Upon re-reading Pejic’s introductory essay to Abramovic’s work at the 1997 Venice Biennale, one cannot help noticing frequent references to Vienna and the Viennese. References to the operetta »The Merry Widow« (1905) by the Vienna-based Hungarian composer Franz Lehár and the movie of the same name by Erich von Stroheim (1925) are intended to indicate how the West receives that which it calls »Balkanian«. Its bestiality appears again in its purest form in Abramovic’s »Balkan Baroque« along with the surrounding events. Both of these examples, which highlight a kind of ethnological bestiality of the Balkans, can also be read as a Balkanian reference to Vienna in which the Balkanian is reflected or as a metonymy.
This binary model, which is based on the historical, but also mythical, battle between the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish army, and is then reduced to the model of Vienna vs. the Balkans, occurs in many texts. Usually, one reference stands for pedigree, and the other for bastardy, or one stands for culture, and the other for the non-cultural, and so on. Many old cultural dichotomies that are still very much alive in contemporary culture are formed in a similar way (Eastern European: Western European is the most common). But this one is the opposite of other ones: not only more condensed but also topologically precise and situated. This is probably the source of the attitude that the Balkans are mostly clearly manifested in Vienna. While everyone knows where Vienna is, there is constant debate within the Balkans themselves on where the Balkans begin. The Balkan region is constantly re-defined for the debate as an island, a peninsula, a historical domain, etc..

Still, what Vienna means for the Balkan region and its constant self-denial is rarely referred to, although this reference is far more than just a historical military point on the map. Did you know that Mozart’s Turkish March has been used in a socialist commercial for another myth –»Gavrilovicka«, a cult salami-sausage? This usage sounds even more outrageous when you know that the name of the sausage is derived from Gavrilo. But the underlying problem of the production of identity is far more vulgar than any of these ideas, especially as there are two difficulties involved.

Identification

We can go further and retell an old joke just to give an idea of the perversity of this imagined counter-identity. A Bosnian Mujo has caught a golden fish, but instead of offering three wishes, this magic fish has given Mujo only one. Mujo tries to think about one wish containing all his desires, and asks to wake up as a king. The fish does its job. In the morning Mujo is lying in a huge bed with white sheets, and is woken by his butler telling him: »Ferdinand, let’s go to Sarajevo!«
The joke obviously laughs at the assassination that had such far-reaching consequences for world history, but also at the Balkanian wish to always be something else. It tells how master and slave are both laughed at. The desire for power and its subversion become clear as soon as the ambiguous Lacanian term, so overused for such issues, is introduced: Mujo becomes an Other to himself.

But what does this have to do with art in contemporary society? The topic of the Other was introduced into the art world through the interpretative awareness of cultural analysis when the time was ripe to replace dogmatic art-historical awareness. Post-colonial studies in particular influenced the» identity-art« of the eighties, demolishing our picture of the Other. Partly owing to the new media-induced collapse of physical identity, the Other has been one of the most elaborated general themes or concepts over the last couple of decades. After »black«, »woman« and »poor«, the Balkanian identity has become one of the most interesting art identities. Balkanian means wild, chauvinistic, and arrogant, even in the case of a woman. Since Marina Abramovic’s »Balkan Baroque« won the Grand Prix of the Biennale in Venice in 1997, Balkanian has been one of the most represented cultural fictions. What the West looks for in this formation, above all through the works depicting the Rest, has probably been best described in C.P Cavaty’s poem »Waiting for the Barbarians«: a way of conquering its own fears and desires. But it also indicates its own fears in the way certain cultures are isolated in »zoo« types of exhibition. A high culture has isolated a low culture - as barbarian, with its own special sense of Balkanization as meaning: segregation, dissolution, breaking up – a definition included in most general dictionaries. Three shows done by major curators on the topic of the Balkanian were of this kind.

Disidentification or the disinfection of identity

When Marina Grcinic objected to these shows, the cultural projection of the Other as Balkanian reached its peak. Western perception was inscribed in mythical topics: spectres, blood and honey etc; however, the use of the term Balkanization in the cultural domain since the »Zenithist« Ljubomir Micic introduced it in his pioneering writings in the early modern age was rarely referred to. The reference was far more »oriental« and content-based, neglecting the cultural form existing within it, although some artists did refer to this.

Re-reading Grcinic’s essays, compiled a in new reader, one can understand the gap that has, at least theoretically, been pointed out in the discussion. Grcinic answers the question not only of how cultural imagination happens, but enters deeply into its processes. One of the most interesting phenomena that she elaborates, such as cannibalization and over-rapid historization, do not speak directly of the Vienna–Balkans dichotomy, but go towards clarifying it.
She recognizes the cynicism of the over-identification that is also present in the old joke about Mujo’s wish and that highlights another aspect; the constant inclusion of the Balkanian in the Viennese. This radical interpretation, which has especially condensed over the last decade, when the most of the events in the Balkans happened, logically closes Pejic’s “How do you see us?” with a “We see you.”

 

 

---