Exhibition:

ART-ACT-BOX: Performativeness of the Exhibition

19. 05. — 9. 06. 2019

Choreography: Zrinka Užbinec / Performers: Zrinka Užbinec, Ana Kreitmeyer, Maja Kalafatić, Mar Medina / Photographs at MSU: Jasenko Rasol

Methods and mate­ri­als used in the pro­ject were deri­ved from the wor­ks of the TOK artist gro­up, the Group of Six Authors, the gro­up KOD, the gro­up Bosch+Bosch, the gro­up Art&Language, and artis­ts Pino Poggi, Bogdanka Poznanović and Lygie Clark. ART-ACT-BOX is an object con­ta­ining easily disman­tled props for an art exhi­bi­ti­on. The con­tent is based on met­hods and mate­ri­als the artis­ts used as means of acti­va­ting the com­mu­nity or the audi­en­ce and cri­ti­cal­ly exa­mi­ning the socio-poli­ti­cal sys­tem during the 60s and the 70s. The artwor­ks were selec­ted from the col­lec­ti­ons and arc­hi­ves of four par­ti­ci­pa­ting muse­ums: the Museum of Contemporary Art (Zagreb), Fundació Antoni Tapies (Barcelona), The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška (Slovenj Gradec) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina (Novi Sad).

The aim of the pro­ject is to fami­li­ari­ze the public with this form of art prac­ti­ce and to pre­sent the cre­ati­ve tools for cre­ating and com­mu­ni­ca­ting the cri­ti­cal con­tent. This is achi­eved by intro­du­cing artis­tic met­hods (for ins­tan­ce pro­po­sals for acti­ons in public spa­ce, the­ore­ti­cal ins­tal­la­ti­ons, arte uti­le, direct work, mani­fes­ts, body ges­tu­res etc.) and sim­ple artis­tic mate­ri­als (mir­rors, scot­ch tape, colo­ured tapes, mar­ker, pen, flash lig­ht, car­d­bo­ard cubes, pos­t­card etc.) thro­ugh an inte­rac­ti­ve per­for­man­ce. The con­tem­po­rary dan­cer, fol­lowing the pre­vi­ous­ly ela­bo­ra­ted cho­re­ograp­hy, takes the ele­ments from the box to cre­ate the exhi­bi­ti­on, per­for­ms cer­ta­in artwor­ks with move­ments, and invol­ves the audi­en­ce as a living part of the cho­re­ograp­hy. There have been 28 inte­rac­ti­ve dan­ce per­for­man­ces in spa­ces not affi­li­ated with art such as public libra­ri­es, reti­re­ment homes, cul­tu­ral cen­tres, high scho­ols, com­mu­nity cen­tres and a psyc­hi­atric hospital.

The ins­tal­la­ti­on at MSU was built on an ART-ACT-BOX per­for­man­ce in which the Museum’s staff mem­bers, who are not artis­ts or cura­tors, were invi­ted to par­ti­ci­pa­te. After the per­for­man­ce which gave struc­tu­re to the set-up, the ins­tal­la­ti­on was enric­hed with docu­men­ta­ti­on and mate­ri­als pro­du­ced during the project.

The pro­ject rece­ived the second pri­ze at the 12^th HT Award for Contemporary Art in MSU Zagreb.