<nettime> [0100101110101101.ORG] THE GREAT ART SWINDLE

[PROPAGANDA@0100101110101101.ORG]

THE GREAT ART SWINDLE
Do you ever get the feeling you’re being cheated?

A disclosure by 0100101110101101.ORG and Luther Blissett

 I declare that I have invented the life and the works of art of the
Serbian artist Darko Maver, born in Krupanj in 1962 and dead at the
Potgorica penitentiary on January 13th, 1999. 

 Darko Maver was born and lived in the Balkan area, which nowadays is
being ravaged and plundered by the economic and geopolitical interests of
the mighty, by the forces of different ethnic groups and in the end, by
the vulture-machine of the media.  Darko Maver was a politically incorrect
artist, his performances hard to digest;  nevertheless he was ready to be
absorbed into the art system. His work, once properly homogenised and
deprived of its expressive force, was ready to go through the canonical
way which links galleries, exhibitions, the art market, and finally takes
to the eternal peace of the museum, apex of an anaesthetic process, of
disarmament and sterilization, a process which art has always suffered. 
The museum is a sheer temple where art is celebrated, faked and degraded,
just as prison degrades life making it unrecognisable. And the theorem,
once more, proves to be exact: an artist (an identity), a style, the
works... and the system is ready to absorb everything and turn life into
commodities. 

 ...all this won’t happen to Darko Maver.
Because Darko Maver doesn’t exist! Because his works don’t exist!


PART I: BIOGRAPHY/ THE CREATION OF THE CHARACTER

 Darko Maver, real name of a well known Slovenian criminologist, is a
media creature.  Studied in details to penetrate the resistance of the art
system, new Trojan horse, Darko Maver hasn’t failed. At the moment of his
recycling - unavoidable destiny of any thought/action, even the most
extreme and radical, under capitalism - when his hands were already tied,
he vanished, revealing all his potential. 


PART II: THE WORKS/THE MYTHOPOESIS

 The diffusion of the name and works of Darko Maver is an active riot
against any dominant form of art. Where the borders between reality and
false, if they exist at all, are so thin that often the roles exchange and
reality copies imitation, Darko Maver is an essay of pure mythopoesis. 

 The dreadful images of foetuses and aborts, alleged evidence of Darko’s
activities at the Belgrade Academy, were true, yet, without effort, we
made people believe they were huge PVC and fibreglass sculptures, even
wearable!  The famous ‘Tanz der Spinne’ is made of images of real deaths,
rapes and violence of many kind; no dummy ever existed and no Serbian
newspaper ever reviewed Maver’s performances.  All this inventory of
horrifying images can be found on the Internet site http://www.rotten.com
and other sites like that, accessible to anybody who have a strong
stomach. 

 The reality of images regarded as simulation balances the inexistence of
an artist regarded as real. But an artist, to be true, needs a poetic, a
theorisation of his work.  Here are the ‘Dimension of the Extrabodies’ and
other wild texts, absolutely impossible to read - parodies of too many
nauseating theories on mutations/contamination - no way one can find any
meaning in them; texts which an art critic, during the last exhibition on
the ‘Darko Maver affair’ (Rome, September 9, 1999) indignantly claimed
they had actually been written Francis Bacon! 

 In the beginning were two web sites, the only “proof” of Maver’s
existence. However, the Internet as medium gives no guarantees, on the
contrary, the easiness to confuse identities is part of its own nature;
being on the Internet was not enough for anyone to be interested in the
Serbian artist’s work. Darko Maver, or at least his works of art, was to
materialise to be noticed, and so they did. 


PART III: THE JAIL/THE EXHIBITIONS

 In August ‘98 a well known gallery of Ljubljana, the Kapelica Gallery,
exhibited the documentation of ‘Tanz der Spinne’, creating a precious
precedent for the following exhibitions dedicated to the elusive artist.
Soon came the Bologna exhibition, on 18-19-20 of February 1999, during a
benefit show for freedom of speech, which showed many works of different
artists like Liberatore, Martin, Manara. 

 Hundreds of attentive visitors pressed in the room dedicated to Darko
Maver. Shocked by the performances images - the originals have been
censored and destroyed - they tried to find an explanation-comfort in the
texts. Result: since February ‘99, after only a few months of life, Darko
Maver was already a myth; at least in the underground. 

 The propaganda continued: the works’ censorship, their destruction and
the arrest of Darko on charges of anti-patriotic propaganda. On the net,
accounts of these events were posted to hundreds of subscribers of the
“EntarteteKunst” (http://www.EntarteteKunst.org)  newsletter, provoking
mentions and links in other sites; at the same time some articles were
published: “Flesh Out” (#3, April '99) dedicated two pages to the life and
works of Maver while “Tema Celeste” (#73, March '99) published an
imprisonment-related solidarity press release. The arrest had allegedely
taken place on January 13, 1999 around the Kosovo area. Many other news
pieces followed. Very often, Maver was cited as an example of censorship,
other times only mentioned. 
 That was the time in which the situation in Kosovo, already intolerable,
bursted out with the NATO intervention in the Balkan area. 


PART IV: THE DEATH/ THE MYTH

 The 30 of April 1999 Darko Maver’s death was announced.  The picture of
the corpse spread itself and roused some intriguing questions: homicide? 
Suicide? The final, tragic performance? 

 This last act of Darko Maver’s life was explained in a clear and sharp
article, “Puppets of war”, appeared on environmentalist magazine “Modus
Vivendi” (July - August '99).  According to then author, the life and
works of Darko Maver might be read as a critique to media
exploitation/manipulation of the victims’ images in the war. 

 From death to myth was a short step. It was time to celebrate the Serbian
artist dead under the NATO bombing. On June 12th ‘99, at the Bienniale of
young artists, in Rome, the theatrical group sciattoPRODUZIE dedicate to
the martyr his performance titled ‘Awakening, a tribute to Darko Maver’
and showed one more time the documentary stuff on his work. 

 On September 23rd, at the 48th Art Biennale in Venice, was presented the
documentary “Darko Maver - the art of war”. 

 On September 25th, the “Forte Prenestino” squat/multimedia centre in Rome
hosted a retrospective dedicated to the work of Maver. The exhibition
included the whole documentation of the ‘Tanz der Spinne’ installation and
the previously unpublished ‘Darko Maver early works’ : collages and
sculptures made in the early 80’s. 

 The presence of Maver at Venice Biennale was surely the highest
achievement in the long process exposing the permeability of such a
vulnerable system like the art world. 


More info: http://www.0100101110101101.ORG/maver

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