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what, how & for whom

contents:

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Background information .......................... 03 What, how & for whom - Zagreb .............. 09 What, how & for whom - Vienna ............. 15 Project: Broadcasting ............................. 23 Project proposal Getting Together ...... 40

Background information
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 fulllment of 1000 years of nations 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 ofcially announced or proclaimed over. The lack of any intellectual contextualization has disabled the reection 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-communicative 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 nalized 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 lter 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 enjoymentin-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.

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1] Slavoj iek, Znak/oznaitelj/ pismo (prilog materijalistikoj teoriji oznaiteljske prakse, NIP mladost, Beograd, 1976.

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ljiljana bunjevac,

What, How and for Whom


on the occasion of 150th anniversary of Communist Manifesto If it were a single, it would be Satisfaction
Mark SIMPSON, Independent on Sunday

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Constant revolutionizing of productions, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All xed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all newformed 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
Croatian Television Prime News, 16/06/2000 Karl Marx & Frederick Engels The Communist Manifesto - A Modern Edition verso 1998, page 38-39.

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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 IEK, Spectre is Still Roaming Around]

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 signicance 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 worlds 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 nally domesticated and turned into a harmless cultural artifact. Not a revolutionary politics, but culture is today the only message of this medium. /.../

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Boris BUDEN It is about the society that mistook culture for politics, catalogue of the exhibition, forthcoming

The difference between capitalism and Communism is that Communism was perceived as an Idea that then failed in its realization, while capitalism functioned spontaneously. There is no Capitalist Manifesto.
Slavoj IEK
[Spectre is Still Roaming Around - An introduction to the 150th anniversary edition of the Communist Manifesto, arkzin, Zagreb, 1998.]

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What, How and for Whom is nongovernmental organization for visual arts, whose primarily goals are to promote and support realization of innovative contemporary art projects, to encourage and protect the freedom of artistic expression, to foster international theoretical and practical collaboration in the eld of visual culture, to collaborate with other artistic, civil and cultural groups in Croatia and abroad, and to promote innovative collaborative methods of realization of more demanding artistic projects. WHW was initiated in Zagreb in late 90s as the informal network between activist organization/publishing house Arkzin, net.cultural club Mama and the team of independent curators [Ana Devi, Nataa Ili, Sabina Sabolovi] that started to work on the international exhibition on the occasion of 150th anniversary of Communist Manifesto. Since this model of collaboration between cultural organizations of different backgrounds and know-how proved very successful, at the beginning of 2001 we became a legal subject, registering as non-for-prot 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.

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The three basic questions of every economic organization - what, how and for whom - are operative in almost all segments of life. What, 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 Marxs Communist

Manifesto on the occasion of books 150th anniversary 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 anniversary of the book of such powerful

ideological and political potential in the society that has imposed collective mystication 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 principle has become the 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 nally have overlapped.

artists who have been forming the strong current of socially engaged art since the late 60s, 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 visualizations 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, unied perception of art scenes, so-

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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 80s, at the time of rapid deterioration of socialist regime, with

cialist 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 nal 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 rst of all a conservative reaction against modernity, particularly against the modern Western culture as culture of human rights and freedoms, i.e., an intrinsically antimodern 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

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reason why culture and civil society are so closely allied in the strategies of transition in todays 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

content in his hands. The Manifesto today is the cultural Other of the West. Vienna project What, How and for Whom, dedicated to 153rd anniversary of Communist Manifesto opposes the view that equals Eastern Europe with communism or identies 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.

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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 nally become a cultural symbol of the East. Anyone who still tries to grasp its political meaning will nd nothing but an obscure, intrinsically non-European cultural

Focus on economy, capital and capitalism seeks to return to the West its own message /on transition from so called totalitarism 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 Yugoslavia acted against ofcial institutions or at least apart from them. Self-organizing and activism were politically engaged, but not as battle against the darkness of Communist totalitarianism, but, paradoxically for the state whose ofcial ideology was self-management, as the ght for complete selfrealization of individuals and culture, against real bureaucratic

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limitations. Alternative cultural movement was indeed taking socialist ideology more seriously than the cynical political lite in power did. Paradoxically, deeply politicized, alternative, subcultural 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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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 todays circumstances of culturalization of everything, in situation when every avant-garde or subversive act is immediately absorbed as a fashion, exclusively cultural and temporary alternative, there is no alternative culture. Alternative

culture existed when there still were alternative ideas about order of society, ideas
Ola Pehrson, Marxist suit, 1997

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 Croatian civil scene in the 90s, often called the alternative scene2, the notion of alternative was used differently in two broad periods. The rst one, in accordance to general regression, as characteristic of the period of Croatian Democratic Community partys rule, is actually a continuation of 70s ideology that perceives alternative culture as the low opposition to high, lite, institutional culture. That
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, antiwar, anarchistic organizations, groups, initiatives and movements.

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3] Autonomous Cultural Factory Attack, Zagreb; Arkzin DTP & Prepress studio, Zagreb; Movara club, Zagreb; net.cultural klub MAMA, Zagreb; Art Workshop Lazareti, Dubrovnik

scene, roughly identied 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 subcultural and it developed specic political meanings, regularly strongly based in ethical demands for non-violence, equality, multiethnicity, 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 ll 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 insufcient 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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Tomislav GOTOVAC, Rocks in my bed, performance at the opening, 20/06/01

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 signicant shift of the status of the intellectuals. It is no longer enough to be

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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

PROJECT: BROADCASTING
[dedicated to Nikola Tesla]

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

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broadcast media in relation to the concept of politics and specific 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 interventions, situations and researches, publications, radio, TV and internet interventions and broadcasts, public lectures, screenings, forums etc.

The project deals with issues of broadcasting in reference to Nikola Teslas biography and inventions. The basic concept is close to Brechts writing on radio as two-sided apparatus of communication and the whole project has strong educational emphasis.

participants:
Marina ABRAMOVI Robert ADRIAN X & Norbert MATH Joe BARI & Apolonija UTERI 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 KULUNI Ivan MARUI KLIF, Magdalena PEDERIN & Lala RAI Kristina LEKO

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David TOOP Stephen WRIGHT Igor ZABEL ZVUK BRODA

timeline:

10/06/01 Brian HOLMES lecture 12/06/01 Hans ULRICH OBRIST lecture 5/07/01 rst supplement dedicated to Broadcasting Project in the cultural magazine Zarez 28/09/01 ing. Renato FILIPIN demonstration of Teslas experiments Keiko SEI lecture 05/10/01 Bojana PEJI lecture

27/11/01 Viktor MISIANO lecture 04/12/01 Igor ZABEL lecture 06/12/01 second supplement in the cultural magazine Zarez 13/12/01 Diedrich DIEDERICHSEN lecture 04/01/02 rst radio show dedicated to Broadcasting project at the 3 program of Croatian National Radio 13:00 CET, following broadcasts: 18/01., 01/ 02,15/02, 01/03, 15/03, 29/03, 12/04, 26/04, 03/ 05, 17/05, 31/05 26/01/02 opening of the exhibition in the Technical Museum perfomances: Tomislav GOTOVAC, Marko PELJHAN 27/01/02 David TOOP lecture; live broadcast of Norbert MATH & Robert ADRIANs installation at Kunstradio Vienna 23:00 CET

28/01 - 01/02, daily radio shows by Joe BARI and Apolonija UTERI at Radio Student, 13:00 CET, following broadcasts 04/02 - 08/ 02, 11/02 - 15/02 28/01-28/02/02 series of broadcasts by Marianne BRAMSEN at Radio Student 07/02/02 Branislav DIMITRIJEVI lecture 14/02/02 STATION ROSE webcastbroadcast, ZVUK BRODA live performance, KSET club 21/02/02 Stephen WRIGHT lecture 28/02/02 closing of the exhibition, Marko PELJHAN lecture Februray - June 2002, books by Hans ULRICH OBRIST, Brian HOLMES, Diedrich DIEDERICHSEN further supplements in Zarez...

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11/11/01 live streaming dinner/ discussion go_home


Zagreb: Nada Bero, eljko Blae, Ljiljana Filipovi, Branko Franceshi, Sanja Ivekovi, Katarina Peovi, Joanne Richardson, Mladen Stilinovi, Ana Devi, Nataa Ili, Sabina Sabolovi, Tea koki New York: Ammiel Alcalay, Katherine Carl, Elizabeth Cohen, Danica Daki, Slavko Kaunko, Beka Nani, Atsushi Ogata, Shelly Silver, Sandra Sterle, George Yudice, Martha Wilson

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 finest 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 BRECHT The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication, 1932

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 selfserving power-structures. Due to the specific 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

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curatorial practice. Additionally, one of the sideeffects of the transition period in the field of visual arts is ten years long hiatus in publishing of contemporary art theory. *** BROADCASTING PROJECT moves in opposition to the oppression of monologue and centralized patriarchal infotainment. Crucial questions are communication and mediation. Success of mediated communication depends on the conditions under which the exchange takes place - those conditions are not primary technological 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

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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, commodification). 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.

Brechts reflection on the radio comes home today with


not one but two jolts of recognition. The first 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 describesif 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 reflexes 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?

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Brian HOLMES Kosov@: Futures of the Transatlantic Carnival

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 development of radio, radar, satellites,

electronic microscope, microwave, fluorescent 30 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 scientific working process and outcomes. At the same time, Teslas 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.

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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.

... The world system

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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 scientific 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 one or more wires (at a distance obviously restricted) can likewise be actuated, without artificial 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 fields 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: 1] 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. 2] The Magnifying Transmitter: This is Teslas 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, sufficient to light more than two hundred incandescent lamps, around the Earth. 3] 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

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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. 4] The Art of Individualisation: This invention of Tesla is to primitive Tuning, what refined 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, noninterfering 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. 5] The Terrestrial Stationary Waves: This wonderful discovery, popularly explained, means that the Earth is responsive to electrical vibrations of definite 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 respects. The first 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: 6] The inter-connection of existing telegraph exchanges or offices all over the world; 7] The establishment of a secret and noninterferable government telegraph service; 8] The inter-connection of all present telephone exchanges or offices around the Globe; 9] 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 handwritten 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

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Brian HOLMES
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Hans Ulrich OBRIST

Scanner
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Diedrich DIEDERICHSEN

Viktor MISIANO
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Technical Museum is located in the


building that is one of the most beautiful examples of Croatian 1950s modernism and human-face socialism. The major part of the exhibition will be held in the separate space in the Technical museum [black box], but there will also be a number of works incorporated into the museums permanent collection. In todays context, evoking Teslas work offers numerous interpretations, parallels and wondrous paradoxes of meaning. Our intention is not to make closed illustrative museum exhibition or to focus exclusively on biographical references of this charismatic legend. Instead, our goal is to open the space for interaction and exchange of information, and encourage artists to utilize in-situ installations and projects with space-visual-audio elements in exploring and emphasizing important elements of experience, movement and continuance in redefined conditions of contemporary technologic, post-information time.

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WHW [What, How & for Whom] c/o Arkzin Ilica 176 10000 Zagreb Croatia phone: +385 1 370 5374 3777 866 e-mail: whw@mi2.hr

January 3, 2001 Dear Ms. Jaulin, Following please find the project proposal for Getting Together.

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The project Getting Together is based on the utopian idea of togetherness and it treats the subject of phenomenon of artists groups and its relations to other contemporary forms of social groups with the method equaled to its subject. The project consists of two layers that overlap temporally and spatially. The first one puts emphasis on the researches whose outcome should establish models of collaboration for whom: Germana Jaulin between different artists and social groups, while the second combines further researches with series of fondation presentations in numerous permutations of different Evens formats of magazines, projects in public spaces and 14, rue Lincoln exhibitions in alternative, non-gallery spaces. 75008 Paris France The project operates at the intersections between the model of artists group and the model of various groups developed within, for example, antiglobalization movements, thus also intersections between artistic work and social movements in a

broader sense. The project will include different artistic groups but also different cultural groups that work with the procedures similar to artistic models and it will provide a platform for various groups to redefine its positions. Our starting position is that an artistic group is a result of certain social conflict that a group is trying to solve, and that is a location of a very direct political relevancy of a collective work. On the other hand, we would like to explore the moment of enjoyment that often binds a group together. There is always a possibility of a sudden break of initiated chain of reactions and this project is therefore open to tests and shifts in the limits imposed on mutual influences, communication, engagements and creativity. Please feel free to contact us should you require any additional information. Thank you for your consideration of this request. Sincerely, Ana Devi, Nataa Ili, Sabina Sabolovi

whw

GETTING TOGETHER

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From the moment that artists started to sign their works, the artworks had been granted authorship and emerged out of collective anonymity. Since then they have been treated as unrepeatable individual creations. Man is a social creature and in certain way every work is a collective work, made possible by the work of others, those that worked before, those who formed frameworks of communication and meanings, those who invest their work in our work by interpreting it... But the ideology of modernity insists on individual, artist genius, and exceptional authorial personalities. Of course, today we understand that it is not about some essence of art, some essential category that denes artistic practice, but about needs of capital and markets demands. Phenomenon of artists group occurred in the second half of 19th century, coinciding with new styles and movements in visual arts. The beginning of 20th century has been marked with intensive activities of artists collectives linked to avantgarde movements and schools, starting from Futurists, Dadaists and Surrealists to various

artistic movements including conceptual and post-conceptual art. Mass media and technological progress had enabled mechanic reproduction and initiated the lost of aura [w. benjamin], which indirectly inuenced increased number of artists groups during the 20 th century. The work of different historical artists groups and movements was often based on the idea of achieving total artwork, perceived as multi-disciplinary unit whose realization should directly inuence the society by improving the quality of life and initiating a kind of social revolution. The idea that art could inuence and change complex social relations had persistently proved untenable, especially in the periods when these claims culminated - during 1920s and 1930s, in the post-war 1950s and especially in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Nevertheless, continual efforts of different artists groups prove relevancy of this basically utopian wish. In that context it is interesting to note that numerous artists groups of the second half of the 20th century questioned the very essence of artistic production, negating it or shifting it closer to other

elds, such as architecture, design, theater or science, in order to multi-disciplinary enlarge its own eld of activity. The phenomenon of artists group is paradoxical and dynamic. On the one side it is the very negation of romantic idea of individual genius, but on the other side the concept of the art group is not based exclusively on the summation of individuals, but draws its character from multidirectional creative possibilities of different interactions and synergic actions. First of all, the phenomenon of artists group indicates toward certain more or less prominent social conict realized as the reaction of minority of isolated individuals organized in a collective that explores alternative models of power redistribution. This social conict is a priori political gesture based on the oppositions that reect inability of an individual to confront the system of restrictions and act within it. Collective is a micro-system, both small society and parallel society. Since the possibility to act socially also means to partly t into the system, dynamics of artistic groups is

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paradoxically based on balancing these parallel identities. As a system the group is always fragile, from one side threatened by ossication and complete integration into the system, from the other by its own disintegration. Balancing these unstable factors and tensions functions as the very vitality of artists group. Creating the sense of closeness and making some kind of a barrier, a membrane against outside world, a group might be compared to a family and thus indirectly points toward total crisis of a family concept.

is inevitable that individuals working in a group give up part of their identity and acquire certain exclusive collective identity. Therefore, to

belong to a group inevitably expresses artistic and political attitude.


There is a constant fear of Western man of totalitarian loss of freedom and accordingly the need to express identity, autonomy and rights of the subject, including hypertrophied forms of political correctness, culture of complaints and harassment. Its ip side is hysteric search for rules, subjection to various disciplinarian rituals ranging from cults and masochism to Body radicals, subjection of free will, depersonalization, drowning in anonymous crowd and/or collective... When is collective work truly productive and when is it just a promotional tool or a mask for personal weaknesses? After sixties and seventies personal is political and eighties yuppie individualism, in the nineties mass usage of digital communications networks and ideology of multiculturalism shifted the focus toward virtualization of the body, fragmentary and uid subject

Are couples a group?


There are numerous models of constitutions of artists groups. Dialogue and work distribution are always parts of the model /even when the opposite is claimed/. The sense of a shared secret /even when the opposite is claimed/. *** A group is creative laboratory, voluntary and temporary think-tank isolation that enables results of interactions to become socially active. It

solidarity, but on conicts. What is it In this situation the question of the subject and today to be its relations to collective are necessarily raised. subject and What is it today to be subject and what is the relation of the subject toward community? What what is the are his/her responsibilities to broader community relation of the and how is a collective, community responsible to subject individual? How is it possible to work together? national identities, political systems and social toward *** changes brought about by so called transition community? - privatization, bankruptcy cases, unemployment, In many Eastern European countries there is 45 loss of social stability, armed conicts, wars and What are his/ rich history of artists groups, whose work had been destruction of whole cities. In the transition her process, the state lost its status as the politicalresponsibilities almost always performed at the social margins. In Croatia, where this tradition dates from 1950s, administrative representative of solidarity exactly those marginal artists groups changed based on work, and the new civil-social form to broader conservative visual language and offered strong of power based on private property had been community established. In this new context, the state acquired and how is a counterpoint to the production supported by institutions of dominant cultural politics. In the the function to regulate the conicts resulting collective, wider local context of ex-Yugoslavia, it is possible from unsolvable contradictions of the new system, to trace continual activities of artistic groups that which becomes repressive whenever these community conicts can not be funneled by procedures of responsible to shared utopian ideas of out-of-system, critical political activities in the public, redened notion parliamentary democracy or some negotiable and context of artwork, afrmation of category of solution. Sociability is no longer based on individual?
and idea that everyone can freely choose and change identity and social role. Behind this permissiveness there is obsessive search for the rules of behavior that would norm and order unstable and fragile social life and also passionate attachments to different types of fundamentalism. Parallel to it, especially in the Eastern Europe, weve witnessed the collapse of state and

The experience of collective work within the WHW motivated the planed research 46 that aims to explore the issues and models of artistic collaboration and groups

ephemera and chance, dematerialization of art work and inclination to alternative spaces and formats. The activities of groups like EXAT 51 [1951 - 1956, Zagreb] Gorgona [1959 - 1966, Zagreb], Crveni Peristil [1968/69, Split], OHO [1966 - 1971, Ljubljana], Bosh + Bosh, [Subotica], Penzioner Tihomir Simi [1969, Zagreb], The Group of Six Artists [1975 - 1984, Zagreb] left traces whose echoes and modications we can discern in the activities of contemporary groups like IRWIN, Ljubljana, Weekend Art Projekt, Zagreb, Crni Peristil, Zagreb, Ego East, Zagreb, kart, Beograd... The ideas of group work culminated in late sixties and during the seventies, and 1968 idea of collectivism initiated interaction with the public and art getting out of galleries to public spaces of squares and streets, universities, factories, apartments, nature... For the Eastern European groups it was often the only possible model of working and essential feeling of belonging to the group formed resistance to power structures and ee from them. How general are these general characteristics? What is the role of the group work

today when getting into public space and interaction with the public are common means of artistic expression? If in that context one can still talk of critical art and its impact on the public, how is it realized? What are the restrictions and

repression of recent global or transitional society? Do we still perceive the public as critical mass or as uninterested crowd? These are just some of the few questions that arises from analysis of collective artistic work.
*** The experience of collective work within the WHW motivated the planed research that aims to explore the issues and models of artistic collaboration and groups in the light of broader context of networks and groups that operate on shifting grounds of life-styles and politics. Invitation to collaboration to different artists and cultural groups and simulations of collective should result in temporary networks and applications in formats characteristic for late sixties and seventies artistic collectives:

magazines, project in public spaces and exhibitions in alternative, non-gallery spaces.

Apart from classic model of artists groups as closed unity, today there are many different models of collective work. Possibilities opened by new technologies and fast information exchange enabled different networks and collective work based on the network models is no longer dependant on the context of real time and space. While classic group organization
was based on the belonging, networks enable formation of temporary groups and possibility of simultaneous participation in many different groups. Also, groups today very often appropriate or simulate certain social forms or templates present in the society. So a group can

Disregarding the model of group activities and their common goals, contemporary artists groups and collectives are still characterized by enjoyment of togetherness and more than ever are the groups interested in the possibilities of communication and limitations imposed on it in the broadest social context.

appropriate the form or identity of different institutions: commercial companies, cultural nancial speculations and stock-exchange games. This, of course, enhances the role of a curator institutions like museum or research laboratory. Often behind these appropriations of who is no longer the one who just selects from the
forms there is and individual that by appropriating framework or a form creates contra-culture and actualizes own existence within the present system or at its margins. catalogue of artworks, but who creates values and context. And the question is nowadays how to

...the question is nowadays how to overcome this *** dominant but also The art object is no longer the most important - exhibition as social event and relations it enables almost 47 or art projects as social projects are in the focus of exhausted contemporary art. This dematerialization of art paradigm of coincides with domination of nancial capital that does not produce new values primarily in the collective/ eld of material production, but in the eld of group show

overcome this dominant but also almost exhausted paradigm of collective/group show

48

that simply gathers under common denominator works by different artists, how to achieve cooperation, collaboration, truly collective work. There are three levels - material level of production of the object, the very process of work production and its documentation, and social relation between artist and viewer/consumer, including media and market mediation and commentaries on that mediation. In all the periods some of this aspects was central to the art production. The question is now how to connect them, how to bring back into artistic production the very process of material production while not losing sight of symbolic production and its special aspects. *** Actualization of the project would be preceded by exchange of information, ideas and proposals in the form of mail forum and work on the magazine. The process of communication is equally important element as the very realization of the project.

The form of /anti/magazine as alternative way to distribute ideas and realize works has a long tradition in the local and international context / Gorgona, Maj 75.../. It would be a certain form of mail art that gathers different material, documentation,

programs, projects, artworks, manifestos, questionnaires... By its very nature media are collective - they
appear due to the minimal feeling of connection between creator/sender and receiver/consumer and this relation is further strengthened by participation in certain lifestyle. While the media were huge, dinosaurs, slaw, heavy, immobile and centralized and thus unable to react fast enough to the signals sent by body so huge, due to their nancial sustainability they were dependant on mass audience. But these relations are nowadays changed. Against broadcasting even narrowcasting becomes possible, interesting and even nancially lucrative. This also bring up the issue of collectivity - of creative collective of media creators, but also of possible models of collective created by media - new tribes no longer

connected to space proximity and immediate contacts but drawn together by common interests, communication codes and information exchange... *** The project Getting Together does not offer participants strict spatial and temporal form of the group show. Project is conceived as a series of consequential and coordinated parallel actions that should take place at different locations within the city of Zagreb, but also in other cities in Croatia and abroad. Abandoning the idea of the exhibition as more or less monolith unit, in Zagreb we would like to utilize vacant ex-socialist youth cultural center at the very outskirts of the city, offered by the City of Zagreb to the curators collective WHW. It should be mostly used as the archive and working space where documentation on the events initiated in other cities would be displayed. Artists invited to work in Zagreb could realize their projects at the same location or at other public urban structures. At the same time it would be presentational

framework of the projects developed by individual artists who appropriate/simulate collective framework of presentational models of museum, company, institute etc /PARASITE, Slovenia, Museo de Telenovella, Mexico/US, Rambutan Society, Thailand, Salon des Fleures, USA/ Yugoslavia, Museo della Calle, Columbia.../ Within this context we would also like to explore the possibilities of collaborating with the artists collectives also nominated for evens award, replacing exclusiveness of competitive concept by explorations of cooperation within the broader framework. The project of actions in the public space initiates collaboration between artists collectives that deal with related issues and with groups of different cultural backgrounds. Interventions and situations in public spaces might range from palpable impact, redistribution of knowledgepower or resources all to the subtle realizations of utopian ideas and functions in the space that could be quite ephemeral, at the very limit of attention, but at the same time could initiate some new quality or indirectly function as temporary

...replacing exclusiveness of competitive concept by explorations of cooperation within the 49 broader framework

The project will explore not only the relationships in and among artists groups and 50 collectives, but also the concept of a group as such

subversion within the routine going on. It should be afrmation of the idea of possible network collaboration of different collectives, subgroups, and parallel networks /IRWIN, Superex, Marko Peljhans projects, Andreja Kulunis Distributive Justice project.../ *** The project will explore not only the relationships in and among artists groups and collectives, but also the concept of a group as such. The last decade in Balkans, that had became terrifying European Other that embodies all that is wrong in the eyes of Brussels bureaucracys dream of the smooth functioning, has been characterized by an ination of groups and associations, from dozens of almost daily emerging new political parties, humanitarian organizations, non-prots and citizens associations, to scary but ever more present maa groups. The aim of the project is to explore these new groups that have replaced our old solidarity and one for all, all for one concepts that prevailed at this geographic

area. During the acute conict in ex-Yugoslavia, the huge number of humanitarian and humanrights organizations emerged, dealing with issues from providing help in crisis, trauma prevention and recovery, peace building, reconciliation, and reconstruction to sophisticated media and management training. In the early nineties, the so called NGO scene, non-governmental scene, acquired a certain pop quality of the freedom ghters and trouble makers. However, in a short time period of few years, the whole scene became completely professionalized and dependent on large inux of foreign donations and program priorities, at times even adopting an almost cynical approach to its work. Although they still remained burning issues of our societies, questions like return of refugee populations to their homes, including their peaceful reintegration to old communities, building the relationships with neighboring countries, suppressing xenophobia and including national minorities into society processes and structures have somehow drifted away from our collective consciousness. The conict is over and

things are better swept under the carpet. Instead of switching their priorities along with media and donor attention, some of the organizations have nonetheless continued to work on difcult issues. The project would like to investigate the possibilities of communication and structured dialogue among artists collectives and these collectives on reevaluating the content and context of our peace. These cross-border collaborations would be initiated through our already established network with organizations from Belgrade, Sarajevo and Ljubljana.

Utopias possess a kind of modesty which repels people.


Elias CANETTI

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WHAT, HOW AND FOR WHOM


on the occasion of 152nd anniversary of the Communist Manifesto Zagreb, 16/06 - 28/07/2000 budget 23,255

WHAT, HOW AND FOR WHOM


on the occasion of 153rd anniversary of the Communist Manifesto Vienna, 21/06-28/07/2001 budget 20,451

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PROJECT: BROADCASTING
dedicated to Nikola Tesla Zagreb, June 2001 - .... budget 46,016

The projects organized by WHW were realized with minimal financial means and with the support of various national and international agencies. We repeatedly received grants from the Ministry of Culture of Republic Croatia, The City of Zagreb Cultural department, European Cultural Fondation, KulturKontakt Austria, Open Society Arts and Culture Network, OSI Cultural Link Program, Pro Helvetia... In all the project we also collaborated with the national agencies which support the participation of their local artists in international programs: The British Council, The Flemish Institute, The Swedish Institute, Danish Contemporary Art Institute, Goethe Institute, Austrian cultural institute, Institut Franaise... We are especially glad that all WHW projects received a number of small sponsorships from local firms and private offices. Although the Croatian legislation does not grant benefits for culture sponsoring, WHW tries to develop models of collaboration between non-profit sector and economically powerful companies.

This is indeed the very meaning of the commodity as a form, to obliterate the signs of work on the product in order to make it easier for us to forget which its organizational the framework. It would indeed be surprising if such an occultation of work did not leave its mark upon artistic production as well, both in the form and

class structure

in the content...
[Fredric JAMESON]

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54 WHAT, HOW AND FOR WHOM


curators: Ana DEVI, Nataa ILI, Sabina SABOLOVI consultant: Ivet URLIN

design: Dejan Kri & Rutta [arkzin] fonts: Filosofia [emigre] Eunuverse [Barry Deck] Bliss [Jeremy Tankard] digital print: PagiGraf Zagreb 2002

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