One of the most intriguing aspects of the post-Cold War encounter between the West and the East (these are, unfortunately, still very useful terms) is the way the East has read terms and concepts coming from the West: to put it in a metaphor much favoured in psychoanalysis, Western »hieroglyphs« have undergone some unexpected readings by Easterners that have practically interpreted (or re-created) their meanings in a far more sinister and fatal way than was originally intended in the West. For example, against the background of the hieroglyph »democracy,« nationalistic parties in Bosnia seized power at the first democratic elections, subsequently interpreting the right to democracy as the right to nationalistic exclusivism and outbursts of ethnic and religious hatred, leading to brutal warfare.

The most recent encounter with the hieroglyph »globalization« is also very instructive: if you are looking for the most authentic embodiment of globalization in Bosnia, be prepared to find it where you least expect it. Far from its being, for example, the representatives of the international community and economy (agents of the IMF and the World Bank), it is their very opponents that exemplify globalization [i]in nuce[/i]: the »Islamists« who claim to be the only proper interpreters of Islamic thought, while at the same time selling in their stores the widest possible range of goods and products coming from the West they despise so much. These - as a rule - young people, who have never before shown any religious interest, have suddenly been »enlightened« and started to protest against Bosnian Islamic moral standards (quite liberal, compared with the Arabic practice of Islam: for example, consuming alcohol is allowed by Bosnian Muslims), eagerly promoting Islamic practices current in Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. But we shouldn\'t be misled by their manifestly »fundamentalist« image: the only fundamentalism they really embrace is the fundamentalism of profit. These kids have learned the elementary lesson of capitalism, one that even their fathers - decent, boring shopkeepers from the era of a socialist economy - didn\'t learn - open your store an hour before your first competitor, and close it an hour after he closes his. And, of course, never run out of Orbit chewing gum! In this hybrid world of »brave new Islam,« Coca-Cola and »loyalty to the fundamental meaning of Mohammed\'s words« are far more compatible than Coke and Pepsi! Thus, »vehabije«, as they are called, are like »double agents«, bringing us the most fundamental doxies from both worlds; and we should add that in a way they are only cementing already existing stereotypes and phantasies about each of these worlds. In a word, they are reminding us that giant billboard commercials and newly-built Arab-style mosques - completely out of touch with traditional Bosnian Islamic architecture - are simply parts of the same universe: the globalistic universe.

But to say that what the West gets from the East is its own message in an inverse form and with its true meaning would be a rather shallow point to make. The real problem is that even the East falls victim to this inverse, obscene meaning; that the Easterners\' awareness of the ambiguity of all those Western shibboleths and catchwords has no emancipatory effect as far as they themselves are concerned. The utterly cynical attitude of the East - »the better the concept is, the worse the meaning we are going to find in it will be« - causes an ultimate [i]capitonnage[/i] of those concepts. After the Western [i]capitonnage[/i] of, say, the concept of democracy, other subsequent interventions were still possible; but after the cynical Eastern [i]capitonnage[/i], no new readings of democracy are possible anymore: after being cynically recognized as obscene, »democracy« suddenly becomes somehow exhausted, drained of all other »positive« features... But what is also significant here is the sort of sadistic [i]jouissance[/i] that Easterners display in their cynical »reading of the hieroglyphs«: »I know that I am going to destroy the hieroglyph with this sinister, perverted meaning - so what! I\'ll do it anyway, that is precisely what I want to do - I don\'t even have to get any benefit from it (some form of political or economic gain), but I\'ll misread the hieroglyphs and smash the tablets simply for the sake of misreading and smashing them!« So, even if we cannot blame them for new readings (no matter how obscene these are), the Easterners remain fully responsible for the [i]jouissance[/i] they get from these readings.

How, then, are we supposed to approach the concept of cosmopolitism, which could easily become a new spectral shibboleth roaming over Bosnia? There is no doubt that the same matrix will be activated: in what used to be Diogenes\' good old cosmopolitan principle - »I am a citizen of the world« -, an inverse, obscene version will be found. It is easy to imagine local criminals and corrupted politicians saying, with a cynical grin: »Yes, of course, we are citizens of the world too - and, what\'s more, we are the only ones that can be called citizens of the world, since only we, with our credit cards and cash, can travel around the globe and be welcomed everywhere.« Intriguingly, the same pattern can be discerned in domains that seem quite remote from the poignant underworld, where politics, economics and crime are allied. To demonstrate this, let us recall a recent event in the Sarajevo art scene.

In June 2002, in the Sarajevo gallery Collegum Artisticum, the exhibition »Searching for Identity 92-02« was put on display. According to the curator of the exhibition, Asja Mandiæ, »Searching« was »the first exhibition by young artists from Sarajevo to be organized by the International Project Ars Aevi. The exhibition represents a new departure for the Project - the presentation and promotion of contemporary local art. The focus is on the newest generation of artists, a generation with practically no opportunities for displaying their work locally due to the lack of exhibition spaces and the non-existence of a coherent infrastructure for art.« If these lines had been written some seven years ago, they would be true: today, this \'description\' of young Bosnian artists’ status is obsolete and far from the truth. To verify this, it is sufficient to look at the biographies of the participants in »Searching«: the most important artists among them have not only participated in numerous local exhibitions, but in significant international art shows as well: for example, Sejla Kameric, Kurt&Plasto, or Manifesta 2002 participants Zlatan Filipovic and Edo Vejselovic can hardly be described as neglected young Bosnian artists deprived of any possibility to display their work. In the light of these facts, Mandic\'s text seems even more ridiculous: »Ars Aevi has just begun to promote the art of the younger generation, a generation only now beginning to take its place on the art scene. ›Searching‹ launches young talent and opens the door for further moves in that direction.«

All these preposterous claims and propositions (how can you launch something that is already in orbit?) have no other purpose but to rewrite the history of contemporary art in Bosnia. If there has been any artistic activity in Sarajevo that has bloomed during the post-war period, then it has been contemporary visual art. We can even trace the crucial moment in this process: the establishing of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art Sarajevo (lately renamed to become the Center for Contemporary Art Sarajevo), whose importance in working with local artists can hardly be overestimated. According to Meliha Husedzinovic, the director of the National Gallery of Bosnia-Herzegovina, »the Sarajevo SCCA immediately turned into the initiator of a new spirit and enthusiasm. It has brought together both established artists and relative beginners.... The support provided by the SCCA enables debutants on the art scene, those still studying, to somehow detach themselves from the Academy, to emancipate themselves from it and show their works at important regional exhibitions....«¹ But with what can be described only as an elemental struggle for power, none the less brutal for being in the domain of art , all these facts are to be erased in Mandic-style (or »1984«-style, if you like): the SCCA has to disappear from history without a trace so that Ars Aevi can be heralded as the organisation most responsible for the very genesis of the contemporary art scene in Bosnia. It is no coincidence that Ars Aevi used the exhibition »Searching« to re-baptize itself with a new label, »Ars Aevi Museum / Center of Contemporary Art Sarajevo,« thus trying to abolish the SCCA even on the symbolic level.

This »new departure« for Ars Aevi may come as a surprise after the previous development of the project. Ten years ago, Ars Aevi was conceived as a cosmopolitan art project - according to its general director, Enver Hadziomerspahic, it was supposed to be »above all, an expression of the artists of the creative World Community« (boldfaced in the original). Artists of the world were expected to donate their works for a lavish museum of contemporary art that was to be built in Sarajevo after the war had finished. In the pursuit of this vision, eminent curators like Zdenka Badovinac, Lorand Hegyi and Chiara Bertola, to name just a few, did not only the lion\'s share of the work, but practically all of it, to create a fascinating collection whose importance extends far beyond the Bosnian borders. But only now, with »Searching« - the first Ars Aevi exhibition to be put on without help from foreign experts, curators or the artists themselves -, are we getting the whole picture of what Ars Aevi really is: underneath the alluring cosmopolitan surface, designed by foreign art experts to the highest standards, lurks the obscene, dark flipside, displaying noxious ignorance and goals that are far from any noble notions of humanity and cosmopolitan tolerance. What foreign experts do in presenting the Project Ars Aevi on an international, cosmopolitan level, local experts undo and corrupt through illiterate, malign attempts to deal with the local artists. What is revealed under Ars Aevi\'s cosmopolitan facade is nothing but a local, Machiavellian fight for power and the chance to rewrite history on a microcosmic level.

But just to reveal this dichotomy is not enough: its problematic rationale is far more pivotal. And, significantly, - and here we must be careful not to miss the point -, it is occurring [i]on the side of the »good,« cosmopolitan idea[/i], not on the side of its devious twin! What is problematic here is the very basic, commonsensical notion that Sarajevo as such is the embodiment of cosmopolitism, and consequently destined to become the locus of such a spectacular international collection. Or, to put it in the poetic words of a Sarajevo curator: »It is no accident that the ruins of cosmopolitan Sarajevo are the birthplace of art … .« The ruins of Grozny or Kabul could never serve for this sort of birth, since they are not perceived as cosmopolitan. The doxy about the cosmopolitan core of Bosnian tradition, spirit etc., of course, maintains itself through an endless, mantra-like repetition of phrases that would fit almost any city in the Balkans - intersection of the East and the West, different cultures etc. Ars Aevi unscrupulously embraced this mythical pattern, which, like any other doxy, has a highly soporific effect: cosmopolitism is not something that Sarajevo/Bosnia is supposed to strive for, it is not the idea around which we should conceive and create a concrete political or cultural program, etc. Everything has already happened in the mythic past: Bosnia had been an incarnation of cosmopolitism, until the rest of the world forsook the very principle of cosmopolitism by betraying Bosnia in the recent war. This absurd composite is definitely a myth, but nevertheless - it works! The most important part of the Ars Aevi project - collecting the pieces of art -, which was carried out solely by foreign curators and artists who felt solidarity and compassion with Sarajevo as a »martyr city«
(E. Hadziomerpashic),² in a gesture that can be paralleled with humanitarian support (Ars Aevi), could be succinctly defined as the most sophisticated fruition of humanitarian logic in the case of Bosnia. But the point is not that this sort of motivation to help on the part of foreign curators and artists, especially at the moment when the West was showing political ignorance toward Bosnia, is wrong in itself. Rather, the good will shown by these benevolent foreigners uncovers the essential thing about the Ars Aevi project: to be a victim, or to be cosmopolitan »at heart,« is not enough to deal with the field of art (or, indeed, to participate in other domains, that of politics, for example). All the applause for a mythical Sarajevo thus functions as a cover-up for the fact that Sarajevo, deprived of an artistic infrastructure (curatorial, critical, educational...), could hardly live up to the demanding standards of foreign experts, that the members of the local Ars Aevi team are not ready for the project of this magnitude, and that the project has started to reveal itself as a vehicle for the opportunistic purchase of their own privileges.

The example of Ars Aevi, of its shift from cosmopolitism to Machiavellism, from IRWIN to Goran Bregovic,³ thus encapsulates many of the nuisances that accompany the reading of the hieroglyph »cosmopolitism.« Most of them can be avoided by applying an elementary »Leninist« test: Cosmopolitism? - For whom? To what purpose? At what cost? Why here? Why now? And, of course, by not forgetting for a single moment that the aim of this operation is not the salvation of the supposed blissful essence of cosmopolitism from its »bad«, pathological features, but to completely dismantle this concept if necessary, or - why not? - to completely discard it if we find it does not meet our needs in the struggle for more political and economic equality.

 

 

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