DeLVe | Institute for Duration, Location and Variables presents
Moving Forwards, Counting Backwards
February 25–May 27, 2012
Commissioned and hosted by
MUAC – Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City
Insurgentes sur 3000, Centro Cultural Universitario
Del. Coyoacán, C.P. 04510, Ciudad de México
Hours:
Wed, Fri & Sun 10–18
Thu & Sat 10–20
www.muac.unam.mx
www.delve.hr
info [at] delve.hr
Vojin Bakić, Walter Benjamin, Chto Delat? & Vladan Jeremić, Collective Actions, Gorgona, Igor Grubić, Tibor Hajas, IRWIN, Sanja Iveković, Julius Koller, Andreja Kulunčić, David Maljković, Kazimir Malevich, Ahmet Ögüt, Dan Perjovschi, Anri Sala, Mladen Stilinović, Nicoline van Harskamp, Želimir Žilnik, Artur Żmijewski
Curators: Ivana Bago & Antonia Majača (DeLVe | Institute for Duration, Location and Variables)
Associate curator: Alejandra Labastida (MUAC)
Moving Forwards, Counting Backwards opens with the juxtaposition of a “universal futurological question mark” by Julius Koller from the 1970s and an impossible attempt of a future resurrection of the countless ruins of the 1990s by Ahmet Ögüt. It ends with wall drawings by Dan Perjovschi, which brings together a multiplicity of question marks, fragmentary narratives and puzzles that constitute our present. Enfolding around the legacies of the twentieth-century avant-garde political and aesthetic projects developed in the space still referred to as Eastern Europe, the exhibition reflects their specters, remainders, and dissolutions within the post-political void of Fortress Europe and Western neo-liberal democracies.
The project encompasses several layers of the dialectics between the universalist premises of the historical avant-gardes and the ideas of communism, collectivity and solidarity. It looks at the re-articulations of these ideals and their potential “rescue” (in the work of Collective Actions, Gorgona group, Nicoline van Harskamp), their erasure from individual and collective memory (Sanja Iveković, Anri Sala), the survival and bastardization of their forms (Walter Benjamin, Kazimir Malevich, Mladen Stilinović, Irwin, David Maljković), the questions of the individual agency (Tibor Hajas, Igor Grubić), and, on the other hand—the cacophonic neo-liberal democratic paradox in which identity, adversary, and victim play central roles (Artur Żmijewski, Andreja Kulunčić, Chto Delat? & Vladan Jeremić, and the films by Želimir Žilnik).
And while we are facing what seems to be the worst crisis of neoliberal democracy and of the EU since its inception, could enlightening the ruins of both present and past actualize a potential for starting anew, with a different conception of both our common future and the future of our common? DeLVe’s project at MUAC attempts to open a number of possible paths across—and perhaps beyond—the social, political and ideological “ruins” on “both sides” of the short twentieth century.
Supported by: MUAC, ERSTE Foundation, Mondriaan Foundation, Ministry of Culture Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb – City Office for Education, Culture and Sport.
