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Author: Yelena Kalinsky
Keywords: conceptual art, performative practices, private venue, processuality, unofficial event
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Artists and friends at Ilya Kabakov’s studio, (l–r): Sergei Letov, George Kiesewalter, Ilya Kabakov, Josef Backshtein, and Dmitri Prigov. (courtesy of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov)
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Kabakov showing work to Andrei Monastyrski. (courtesy of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov)
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Kabakov showing work to artists and friends (left to right): Andrei Monastyrski, Lev Rubinshtein, Viktor Skersis, and Nikita Alekseev. (courtesy of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov)
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Kabakov displaying his albums in his studio. (courtesy of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov)
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Artists and guests at Ilya Kabakov’s studio, (l–r) Alik Chachko, Irina Golovinskaia, unidentified woman, Vladimir Sorokin, Lev Rubinstein, D.A. Prigov, Viktoria Mochalova, Andrei Monastyrski, and Kabakov, ca. 1985–86. (courtesy of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov)
Dates: 1967–1987
Organized by: Ilya Kabakov (b. 1933)
Location: Attic studio, 6/1 Sretensky Boulevard, Moscow
Soon after Ilya Kabakov built his sixth-floor attic studio on Sretensky Boulevard and until his emigration in 1987, the space became a meeting place for Moscow’s unofficial artists, particularly for those who would eventually be associated with Moscow Conceptualism. Artists, poets, philosophers, critics, gathered there to discuss new work or for festive occasions.[1] Starting in the mid-1970s, Kabakov began to “perform” a series of conceptual albums. He used his training as a book illustrator to create metaphysical or conceptual narratives on sheets of gray or white paper. The readings would consist of Kabakov slowly turning the pages and reading the texts of these albums before a seated audience for periods that could last hours. In a short text from the time, entitled “…the point is in the turning of the pages,” Kabakov attempts to describe the sense of pure time that occurs in these durational performances, a concern that is echoed in the work of other Moscow Conceptualists such as the poet Lev Rubinstein with his index card poems, or the Collective Actions group with their actions for Trips Out of the City.
See also Matthew Jesse Jackson, The Experimental Group: Ilya Kabakov, Moscow Conceptualism, Soviet Avant-Gardes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
[1] Many members of Moscow’s artistic underground who gathered at the studio included: Yuri Kuper (b. 1940), Erik Bulatov (b. 1933), Eduard Steinberg (1937–2012), Vladimir Yankilevsky (b. 1938), Oleg Vasiliev (1931–2013), Viktor Pivovarov (b. 1937), Pavel Pepperstein (b. 1966), Andrei Monastyrski (b. 1949), Dmitri Prigov (1940–2007), Boris Groys (b. 1947), Joseph Backstein (b. 1945), Ivan Chuikov (b. 1935), Vladimir Sorokin (b. 1955), Lev Rubinstein (b. 1947), Vsevolod Nekrasov (1934-2009), Nikita Alekseev (b. 1953), Elena Elagina (b. 1949), George Kiesewalter (b. 1955), Igor Makarevich (b. 1943), Nikolai Panitkov (b. 1952), Sergei Romashko (b. 1952), Sabine Hänsgen (b. 1955), Viktoria Mochalova, Irina Nakhova (b. 1955), and others
Documents:
Ilya Kabakov – “…the point is in the turning of the pages” – artist’s text (1970s)
Ilya Kabakov – excerpt 60-e – 70-e… Zapiski o neofitsial’noi zhizni v Moskve [1960s-1970s… Notes on unofficial life in Moscow – memoirs (1982)
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Author: Daniel Grúň
Keywords: artist as curator, collective practices, documentary film, environment / installation, participatory practices, private venue, processuality, semi-public event, site-specificity
Otvorený ateliér / The First Open Studio, 16 mm film transferred onto DVD, 7:04 min. (courtesy Marian Mudroch, Bratislava)
Date: 19 November 1970
Participants and organizers: Milan Adamčiak (b. 1946), Peter Bartoš (b. 1938), Václav Cigler (b. 1929), Róbert Cyprich (b. 1951-1996)), Milan Dobeš (b. 1929), Igor Gazdík (b. 1943), Viliam Jakubík (b. 1945), Július Koller (b. 1939-2007), Vladimír Kordoš (b. 1945), Ivan Kříž-Vyrubiš (b. 1941), Otis Laubert (b. 1946), Juraj Meliš (b. 1942), Alex Mlynárčik (b. 1934), Marián Mudroch (b. 1945), Jana Shejbalová-Želibská (b. 1941), Rudolf Sikora (b. 1946), Ivan Štěpán (b. 1937), Dezider Tóth (b. 1947), Miloš Urbásek (b. 1932)
Location: Private house of Rudolf Sikora, Tehelná 32, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia
The collective exhibition ”1st Open Studio,” opened on 19 November, 1970, in Rudolf Sikora’s house—with an adjoining courtyard and garden—on Tehelná Street 32 in Bratislava. It was the first organized protest (in the form of an exhibiton) against the intervention of power over the visual arts, following the events of 1968. The nineteen participants, who gathered there at the invitation Rudolf Sikora, one of the young, emerging artists, shaped the unofficial art scene in the following years. Through the ”1st Open Studio” the artists declared their adherence to the progressive, Slovak art scene in the 1960s. In their work they developed experimental creativity, playfulness, a sensitivity to civilistic poetics of the painting, the art of object and the environment. On the threshold of the period of normalization, in the stifling atmosphere of a closed society and ongoing political purges, the artists’ studios became, not only a place to confront individual artistic practices, but also a space for participation in creative, collective experiences.
(Eugénia Sikorová, ”The Coming of a Generation,” in 1. Otvorený ateliér. Sorosovo centrum súčasného umenia (Bratislava, 2000), 31.
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Author: Daniel Grúň
Keywords: collective practices, educational event, ephemaral works, performance for photo camera, photography, processuality, semi-public event, site-specificity
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Peter Bartoš has come to the lake with ecological issues, 4 August 1978 / Peter Bartoš prišiel k jazeru s ekologickou problematikou (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Juraj Mihalík (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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A — B (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Preparing to strike / Príprava k úderu (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Sculptural or achaeological precision / Sochárska alebo archeologická presnosť (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Juraj Mihalík, sculptor, holds a newspaper / Noviny drží Juraj Mihalík, sochár (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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End of a conversation / Koniec rozhovoru (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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A sculpture by Vladimír Havrilla / Socha Vladimíra Havrillu (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Vladimír Havrilla reveals his sculpture / Vladimír Havrilla zviditeľňuje svoju sochu (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Water as sculptural material and medium / Voda jako sochársky materiál a médium (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Ľubomír Ďurček: Self-portrait with potholer’s goggles / Ľubomír Ďurček, Autoportrét s potápačskými okuliarmi (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Archeologist Ladislav Snopko talks about taking a stone in one’s hand / Archeológ Ladislav Snopko hovorí o kameni do ruky (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Once more on the haptic / Ešte raz o haptike (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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The third of all holds / Tretí, zo všetkých úchytov (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Only a small part of today’s texts / Iba malá časť dnešných textov (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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One of the authors of the lake book / Jeden z autorov jazernej knihy (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Gerulata, part of a Roman fortress / Gerulata, časť rímskeho opevnenia (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Gerulata, underground / Gerulata, spod zeme (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Vladimír Havrilla distributes microten bags, 7 August 1978 / Vladimír Havrilla prideľuje mikrotenové vrecká (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Sculptor Juraj Mihalík makes his fountain operational / Sochár Juraj Mihalík predvádza svoju fontánu (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Somewhere apart, Stano Filko is sketching and writing on microten bags / Stano Filko niekde v ústraní kreslil a písal na mikroténové sáčky (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Afterwards he turned them over / Potom ich obrátil naruby (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Ladislav Snopko speaks about archaeology / Ladislav Snopko hovorí o archeológii (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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The sculptor who creates sculptures can himself be a sculpture, says Ľubomír Ďurček / Sochár, ktorý vytvára sochy, môže byť sám sochou – hovorí Ľubomír Ďurček (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Juraj Mihalík thinking over another kind of sculpture / Juraj Mihalík uvažuje o inom druhu plastiky (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Sociology and sculpture before their action / Sociológia a sochárstvo pred svojou akciou (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Once again on the secrets of archaeology in the present / Ešte raz o tajomstvách archeológie v prítomnosti (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Ľubomír Ďurček looks at this world through a microten bag /Ľubomír Ďurček sa díva na tento svet cez mikrotenový sáčok (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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One more look towards the sun / Ešte jeden pohľad smerom k slnku (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Painter Ľubomír Ďurček looks through a microten bag at himself / Maliar Ľubomír Ďurček sa díva cez mikroténový sáčok na seba (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Ďurček: Enclave / Ďurček – Enkláva (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Vladimír Havrilla concludes the lakeside meeting / Vladimír Havrilla ukončuje stretnutie při jazere (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Vladimír Havrilla fashioning water / Vladimír Havrilla modeluje vodu (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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(Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Invisibility within reach / Neviditeľnosť na dosah (Photo from the archive of Ľubomír Ďurček)
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Date: 4-7 August 1978
Participants and organizers: Peter Bartoš (b. 1938), Ľubomír Ďurček (b. 1948), Stano Filko (b. 1937), Vladimír Havrilla (b. 1943), Juraj Mihálik (b. ), Ladislav Snopko (b. 1949)
Location: Rusovce, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia
By a lake in Bratislava, participants created mini events and ephemeral artworks out of materials found at the location, including pebbles, stones, plastic, etc. The event was initiated by Ľubomír Ďurček, a conceptual artist, performer, filmmaker, and author of experimental texts and books. The entire event was documented in a series of black-and-white photographs taken by participants.
In comments made Ďurček about the event, he points said that situations created did not necessarily correspond to reality.
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Author: Jelena Vesić
Keywords: art and theory, collective practices, dematerialization, educational event, processuality
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Seminar, Gallery SKC, Belgrad, November 8-11, 1978
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Seminar, Gallery SKC, Belgrad, November 8-11, 1978
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Seminar, Gallery SKC, Belgrad, November 8-11, 1978
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Seminar, Gallery SKC, Belgrad, November 8-11, 1978
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Seminar, Gallery SKC, Belgrad, November 8-11, 1978
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Seminar, Gallery SKC, Belgrad, November 8-11, 1978
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Seminar, Gallery SKC, Belgrade, November 8-11, 1978 Marko Pogačnik, Miško Šuvaković, Boris Demur, Jovan Čekić, Darko Hohnjec, Paja Stanković
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Seminar, Gallery SKC, Belgrade, November 8-11, 1978 Marko Pogačnik, Miško Šuvaković, Boris Demur, Jovan Čekić, Darko Hohnjec, Paja Stanković
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Seminar, Gallery SKC, Belgrade, November 8-11, 1978 Marko Pogačnik, Miško Šuvaković, Boris Demur, Jovan Čekić, Darko Hohnjec, Paja Stanković
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Seminar, Gallery SKC, Belgrade, November 8-11, 1978 Marko Pogačnik, Miško Šuvaković, Boris Demur, Jovan Čekić, Darko Hohnjec, Paja Stanković
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Seminar, Gallery SKC, Belgrade, November 8-11, 1978 Marko Pogačnik, Miško Šuvaković, Boris Demur, Jovan Čekić, Darko Hohnjec, Paja Stanković
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Seminar, Gallery SKC, Belgrade, November 8-11, 1978 Marko Pogačnik, Miško Šuvaković, Boris Demur, Jovan Čekić, Darko Hohnjec, Paja Stanković
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Seminar – A Conversation about Morality, private space at No. 24 Lomina Street, Belgrade, 17 January 1976: Miško Šuvaković, Biljana Tomić, Jovan Čekić, Paja Stanković
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Seminar – A Conversation about Morality, private space at No. 24 Lomina Street, Belgrade, 17 January 1976: Miško Šuvaković, Biljana Tomić, Jovan Čekić, Paja Stanković
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Seminar – A Conversation about Morality, private space at No. 24 Lomina Street, Belgrade, 17 January 1976: Miško Šuvaković, Biljana Tomić, Jovan Čekić, Paja Stanković
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Seminar – A Conversation about Morality, private space at No. 24 Lomina Street, Belgrade, 17 January 1976: Miško Šuvaković, Biljana Tomić, Jovan Čekić, Paja Stanković
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Seminar – A Conversation about Morality, private space at No. 24 Lomina Street, Belgrade, 17 January 1976: Miško Šuvaković, Biljana Tomić, Jovan Čekić, Paja Stanković
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Seminar – A Conversation about Morality, private space at No. 24 Lomina Street, Belgrade, 17 January 1976: Miško Šuvaković, Biljana Tomić, Jovan Čekić, Paja Stanković
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Seminar – A Conversation about Morality, private space at No. 24 Lomina Street, Belgrade, 17 January 1976: Miško Šuvaković, Biljana Tomić, Jovan Čekić, Paja Stanković
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Seminar – A Conversation about Morality, private space at No. 24 Lomina Street, Belgrade, 17 January 1976: Miško Šuvaković, Biljana Tomić, Jovan Čekić, Paja Stanković
Date: November 8–11, 1978
Participants: Jovan Čekić, Miško Šuvaković, Paja Stanković, Darko Hohnjec, Igor Leonardi, Maja Savić, Boris Demur, Bojan Brecelj, Biljana Tomić, and Marko Pogačnik
Location: SKC gallery, Belgrade
The Seminar by Group 143 was conceptualized as theoretical artistic event. It was paradigmatic for the work of the group whose main artistic medium was conversation, and as such, events were often presented in the form of artistic seminars and theoretical performances. The Seminar in SKC was an exploration of various formal, semantical, and contextual issues of art placed behind the “surface of visible” of an art object (as the assumed fetish of modernist aestheticism). Artists, critics, and philosophers—members of Group 143 and their guests from Šempas and Zagreb—were interrogating and performing different artistic, philosophical and logical questions, emphasizing process-based work (or thought) and focusing (aesthetically) to the very process of lecturing. Some of the investigations by participants of the Seminar unfolded under titles such as “Specific character of the structure or of the process,” “Specific character of meaning,” “Theory of numbers in the domain of visible-sensible manifestations,” “History of art as the process of education of the humankind,” “The art of nature and the art of man,” and so on.
The Seminar experimented with the concept of art-as-knowledge-production in line with the tradition of analytic Conceptualism in Britain and the United States, but also with the other institutionalized avant-garde forms of artistic education such as the Bauhaus school where the learning of art making coincided with the urge for theoretical reflection on art by the artists themselves. In the similar fashion, the occasion for the artistic talks and investigations where their artworks exhibited in the gallery space in the medium of film, photography, performance, and analytic drawings. Some of the theoretical references, important in the development of Group 143 and the structure of their (internal or public) seminars and workshops, were the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Art & Language, the concept of a “paradigm shift” by Thomas S. Kuhn, Joseph Kosuth’s investment into linguistics, and Germano Celant’s concept of critical critique. The work of the group was oriented toward “non-utilitarity, non-partisanship and ethical, rather than political statements. In other words, the group didn’t support any forms of artistic activism, but rather insisted on theoretical intertextualism.”[1]
Group 143 was established in 1975 by curator and art critic Biljana Tomić, one of the most influential figures in the history of Student Cultural Center (SKC), Belgrade, who became head of the visual arts program at the end of 1975, when Dunja Blažević moved to the directorial position of SKC. Tomić was also one of the editors of the Likovni program of the Belgrade International Theater Festival (BITEF), which was the visual arts program organized by Atelier 212 as an accompaniment to the festival of avant-garde and experimental theater, held in Belgrade since 1967. Within the context of BITEF and Tribune of Youth, both predating the establishment of the SKC gallery, Tomić organized different projects of experimental art, collaborating with early Yugoslav conceptualists (OHO, Braco Dimitrijević, Goran Trbuljak, KOD Group, Group E, etc.), and presenting various actors from the international art scene—from performance artists to protagonists of Arte Povera and Conceptual art (Michelangelo Pistoletto, Jannis Kounellis, Daniel Buren, Germano Celant, Catherine Millet, etc). At the time, Group 143 was joined by young philosophers and artists who were often influenced by analytic philosophy and logical positivism—among these were Jovan Čekić, who later called himself a media theorist and artist, and Miško Šuvaković, who later became a significant theorist of the art of 1960s and 1970s in both the Yugoslav and international context.
Group 143 continued working until the 1980s. One of the reasons why the members of the group dispersed was, according to the statements by its members, the perceived lack of interest in conceptual thinking within contemporary art production at the turn of 1980s, and their refusal to participate in the new “paradigm shift” that lead to the supremacy of painting. This particular period was marked by the return to image and painting, which, in the local context and within the microclimate of SKC, was probably fostered by visits of Achille Bonito Oliva, and promotion of the concept of Transavanguarde by the local critics and curators, including those who supported New Art in the 1970s.
[1] Miško Šuvaković, Konceptualna umetnost (Novi Sad: Muzej savremene umetnosti Vojvodine, 2007), 308.
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