The Ready-Made And The Question Of The Fabrication Of Objects And Subjects - Critical Essay

Afterimage, Jan, 2001 by Suzana Milevska

The question of the perfection of the medium and the living standard became unexpectedly intertwined; the barest life styles were followed by a perfect political and blinding usage of the medium of television. By using this medium, the everyday suspense of the sirens announcing the war mingled with the suspense of Hollywood movies. The TV programs recorded for the project included everything from the local news to music entertainment to religious documentaries to cockfights. In the top left of the screen the words "war danger" were written, reminding us of the absurdity of the animal and human fights appearing in miniature on the television. The presentation of the work, with an interactive CD-ROM, can be interpreted as a simulation of what an average TV viewer was watching during the bombardment. The viewer in the exhibition space could also represent the experience by clicking the mouse in order to change the channel.

The consequential outcome of the war, the tide of about 200,000 refugees who emigrated to Macedonia during the NATO intervention, provoked the artist Ismet Ramicevic to create the work "Pain Food = Souvenir" (1999). Ramicevic's work was shown in the context of the group exhibition "Artists and Refugees," that was organized by the Center for Contemporary Arts (appearing at the Museum of the City of Skopje). Ramicevic displayed the plates of several refugee families that he had previously photographed. These objects were their only belongings after they left the refugee camps--signifying their short, yet tragic, experience. The destiny of those subjects was strongly connected with the simple aluminum plates--the only remaining evidence of the harshness of life during that period. On each empty plate's inner surface the artist had placed a photograph of some of the refugees just before they left the camps.

The ready-made might be not the most appropriate medium for the art activities in the Balkans in the technological sense, but it is appropriate in terms of the content. It can express the specific reality of countries affected by continuous economic and political instability; especially if the industrial shapes and their difference from perfection are used within profoundly conceptualized artistic projects. Focusing on the ready-made as an artistic mode of expression was expressed in Tosevski's "Dossier '96." Its method of investigating the possibilities for a perfect mode of production, along with other problems initiated by the switch to a market economy implies there are other ways of using and interpreting the ready-made: e.g., the treating of state symbols as "unready" ready-made products. Or, in the conditions of establishing a new state with unclear strategies, as in the case of Vangeli's projects. Naskovski used theses images as a strong critical context of the bombardment of Serbia, emphasizing the possibilities for manipulation via television--the most powerful ready-made of all--during a time when the whole population was forced into a "home TV prison." The absurdities and paradoxes of life and art in the Balkans are emphasized by the medium of ready-made. The tendency toward a society of high-tech objects and the not-so-perfect everyday life of their consumers are inevitably in conflict so that partial information about globalization and its technological advantages often sounds unconvincing and hollow in such social, economical and political conditions.