AGORA8 :: ISSUE # 1

In 1993 Nenad Bogdanovic began a body of work titled 'Man Gallery'. Protesting the commodification of art and gain in the object, and engaging with the effects of conflict and cultural embargos set against Serbia, he declared his body to be a site for the production and display of art. He organises IMAF Performance Art Festival and is Director of MAS Gallery. Betwen 1984-88 he published the Mail Art magazines 'Total' and 'Second Manifesto'.

Transylvanian artist and organiser UTO Gustav lived for more than thirty years subject to extreme totalitarian regimes. In conjunction to this, and as early as the 1970's, he chose to manifest the individual Self through Action art. In 1990, the year following the coup d'état that overthrew the Ceausescu regime, these became international festivals held annually at Saint Ann Lake.

Poet, musician, visual artist, and founder of Studio Erte Juhasz R. Jozsef (Rokko) marries a poetics of the absurd and playfully grotesque with a deep engagement with context. agora8 is delighted to re-publish the artist's catalogue "Divergencies 1986 - 2002' in print-ready downloadable pdf file. Texts in Slovak, Magyar, and English.

Engaging with everyday concepts of freedom and containment Czech artist Martin Zet reveals the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in the human complex of identity and its inhabitation. At times his actions are concerned with demonstrating how disturbingly easy it is to create divisions and raise tensions in everyday life situations, while at other times he inhabits a more meditative space to sensitively reflect on the material a city provides the artist and the materiality of its citizens.

A founding member (1968) of influential Yugoslav group Bosch+Bosch Balint Szombathy helped advance the idea of art-as-practice, devised theoretical models of urbanity, and was active both in the Mail Art and Body Art movements. He has created and contextualised many unique performances, and written essays on art as well as the disintegration of Yugoslavia. A monograph study was published in 2006.

Can 'cultural' places be determined in relation to geography and hygiene? In a remarkable essay entertaining notions of geo-aesthetics and geo-hygiene Dusan I. Bjelic takes a healthy swipe at Julia Kristeva's apparent erasure of her Balkan identity as being nothing but scatological intercourse with the Parisian bourgeoisie. And what do preconceptions of European "purity" and "dirty" Balkan tell us about how identity is constructed?

From his seminal actions in the 1970's 'Was ist Kunst?', texts on art, 'Edinburgh Statement - Who Profits from Art, and Who Gains From it Honestly?' (1975), and through the Installation series 'Gott Liebt die Serben' (God Loves the Serbs) of the 1980's and 1990's Rasa Todosijevic has consistently challenged the role and responsibility of art and artist, offering existence as both context and material to juxtapose authoritarian command and 'Heimat' nationalisms with the paradoxical subjectivity of the individual and social group.