COURAGE

savienojot kolekcijas

The first presentation of works from the "Exploitation of the Dead" cycle took place in the Extended Media Gallery in Zagreb in January/February 1988. About 350 small-format works which summarize Stilinović's four-year work were shown at the exhibition.

The exhibition was well attended by the public, and received sound media coverage. The main Croatian newspapers (Vjesnik, Večernji list, Oko, Studentski list, Danas) ran positive reviews on the exhibition. Especially interesting is the review by the well-known art critic Ana Lendvaj, who emphasised Stilinović's courage to play with the symbols of the star or the cross and generally with - according to Stilinović - dead ideologies that still impress people.

She noted: "It is clear that Stilinović - by touching upon the network of ideology, the network of religion, and the network of art, and doing this in a courageous world-building attempt - explores how the process of repetition vibrates as the one that either leaves things as they were or radically changes them at the expense of (lethal) consequences for the person who engages in this perilous task. It is dangerous because all these used signs, artistic or historical directions to which the author refers have not been emptied of emotion, and we are still tragically sensitive over them, but only when they are thrown into our faces in a pure, direct and non-derivative form. If they are transmitted through pictures, it will be harder for us to notice them" (Večernji list, 26 January 1988, p. 11).

Ruzhdi Panxha, director of the Directorate for Archival Activities in Pristina, explained that public institutions submit documents to the Archives of the Republic of Kosovo every twenty years. Until 1988, the collection was owned by the League of Communists of Kosovo’s Central Committee, and Rilindja newspaper. Materials at the Archives of the Republic of Kosovo are protected, preserved, regulated, processed, published, and displayed for professional and scientific purposes. The archives are particularly interested in scientific research, as well as cooperating with other local, regional and international archives.

The Literary Municipality of Cetinje was forced to close in 1988, ostensibly due to the publication of the book Etnogenezofobija that same year. Etnogenezofobija was written by Savo Brković, a prominent Communist official, who had been previously criticized for his nationalist stances. In this book, Brković again discussed the ethnic origin of the Montenegrins and openly criticized Greater Serbia nationalism, which at that time was increasingly propagated by Serbian communist leaders and intellectuals. After the publication of this book, Brković suffered severe consequences – he was expelled from the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and publicly defamed for Montenegrin nationalism.

Although the closure of the Literary Municipality of Cetinje followed the publication of this book, the main cause for the regime to shut down the publishing house was the ongoing provocative activities of the founders and creators of ARS. They had long been known for their non-communist political views, which included embracing liberal political stances, discussing the Montenegrin national question, and sympathizing with famous Yugoslav dissidents. Consequently, the editorial board of ARS, then led by Milorad Popović, Mladen Lompar, and Slavko Perović, was replaced with regime-friendly staff, while Slavko Perović, the former president of the Literary Municipality of Cetinje, was accused of being “politically inappropriate” and was expelled from the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Montenegro.

9–21 December 1989

Young Artists’ Club, Budapest

The reconstruction of the exhibition entitled Hungary Can Be Yours!, which was banned in 1984. The same artefacts were placed in the same space, exactly where they had been five years earlier. However, the opening program was different from the one originally held: the public was able to participate in the roundtable discussion among the ‘banned’ and the ‘banners’: György Galántai, Lajos Kiss, Attila Zsigmond and Tamás Török. The discussion was moderated by Péter Rózsa. The event was documented on video and a catalogue was made.