TITLE: Mapping The Art AUTHOR: Maja Petri

The world is geographically divided by borders, and within every border lays a bordered culture of distinctive identities that differentiate themselves from others, and others found them different. Consequently, the art produced within a certain border is differentiated from other arts. I am inquiring into which ways art made in the territories of ex-socialistic European countries is Eastern European art. (My focus was based on the sense of Eastern Europeanism in the art by Authors of Eastern European Contemporary Bookworks, go_HOME, Tomislav Gotovac, Kugla, Marilena Preda Sanc, Dan Perjovschi, Tadej Pogaar, kart, and Krzystof Wodiczko.) All 10 of them originate from Eastern Europe, and were presenters of politically charged contemporary art in New York City in the association with Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.

Location: Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.

Martha Wilson founded Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. in 1976. At this time underground art was coming out in public spaces. Such content for mass audience didnt get traditional medias approval, so they tried to keep avant-garde under the ground. Therefore, Martha Wilson stated that she was inspired to present, preserve, interpret, proselytize and advocate on behalf of avant-garde art, especially forms that may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect, their ephemeral nature, or politically unpopular content. For 26 years Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. has been archiving documentations of performances and other time-based arts, collecting artists' books, publishing artists' books, exhibiting time-based arts, funding artists, and digitally presenting archived material. They provided the space for art work by Laurie Anderson, Vito Acconci, Barton Barnes, Eric Bogosian, Karen Finley, Coco Fusco, Gilbert and George, Guillermo Gomez Pena, Barbara Kruger, Ana Mendieta, Nam June Paik, Annie Sprinkle, and many others. Many of the difficult artists at Franklin Furnace were representing the avant-garde tradition in state socialist culture. Starting with Krzystof Wodiczko, Franklin Furnace hosted art from that side of the world that was isolated from the Western world. Art that had been jailed in

socialist countries gained attention in the US. However, Eastern European anti-state art stayed only on the margins of the art world, and for that reason remained to be Martha Wilsons choice. In 1997 Franklin Furnace closed the experimental performance space to open a complex virtual performance space at www.franklinfurnace.org. The new place still includes art functioning as political opposition, and will be used by Croatian artist Zlatko Kopljar in 2003.

Region: Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the term that stands for a space which is determined by historical facts and political reality. In other words, Eastern Europe is not a precisely bordered geographical territory, but a segregated area that has been distinctively organized. Organization has been ruled by 27 different socialist systems, which are now transitioning from the common wealth toward the democratic capitalism. Eastern Europe, stigmatized as a nest of evil, continues to migrate through the challenges of post-war reconciliation, regional integrations, and promotions of democracy. According to Michael Foucault, Our epoch is, above all, the epoch of space. In the text Of Other Spaces Foucault explained how in the 17th century Galileos revelation that the world revolves around the sun caused a replacement of open space with localizations. Humanity defines itself by locations where they are being active, and where others also define them as one of the same group. Definitions made through localities are alleged ethnicities that signify how people are different from other people in other places who share different national and regional origins. Therefore, todays localized spaces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Yugoslavia set the region of Eastern Europe. The place called Eastern Europe has its own space, but the location is not marked and therefore doesnt exist. According to Foucault, places of that kind are heterotopias, "They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down The heterotopias are capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible." In 1917 and then in 1945 more than 40 ethnicities and cultural groups

were unified by common non-self-organized dictatorial socialism that was imposed by the former Soviet Union. Plainly stating, after the World War II, Eastern Europe suffered from severe dependency on Moscow. The authority of the Communist parties, based on Marxist-Leninist ideology, struggled against capitalist imperialism. Proletarian internationalism violently solved the problems of national and ethnic minorities. Starting in the early 1990s, they again were forced into a new form of social organization called capitalism. The Cold War strongly segregated east and west, and the representation of it was the Iron Curtain. The situation resulted in high economic inequality, massive migrations, international division of labor, expenditure of armed forces, and more animosity towards and from the US. Unavoidably, political happenings affected the destinies and mentalities of the curtained community. This atmosphere resulted in specific cultural realizations of the current public space. The concept of space changed after the fall of socialism, mostly because of the rapid transition to a digital world. The digital worlds geography gained the capacity to find communication solutions that physical places could not. Virtual reality can bring together distinctive elements of different cultures that often cause conflicts. Nevertheless, the reality with no fatal differences remains to be virtual one. My main inquiry is form and meaning of signs produced by Eastern Europeans. Since the construction of the sign system is impacted by hyper-politicized reality, produced signs reflect this impact. Public art is one of the most direct reflections of the realm. It has been asking how we define art, the public, and the community. Active art uses the experiences of those elements in order to move away from the creation of a fine aesthetic style toward a provoking structure with social context.

State: Croatia

Kugla, Zeinimuro, The Actions of Pictures

Kugla, in English The Sphere, was the leading performance group in former Socialistic Federative Republic of Yugoslavia during the late seventies and eighties. The five members of Kugla - Damir Bartol Indo, Damir Prica, Zlatko Buri, Goran ulji and Renata

Demirovi ulji - began performing in Zagreb in 1975. Their performances were considered to be highly alternative, visually metalized events tracked by insane sounds. Today, the leader of the group, Damir Bartol Indo, perseveres Kuglas aesthetic while working under the name D.B. Indo House of Extreme Music Theatre/Kugla. On February 23, 1991, Kugla presented the performance Zeinimuro: The Action of Pictures in Franklin Furnace. The group explained the performance was about the main character - Zeinimuro Candandze, the pilot of a downed fighter plane. Caught in the chaotic memories of his experience, he became an anachronistic person. Lost in the collective past, Zeinimuro founds himself enveloped in the sounds of his heart beating, nerves firing and blood circulating. He creates abstract, surrealistic images, which delve deep into the realm of subjective truth. A flow of images and sounds, as well as soul stirring dance, creates intensely emotional and psychological experience. Noticing the similarity of Cages and Goghs physiognomies, he begins to make a link, Cage-Gogh, and continues it with the image of the ear. Cage embraces the ear, Gogh gives it up. Cage-Zeinimuro-Gogh live together. Goghs paintings lure Zeinimuro to detect their movement with radar and a reenact the movement. I seehear-hearsee the soundwawes coming out. Perceiving the action of the painting, he makes his own action and undergoes the phantasmagoric experience. The performance was packed with medical symbols of contamination, trauma, and survival that turned theatre into the ritual. Kugla kept on performing fairy tales that convey political activism trough narration about schizophrenic life caused by social-political conditions. They were inspired by political events of the frequent RAFs (Red Army Fraction) interventions, kidnapping of Ald Mor, etc. As the result, in the performance Action 16.00 they used real cars, guns and other army machinery. The motif of the performance Horse Tail was the Serbian general called Arkan (Arkan in Tartarian stands for the horses tail). The theme of Horse Tail was a soccer ground in Sarajevo, which was turned into a graveyard during the Bosnian-Serbian war. Kugla continued to make political statements in symbolic performances: Laika the first dog in Space, Laborem Exercens, Jedadde-Jedadde, Man-Chair, etc. Damir Bartol Indo stated for the Croatian newspaper Zarez in 2001 that he will not perform in Serbia until the Republic of Yugoslavia hands in at least 3 war criminals.

Tomislav Gotovac, Point Blank

Tomislav Gotovac is a filmmaker, performer, and visual artist. He started radically presenting his conceptualized work during the early 60s. By performing in public spaces his act provoked strong enforcement of police surveillance and censorship systems. Nevertheless, Gotovac kept on performing on the streets, and frequently ended up in the police stations. At 1971 he ran naked through the streets of Belgrade. In 1981, naked Gotovac kissed the concrete streets of the Zagreb during the performance Zagreb, I love you. For several decades, his actions have been challenging the autonomy of the body, and its political position. Through pure bodily dimension Gotovac succeeded in directly communicating with the audience. From January 6th till January 29th , 1994, Franklin Furnace presented Gotovacs Point Black. His work consists of installations: Museum of Peoples Revolution of Tomislav Gotovac, Paranoia View art-Homage to Gen Miller, Documents 1956-1990-- ; and performances: 24 Images per sec., The Hammer, Sickle and The Red Star, and Shooting Piece/Sniper Peace. All the pieces raise political issues trough repeatable use of totalitarian symbols, cinematic icons, and the fragments of former Yugoslavians history. Museum of Peoples Revolution of Tomislav Gotovac is Gotovacs ongoing project of creating a political hero. He uses typical forms of Hollywood cinematography, dull museum displays, and Soviet film to screen the character of Josip Broz Tito. Gotovac also impersonated Tito, the leading roll of his art project and main actor of the communistic Yugoslavia. Such approaches attempted to define the consequences of art to political struggles and the forms of propaganda for communist parties. Even though Tito and Titos Yugoslavia dont exist anymore, Gotovac maintained Titos iconic value and explained art in consistency with Titos ideology. Gotovac finished his presentation in New York with Shooting Piece/Sniper Peace. The performance transformed the shooting target into the screen filled with violent nightmares. In that way New York Citys audience was for the moment confronted with the shootings, which were at the time happening for four years in the on territory of former Yugoslavia.

State: Poland

Krzysztof Wodiczko: Projections

Krzysztof Wodiczko is an internationally renowned artist born in Poland, where he lived until 1977. After spending half of his life behind the Iron Curtain, Wodiczko moved to Canada and the United States. On the West he developed aesthetic research on how design, performance, and media endorse social change. In the seventies, Wodiczko started the ongoing project Projections, a series of photographs projected in large scale on the institutionally important buildings around the world. For a night or two Wodiczkos projections completely covered surfaces of large buildings in Australia, Austria, Canada, England, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States. Upon the domed Centro Cultural Theatre of Tijuana, Wodiczko projected the image of a Mexican worker as if being arrested by La Migra (the INS) because of an illegal crossing of the US border. On the Boston monument he screened the image of a homeless person. A projection of a swastika appeared on the South African Embassy in London. The war museum in Pittsburgh exposed images of skeletal hands playing a tuneless funeral song. A projection of a pair of death hands appeared in Madrid, just days after the outbreak of the Gulf War. The image of a pair of hands, one grasping an M-16 machine gun and the other a gas pump, juxtaposed with the text Cuantos? (How much?). Other projections documented: American-Canadian free trade at a Toronto water filtration plant; attack in Edinburgh on Margaret Thatcher's economic policies; and a street level protest against the problem of homelessness in New York through a controversial prototype of a mobile shelter. Since the late eighties, he has developed a series of nomadic instruments for homeless and immigrant operators. Those were integrated into the ongoing project: Xenology: Immigrant Instruments (begun in 1992) It combines interviews with immigrants made in their native countries with interviews of the same immigrants conducted in the country they immigrated to. For the project Alien Staff, Wodiczko developed the walking stick for immigrants. The apparatus consisted of a TV monitor, loudspeaker, and electrodes for electric field sensing. The small sized monitor was put over the mouths of performers who were walking around public spaces and attracting publics attention. The observer who dared to come closer could see that the image on the face of the screen and the actual face of the person are of the same immigrant.

Every observer who passed the distance and came closer to the immigrant contributed to shortening the length of ignorance about migration. On April 15 through April 25, 1981, Franklin Furnace presented Wodiczkos collection of photographs of proposed and executed architectural slide projections for the project Projections. Wodiczkos program included a lecture on Avant-Garde and Bureaucracy about avant-garde tradition in Polish art, a moment of Socialist Realism during the early fifties, and the culture of post-Stalinist period of the sixties and seventies. Wodiczko frequently lectures around the world. He has presented topics about the history and theory of the avant-garde; the theory and criticism of public art; nomadic design; art, identity and community; design, technology and ethics; the art of counter-memory; and interrogative design.

Maciej Toporowicz , Ding An Sich 3

Maciej Toporowicz is born and lived in Krakow. Later he resided in New York City, where he expanded his performance, installation, silkscreen, photography, paintings, video and sound media work. One of the many places Toporowicz exhibited at was Franklin Furnace in 1987. He, Magdalena Deskur and Peter Grzybowski performed Ding An Sich 3. The performance explored a hardcore, esoteric, and alternative vision of the future or other realities that still didnt appear. Performers became half-people and half-objects that came out to the fluorescent light as cybernetic figures. Toporowicz continued his association with Franklin Furnace while presenting the installation project called Ultragothic. Today Maciej Toporowiczs name provokes memories of New York City streets covered with over 200 of his posters based on the ads for Calvin Klein perfumes. Poster images juxtaposed the perfume names "Obsession," "Escape" and "Eternity" with images of the Third Reich. Toporowicz also created projects called Sylvia Plath, Kurt Cobain, and Aokigahara Forest (a suicide forest in Japan) project; Baby Gap project for creation of the house for babies whose mothers were HIV positive; Serial Killers project made of 48 drawings, and others.

His recent project has been presented at "Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art exhibition in The Jewish Museum from March 17 through June 30, 2002. Toporowicz was one of the thirteen internationally recognized artists who exhibited provoking imagery based on images produced in the Nazi era. He edited a video Obsession that combines Calvin Klein ads, scenes from Visconti's film The Damned, images from Nazi propaganda, and Leni Riefenstahl films. Different video materials were connected throughout the video by use of fetishiziostic sexual motifs. Nazism and the Holocaust became the subject of artwork by young artists who looked upon the memory of their parents reality. Their work also demanded examination of what those images of Nazism mean today. Politicized art becomes obsessed with the historical ways of evil that are ignored at the present. The exhibition provoked outrage by Holocaust survivors at the Jewish Museum. They required several works of the show to be removed. The incident progressed when they asked the public to boycott the show. Nevertheless, the show and extensive education programs, forums for discussion, and a major publication continued as planned.

State: Romania Dan Pe rjovschi, Anthroprograming

Don Perjovschi is well-known for his harsh critique of ruling politics. Through drawings, performances, and writings he expresses his approval/disapproval about what happens in the world. A number of Don Perjovschis works refer to the Romanian autocratic totalitarianism of Nicolae and Elena Ceaucesecu. In 1993 Perjovschi performed at the Europe Zone East performance art festival. The symbolic location of the festival was Timisoara, where Romanian opposition succeeded in the emancipation of communism. There, Perjovschi performed by sitting still at the chair while the word Romania was tattooed in his upper left forearm. His skin became abjected material or the identity that has been disturbed by degrading elements of the society. The content of the tattoo acknowledged Romania as the place of Perjovschis origin and way of living, which impacts his identity. Because the state in which he was living was undergoing surveillance, control, and manipulations; Perjovschi himself was under surveillance, controlled, and manipulated. 8

Dan Perjovschi was in residence at Franklin Furnace where he created an installation/performance Anthroprograming about art-making and critical processes. On December 23, 1995, Perjovschi in association with his wife Amalia Perjovschi presented thousands of drawings of little human faces on the wall space of Franklin Furnace. Then, he systematically erased the drawings to emphasize the monotony of labor. Part of the installation was a moving scroll of the artists political cartoon and other objects that the viewer was invited to interact with.

Dan Perjovschi about east, west, east-west, and art:

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Marilena Preda Sanc, Mindscape, Inside, Algorithms of Power

Preda Snc is a multidisciplinary artist. She first trained in painting, drawing, and mural techniques. Her work expanded in a series of two-dimensional works and "visual concrete poetry" based on photos of her own body. Further development led her into the video performance. In 1993 she created: Bodyscape, Handscape, Mindscape. Since then, Marilena Preda Sanc has been working in video performance and installation. She also extensively publishes on new media and technologies in art. She explains her work: Trained as mural painter, I consider myself a painter of fix and running images concerning with representation of Realities. Since 1980 I have been creating art that incorporates Image. This continuously evolving artwork includes: object/drawing/painting and photography/artist book. From 1983 I have a series of interventions on photographs taken after my face/body entitled My Body is Space in Space Time in Time and Memory of All. That photo action, a Body Art piece was presented in many international experimental art biennials at that time. I began experimenting with video after 1990. For Romanian artists video technology was forbidden during the communist period. My first video work was a video performance. During the performance I wrote words on my face/body. Another video work - Bodyscape/ Handscape/Mindscape presents metaphorical images obtained by slides of my art in Media Culpa'95 show, Bucharest. The video images are anchormen and old records suggesting a possible manipulation of Media Power by the Power itself. I started the work by sending on-line message on this topic. I received answers from different persons, which I used in my installation as a background for a video projection. The visitors interacted with the environment. In the end I found many interesting texts written by the visitors on this topic of Power. My video work consists in video documentary Oldness, video performance Mindscape and Inside, video poetry Passing, a life net performance Brief Autobiography and a multimedia show The Wall in the Tower. During this work-in-progress I collaborated with an artists' team. My artwork explores various layers of Realities and has at its core a Man, the spiritually beautiful being and alteration in the context of the civilization created by him. The human being is situated in the world in an interconnection with the material/social world but my positive vision about the world make me to believe in our immersion in a spiritual cosmic hologram, into an ethical space of poises also. My art works on concrete supports -Bodyscape (body as place of meditation, prison 16

and refuge vis a vis of communist realities) We can have a long discussion about high art and low art and how low art / kitsch / populist art represent the greatest part of visualscape of local / global Image today. Both local and global images convey the politics. Authors have choice to transmit local or global meaning of imagery. Either way, according to Preda Sanc, choice should be made upon the certain ethics. I want to believe that for Romanian artists, Eastern European artists and for artists from everywhere it's a duty to reflect in their work the realities that are not so pink all over the world. We have to present the true stories even if they are not in "the parameters of acceptable stories. I believe that the quality of human being will be enriched once ego / geoconsciousness is fully integrated into the environmental mind of a revived new man identity, an identity based on the concept of neighborhood as a "living need and we practice the "ethics of care". Preda Sancs example of practice of ethics of care was presented at Franklin Furnace on Friday, December 4th , 1998. Live performance and a compilation of short performance videos: Mindscape, Inside and The Algorithms of Power used information, technology, and other forms of logical structure to create an image or meta-visual world. The author recalls: When I came to New York to Franklin Furnace Foundation I feel as lost in space. First days I was not able to communicate with the others and all the time I took the subway in wrong direction. I came with the intention to present my video work but I realized that it's better to find a direct way to say a few words about myself and the result was the performance piece Brief Autobiography part of the program The Future of the Present. Martha Wilson helped me to feel the place of Franklin Furnace and encourage me to do something and not only to behave as a visitor. It was a great experience. My American experiences made me to be freer in my art/life decisions. State: Slovenia Tadej Pogaar, CODE:RED

Tadej Pogaar is Slovenian artist who lives and works in Ljubljana. His works are called action projects or art that encourages participate policy-making through real working relationship for development of new policies. Pogaar directs symbolic virtual institution - P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E.

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Museum of Contemporary Art (PMCA) Pogaar succeeds to expose flues of policies that run our lives are lifes and keeps on proposing improvements. He and PMCA became renowned for reusing the logo of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the introductory speech of the director of the Guggenheim museum. But the work that represents them is CODE: RED, initiated at the I. World Congress of Sex Workers and New Parasitism. CODE: RED (1999-2004) includes investigations and discussions about the aspects of prostitution and sexual work as a specific branch of economy that is continuously being marginalized. The project uses real and virtual spaces for open dialogue between artists, sex workers and the public. Discussions aim to initiate a new model of economic and political status of sex workers. They kept on the Sex Workers project for 49. Venice Biennial, organized in close collaboration with Comitato per I Diritti Civili delle Prostitute from Pordenone in Italy. Tadej Pogaars CODE: RED project won Franklin Furnaces Fund for Performance art 2002, through which he presented CODE: RED USA on May 8, 2002. CODE: RED USA researched the urban context of the city and the conditions of life and work of sex workers in New York. Links were established between local organizations, artists, activists and protagonists. Together, they discussed the urban minority of sex workers and the protection of sex workers. Public discussions created a basic platform for later group actions and interventions. Phases and outcomes of the project are posted on the special website - http://www. parasite-pogacar.si,. The website allows the general public to directly access the project. The P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art and Tadej Pogaar recently announced the unveiling of the 'Monument to an Unknown Prostitute' in the Tivoli Park in Ljubljana. The inauguration of the monument will be performed in close co-operation with the Comitato dei Diritti Civilli delle Prostitute institution from Pordenone, Italy. This will be the first memorial of its kind that aims toward political and social change of sex workers status. Also, it is one of the small number of art projects that through many different levels contributes to social benefit of the large region, and wants to spread globally. State: Yugoslavia kart, Survival Coupons

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Dragan Proti and ore Balmazovi founded the graphic research group at the abandoned graphic studio in Belgrade in 1990. They named their self kart which in SerboCroatian means scrap(s), reject(s), or discarded material(s). The group works are crossdisciplinary, ranging from multi-media and literary publishing to street actions. Production of karts work includes limited editions of books, posters, magazines that are distributed during the street performances. Through the distribution of socially critical content the group creates "critical communication with the public. In 1992-93 kart did "The Sadness Project" as personal reactions on the current socialpolitical state of Yugoslavia. At the time Serbians were fighting on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. Simultaneously, the territory of Serbia was under Milosevis dictatorship and heavy economic sanctions. In the meantime kart published Sadness books" once a week. Books of The Sadness poem, made of brown cardboard pages and wrapped in a brown paper band, were randomly distributed to strangers in Belgrade. kart continued the project by printing photographs and posters of people receiving Sadness books. In 1998 kart set off the project Survival Coupons to carry on the "critical communication" strategy. They designed several kinds of "coupons'" - coupons for orgasm, coupons against coupons, coupons for fear, coupons for power, coupons for masturbation, coupons for relaxation, coupons for money, and finally coupons for the end. Designed material ? and instructions for using it were given to people in public spaces. Coupons became a commentary on of reality. At that time the reality in Serbia included peoples dependency on coupons for electricity, coupons for hot water, coupons for bread, and other coupons. The Survival Coupons project was accepted in Franklin Furnaces Archive, Inc., 25th anniversary season The Future of The Present 2000. At the time karts arrival to the US was questionable because of the troubled international politics after NATO bombed Belgrade in late 1999. The bombing occurred when kart was supposed to have received US visas. After many difficulties, they gained the right to enter the US. kart completed a month-long residency in the Parsons School of Design that resulted in a live and on-line presentation on December 15, 2000. A special edition of coupons commented on American reality in relation to Serbian way of life. In collaboration with students from the

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Parsons School, they delivered coupons in New York City subways. Their art expanded by documenting subway-actions, and redesigning the project for presenting it on the internet where reactions and comments are still being received. Dragan Protic about east and East and non-east: Who is behind me? / Behind me are memories. it is a great comment by ivojina KaraPeia, an architect from Belgrade. It is impossible and totally wrong to slice the cake of the origin upon the reason of some kind geography. In fact, geographies dont exist until you start to determine them by your own set of borders. These violently divided geographies and histories will always remain the base (like the poor girls shirt which is always too tight and bites the skin under the arm because of the lack of material). Who is behind me? From todays distance, ideological hammer of socialism and its variations (socialistic self-ruling, and then in nineties, hybrids of socialistic nationalisms) have for sure shaped our tools. It seems that all those things that we were used to ashamed of or proud of (bad press, infantile soc-realistic caricatures in workers papers, emancipations-to the village we go, TV-shows knowledge is gold) became the base of our work. In the beginning those were only traces of the (almost) autistic right-here-and-now environment. Later, in the beginning of the war, plan of critical communication and actionism was opened within the diseased social-political reality. But, that is also behind us. Today, More or less everything is West/When you look from the East. Duko Trifunovi, poet from Sarajevo. That much about east. And East. And non-east. There is something strange in the other. While I was in the elementary school, my whole class envied girl Sonja who didnt have father. Her family was somehow different, from ours ordinary families. Art of so-called Eastern Europe for us remained to be as ordinary family, something that is so much part of us that it became completely uninteresting because we can do even better (or worse, it depends what is the purpose). Stupid prejudices turns us into social worker who keeps on searching for ran away father from the west, while refusing to sit down at the same table with its own family. East and east dont know each other. That could be the reason why each of us thinks that we are not east.

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When I was going out in my sleepwear, my grandmother would say:U cemu lezis u tome i bezis (You wear sleepwear when you are not sleeping). No matter where I am or how impractical it is, I try to have that sleepwear by my side. The bed is still horizontal everywhere I go. My friend from New York Carla P., theatre manager who lives at W14th Street, every Saturday goes to Union Square to buy vegetables. She comes home, puts out of the fridge all the rotten vegetables she bought last Saturday, and puts in new ones. Next Saturday she does the same, because in the mean time she doesnt have time to open the fridge. We gave here coupons for relaxation that we made in Belgrade. Next weekend she made a soup. -----------Hopelessness of Charlie N. is the same as the hopelessness of Lenke Z. He was a young black guy from Harlem, working as elevator-operator at Lower East side. She was unemployed single mother living in Belgrade as refugee from Kosovo. Both of them experienced passivity, gethoization, and social manipulation. Those experiences are the same at both sides of Ocean. In New York, Charlie worked with us on Hello Charlie project. Few months later Charlie suddenly died of ammonia. We also worked with Lenka and other single mothers onKitchen Ties project. Few months later, Lenkas handicapped daughter tried to kill herself. Connection: Eastern Europeanism

Black and White and Red All Over: Bookworks from Eastern Europe

From April 23rd until June 19th 1982, Franklin Furnace presented artist-made books from Eastern Europe - Poland, former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and former Yugoslavia. The presented artist books, periodicals, mail art, and reference materials were established during sixties against the official regime. Therefore, non-official art was illegal and very dangerous. Hard conditions of production resulted in the use of secret media. The leading new media was samizdat that came out of the Russian avant-garde way of thinking, and the political atmosphere in socialistic countries.

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Samizdat stands for self-published art (sam=self, izdat=published). Self-publishing began during the end of Kruschchevs, and the beginning of Brezhnevs ruling era in the midsixties. The self-published books became a popular symbol of resistance and Russian surrealistic and dadaistic sensibility. The books were illegally printed and chain-distributed in Soviet Union. One method of distribution was Mail Art, Correspondence Art, Envois, or Postal Sculpture that carried on the development of avant-garde rebelliousness. By using the postal system as a means of creating art, artists enable communication networks and establish an interface between themselves and the world outside the art. This form was growing because of the availability of the cheap offset printing machines and Xerox machines. Using simple technology, the work was typed or hand written on carbons, in an edition of 2 to 12 copies. Waclaw Ropiecki created a series of hand-colored photography called art as a way of Authotherapy. Kopany Marton printed mail works by using photocopies in limited editions of unbound books that were composed of broken lines, squares, and other imagery related to the page. Avant-garde in Eastern Europe accepted the new Russian tradition and kept on publishing illegal books that had no references to the publisher, translator, location, or any other information about the source. The aim of the illegal editions was to publish what was forbidden to be published, which meant critiquing the ruling politics. The flourishing time of samizdat as revolutionary press was in 1968 when left-winged students demonstrated in Paris, Hungary attempted democracy, and brutal military interventions tried to break down Czech Spring. After some time illegal distribution of the artist books disappeared. Franklin Furnaces permanent collection of a large number of Eastern European artworks was smuggled out of Eastern Europe during the eighties. In 1993 it was acquired by the MoMA. The collection is available for research to artists and the general public in New York.

go_HOME

In 1999, Bosnian artist Danica Daki and Croatian artist Sandra Sterle formulated an idea about fusion of real and on-line artist's residency for exploration of the meaning of "home". Due to many supporters, among which was Franklin Furnace's The Future of the Present Program, the project go_HOME was realized in New York City and virtually at www.project-go-home.com.

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During the four month residency artists organized Sunday dinners in their home for artists, scholars, and public to discuss topics of: Architecture of Migration, Women Who Move Too Much, Relocating Culture, Reproducing Home, Transitory cases: Language, Media, Imagined Homes, and Nation and Globalization. Fritzie Brown, Darko Fritz, Marjetica Potrc, Branimir Stojanovi, Milica Tomi, and many more talked about the meaning of home. They confided about their own homes, and how they relate to the location of their home, which imposed the question is home geographically determined place? Kathrine Carl answered: Making space is crucial for human well-being. During the weeks after the 11th , it was very reassuring to have a home to go to---we gathered and ate and talked together and had many questions, from which we built a project, a new kind of home. Myth, as well as political reality, has a strong influence on how we interact with each other, use our local geography, envision our place in the world, and imagine our histories and future. Danicas and Sandras online artworks highlight the fragmentary and layered nature of experience through their episodic form and their use of a mix of facts and myth. Danica represents her own body maneuvering through largerthan-life headlines and public facts from newspapers. Sandra uses intimate diaristic recordings of events mixed with dream-like fictional images. The internet broadcasts of the dinner discussions also created a space for a new rhythm of conversation. The internet has become an appendage that nurtures global living but also makes us more attuned to the hiccupsthe obstacles and gaps in our movement and communication. The hallmarks of postmodern life are not necessarily placelessness or alienation but an unstable presence, an indeterminacy that comes from multiplicity. go_HOMEs temporary geographical location was attacked on September 11, 2001. Consequently, fatal political happenings changed the discussion of the meaning of home and going home. Fritzie Brown said about it: It is strange in the most terrible way that the project started two days before September 11 and the living space was 6 blocks from WTC. Perhaps that event may become something of a Zen smack to the US's head - have we ever before seen so many trying to learn so much about another culture than in the months after September? But the event produced nothing but extreme anxiety and turmoil for my co-Director Katherine Carl, the artists and me. We were, in a nightmarish replaying of their pasts, frightened, displaced and forced to immediately readapt to an entirely new set of conditions, including a new living situation. There was a feeling of triumph in merely completing the project under such difficult

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circumstances. We found rich enjoyment in the constructed domesticity as it played out during the months of the project: the comfort we all derived from the meals, the special Balkan spice mixture that appeared in the food, an investigation of Polish beers and US malt liquors, laying with Sandra's new baby. Most memorable for me was Sandra and Danica's resolution, a resolution that seemed to come from a cellular level, to make something artistically important from this experience just as they had from their Eastern European pasts. Sandra Sterle about east and west: I work and live both within the territory of Eastern Europe and Western Europe. I now also have the experience of working in U.S. Because I am born in Eastern Europe, Croatia, lived there and study art till the age of 25 I never lost my Eastern European background. I work with and use pictures, memories and language from the specific area I came from: Croatian Coast - Dalmatia. This is often a content and poetic loading of my work. Structure is contemporary; using photography, performance, video, and computer and experimenting with new technologies. I dont see much difference in structure in contemporary art across the globe. Once I came to live in Western Europe, it was expected from me as an artist to be different from my Western European colleagues. I always thought this separation was somehow artificial. It is clear that both East and West Europe have their part in the western art history and the practice of art was never so different from one another. The fact is that Eastern Europe and its arts structure has always been poor, chaotic and therefore didnt provide enough opportunities and funding for its arts and artists to function on the global contemporary market. Because of this situation, West has always imported art, artists, movements and ideas from the East. It was some time ago that art with a political touch was considered to be art with bad taste. Everything that was abstract, highly esthetical etc. was considered important, although it didnt reflect at all the reality of life in Eastern Europe. I think that Eastern European Curators and museums now became aware that politically touched works are somehow interesting outside Eastern Europe, so they too slowly start to work with it.

Distance: East West

Spaces differ in ways of distributing population, the spatial organization, and the patterns of spatial change. Differences have historically separated the east from the west, and forced the 24

countries of the world to be related through the spatial interdependence. Therefore the United States and the European Union are the most interdependent and have the status of centrality. The concept of centrality exists as opposition to the concept of periphery or isolated location. Distances between countries are measured by the time, effort, and cost required for crossing the space. It is difficulty that requires extra effort for archiving communication, movement, and trade. Despite technological advances, migration remains expensive and unequally accessible. Segregation of the groups with greater access from those who have less or non-resources creates between them the relation of power. Actions of the powerless provoke a colonizing reaction of the subject that possesses certain power. According to Derrida, difference is always understood on the basis of what we already know. As everything, we distinguish one term by recognizing that it is oppositions of another. Freedom to understand meaning in relation to images, sound or spaces is dependent on the context of another. Images possess information, provide pleasure and displeasure, and portray power relations. Therefore, Eastern European imagery presented in the US is in likely to be considered as exotic culture or the Other. Now that the socialist system has collapsed, Eastern European countries are in a bizarre state of transition. Transitory status produces another form of bizarre aesthetic, which was promoted with a little help of Franklin Furnace Archive Inc. Promoted Eastern European arts in New York City gained a new context provisioned by the US environment. It also subjected Eastern European themes as universal through the media of public art that by itself stands for collectiveness. Still, many significant public artists across Eastern Europe and further have not been mentioned in this article, only because the article is about those who are associated with Franklin Furnace. There are a number of those who dont even know about possible support from Franklin Furnace and other organizations. The reason is their marginalized position in the culture and on the map.

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