Are You a hero?
Even though experience from wars and revolutions that took place in the early 20th
century hasshattered the illusionthat art can truly be a means for bringing a change, I
believe that it has to be something more than a mere comment, that a modern artist
ought to examine all aspects of human life, and present them in a meaningful and
unpretentious fashion.
One of important elements of Hitler’s ideology was art itself, perceived as heroic
and eternal. Eternity was regarded not as the Christian immortality of soul, but as
something purely material, inspired by the traces of all great ancient cultures and their
aficionados through centuries. Hitler was interested in the future life of a work of art, in
its interaction with the viewer, in a kind of idolatrous pleasure. In fact, as stated by Boris
Groys, this relationship and the pleasure derived from art were supposed to represent a
direct contact between two bodies – the body of an artwork and the body of the viewer,
who at the same time had to carry heroic genes in themselves.
The concept of my work proposed for the project “Anti-Fascist Map of Nikšić” is
ironically and critically based upon Hitler’s theory itself. The work features a hand
trolley with a PVC film on it. Both items are used for the transport and protection of
goods. Underneath the film is a motion sensing fan, which is activated when a viewer
approaches it and which animates the film. All this alludes to the interaction between
the work transported into the future and the viewer who has to be a hero in order to
perceive it successfully. It is a sarcastic game in which a non-existent content/truth is
transported, and in which, in line with the fascist conception of art, the visible truth and
meaninglessness are offered in an inverse form.
