Public Rendition of Authorship: Commemorative Ceremonies in Neo-Avant-Garde Projects by Zabludovsky-Zorica

Marina Protrka Štimec

doi:10.3986/pkn.v44.i3.10

Abstract

Artistic intermedial and interdiscursive projects and performance art events on the artistic stage written by Željko Zorica and his imaginary co-initiator “paleoanthropologist, demonologist, card player and wine drinker, Hans Christian Zabludovsky, PhD” are based on commemorative practices established by historical science and culturology. They refer to mechanisms of history production, question creative processes and evaluate the elusive and complex relationship between collective memory, the political sphere, literature and history. Zorica-Zabludovsky’s books and artistic performances (the erection of memorial plaques in Paris, Zagreb and Oporovec) challenge the “social imaginary” as a fundamental reference of historiographical and critical work, demonstrating that theoretically and politically conscious art does not necessarily interfere with aesthetic experience. This paper analyses them as expression of the transgressive character of post-avant-garde artistic practices—as undertakings that reveal the basic relationship between art, literature, history and public space.

Highlights

Public commemorative ceremonies ruled the public space of European countries in the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, at a time when national literatures took form and historical sciences, humanist approaches and methods were established
Artistic interest in individual or group performances in a public space appears in neo-avant-garde, post-avant-garde and retro-avantgarde practices that question the mechanisms, functions and interactions of public and private, art and society, past and present, form and contingence
Željko Zorica Šiš did his first “commemorative” performance art event dedicated to Croatian writers in Paris, where he placed a plaque on the facade of the alternative cultural club “Les Voutes” on 25 May 2005 commemorating the day when in 1900 H

Summary

Introduction

Public commemorative ceremonies ruled the public space of European countries in the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, at a time when national literatures took form and historical sciences, humanist approaches and methods were established.1 As part of the process of “imagining a nation” (Anderson 6) of that time these public gather-.

Results

Conclusion