The Best is Yet to Come
Tadej Pogacar & P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art
Edited by Lívia Páldi
Texts by Zdenka Badovinac, Igor Zabel,
Misko Suvakovic, Hans-Ulrich Obrist,
Livia Paldi, Tadej Pogacar
English edition, c-print, paperback, format:
26 x 21 cm, 80 pp., Ljubljana 2007
Design: New Collectivism
ISBN 13-digit: 978 3 86588 371 1
Published by P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute
Co-published by REVOLVER and Skuc Gallery
The Best Is Yet to Come is the first comprehensive overview of the work of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art. The P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum was established in 1993 by Tadej Pogacar who describes it as a “virtual, critical structure that exists without its own space or employees, but rather merely takes up residence in other territories, locations and networks and feeds of the juices of institutions.” Its strategy may be condensed into three basic tenets: transcending the limits of one’s own discipline; being flexible; and practicing a methodological eclecticism. New parasitism can be described as the subtle deconstruction of the horizon of the everyday and a ruthless challenging of the social systems used to establish center, dominance, and power in everyday life, art, and society. In the last thirteen years, the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum has created a number of events, performances, public actions, interventions, exhibitions, collaborations, and conferences.
The early museum interventions raised questions about knowledge: How is it produced, structured, and ordered? How is it possessed, transmitted, and used? Another, closely related issue was that of social visibility: Pogacar posed questions about what we see and what we fail to see, what we consider “natural” and what we find disturbing.
Public actions in Ljubljana (1995), Graz, Austria (2002), New York (2002), Mexico City (2003) and Puerto Rico (2005) were executed as participatory projects and interventions into public space. They represent practical investigations of low-tech and unplanned architecture. Such actions open up new possibilities for redefining institutional participation in the creation of urban space and producing alternative policies for the use of public space.
In 1999, Pogacar initiated the project CODE:RED as an ongoing collaborative, interdisciplinary platform for discussion and research into models of self-organization of urban minorities, global sex work, and human trafficking. This platform uses both real and virtual spaces, and takes the form of an open dialogue between artists, sex workers, and the public in selected urban environments. CODE:RED employs various forms of public action and activism, subversions in urban, media, and virtual environments. CODE:RED events have been organized on different venues, including at the Venice Biennial (2001), Tirana Biennial (2005), Sao Paulo Biennial (2006) and most recently on 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007).
To order the book online go to one of the following:
www.revolververlag.de
