology

that perceives alternative culture as the

low opposition to high, élite, institutional

culture. That scene, roughly identified with

eco/punk/hardcore/anarcho groups and

movements, really was marginal and

marginalized, completely out of funding

system, which it had slowly entered only

after the establishment of the Open Society

Institute [Soros] in Croatia in 1994.�

In that second period, the alternative

ceased to be synonymous with the marginal

and the sub-cultural and it developed

specific political meanings, regularly

strongly based in ethical demands for

non-violence, equality, multi-ethnicity,

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According to the old slogan, art is not a mirror, art

is a hammer! Present situation should not be merely

mirrored or represented. The aim is to create new conditions, not to act within the realm of possible,

but to actually change that what is possible. It is a

significant shift of the status of the intellectuals. It is

no longer enough to be critical intellectual [as were old communist dissidents or intellectual emigres during nationalist rule] now the most important are creative intellectuals, that would in the same time

keep critical mind and be activelly engaged in change of

existing situation.

…Everybody is an intellectual, but not all people in society perform the social function of the intellectual. [ Antonio GRAMSCI ]

COM.MANIFESTO

non-hierarchical structures etc. The

alternative in the culture was perceived

as a system of parallel institutions that

were not nationalistic or statehood-

oriented, but their activities were limited

to fill in the gaps left open by state and its

conservative institutions. As a result, the

real institutions of alternative and sub/

cultural scene, that should guarantee its

continuity and development, had been

formed only in the late ‘90s3. But in the

new “democratic” situation that followed

the last elections at the beginning of 2000 -

that resulted in withdrawal and downsizing

of foreign funds - their future is very

insecure indeed. There is a dominant

tendency to commercial, market-oriented

culture, state funding is still insufficient

and often dependent on personal whims,

conditions for cultural projects funding

have not been set [legislation of taxes],

nor the space open for non-commercial

culture and media production.

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BROADCASTING PROJECT,

dedicated to Nikola Tesla is

organized in cooperation of visual

arts NGO What, How and for Whom,

publishing house Arkzin, net-cultural

club MAMA and Technical Museum

in Zagreb. It is conceived as the series of cultural events that question the

social and artistic implications of broadcast media in relation to the concept of politics and specifi c political developments in Croatia, issues of information and technology accessibility as well as concepts of intellectual property and copyrights. �The project started

as series of lectures by curators

and art and cultural theorists in June

2001 and developed as international

contemporary exhibition in the

Technical museum in Zagreb,

scheduled for January/February 2002.

After the exhibition, the project will continue throughout the 2002 in different formats of contemporary art publishing edition, art inter�ven�tions, situations and researches, publications, radio, TV and internet interventions and broadcasts, public lectures, screenings, forums etc.

PROJECT: BROADCASTING

wenn wellen schwingen ferne stimmen singen... [kraftwerk: airways. radio-activity, 1975]

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13PROJECT: BROADCASTING

[dedicated to Nikola Tesla]


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participants:

Marina ABRAMOVI∆

Robert ADRIAN X & Norbert MATH

Joæe BAR©I & Apolonija ©U©TER©I»

Marianne BRAMSEN

Diedrich DIEDERICHSEN

Braco DIMITRIJEVI∆

Branislav DIMITRIJEVI∆

Tomislav GOTOVAC

Brian HOLMES

Aleksandar Battista ILI∆

Sanja IVEKOVI∆

Ivana KESER

Yuri LEIDERMAN

Dalibor MARTINIS

Viktor MISIANO

Hans ULRICH OBRIST

Marko PELJHAN

Bojana PEJI∆

Tomo SAVI∆-GECAN

SCANNER

Keiko SEI

STATION ROSE

Mladen STILINOVI∆

SUPERFLEX featuring:

Marijan CRTALI∆

Andreja KULUN»I∆

Ivan MARU©I∆ KLIF, Magdalena PEDERIN

& Lala RA©I∆

Kristina LEKO

David TOOP

Stephen WRIGHT

Igor ZABEL

ZVUK BRODA

The project deals with issues of broadcasting

in reference to Nikola Tesla’s biography

and inventions. The basic concept is close

to Brecht’s writing on radio “as two-sided

apparatus of communication” and the whole

project has strong “educational” emphasis. �

…Radio is one-sided when it should be two-. It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus over from distribution to communication. The radio would be the fi nest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him.

Bertolt BRECHTThe Radio as an Apparatus of Communication, 1932


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The traditionally strong role of artists has been

in discovering new ways to use media, inventing

new and contradictory meanings for existing

organizations and systems, and in subverting

self-serving power-structures. Due to the specifi c

political and economic context [such as state

ownership of the still only one national TV] and

ruling structures’ inertia, the access of Croatian

artists to media has been extremely limited.

Croatian public discourse is ignorant of potentials

of electronic media as two-way communication

tools that are not necessarily just distributed and

based exclusively on commercial and ideological

grounds. The new digital technologies have

fundamentally changed methodologies and

strategies of documenting, producing and

displaying contemporary art, as well as social

circumstances of its creation and accessibility.

At the same time, educational institutions in

Croatia [Art History Studies, Philosophy Studies,

School of Fine Arts] almost completely failed in

following current international developments.

Museums stay noticeably unvisited, with virtually

no outreach aimed at increasing audiences.

This problem is perpetuated by the fact that in

Croatia, there is no formal or informal education

in curatorial practice. Additionally, one of the

side-effects of the transition period in the fi eld

of visual arts is ten years long hiatus in publishing

of contemporary art theory. ��

��

��BROADCASTING PROJECT moves in oppo�sition to the oppression of monologue and centralized patriarchal infotainment. Crucial questions are communication and mediation.

Brecht’s refl ection on the radio comes home today with not one but two

jolts of recognition. The fi rst has to do with the prescient glimpse it seems to

offer of the Internet, that inconceivably vast network of pipes which permits two-way communication, which receives just

as well as it transmits. But the second jolt comes from the realization that radio in the

1930s, particularly if used in combination with the telephone, could easily have

functioned in the two-way channels that Brecht describes—if the social and political will had not been lacking. The implication

for today is that the Internet, despite its evident technical advantages,

could easily cease functioning in a communicational mode, that it could

rapidly give way or regress to new forms of central-broadcast content

[masked by the push-button charms of “interactivity”]. /.../

If radio became predominantly a vehicle for state propaganda during the age

of total mobilization from the First to the Second World War, if television in its turn

became the indispensable device for training in the refl exes of mass consumerism,

what then will the emblematic medium of globalization become? What will be its

dominant uses, and above all, what kind of society will they articulate?

Brian HOLMESKosov@: Futures of the Transatlantic Carnival


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Success of mediated communication depends on the conditions under which the exchange takes place - those conditions are not primary techno�logical but also social, economical, cultural, political...

��

The project aims to continue discussion started

with What, How and For Whom exhibition

project about arts and economy, that is, to

explore issues of economical/political interests

that prevent full realization of the democratic

potentials of new technologies. Every advent

of new technology has been marked with great

enthusiasm about new democratic potentials

of new medium that will allow “everybody”

to communicate, be informed, creative and

participate in social dialogue or decision making,

and yet those potentials are always repressed for

the purely commercial form and content just

as for the creation of new passive audience.

�It is a pertinent for cultural activists/artists/

theoreticians to consider how new technologies

may significantly change what is meant by

“performance”, “art”, “live”, “broadcasting”,

“wide/mass public”... Yet, we believe that the

question of new and still developing digital media

replays narrative strain of anxiety very familiar to

the historic avant-garde [innovation, potential

revolution, incorporation, recuperation,

commodifi cation]. But the question is still open,

not predetermined or decided in advance, but

very much depends on our own action, work on

practical, artistic, media and theoretical work.


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The project aims to negotiate the intersection

between the realm of broadcast as a medium that disseminates via telecommunications, and

the metaphorical surpluses spreading from visions of universal energy transmission, left

over when broadcast is translated into Croatian.

Nikola Tesla [1856 - 1943] is a Serb from Croatia

who died as American citizen, eccentric, ascetic

with visions, claimed and disowned by Croats,

Serbs, Yugoslavs and Americans; who invented

more than 800 patents and laid theoretical

ground for deve�lopment of radio, radar, satellites, electronic microscope, microwave, fl uo�rescent tube etc. Today, the cultural image

of Nikola Tesla, the Man Who Invented Future, is

permeated with stories ranging from conspiracy

theory involving FBI and American government

to mystical worshipping of his exploration of

energy and origin of life. Exploration of his life

and inventions leads into broader questioning

of issues of broadcasting media, copyrights,

intellectual property, science and art funding,

distribution and utilization, politics of science

and descriptions of artistic and scientifi c working

process and outcomes. At the same time, Tesla’s

explorations in the realm of telecommunications

and defense systems seem ever more relevant

in relation to recent reactivation of Cold War

discourse by new American administration.


When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, as all things being particles of a real and dynamic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance, not only this, but through television and telephone we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face.

Nikola TESLA, 1900

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... The world system makes

possible not only the instantaneous

and precise wireless transmission

of any kind of signals, messages or

characters, to all parts of the world,

but also the inter- connection of

the existing telegraph, telephone,

and other signal stations without

any change in their present

equipment.

By its means, for instance, a telephone subscriber here

may call up and talk to any other subscriber on the

Earth. An inexpensive receiver, not bigger than a watch,

will enable him to listen anywhere, on land or sea, to a

speech delivered or music played in some other place,

however distant.” These examples are cited merely to

give an idea of the possibilities of this great scientifi c

advance, which annihilates distance and makes that

perfect natural conductor, the Earth, available for all

the innumerable purposes which human ingenuity has

found for a line-wire. One far-reaching result of this

is that any device capable of being operated through


Book cb 18 18/11/04, 13:32:11

19

one or more wires [at a distance obviously restricted]

can likewise be actuated, without artifi cial conductors

and with the same facility and accuracy, at distances to

which there are no limits other than those imposed by

the physical dimensions of the earth. Thus, not only

will entirely new fi elds for commercial exploitation

be opened up by this ideal method of transmission,

but the old ones vastly extended. The World System is

based on the application of the following import and

inventions and discoveries:�

01]�� The Tesla Transformer: This apparatus is

in the production of electrical vibrations as

revolutionary as gunpowder was in warfare.

Currents many times stronger than any ever

generated in the usual ways and sparks over one

hundred feet long, have been produced by the

inventor with an instrument of this kind.�

02] The Magnifying Transmitter: This is Tesla’s

best invention, a peculiar transformer specially

adapted to excite the earth, which is in the

transmission of electrical energy when the

telescope is in astronomical observation. By the

use of this marvellous device, he has already set

up electrical movements of greater intensity than

those of lightening and passed a current, suffi cient

to light more than two hundred incandescent

lamps, around the Earth.

03] The Tesla Wireless System: This system comprises

a number of improvements and is the only means

known for transmitting economically electrical

energy to a distance without wires. Careful

tests and measurements in connection with an

experimental station of great activity, erected by

the inventor in Colorado, have demonstrated that

power in any desired amount can be conveyed,

clear across the Globe if necessary, with a loss not

exceeding a few per cent.�

04] The Art of Individualisation: This invention of

Tesla is to primitive Tuning, what refi ned language

is to unarticulated expression. It makes possible

the transmission of signals or messages absolutely

secret and exclusive both in the active and passive

aspect, that is, non-interfering as well as non-

interferable. Each signal is like an individual of

unmistakable identity and there is virtually no

limit to the number of stations or instruments

which can be simultaneously operated without

the slightest mutual disturbance.

05] The Terrestrial Stationary Waves: This

wonderful discovery, popularly explained,

means that the Earth is responsive to electrical

vibrations of defi nite pitch, just as a tuning fork to

certain waves of sound. These particular electrical

vibrations, capable of powerfully exciting the

Globe, lend themselves to innumerable uses of

great importance commercially and in many other


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20

respects. The “fi rst World System” power plant

can be put in operation in nine months. With

this power plant, it will be practicable to attain

electrical activities up to ten million horse-power

and it is designed to serve for as many technical

achievements as are possible without due expense.

Among these are the following: �

06] The inter-connection of existing telegraph

exchanges or offi ces all over the world;�

07] The establishment of a secret and non-

interferable government telegraph service;�

08] The inter-connection of all present telephone

exchanges or offi ces around the Globe;�

09] The universal distribution of general news by

telegraph or telephone, in conjunction with the

Press;�

10] The establishment of such a “World System” of

intelligence transmission for exclusive private

use; �


11] The inter-connection and operation of all stock

tickers of the world; �

12] The establishment of a World system — of musical

distribution, etc.; �

13] The universal registration of time by cheap clocks

indicating the hour with astronomical precision

and requiring no attention whatever; �

14] The world transmission of typed or hand-written

characters, letters, checks, etc.; �

15] The establishment of a universal marine service

enabling the navigators of all ships to steer

perfectly without compass, to determine the exact

location, hour and speak; to prevent collisions and

disasters, etc.; �

16] The inauguration of a system of world printing on

land and sea; �

17] The world reproduction of photographic pictures

and all kinds of drawings or records...”

NIKOLA TESLA, Autobiography, 1919

Book cb 20 18/11/04, 13:32:15

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G A L L E R Y � � � �

WHITE CUBE / BLACK BOX / SHOWROOM

Book cb 21 18/11/04, 13:32:17

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Until the summer of 2003 whw worked without permanent

exhibition space, and since

then, in collaboration with

publishing house AGM, it has

been running the program of

Gallery Nova.

The Nova Gallery is a non-

profi t city owned gallery in the

center of Zagreb and we try to

structure its program using

the strategies from whw projects,

conceiving it as a platform for

discussing relevant social issues

through art, theory and media, as

well as a model of collaboration

and exchange of know-how

between cultural organizations

of different backgrounds. The

Gallery Nova was one of the

most active spots of Zagreb

visual arts scene in the mid

Seventies, open towards radical,

avant-garde, unconventional and

often marginalized art practices

that were characteristic for the

young generation of artists,

whose protagonists still have

an important influence on

development of new Croatian

art scene. whw is referring to

precisely this period in the

Gallery Nova history, and the

new program concept brings

a vide array of new activities

into customary exhibition and

gallery practice.

Except producing and

presenting contemporary visual

arts, its focus is also establishing

links between visual culture and

other forms of cultural production

with civil, activist, NGO scene.

Besides exhibitions, the program

is characterized by a series of

events that are designed to turn

the gallery into a vivid cultural

centre, and includes concerts,

performances, fi lm screenings,

lectures and public discussions.


Book cb 22 18/11/04, 13:32:17

23

It tries to fi ll in the gaps in the

local cultural scene acting at

the intersections of popular,

high and alternative culture in

differentiated model that enables

investigation of representational

strategies, exhibiting forms and

actions in public space.

The Gallery Nova is a vivid

and active space targeting mostly

young audiences, using its non-

hierarchical structure and

organizational fl exibility towards

fostering different innovative

cultural collaboration practices

and promoting contemporary

media and socially conscious

and educationally involved

cultural production. Besides

the international exhibition

program, an important aspect of

work is continuous collaboration

with the youngest generation

of Croatian artists, which whw initiated with exhibition START


[mestna galerija, ljubljana 2002; gallery karas, zagreb 2003]. The

artist of the youngest generation

still work without sufficient

institutional framework, with a

strong tendency of polarization

between the “capital” and

the “provinces,” mostly very

traditional educational mo dels,

non/existence of any regulated

art market, lack of professional

publications, critical acclaim,

systems of support and fi nancing.

In this respect, the signifi cant

part of the Gallery Nova pro-

gram is series of START solo

exhibitions, whose goal is to

establish professional standards

of work for young artists and at

the same time, through a series of

accompanying events, establish

a platform for critical evaluation

of their work. The program

establishes collaboration with

young generation of curators and

also trys to stress the continuity

of artistic endeavors and social

themes opened in the Seventies,

thus continuing the traditions

of local conceptual and socially

conscious art practices. In the

end, the question is if one

can radically change the basic

conditions of seeing/appreciating

the artwork corresponds to

examining of the political

potential of the art, and its

ability not only to identify new

and sensitive themes in wider

social context, but also to offer

new modalities of resistance and

collectivity. In this respect, the

Gallery Nova is perceived as a

public urban space of social

visibility, intensive circulation,

space for showing things,

passing through, spending

time, interacting, exposing

confl icts …

Book cb 23 18/11/04, 13:32:21

24

One of our recent exhibitions was Side-effects in

the Salon of the Museum of contemporary art

in Belgrade, with works by EGOBOO.bits, Felix

Gmelin, Igor GrubiÊ, Sharon Hayes, Vlatka

Horvat, Kristian Koæul, Andreja KulunËiÊ,

Aydan Murtezaoglu, Serkan Ozkaya, Kirsten

Pieroth, Bulent Sangar, Marko TadiÊ, and

VERSION. Side-effects took place in the context

of In the Cities of the Balkans, the 2nd part of

the Balkans trilogy, a project initiated by the

Kunsthalle Fridericianum. Side-effects are a

good and illustrative example of indirect links

that whw creates among projects that take place

outside the gallery, and the gallery ones.

The exhibition presented works that deal

with a broad spectrum of questions that can

be read in different contexts. But at the same

time, all of them dealt with certain unavoidable

confl icting knots of “transition” toward liberal

capitalism, whose “side-effects” are class

divisions, increase of unemployment and

crime, cultural and spiritual impoverishment,

lack of imagination, solidarity, safety,

indifference, and lethargy. Side-effects offers a

conceptual frame, a certain standpoint from

which the works presented can be understood

against a background of lost illusions in the

solutions offered by the “normalization”

process and its idea of a gradual approach of the

imagined ideal of a liberal democracy and a free

market, while at the same leaving the dialogue

between the artistic and curatorial position

open.

In a certain non-committed way, the

exhibition is the third in a series of recent

exhibitions of the whw curatorial collective. It

is not the same exhibition in three versions, but

THREE PROJECTS

Book cb 24 18/11/04, 13:32:25

25

rather a process in which the same traumatic

core is always questioned in different ways.

This series of exhibitions might be seen as a

kind of dialectical triad in which the thesis

is the exhibition Looking Awry [apexart, new york, 2003], with works by Igor GrubiÊ,

Aydan Murtezaoglu, Adrian Paci and Maja

BajeviÊ. Starting from Æiæek’s interpretation

of Shakespeare’s quote from Richard III, the

exhibition is based on the impossibility of

grasping the truth through a direct gaze. In that

sense also Marx’s demand to “look at the world

with sober eyes” asks exactly for that “awry”

look, which might also be understood as a look

from the social margins.

The exhibition Repetition: pride and prejudice

[gallery nova, zagreb, 2003/2004] with works by

Sharon Hayes, Pierre Huyghe, Sanja IvekoviÊ,

Aydan Murtezaoglu, Anri Sala and Andreas

Siekmann, functioned as an antithesis: we

cannot directly reach for the truth and that is

why we keep repeating the traumatic event.

That repetition is not the consequence of

some “objective necessity” independent of our

desires, but it functions as a political option, as a

paying of a symbolic debt, a gesture of repeated

inclusion and symbolic appropriation. “Pride

and prejudice” from the title are not separate

themes, a positive and a negative feature, but it

points toward their inter-relatedness - and just

like pride emerges only from the perspective

of certain prejudice, prejudice is a product of

the gaze of arrogant pride. If we wish to spare

ourselves the painful way around through much

false recognition, we will miss the whole truth.

In that dialectical triad Side-effects then is a kind

of synthesis, a negation of a negation.

THREE PROJECTS

Book cb 25 18/11/04, 13:32:30

26

The most ambitious long-term project in which

WHW is currently involved is the Zagreb Cultural

Kapital of Europe 3000 which is a collaborative

platform initiated by four independent cultural

organizations in Croatia - Center for Drama

Art [performing arts], Multimedia Institute

[new media], Platforma 9,81 [architecture and

media] and What, How and for Whom [visual

culture]. Throughout a three year period [2004-

2006] the project will develop a manifold of

collaborative practices within the local and

the international cultural scene and thus

draw attention to the inadequacy of dominant

cultural models to meet the challenges in a

changed setting for cultural action. This new

setting comes as a consequence of acceleration

of globalized communication exchanges,

transversality of capital and attendant ubiquity

of economic globalization. Contrary to these

dynamic processes the cultural fi eld remains

largely limited to and within the confi nes of the

representative cultural models, its ineffi cient

institutional framework, without dynamic

strategies of collaboration and almost without

any [and increasingly smaller] social relevance.

CK3000 has set out as its goal to react, in the

local context of cultural production, to this

[primarily European] situation by offering to

the broader local and international cultural

public an action model which will both on the

level of methodology and on the level of issues

deal with the dynamics of transformation of the

cultural fi eld, which are signifi cantly marked

by the ambiguity of the notion of capital [as in

cultural capital city, socio-cultural capital and

economic capital]. Initial strategic partners

of the Cultural Kapital 3000 are Project

CULTURAL KAPITAL 3000

Book cb 26 18/11/04, 13:32:35

27

Relations from Berlin -

a project initiated by the

German Federal Cultural

Foundation with an agenda

to promote the cultural

collaboration in Eastern

Europe, and Erste Bank

from Vienna which supports

creation of various cultural

platforms in the countries of

Central Europe where it does

business.

By choosing contemporary

agendas such as: the relation

between public and private,

status of public spaces,

capital in physical space,

intellectual property and

digital technologies, copyright

and alternative licensing

systems, hybrid information

in physical space, artist

groups and collective labor,

collective intelligences,

managing of labor and

immaterial labor, the Cultural

Kapital 3000 project will form a

complementary and coherent

set of cultural issues which

are of great social relevance

and thus promote the

importance of cultural action

as a signifi cant element in

the development of the public

and social capital in a neo-

liberal transitional context.

Cultural Kapital 3000 will

promote practices and actors

articulating cultural action

in terms of social agency

and social agency in terms of

critical culture.

Over the next two

years, Cultural Kapital 3000

will produce a number of

local and international

interdisciplinary

collaborations on projects

presenting and engaging

new group dynamics, new

collective strategies and new

forms of labor in cultural

production; counteracting

and hybridizing the control

of productivity through

intellectual property;

advocating the protection

of public domain in face

of privatization; and

producing policy proposals

for strengthening and

development of independent

cultural sector and

securing its presence in

the cultural capital. It will

create collaboration while

investigating and inducing

its conditions of possibility,

because cultural capital no

longer means infrastructures,

but rather collaborations,

for collaboration is its

infrastructure.

whw | 2004

CULTURAL KAPITAL 3000

Book cb 27 18/11/04, 13:32:36

28

WHW published

several books:

Against Indifference

- Croatian translation

of selected essays

by Renata Salecl;

Hieroglyphs of the

Future, bilingual

edition of selected

essays by Brian

Holmes, Zagreb,

16/06/01 book of

interviews by Hans

Ulrich Obrist with

fi ve Croatian artists,

reader/catalogue for

the What, How and

for Whom exhibition

[with essays by Slavoj

Æiæek, Richard

Barbrook, Boris

Buden, Fredric

Jameson, Renata

Salecl, Charles

Esche...] and

regularly publishes

Gallery Nova

newspapers.

Books :

PRINTED MATTER

Book cb 28 18/11/04, 13:32:39

29

COLLECTIVE CREATIVITYAn exhibition on collective practices • Dedicated to anonymous worker

Book cb 29 18/11/04, 13:33:07

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One does not escape a bourgeois problematic of the subject simply by collectivizing that subject...[Terry Eagleton, Walter Benjamin or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism, p. 131]

WORKING MATERIAL

Book cb 30 18/11/04, 13:33:14

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Kunsthalle Fridericianum | Kassel | Germany

May 1 – July 15, 2005

The exhibition COLLECTIVE CREATIVITY is a cooperation between

the Kunsthalle Fridericianum and Siemens Arts Program

Artistic directors: René BLOCK and Angelika NOLLERT

Curated by What, How & for Whom / WHW | Zagreb | Croatia

COLLECTIVE CREATIVITYAn exhibition on collective practices & group enjoyment

The exhibition is dedicated to anonymous worker

Book cb 31 18/11/04, 13:33:20

32

Individuality has been exaggerated in the 20th century. Everybody wants to be different, but individuality is just wishful thinking. It is a sales argument, designed to stimulate commerce... we want something more corporate. We cultivate annonimity. [Kraftwerk]

kraftwerk, the electric quartet, cca 1977gilbert and george: portrait by christopher felver, fournier street, 1989.gorgona: adoration, 1966laibach kunst: ausstellung laibach kunst, pm, 1983

RESEARCH IN PROGRESS

Book cb 32 18/11/04, 13:33:27

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The phenomenon of the artists’ group is both paradoxical and dynamic. On

the one hand it is a negation of the romantic idea of the individual genius, but

on the other hand, the art group is not simply the sum of its individual parts,

but draws its character from the creative possibilities of different interactions

and synergies. Numerous artists’ groups and collectives working in the field

of visual arts during the second half of the 20th century questioned the very

essence of artistic production, negating it or shifting it closer to other fields,

such as architecture, design, theatre, science or daily life.

The exhibition deals with different forms of collective artistic creativity

whose protagonists share common programs, ways of life, methodologies

or political standpoints. Although the work of collectives is in many ways

determined by certain historical, existential, intellectual or political contexts,

the exhibition is interested in specific kinds of social tensions that serve as a

common axis around which various group activities are being organized.

While conscious of collective artistic practices of previous centuries and

historical avant-gardes, the exhibition concentrates on developments after the

neo/post avant-garde movements in the 60’s until today. Exploring procedures,

standpoints, effects, strategies, and social possibilities of collective activity,

the exhibition attempts to define different forms of collectivity inevitably

generated by group work. In the focus are therefore different emancipatory

aspects of collective work [no matter if it is about formal groups, movements,

COLLECTIVE CREATIVITYAn exhibition on collective practices & group enjoyment

WORKING PAPERS

Book cb 33 18/11/04, 13:33:37

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Collaborative creativity is not only a form of resisting the capitalist call for specialization but also a form of hidden struggle with the ilusion of the “autonomous ego”...[Viktor Mazin, Dreaming museums,

Manifesta Journal No 3, Spring/

Summer 2004, p. 19]

oho: mount triglav, happening in zvezda park, ljubljana, december 30, 1968irwin: like to like, 2004.

škart: horkeskart [choir], 2000-

crveni peristil: red peristil, urban intervention, split, 1968

anonymous author: black peristil, urban intervention, split, 1998

RESEARCH DOCUMENT

Book cb 34 18/11/04, 13:33:38

35

communities, scenes, communes, artists’ couples or individuals assuming

group identity]. Which strategies are taken by collectives in public space,

which alternative forms of »sociability« are generated, in which ways do

they occupy and change the system and the conditions of production and

representation, how do they affect the social order?

The exhibition does not see group activity solely in terms of the scope

and efficiency of tools used in attempts to change sociopolitical situation;

it also traces paradoxes of self-sufficient enjoyment in group work, which

inevitably overcomes and betrays its own instrumentality and use value.

GENERATING CONDITIONS FOR COLLECTIVE CREATIVITY

What, How & for Whom, the three basic questions of every economic analysis,

constantly define the work of our curatorial collective. Exploration of the

phenomena of collective creativity is positioned within the experience of our

own collective curatorial practice which is inevitably exposed to questioning

specific inner dynamics of the collective, its strategies and reach, as well as to

specific circumstances of “post-communist,” “Eastern European”, “transitional”

realities. In that regard the exhibition treats collective creativity from two

perspectives, in the sense that methods and models of collective work are

equal to the “theme” of the exhibition – the exhibition itself is trying to

generate the conditions for collective creativity. Although the context of the

exhibition is defined by complex intersections of contemporary and historical

perspectives, as well as by cultural and geo-political parallels and divergences

of different localities, the exhibition does not attempt at homogenous and

finished “history” of collective artistic creativity. Rather, it offers a certain

“collectively subjective” vision very much based in the cultural terrain which

renders the reading of modernity as the unique and homogenous cultural

capital of the West very problematic.

WORKING PROPOSAL

Book cb 35 18/11/04, 13:33:49

36

...transnational situation of the world system in which genuinely trans-national classes, such as new international proletariat and a new density of global management, have not yet anywhere clearly emerged. These constellated and alegorical subject-positions are however, as likely to be collective as they are individual-schizophrenic...[Fredric Jameson: The Geopolitical Aesthetic, Indiana University Press/BFI,

Bloomington-London, 1992, p. 5]

maj 75, group of six authors, magazine, 1978

general idea: fi le magazine [no 25, 1986]

RESEARCH IN PROGRESS

Book cb 36 18/11/04, 13:33:50

37

The question ‘what’ is an attempt to trace specific moments of collective

artistic creativity and the conditions in which it has been generated, the

question ‘how’ insists on the power of the traditional “white cube” exhibition

to articulate critical discourse, and in relation to that the question ‘for whom’

attempts to instigate creative interactions with the social environment, local

communities, public, and media, by triggering a number of artistic projects

tailored for local situation of the museum and city of Kassel and its cultural

and artistic institutions.

COLLECTIV-EAST DREAM

In many Eastern European countries there is a rich tradition of artists groups

and collectives whose work posed a strong critic of social institutions and

dominant cultural policy. Exploration of tradition of collective artistic work

seems to be especially interesting from the perspective of “New Europe”, as

well as in the context of other geographical points with similar “troubles with

modernism” and tradition of artists self-organizing such as Middle East or

South America.

The focus on Eastern Europe is not meant as support of the thesis of

cultural assimilation nor of “essential” differences simplified to consequences

of communist regimes, but as a more productive attempt at the re-

formulation of cultural identities. Mapping of various trans-generational and

international links and connections is based on the perspective of peripheral

cultural zone, effects of international emancipatory movements, popular

culture and lifestyles.

Although being aware of the limitations of our specific Zagreb-based

and generation-based perspective, the intention is to articulate it in order

to check the initial presumption that collective art production in Eastern

Europe generally aims at a different art system than in the West. We are

WORKING PAPERS

Book cb 37 18/11/04, 13:33:55

38

3nós3: arco 10, 1981tucuman arde, 1968

…the category of the individual character as such is also outmoded, as utmoded as that of the nation state [the comparison, meanwhile, very much including the fact that both these things still exist].[Fredric Jameson: The Geopolitical Aesthetic, Indiana

University Press/BFI, Bloomington-London, 1992, p.

176]

oda projesi: míne model, annex 2003.

RESEARCH DOCUMENT

Book cb 38 18/11/04, 13:33:55

39

especially interested in relating it to situations of South America, where there

are a number of groups, and like in Eastern Europe, also a strong tradition of

art collectives since early modernism. The reasons for this are, first of all, to

investigate whether in certain authoritarian and restrictive political regimes

art serves as a political realm, and whether this is also reflected in collective

work. The interest in a specific politicality of collective creativity would also

delineate the inclusion of collective art practice from the West, which is

clearly a reference for global contemporary art.

PRINTED MATTER

For the exhibition opening newspapers will be published, gathering all the

practical information and serving as easily distributed project info. That format

is also following tradition of many avant-garde groups that used newspapers

for propaganda and dissemination of ideas.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue edited by René

Block, Angelika Nollert, and WHW. During the research process for the

exhibition, material will be gathered for a book-catalogue, imagined as a

more comprehensive overview and also a place to discuss specific topics

or document works omitted in the show itself. The emphasis in the book-

catalogue will be on re-publishing as much as possible of original printed

material, such as group manifestos and texts.

The book will also include new texts by several artists/theoreticians.

What, how, for whom [WHW], 2004

WORKING PROPOSAL

Book cb 39 18/11/04, 13:34:05

APPROACHING DEADLINE:

page from chinese propaganda posters, 2005 taschen calendar

Book cb 40 18/11/04, 13:34:05

Promo Booklet WHW, 2004

Documents

Transcript of Promo Booklet WHW, 2004