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Art, Death & Mythopoeia
«Learn the rules so that you will know how to break them properly» Dalai Lama
The myth At the beginning is a website. The only evidence of Darko Maver's existence is a website containing a dozen photos. Starting from his biography, Darko Maver - the real name of a well known Slovenian criminologist - was created to the last detail to quickly penetrate the defence system of culture, and therefore of the art world. His biography is the archetype of a damned artist supposedly coming from Eastern Europe:
The only evidence of these supposed "sculptures", made in the Belgrade Fine Arts Academy, are terrifying photos of authentic foetuses and abortions. The photos and the foetuses come from teratology archives, found in medicine universities and in specialized libraries of hospitals.
Maver starts being a politically tough artist: «Subversive, alarming and questionable» [3]. His performances are more and more difficult to be digested. It's exactly in this period that he starts to realize the installations for the series "Tanz der Spinne".
They are simulations of violent murders. Maver used to build hyper-real mannequins of corpses and then leave them in public places such as hotels, hospitals, houses, public toilets or in the countryside. Later somebody arriving on the crime scene called the police believing he found a real corpse. The installations were so skillfully made that, at first glance, it was almost impossible to realize they were splatter-movie like reconstructions. The fact used to provoke strong reactions by the media, punctually reviewed for each discovery. Installations that are part of the series "Tanz der Spinne" are, for example, Skinned Rembrandt (Paklenica 1991), Deposition (Biograd 1992), Eurotic (Budva 1993), Garbage (Cavtat 1993) and Ecce homo (Bar 1994). Maver doesn't claim his shocking actions:
Every work is followed by its own documentation: articles, apparently coming from Yugoslavian newspapers and magazines such as "Nasa Borba", "Blic" and "Politika", talking about the discoveries and starting to identify the artist's poetics:
The best artists, as we all know, have always theorized on their own work. Darko is no exception and becomes also a poet. Here come texts like "The Dimension of Extrabodies" and "Anaforagenetica":
Actually, these dashed off texts are a parody of a certain kind of "radical art" that never goes out of fashion. Though it is impossible to find any sense in these texts, somebody is not satisfied; an art critic, during an exhibition in Rome, declares: «These texts don't belong to Darko Maver, they're plagiarised by Francis Bacon!» No mannequin ever existed and no Serbian newspaper ever reported Darko Maver's performances. The images, that have been believed as "mannequin pictures" are actually photos of real crimes, horrifying images of corpses available on the Internet on websites like www.rotten.com, at disposal for anybody whom has guts enough to watch them. The reality It's the summer of 1998. At this time the ingredients are ready: a name, a biography, the early works, the "mature" ones, a couple of poems, dozens of photos and articles that testify his importance. The art and life of Maver become tangible, passing from fiction (the websites) to reality: the exhibitions. In August 1998, Kapelica, a well known gallery in Ljubljana, shows the documentation of "Tanz der Spinne". The legend wants that he had been excluded from the collective exhibition "Body and the East", an important show held in Ljubljana in the same period. In October 1998 a new law is released in Yugoslavia punishing, even with imprisonment, any action or statement considered "anti-patriotic". As a result of this law Maver is arrested by military police, in the Kosovo area and imprisoned in Podgorica:
But the art world doesn't agree and intervenes in favour of the artist:
Following the imprisonment, in February 1999, an exhibition is organised in Bologna called "Darko Maver - Exhibition of the censored works". The show is announced with a press conference and advertised in the whole city. Hundreds of alert visitors crowded in a small room, a claustrophobic atmosphere. Not everybody could enter and many visitors do not tolerate the sight of his most cruel works, shocked by the performances images, whose originals had been censored and destroyed; they search for an explanation and comfort in the critical texts.
The work of mythopoeia continues on different fronts. On the Internet the press releases spread like wildfire, reaching hundreds of thousands of mailing lists and newsgroup subscribers. Any piece of news concerning Darko Maver is mirrored by dozens of websites and regularly provokes reactions and debates. There are already three websites on Darko Maver's life and work that are constantly updated. At the same time some articles are published in specialized magazines:
In this very period the situation in Kosovo, already intolerable, breaks out with the intervention of NATO troops in the Balkans: the time is suitable to kill Darko Maver. As any authentic artist, Maver must "live fast and die young": on May the 15th, press agencies receive and spread a shocking release: "The Serbian artist Darko Maver has died in the Podgorica prison": «Maver was in the Kosovo area months before the war started, he was arrested in January and from what we knew he was imprisoned in the Podgorica jail. The news of his death has reached us after several months of silence together with a photo that testifies with no doubt that Darko Maver was assassinated. It seems like a hoax that an artist like Maver finishes his life this way, because during his life he has always played with death» [12] Together with the announcement of Maver's death comes the image that will soon go down in history: the only evidence of Darko Maver's tragic death in the Podgorica prison. The photo, taken in a garret in the centre of Bologna, is banal enough to be believed as true. But an alarming question starts to circulate among people that know Maver's work: is this a real assassination or a suicide: his last tragic performance?
The image of the corpse spread rapidly on the Internet and through the press. The articles illustrate how Darko Maver, his works and history, can be read as a critique to the reality of media and the exploitation of images of victims of war:
From death to myth the distance is short. Time has come for the celebration of the Serbian artist dead under the NATO bombings. The 12th of June 1999 during the Biennial of Young Artists in Rome, the theatre group Sciatto Produzie dedicates to the Serbian artist its performance-piece "Awakening. Tribute to Darko Maver". At the same time there is an exhibition that shows his work. It's a tragic and aggressive spectacle. Dozen of bloody puppets are hung to the ceiling with butcher hooks. Some spectators are taken and tied on the stage while a group of performers hits the puppets spattering blood on the beholders. Flyers rain down from the ceiling covering the astonished public. The performance strikes for its cruelness and is a success. On September the 4th an unidentified group of people intervene at the Venice Biennial of Art, pasting hundreds of stickers on sculptures, photos and paintings. The stickers show a cross and the writing "Darko Maver 1962 – 1999". According to the press:
The day after, when the action is discovered, the works get "restored". Nobody will get to know who the authors of this action are, an action that will remain unclaimed. The 25th of September Forte Prenestino in Rome hosts a retrospective show, "Darko Maver Tribute 1962-1999":
At the end of the exhibition some of the collages are mysteriously stolen, to be probably resold afterwards in the art market, where the death of the artist means an increment of his commercial value. After several successes, Darko Maver is officially invited to participate in the 48th Contemporary Art Biennial of Venice. The invitation represents the final seal on the Serbian artist's fame. On the 23rd of September, a delegation of several representatives of Maver's work, creates a spectacular installation presenting a preview of the documentary "Darko Maver. The Art of War". The documentary is projected endlessly in a dark room, inside the Italian Pavilion, while the floor is covered by thousands of mourning flyers. The installation is a success, hundreds of people see the documentary and the cruelty of some of the scenes provokes several debates. Darko Maver's work is finally seen and appreciated by the best of the art world public. His work is inevitably interpreted in many contrasting ways: to some it is the consequence of the actual situation in the Balkans, to others the last possible form of radical body art, to someone else a post modern art form, the heir of historical avant-gardes. The appeal of Maver, to the eyes of this kind of public, lies in the mix between violence, art and actuality. In the beginning of 2000 "The Great Art Swindle" is revealed to the whole world. In a long press release, starting with the famous quotation: "Do you ever get the feeling you're being cheated?", the couple known as 0100101110101101.ORG claims the operation.
Together with the news comes a photo in which Darko Maver resurrects in the same room in which he was found dead: in his left hand he carries an article showing his face and reporting his imprisonment. The photo was actually taken few minutes after the one portraying his death. As expected the story spreads all over the world and provokes a heated debate. The reactions are countless and contradictory. During almost two years, dozens of people in Bologna, Milano, Ljubljana, Roma and Venezia have staged «one of the biggest artistic deceptions in recent years» [17]. A performance that elevated media manipulation to the status of art, and that transformed the most radical mythopoeia in one of its highest forms. «If we didn't kill him – declares Franco Birkut spokesman of 0100101110101101.ORG – and later revealed the prank, Darko Maver would have gone on living and making people speak about him through exhibitions, articles, documentaries and catalogues, nobody would have stopped us in continuing our narration, because this story is just too good to be false».
FOOTNOTES [1] F.A.C., Darko Maver Biography, first published on the Internet, 1998 [2] See note n. 1 [3] See note n. 1 [4] Antonio Caronia, Darko Maver, in Flesh Out n. 3, April - May 1999 [5] See note n. 4 [6] F.A.C., Tanz Der Spinne, first published on the Internet, 1998 [7] F.A.C., Darko Maver Writings, first published on the Internet, 1998 [8] F.A.C., Serbian artist Darko Maver arrested in Kosovo, appeared in Tema Celeste n. 73, March - April 1999 [9] See note n. 8 [10] See note n. 4 [11] See note n. 4 [12] F.A.C., Serbian artist Darko Maver found dead in Podgorica prison, press release, 21 May 1999 [13] Andrea Natella, War puppets in Modus vivendi, July - August 1999 [14] See note n. 13 [15] Darko Maver Tribute, Rome, Forte Prenestino, 25 September 1999 [16] 0100101110101101.ORG, The Great Art Swindle, press release, 6 February 2000 [17] Uri Pasovsky, Life imitates art and art imitates itself, from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, 19 September 2000 |
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