Masovo-komunikačná kultúrna situácia (U.F.O.)
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- Mass-Communication Cultural Situation (U.F.O.)
- Masovo-komunikačná kultúrna situácia (U.F.O.)
- 1987
- 4 b&w photographs
Július Koller’s "Mass Communication Cultural Situation (U.F.O.)" relates to the late period of Perestroika and to Mikhail Gorbachev’s Glasnost policies of opening the communist countries towards the West. In this quadriptych photo series, one sees Gorbachev on the television screen along with his comrades, either posing still or applauding in the Duma. The four square photographs also show Koller himself constantly visible in the lower area of the pictures, facing the camera with the television screen running in back. In the one image, he holds his hands over his ears while staring straight into the camera much like Gorbachev does on the screen behind. Koller himself, as these images would suggest, consistently occupied a generally oppositional stance that refrained from glorifying any particular system or situation. His use of everyday encounters and their repetition, as seen in the succession of screens, points to “cultural situations” and to mass communication (in the sense of a leading figure of a former political paradigm appearing before the masses), while the artist’s conceptual and pictorial stringency runs throughout. W.S.