Bitef

11l In every overstrained simultaneity there are several stories that are intertwining, rebutting each other, at times barely touching each other or flowing parallel... Nevertheless, there is one story in the official diachronism. The one erasing all others, imprinting their tracks into its smooth teleological flow. But, what of those erased histories? What archive holds them? Are they traumatic? Seductive? Disobedient? What would be if we should dispose of all the tales in every AB cross section, if we should be archaeologists - archivists digging up complex synchronic layers? For example: ...Once upon a time, in the modern Western society... came about a breakdown of art that took many lives. With the demise of the modern Western society - the Cartesian well-tailored system - fell the project of the modernist world of art. The preservation of creation showed itself as an unsheltered proving ground of social practice. Instead of the autonomous and innocent world of art - a material social institution, Instead of the original authentic reality - an artificially generated simulation. Instead of the literal presence - a media delay. Instead of the drama teleology - an algorithm of rhysomatic hypertext. Instead of the purgative act of collective catharsis - an annoying disturbing selfreflection... The first, though unbending, victim to that breakdown in the world of art is the author's project. Once a sovereign centred subject of the world, the author survives only as a remnant of himself. Decentred, fragmented, sundered. Caught in the moving process. Can't control the signifies, and by moving them, produces the signified sacred... The author after the death of the author is an operator from whom has been taken the divine gift of creation, who is not a genius and does not create ex nihilo. Only recombines, connects, copies, and deconstructs, designs hypertexts scattered through the web. He/She is an avatar, a designed media figure whose sovereignty is limited by being in the digital process. That, after all, is not a neutral being. Moreover, it is quite determined by its particular position: its, ever different, dirty hands; its, ever individual, desire; its, ever specifically produced, materiality,

Therein lies the basic horror of contemporary art, the horror that keeps intruding into the production of art and at the same time must constantly be secreted. The horror that stays deleted in the basic flow of art. The trace of that hypocrisy, however, is imprinted into the very foundations of modern art. And so, here is the literal horror of the psychosis and the death of the author-who-is-nomore in the art world of postsocialist Europe. And not only is this dreadful story a side-current - the main character of which is the ghoul that was, only as shut down, written into the centre story of contemporary art, but the story itself was realised exclusively by side-scripts equally important and marginal, turned on and off at the audience's will. It is crucial to understand that the story is about a tragic figure. It is the author who - driven by a system of regulations of the margin and centre balance of power - hasn't become an author yet, and is already dead. It is a media figure that - screen simulated per definltionem - has never been present, and its presence is already disabled, it is the hovering signifier that is- without the old semiotic procedures - ready to freely accept any meaning, and meanings are firmly set by a net of global capital. It is a petrified pose which - answering to the summons of the great glorious international art world - appears as another which has not yet created a masterpiece, and masterpieces are no more. It is a psychotic, deranged author on the verge of transgressing the law, and madness is already the madness of the law that calls for transgression. Do with that frailty-that-circles-Europe as you like! ...If your liking is not already the liking of another. Ana Vujanović