testsite 06.2: Metropolis M magazine (no. 2, 2006) has been reduced in size by 1mm.
Tomo Savic-Gecan & Kate Green
05.12.2006 - 06.18.2006
He was waiting when I got to the conference room, which was light and wide and in Amsterdam. He lives in Holland now, having moved from his native Croatia to study art in Italy in 1988. When I walked in he was sitting with his back to me at an oversized glass table in front of a laptop. He turned his head and smiled when I came in but didn’t get up. I realized that he was as tall as my dad when he left at the end of the studio visit.
A artist whose work I admire had suggested I do a studio visit with Tomo Savic Gecan. I hadn’t known who or what to expect. Bojan Sarcevic’s other leads in Amsterdam had been duds—interesting artists but most of them still developing their language. Tomo’s work, like his smile, was quiet and humble, but confident. We didn’t do much visiting during the visit, but I couldn’t stop thinking about his work.
After I sat Tomo turned around his laptop so that I could see. Where I expected an image there was a white screen with small black letters that read:
Tomo Savic-Gecan
Selected Works
Pause. The next said:
2000
Lijubljana, Slovenia, Modern Gallery: Manifesta 3
The white screens hushed along with no further explanation from Tomo.
One of the walls invisibly moves and fills in a space.
2001
Utrecht, Holand, Begane Grond Center for Contemporary Art: Common Ground
The passing of visitors in Begane Grond Center in Utrecht causes the escalator to stop in the Kaptol shopping mall in Zagreb.
2001
Slavonski Brod, Croatia: Borders
Visitors asked to leave their name and telephone number in gallery.
2003
Kassel, Germany, Kunsthalle Fridericianum: Portal II
1. Visitors’ movements are continuously registered.
2. This registration will define architectural changes elsewhere.
2004
Berlin, Germany, Isabella Bortolozzi Gallery
Passing of visitors in 2003 exhibition causes small architectural changes.
If we had sat in that conference room a year later, I would have seen the following screens as well:
2005
Venice, Italy, 51st Venice Biennial: Croatian Pavilion
Movements of visitors in W139 Center for Contemporary Art, Amsterdam, Holland, change the temperature of the Spordiklubi Reval-Sport swimming pool, Tallinn, Estonia by 1°.
2005-2006
Amsterdam, Holland, De Appel: On Mobility Budapest, Hungary, Trafó, Stúdió Galéria & Mucsarnok Amsterdam, Holland, De Appel
In 2001, during the group exhibition Boarders, held in Slavonski Brod, Croatia, visitors left their names and telephone numbers as part of Tomo Savic-Gecan’s work. Five years later, Edit Molnar, one of the curators of the On Mobility exhibition directly communicated with the public from the previous exhibition by phone.
I asked Tomo whether he was interested in seamlessly solving complicated technological issues. No. Did he record responses or watch reactions? No. I asked him whether the people entering W139 in Amsterdam knew they were part of an artwork and affecting a pool in Estonia or whether it was important for them to know. No and No. Did visitors to the Croatian Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennial see anything but the line of text? No.
I thought about control and power and whether someone who grew up in communist Zagreb would be particularly sensitive to exploring such dynamics. Then I thought about a number of works from the politically charged early 70s that were about challenging power structures. In 1975 Belgrade Marina Abromovic tested endurance and disrupted the often-distanced relationship between artist and viewer by incessantly grooming in Art must be Beautiful. Artist must be Beautiful. In 1972 Vito Acconci transgressed different lines by masturbating under a hidden ramp to somewhat-knowing New York gallery visitors in Seedbed.
As Tomo and I began planning what to do with the invitation of a project at testsite, two equal parts of his practice sifted apart: intervention and text-based representation. This made me think about Chris Burden’s performance/documentation/text-as-explanation works. From a recent exhibition I could not recall photographs of 1971 performative works like Five Day Locker Piece, where he managed to live on a shelf, or Shoot, where he took a bullet in front of surprised visitors, yet I could not forget the dryly explosive description typewritten on paper next to them.
Moving away from participatory spectacle and toward economies of power led me to Hans Haacke. His works, like Shapolksy et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real-Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971, first shown in 1972, though slated for a 1971 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum solo show that was canceled because of this and other disputed pieces, heavily employ text to expose structures of power and economy, and their intricate role in the art world.
Leaving these 1970s projects of resistance behind, I was back in 2006 and planning with Tomo. Because of the strong lines, heavy windows, and particular architecture of testsite’s living room space, both of us gravitated toward an ultimately unfeasible intervention: to flawlessly hide the living room by sealing doorways and closing off windows from the inside and out.
Tomo’s focus shifted to the manipulation of a generic product by an indecipherable amount—a minimal yet vastly enduring gesture. We discussed bottles, hangers, tortilla chips, and bread bags, but Tomo finally made it happen with Metropolis M, an art and culture magazine based in Amsterdam. The publisher agreed to produce its second issue of 2006 smaller by a vexingly tiny amount: one millimeter.
At testsite several copies of the magazine lie on the coffee table and a sentence on the wall in vinyl quietly announce the facts. When I asked Tomo whether there would be any indication to Metropolis M readers he said no. Would he buy a trove of the magazines for future exhibit? No. The fulcrum of the piece isn’t the object or tricking unwitting readers and potentially perplexed gallery visitors (or curator). It is the strong-willed but elusive concept, which spreads laterally, forming a Deleuzian web of complex power relations from the magazine’s production apparatus to the text the space to the viewer’s moment of realization to the machine of contemporary art and into the capitalist marketplace beyond.
On a shelf at testsite sit several generic-looking glasses. A one-sentence label provides an indication of their recent history. In response to a pervious exhibition invitation, Tomo had the gallery windows removed, melted down, and made into drinking vessels that were sipped from at the opening. These glasses were toasted again at testsite’s opening and now sit silently provocative, their borderless web spreading as the ghosts of lips and hands come into view. From the hands of the worker’s who removed the panes to the lips of the art-lovers who drank from them, Tomo’s glasses elegantly refuse to be fuel for the ever-growing forces of the market. While Tomo Savic-Gecan’s works draw from intervention and text-based strategies from the 1970s, their real antagonist is the socio-political power structure of the moment. The projects look back while confronting the commodified landscape of the present.
Artist Biographies:
Tomo Savic-Gecan
Kate Green