The Unwritten History Project Detail Record

Detail Record for Tomislav Gotovac

Event Title: Point Blank
Series Title:
Location: Franklin Furnace
Date: 1/6/1994 - 1/31/1994
Event Type: Installation & Performance

Event Documentation:

Point Blank	Point Blank	Point Blank	Point Blank
Point Blank	Point Blank	Point Blank	Point Blank
Point Blank	Point Blank	Point Blank	Point Blank

Artist Statement: Tomislav Gotovac Point Blank One day, when I woke up, everything had changed. Changed from what I thought things looked like, and especially changed from how I thought the relationships between those things came about. It was difficult to figure out what was up and what was down, what was on one side and what was on the other, what was soft and what was hard, what was sweet and what was bitter. Panic in the Streets ensued, when a Young Man with a Horn in front of the Western Union played My Darling Clementine, Without Pity, for Fourteen Hours From Here to Eternity. What I liked best was observing, observing for observation sake. Observation was my monument, behind and on top of which I hid most of the time. Most of the time is to put it rather casually; it was in fact all of the time. What is moral and what is immoral? What is ethics and what is aesthetics? Alexander Nevsky, The Bicycle Thief, looked through the Real Window and thought about The Lost Weekend, and it was All Quiet on the Western Front, as Citizen Kane said. /A.Q.o.t.W.F., 1930/ Sometimes I was able to distinguish between different observations, but for the most part I couldn't. One kind of observation came when I had no consciousness of the outside world. Another, when I acted in the so-called real world and was in so-called full possession of the senses, at times perhaps hampered by alcohol or exhaustion. The third and perhaps the most important kind of observations were the ones in darkened spaces of someone else's images that would come into my field of vision at the rate of 24 per second, with a black, blank space separating each of these images. Questions started accumulating: What is good and what is bad? Who are the bad guys and who are the good guys? Under the Gaslight / 1044/, having avoided The Asphalt Jungle, the Notorious watched with Vampire - The Strange Adventure of Allan Gray The Death of a Salesman / 1951/ from Show Boat / 1951/ and wondered what kind of a Detective Story it could be. The first two kinds of observations, dream like and real life ones were gradually dissolving into observations of images /24 images per sec./ in darkened spaces. One ay, all these observations merged into one single and singular observation /24 images per sec./, and all the rest was darkness. What is paradise and what is hell? What is light and what is dark? How do we perceive God and the devil? Is it true that God so often appears in the guise of the devil? It all started on the Rio Grande, where I Was a Male War Bride and saw the Tragic Hunt on the Battle Ground and heard The Glen Miller Story. Observation becomes a rhythm, a life in itself, with its light-whiteness and its dark-blackness, and a tempo that fills the rhythm of light and dark with silences and sounds /noises/. Questions kept accumulating: What is a lie and what is the truth? Is it true that the devil often appears in the quise of God? Rashomon started when Srangers on a Train met on Sunset Boulevard and A Man Escaped toward A Place in the Sun. One day, when I woke up, everything had changed. Changed from what I thought the things looked like, and especially changed from how I thought the relationships between those things came about. Dedicated to Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers. Zagreb/ New York, Fall 1993 Translated by Philip Philpovich.

Bio:

Press Release: Press Release November 29, 1993 Opening Thursday, January 6, from 6-8PM through January 29, 1994 FRANKLIN FURNACE ANNOUNCES "POINT BLANK" AN INSTALLATION AND PERFORMANCES BY TOMISLAV GOTOVAC While events in the former Yugoslavia have challenged our conscience, very few artists have directly addressed the moral and political issues raised by the conflict. In this context, the work of TOMISLAV GOTOVAC has a poignant resonance. A pioneer of performance art and underground cinema from Zagreb, Croatia, Gotovac has questioned the social and moral fabric of Yugoslav society since the early sixties. Politically situated between the East and the West, communist Yugoslavia had a special status. Its demise has triggered the current conflict. Gotovac's installations and performances expose the forces that have unleashed the most serious conflict in Europe since World War II. The installation Museum of People's Revolution of Tomislav Gotovac which has been the artist's ongoing project for more than a decade, emulates a process of creating a hero by mimicking dreary museum displays. Like another pioneer of performance art, Joseph Beuys, Gotovac has enacted and impersonated myths as formidable social forces. But while the German artist's performances were rooted in the traumatic experiences of the Second World War, Gotovac's performances and installations have dealt with the impulses that have fostered the current war. While Beuys' primary role was that of healer, Gotovac describes himself as an observer whose principal reference and inspiration is the cinematic energy of Hollywood. In his three performances entitled "Sickle and Hammer and Red Star," "24 Images per sec.," and "Shooting Piece/Sniper Peace," Gotovac deals with his three major themes: totalitarian symbols, cinematic icons, and the former Yugoslavia. Inspired by Soviet films, "Sickle and Hammer and Red Star" is a comic parody of Communist iconography. It features a communist hero who shares certain characteristics with Josip Broz Tito. Gotovac understands the first president of Communist Yugoslavia as a leading actor and co-director in the movie and art project "Communist Yugoslavia." As the title "24 Images per sec." Indicates, this performance paraphrases the projection of the cinematic image which consists of twenty-four frames per second. By translating the cinematic apparatus to the language of performance, Gotovac is paying tribute to avant-garde filmmakers, notably to Paul Shartis and Peter Kubelka. The bleak reality of the former Yugoslavia lurks behind "Shooting Piece/Sniper Peace." By confronting the viewer with the violence of shooting, the performance transforms the shooting target, stretched canvases, into the screen on which we can project the nightmares of systematic and random violence. The piece becomes a potent metaphor of the contemporary world by linking the former Yugoslavia with our inner cities. Gotovac has had thirteen one-person exhibitions in Europe. His work has appeared in two group exhibitions in new York: "Rhetorical Image" at the new Museum of contemporary Art in New York (1991) and "The Other Side: European Avant-Garde Cinema 1960-1980" at the American Federation of the Arts. The Franklin Furnace is presenting POINT BLANK, his first solo show in the U.S. from January 6-29, 1994. The exhibition is curated by Ljuba Stanivuk, an art historian from Bosnia-Herzegovina who lives in New York. On Monday, January 24 at 6:00 PM, Tomislav Gotovac will serve on a panel discussion at The New School for Social Research, 66 West 12th Street, convened by Martha Wilson, Director of Franklin Furnace, in collaboration with the Communications division. The subject of the panel is the relationship of the media to avant-garde art, both in the United States and in Europe. Members of the public are invited to attend in addition to registered students; please call 925-4671 for information. Opening reception Thursday, January 6, 1993 from 6-8 PM Performances: Thursday, January 13, 1994: HAMMER AND SICKLE AND RED STAR at 7 pm. Friday, January 21: 24 IMAGES PER SEC. At 7 pm. Thursday, January 27: SHOOTING PIECE/SNIPER PEACE from 12-6 pm. Point Blank is made possible by grants from The Heathcote Art Foundation; THE SUITCASE FUND: A Project of ideas and Means in Cross-Cultural Artist Relations, an initiative created by Dance Theater Workshop in New York City with major funding from the Rockefeller Foundation; ArtsLink, a private-public partnership of the national Endowment for the Arts, the Open Society Fund, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, and the Citizen Exchange council; and the friends and members of Franklin Furnace.

Proposal Information:

Search Again