I enjoyed the 'participation' in the project by BikVanDerPol

What does it mean to participate?
You get the invitation to come to the site of the foundation of the Museum of Revolution; the invitation says that this is the project by BikVanDerPol, under the title "Art is Either Plagiarism or Revolution OR Something is Definitely Going to Happen Here", and wants you to participate in the event. You immediately know that you are not coming to the opening cocktail, but that something is really going to happen.

The last time I visited the Museum of Revolution was the 1st of May last year, and I went there together with my friend from Prelom Dusan Grlja. We were staring for some time at the red little rhizomes which covered the fundaments of the Museum. Dusan made a few philosophical jokes and we quickly left the site, moving to the cafe on the nearby boat.

The day I went to the 'performance' by BikVanDerPol was sunny and cold and stepping to the meadow around the Museum I noticed that everything is olive-green, even my velvety coat was fitting in this monochrome horizon. I immediately saw the spotlights and the people recording things around the platform. Some of them have been engaged by the artists and some of them were just recording for themselves. It was an ultimate recording event. While approaching to the building and skillfully avoiding muddy parts I recognized the artists involved in the project, Zoran Eric and the group of curators, guards and technicians from the Museum of Contemporary Art... The photographer Goranka Matic – a person which I'm always glad to meet - was shouting from the distance: 'Stop, stop there you young partizan woman'. She made a photo of me in the woods, symbolically shooting at me with the flash, but I couldn't perform the slow pathetic death, because of the mud. Young curators Una and Aleksandra joined the session. There was also the well-known and significant conceptual artist Era Milivojevic, who became famous during 70’s, sometimes heard complaining that other artists are stealing his ideas. He was also recording the event, and the small company of curators I just mentioned started to debate about stealing, trying to figure out whether Era is now stealing from the others or this whole project is somehow about stealing, actually. Everybody around were taking footage, or pictures, or both. After the short debate I moved to BikVanDerPol, who spoke with some more camera guys and welcomed the people they knew. They gave me the nice book, entitled "Fly me to the Moon", about the Cold War, excursions to the outer space and museologization of the stones of the lunar surface (the stones were often delivered as diplomatic presents) - all related to their project in Rijksmuseum. Flipping the book I thought about how it can be linked to what is happening 'here' and 'now', and some loose and not-so-loose connections did emerge... Anyway, we ended up in the discussion about the Dutch print design. The rest half an hour I spent in the conversation with Dusan and Stefan Romer. We talked about historical representations of Conceptual Art. Stefan made the film where he interviewed the number of the central protagonist of the movement in Europe and US, while Dusan and I just started to work on the documentary exhibition about Student’s Cultural Centre, as the central point of the flux of New Artistic Practice in the former Yugoslavia. The in-depth conversation about problems of Conceptual Art fully kept my attention and I almost forgot where I am. It was already the sunset and I noticed my boyfriend Vlidi moving around the platform and obsessively-compulsively observing the ground, taking pictures as well, as if he was at the crime scene looking for the proofs of evidence. His movements made me notice that there are actually yellow ribbons around some dangerous sites [like the holes which one can easily fall through, etc.] and some other yellow markers, and this fact introduced the fictional dimension into the whole thing. At the same time, it was the end of our participation since we had to visit our grandmother in the hospital. We passed by the "Park of Friendship" on our way back, and from the distance of sitting on the back seat of taxi, because of the spotlights, it looked as the glamorous scene of the shooting of some blockbuster movie. I decided to make the preliminary interview with the artists once they get back to the Netherlands, and here it is below.

I'll just give a few basic information about the site of the event that the artists wanted to emphasize. The Museum of Revolution is designed by architect Vjenceslav Richter. The Museum should have been opened in 1981, but it was never finished, though the foundations were laid. All one can see today is an empty concrete platform with iron poles sticking out. The Museum of Revolution was never materialized, but is temporarily activated on Saturday December 1st 2007, when the public is invited to be part of the event .

J.V: Why the Museum of Revolution? How do you see this 'unfinished project' in relation to the politics of New Belgrade as the social and architectural project?

B.V.D.P: We heard about the Museum of Revolution some two years ago, when we were exploring and discussing the park on the confluence of Sava and Danube and its specific history in relation to the non-aligned movement. At some point someone mentioned the fundaments of the museum. This immediately raised our interest, but we couldn't find it at that time. Not many people seemed to know exactly where it is; they kept being vague about it. This was also an interesting condition which we started to explore. The next time we visited Belgrade, we were determined to find it, and we did. The ruin of the unrealized museum of revolution, which has the form of a large platform, looked quite impressive, it was a big stage. We did not know immediately what to do with it and how to link it with the topic of neighborhood, which was the central preoccupation of the collaborative project 'Differentiated Neighbourhoods'. However, as soon as we made this little jump from neighborhood to community - or rather temporary community – the story started to unfold and the ruin became a location where this temporality could be acted out. Theatricality was already part of the location, and we wanted to connect the notion of temporary community with notions of spectacularisation and mediatisation.

The "Park of Friendship" is a very interesting place, buildings located in the park refer to the history of Yugoslavia, and it is surrounded by New Belgrade, a very ambitious utopian example of urban planning. The park itself is a theatre site, and the surrounding blocks look down on it as if they are guarding the place. We asked ourselves: is it possible to speak of a neighborhood here? Through the past two years we met several people living in New Belgrade, and it seems that the blocks are the places of important identification. They create a sense of community, a sense of belonging.

On the other hand, The Revolution, its causes and its consequences, seem far away. It has become a print on t-shirts, revolutionary icons have become fashion. Is there a new type of revolution in the gaps of our society? Today, New Belgrade is changing rapidly. Capital moves in. Casinos are opening, banks are being built, prices of real estate are rising tremendously. Seen in the scope of history, this area is undergoing a major turnover. Is this what we could understand today as ‘revolution’? Shall we accept this understanding? And in the meantime, the park, a ground uploaded with historic connotations, is quietly waiting. Nobody touches it.

J.V: You interconnected the history of the building and famous statement by Paul Gauguin 'art is either plagiarism or revolution' and you decided to arrange spontaneous social gathering under the provocative and ambiguous claim 'something is going to happen here'. Did anything happen? Or, ‘What should happen in contemporary art’?

B.V.D.P: By stating something, naming it, you already make it happen, whatever it is that happens. Even if nothing would happen, that would still be something. Maybe, as mentioned before, it is already happening.
Choosing the quote 'art is either plagiarism or revolution', we wanted to emphasize not only on the possible role of art, but also on what ‘fake’ and what ‘real’ experiences might be. Gatherings, be it demonstrations, revolutions, parties or events, are all highly mediated events. The public, being a public, seems to be of more importance than what is at stake. Revolutions and demonstrations are staged as media-events: hope, glory and a cry for change are accompanying this and are used as the tools of political pressure, but somehow it seems as we get used to events that are spectacularised, we get used to the fact that they do not bring that much of a change.

Entertainment is a factor, as well. We do not want to play down the issues at stake, but gatherings create a sense of belonging. Sometimes revolutions – or rather, the spark that sets it off - also appear to happen from an excitement, a media-driven presence, as if it is performed. Then it becomes almost a classical theater play, however with very real outcomes.

To emphasize on the role and acting of the public – be there many or not - in their continuous changing between the roles of actor, participant and observer, literary shed light on the ambiguity of the event.

What should happen in contemporary art… We think the role of the public is very important in contemporary art, but the amount of public does not necessarily create an engagement. Politicians are fond of numbers; they need numbers as a justification. Masses of public justify the claim of contemporary art, just like masses of public justify the claim of revolution. Still, in all cases, there is a lot of wobbly ground to walk on: do the events that establish (temporary) communities have enough ‘gravity’ to become a catalyst for change? Are they able to generate another insight, a sense of urgency?

The museum of revolution… It is a paradox in itself, built or not built. What is a museum? The international Council of Museums defines a museum as ’a non-profit making, permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, and open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment.’

This unfinished museum of revolution created the opportunity to emphasize on the possibility and impossibility to present, show, conserve and exhibit an experience. This event explores different levels of communication, such as excitement, boredom and the wish to recall. It deals with what can be implied, instead of wanting to be explicit.
This unfinished state might actually be the perfect museum of revolution, since it is inhabited by expectation. An expectation that is raw, unfinished, maybe cold, harsh, but waiting to be uncovered.

J.V: You are planning to re-narrate the 4 hours long live performance through the language of video? Do you already know how the film will look like? What caught your attention while going trough the recorded material?

B.V.D.P: It was important in this project that we, as artists, are not the ones in control. We are not the directors of the film. Our position can be described as the voluntarily abdication of the authorial subject which shapes and controls the field of representation. It needed to develop itself, So, in a way, the film grows in the directions it needs to grow into. Therefore, we needed to engage camera teams, four altogether, to shoot the material. We did not tell them exactly what to do, what to look for. We just gave them a rough layout of our understanding of what is the platform, what is this ruin to us. The camera teams are part of the spectacle, and they are also the generators of what might happen: often, when a camera team is on a location, this is an indication that something is happening there. It attracts people. They want to know what is going on. So all teams, passers by, catering, visitors, light people, toilet people, everyone is a part of the event.

So far, we have not seen all the material, only the photographs. The film material is still in the process: all the ingredients are there, everything is filmed, the platform is there, the title is there... And we are now waiting for Godot!... Everything is in the state of waiting. All of this refers, in a way, back to the title, 'art is either plagiarism or revolution, or: something is going to happen here'. The question is bouncing back; what is art, what is revolution, what is plagiarism... And what is neighborhood? We see neighborhood as belonging to a community, however small. One of the qualities of the community is shared experience. The material and its postproduction will hopefully reflect that, since so many hands are involved.