Blowing up, toppling, decapitation

Still, the strategy of blowing monuments up was seen as left-wing not because it was so in a political sense, but because it was the way an invisible society of workers made itself spectacularly visible. Obligatory classes of self-defence in secondary schools, which were more like terrorism lessons for children, taught a type of knowledge similar to the interventionist discourse of anarchism and the radical left in the West, for example Johann Most (end of 19th century) or William Powell (»The Anarchist Cookbook«, 1960s). But they were legal, a part of historical methodology. Instead of demolishing the sculpture of Tito, bombers have simply reminded everyone of what they already know..

When the government decided to put the restored monument back in place, Martinis took revenge on copies. Cutting heads off replicas of the monument not only repeated the iconoclasm of bombers where the sculpture only lost a head, but established Martinis himself on the empty pedestal of the symbol as Tito himself – who, according to implausible accounts of his life, was at first a metalworker.

The strategy of replacing heads of statues with different ones, practised since Roman times, was more colonial in meaning. For this method has been used on a large scale in another medium – photography. Stalin’s partial interventions in historical photographs used iconoclasm in a constructive rather than destructive way, to build new meanings .

Martinis’ performances actually refer to photography and film both in content and form. All we have is a photography of the first performance, and all that happens is a ritual decapitation – but the symbol lives on. So what is meant to be subverted here if the sculpture cannot be punished?

Subversive museums and theme parks

The pedestal that Martinis climbs on to is not an artistic reference point, like the empty pedestals of Lawler and McCollum . A museum and the birthplace of the »ex-father« are not the same, although both are »memorial« institutions.

A empty pedestal in a public place is a sign of a past time. Paul Claudel has noted how Mallarmé’s Paris was »suddenly peopled with pedestals dedicated to absence«, and for this reason Iamposkii has seen pedestals as a sign of stable times During Tito’s life, the pedestal was also a point of reference for the »everyday pioneers« who participated in the grand spectacles for Tito’s birthdays (»slet« - large-scale festivals, often in stadiums, where songs and dances were performed in honour of Tito; or »_tafeta« - relay races through all the republics, using burning torches instead of batons; the last torch was given to Tito personally on his birthday). Once arrived at the pedestal, Martinis fulfills his old obligation to stand up and defend the place. He comes there to stabilize.

But it is not that Martinis makes a political decision, even though he takes the place of Tito (or, to be more precise, of his copy) or behaves as a metalworker. He is actually entering an impossible exchange with a place where icons of popular culture are in play that are referred to by art, but are can no longer be successfully decoded by politics. In this place, iconoclasm and iconophilia lose their meaning, as they refer to particular motifs, but do not manage to decipher the icon and the symbol .

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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