mladen miljanovic

Hal Foster views the notion of culture as an issue of discursive cross section of texts; in that sense, contemporary art is no longer interpreted in the context of the physical or material constitution of the medium/form, but in the context of the spatial categories of the body and perception.[1]

This supposition should allow a better understanding of the overall concept of this exhibition as well as its individual exhibits. Contrary to constructivists, who spoke of the work of art as of a nonutilitarian machine becoming a model for the new society and world, the concept of this exhibition is such that it presents a potential work of art as a machine re-examining the relation between a body and a utilitarian form. In that context, art is used as an instrument of the practice of defining or delineating everyday living in the contemporary and historical domain. Today’s art is not a sum of concrete ‘things’, but rather a topology of symbolic domains integrating and containing traditional art objects alongside symbols of one specific historical society, culture, i.e. objects taken from modern-day living.

It is in relation to them that art has the capacity to denominate and define, intervene in the field of culture, exert pressure on elements (items) of the social structure by transforming them into artefacts (works of art).[2]

Consequently, each and every artefact is eventually an instrument of active modeling of fragments of reality. Accordingly, an artist is never contented with the factual situation as it is, or with the prevailing formal aesthetic paradigms. Instead, he constantly searches for the unattained and is therefore bound to reach the unattainable, which means a utopia.

In line with the exhibition concept, the works are formally divided into three groups (form – perform – reform), which in a contextual sense exploit the general form and parts of the automobile Zastava 101 as a resulting metaphor. This designatory form (in the context of Žižek) is used to re-examine and research the connection between form in the public realm and its possible employment in the field of art, as well as its reformulation and reconstruction.

The first group of works, which deal with the identified form as a kind of public and social good, are used to present and research how individual members of society relate to, experience and understand those forms. The exhibit «Formal Individualisation» is an example of this. Also, various instances of how today’s society uses such forms as utilitarian objects or machines are presented in a paradigmatic manner. In terms of the media used, the concept includes 7 installations and drawings and two performances to be staged during the exhibition (one will be staged during the exhibition opening, and the other will last 7 days following the opening).

The role of the artist in the performance that will be staged for seven days after the exhibition opening will be to play a taxi driver, receive calls and bring visitors to the museum in his car (an automobile Zastava 101 will only be used).

The title of the exhibition mainly refers to this performance, as on a formal level it puts the artist in the position of a subject who is in the service of the museum and acts as a laison between society and the museum as an institution, which presents action in the context of art. In the other, contextual domain, this act of mediation (transfer of visitors to the museum) between the audience and the exhibition, which focuses on the work of art as a machine investigating the relation between the body and a utilitarian form (car), will help the visitor in an experiential sense and increase his or her understanding of the exhibition context. «Art Service», the English rendition of the title, is far more evocative, as it opens up the possibility of a bivalent reading of the word «service» as serving art and as providing artistic services. Art, equal to the subject of its implementation (artist), must find new strategies for social engagement in modern-day society, which will take the form of interference with the actual «bare life»[3] of man and society and thereby place the context of action into an interactive, socially engaged plurality of culture. This kind of approach may be labeled as «applied social art».

Interview with Mladen Miljanovic on occasion of his solo show ``Museum Service`` at MUMOK - Vienna, 2010

Several works presented in this exhibition identify form in a utopian manner as a potential point of change of social conscience. Yet, they are characterised by excessive aestheticism, which eventually challenges this kind of action in relation to the general concept of the exhibition. This overemphasised aestheticism is intentional, as it is also a demonstration of the incapacity of art to effect change in society.

[1] Hal Foster, The Return of the Real. The Avant-garde at the End of the Century, MIT Press, Cambridge – Massachusetts – London, 1996

[2] Artur Zmijewski, Život umjetnosti. Časopis za suvremena likovna zbivanja, no. 83, year 2008, p. 98

[3] Giogio Agamben, Figure u pokretu – savremena zapadna estetika, filozofija i teorija umetnosti. Group of authors. P. 682