10 Oct 2008

Salon Of The Revolution - 29th Youth Salon Zagreb

The title of the exhibition for the 2008 Zagreb Youth Salon – Salon of the Revolution, contains a deliberate paradox and an ambiguity that defines it both as 'revolutionizing a Salon' and 'salonizing a revolution'. By creating a space of uncertainty about its meaning, it presents itself primarily as a question, reflecting on the possibilities, responsibilities, and positions which contemporary art and intellectual practice can occupy today.

The year 1968 (the year of the global revolts but also the year when the Youth Salon was first established in Zagreb) is just an allusive starting point for the multifaceted project which links the strategies of resistance in the past with those of today and, in a more general sense, questions the ways in which looking into the past, even with nostalgia, can become not only paralyzing and passive attitude which Walter Benjamin reproachfully dubbed 'left melancholy', but the driving force of a new reflection on art and the present moment. The relation towards the past which the Salon of the Revolution wishes to activate is closest to Badiou's concept of the 'fidelity to the event' – beside 1968, the project maps a series of other 'events' from the past which together, form a collection of empowering references, or at least moments whose heritage is today worth questioning and whose 'anniversaries' we can, without cynicism, congratulate.

The project further reflects on the history of the exhibition venue, the House of Artists, designed by Ivan Meštrovic and built in 1938, which, since then, had gone through several transformations all of which have been linked to highest instances of state politics and changing ideologies (inaugurated as an artists' house, it became a mosque during the WWII, soon changing into a Museum of Revolution, almost becoming a pantheon of Croatian nobles, but finally returning to its original function of an art venue)

Participating Artists:

Julieta Aranda, Arturas Bumšteinas & Laura Garbštienė, Petar Bunić, Alejandro Cesarco, Kajsa Dahlberg, Mariana Castillo Deball, Claire Fontaine, Samuel Dowd & Florian Roithmayr, Ivan Dujmušić, Köken Ergun, Marin Kanajet, Patricia Esquivias, Jakup Ferri, Mario García Torres, �?uro Gavran, Igor Grubić, Nicoline Van Harskamp, Stefan Haus, Adrijana Hiseni, Ilegalni Bioskop, Siniša Ilić, The Institute Of Art And Practice Of Dissent At Home, Janez Janša, Jeudi Noir, Božidar Katić, Iva Kovač & Nataša Tepavčević, Nenad Kurćubić, Siniša Labrović, Runo Lagomarsino, Ivan Latin, Marko Marković, Monument To Transformation, Radenko Milak, Ciprian Muresan, Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere, Ahmet Öğüt, Damir Očko, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Lala Raščić & Vuneny, R.E.P. - Revolutionary Experimental Space, Joanne Richardson, Dina Rončević, Majorian 458, Karla Šuler, Pilvi Takala, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Nassan Tur, Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor, Voina

Disobedience Archive (curated by Marco Scotini and designed by Zbynek Baladran) is specially hosted in the framework of the Salon of the Revolution.

The project is developed and curated by Ivana Bago and Antonia Majaca.