Page 86 - The MoMA/ Guggenheim issue of World of Art magazine (2003)

in SEARcH Of BALKAniA

nEuE GALERIE Am LAndESmuSEum JOAnnEum, GRAZ AuSTRIA
curaTors: ROGER cOnOVER (us), EDA cUfER (slo), PETER WEiBEL (a)

in search of Balkania lifts relation to Balkania again. shown in europe of the and build a complex of
a long overdue ban on if on one level in search of Balkans, it is that there is metaphors derived not
the Balkans as a site of Balkania is a rendez-vous nothing in europe but the from the white cube of
intellectual endeavor and with a dented landscape full Balkans. museum logic, but from
cultural desire. conceived of used parts and accidental Balkania is not a world unto the street collisions and
from the outset as a art, where the real still itself, but a mirror onto all market chances of Balkanic
curatorial operation and matters and storefront selves. To recognize the knowledge. some rooms
artistic experience against windows resemble surrealist Balkans is to recognize lead to a secret history of
expectations, this exhibition displays, on another level it features and syndromes the avant-garde, others to
confronts a subject full of is a virtual encounter with a out of which cities, wars, a phenomenology of the
contradictions, to which symbolic geography that will experiments, ideas and banal. from the bunkers
everyone brings baggage be the 21st century’s most visions are composed. of enver hoxha to the
they can’t easily drop. important fold: where east how is such a world imaginary of the Black sea,
This exhibition requires meets West, where occident insinuated within the from religious kitsch to
that visitors check their becomes orient, and where museum environment? urban folklore, and from
baggage at the door, and none of the old lines and Working with over sixty croatian conceptualism to
allow the content of their myths about identity, self, artists encountered romanian Dadaism, this
own mental suitcases to be nation, and other hold. during five years of close exhibition considers the
disturbed, questioned and indeed, if this exhibition exchanges in the Balkans, Balkans as a source of culture
de-sensitized before thinking presents a picture different the curators construct a without which the future of
uncritically about their from any picture previously matrix of Balkanic spaces europe is unimaginable.

MARinA ABRAMOVic
naMe Pickers 1998
color PhoTogr aPh, 107 x 97 cM.
coll aBor aTion WiTh The
PhoTogr aPher Bojan Brecel j
anD The grouP irWin.
courTesy of The arTisTs

84 WORLD of ART