Govor
/1
- Speech
- Govor
- 1976/2015
- artist book, colored pencil on paper, stapled
- 21 × 29,7 cm
Mladen Stilinović's production in various media is mostly articulated around the notion of the relationship between ideology and man opposing that ideology. This relationship is especially visible in the domain of language which is why Stilinović often uses the form of artist’s book. In the book entitled Speech, language is reduced to a single voice – the collective “we,” which gets repeated on every single page of the book. Linguistic and phenomenological analysis of this work raising the issue of the right to use the word “we” can be interpreted with Popper’s claim on the “closed societies” (in this case the society of the communist Yugoslavia) according to which individualism is levelled with egoism. It hampers the way towards clearer formulation of the main problem, the problem of how to come up with a rational estimation of one’s own importance in relation to other individuals. “Since it is believed that we should aim at that which is beyond our selfhood, at something we can focus on and make a sacrifice for, it is concluded that this must be the collective with its ‘historical mission.’”1
Stilinović loves elementariness and repetition and symbolisms of the color of red, which intensifies the strength of words. Ideology is omniscient and the artist engages into a multilayered play with it. B.S.
1 Karl R. Popper. The Open Society and Its Enemies. Vol. 1. Plato, 5th ed., Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1971, p. 23.
Stilinović loves elementariness and repetition and symbolisms of the color of red, which intensifies the strength of words. Ideology is omniscient and the artist engages into a multilayered play with it. B.S.
1 Karl R. Popper. The Open Society and Its Enemies. Vol. 1. Plato, 5th ed., Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1971, p. 23.