Zdenka Badovinac Suzana Milevska

Ivana Bago Nina Möntmann

Angela Dimitrakaki Gerald Raunig
Zoran Erić Hito Steyerl
Alenka Gregorič Vladimir Vidmar
Vít Havránek
Edited by
Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska

Concerning
Institutions
Discourses
Inside Out
— Critical
Muzej in galerije mesta Ljubljane
Mestna galerija Ljubljana

Inside Out — Critical Discourses Concerning Institutions

 X
INSIDE OUT: Critical Discourses
Concerning Institutions
Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska

Part one: Discourse Part two: Research

X X
Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska Ivana Bago
INSIDE OUT: DEMATERIALIZATION AND
Critical Art Practices POLITICIZATION OF THE
That Challenge the Art System EXHIBITION: Curation as
and Its Institutions Institutional Critique in Yugoslavia
during the 1960s and 1970s
X
Gerald Raunig X
OUTSIDE AND INSIDE Zoran Erić
INSTITUTIONS: THE NEW ART PRACTICE IN
The Two Modes of Desertion YUGOSLAVIA AND ITS AFTERMATH
as Instituent Practice and the
Institution of the Common X
Vladimir Vidmar
X MORE OR LESS THAN ARTISTS:
Angela Dimitrakaki Institutional Critique in Slovenia
ART AND INSTITUTING FOR and Croatia
A FEMINIST COMMON/S:
Thoughts on Interventions in the X
New ‘New Europe’ Vít Havránek
EGO-INSTITUTIONS AND
X THE ST. AUBY CASE
Zdenka Badovinac On Bureaucracy and Artistic
THE CRITICAL INSTITUTION Practices in Eastern Europe

X X
Hito Steyerl Nina Möntmann
A TANK ON A PEDESTAL: A LETTER FROM EUROPE
Museums in an Age of Planetary
Civil War X
Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska
AFTERWORD: A Conversation

X
Selected bibliography of books,
texts and conferences
 5

Inside Out:
Critical Discourses Concerning Institutions

The reader Inside Out: Critical Discourses Concerning Institutions is the

result of the long‑term research and curatorial cross-disciplinary project
Inside Out – Not So White Cube, which was initiated in 2014. The project’s
initiators, Alenka Gregorič, an art historian, curator, and writer currently
working as the artistic director of the City Art Gallery Ljubljana and CC
Tobacco 001 (MGML), and Suzana Milevska, an art theorist and curator
based in Macedonia, currently working as the Principle Investigator of
the project TRACES, Horizon 2020, at the Politecnico di Milano, are the
co-editors of this publication. The project Inside Out – Not So White Cube
consisted of two co-curated exhibitions (first one took place at the City
Art Gallery Ljubljana and the second was organized in collaboration with
the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade), a conference and two
publications (a catalogue of the first exhibition and this reader), continuous
promotion of collaboration with independent curators and researchers, as
well as with public institutions and independent organizations from other
regions and contexts (e.g. the most recent is the collaboration with MACMO,
Montevideo, Uruguay).
In addition to conceptualizing the project and this reader,
Gregorič and Milevska have been involved from the start in the selection
of the artists, who were also invited to participate in the process of the
overall concept’s development and in the realization of various exhibitions
and discursive events. Therefore, various theorists, researchers, artists, and
curators (some of whom were already involved as long-term researchers or
in various events and stages of the project), were invited to contribute to
the reader Inside Out: Critical Discourses Concerning Institutions in order to
challenge and re-evaluate the current potentials of the historic and theo‑
retical notion of institutional critique. The contributors approach the topic
from different critical positions stemming from various theoretical disciplines
and methodologies (e.g. art history, institutional theory, new institutionalism,
postcolonial critique, curatorial and museum studies, feminist critique,
deconstruction) and investigate the turbulent socio-political and economic
shifts that are relevant to the development of institutional discourse regard‑
ing artistic production at the present time.
Thus, Zdenka Badovinac, Ivana Bago, Angela Dimitrakaki, Vít
Havránek, Zoran Erić, Nina Möntmann, Gerald Raunig, Hito Steyerl, and
Vladimir Vidmar, together with the co-editors of this publication – Alenka
Gregorič and Suzana Milevska, reflect the differences in critical discourse
regarding institutions in arts. While revealing the concealed issues through
analysis of infrastructural conditions and failures in various cultural and
political contexts, the texts – arranged and structured in two separate
chapters – Discourse and Research – point to the importance of the historic,


 6

political, and economic systems and structures in arriving at an understand‑

ing of the inner contradictions of institutional critical discourses and related
art projects and works.
Some of the texts focus particularly on the countries of Central
and South Eastern Europe that were already presented in different project
sections and in different manners (e.g. through collaboration with artists,
institutions, and in art works): Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria,
Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova,
Poland, Romania, Serbia, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia.
The institution hosting the project Inside Out – Not So White
Cube, the City Art Gallery Ljubljana (MGML), is also the publisher of the
reader. The project and this publication were supported by the City of
Ljubljana and the Erste Foundation.
The editors would like to thank all the writers, researchers, artists,
and institutions that made the realization of this project and publication
possible.


 7

Part one:
DISCOURSE
 8

Inside Out:
Critical Art Practices
That Challenge the Art System
and Its Institutions
Alenka Gregorič &
Suzana Milevska

Suzana Milevska is a theorist and curator

of visual art and culture from Macedonia.
Currently, she is the Principle Investigator in
Alenka Gregorič is an art historian, curator, the Horizon 2020 project TRACES, Politecnico
and writer. From 2004 to 2010 she was the di Milano. Milevska was the first Endowed
artistic director of Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana, Professor for Central and South Eastern
curating and coordinating all program European Art Histories at the Academy of
activities. Since 2010 she has been the Fine Arts Vienna. Her curatorial projects
artistic director and curator at the City Art deal with postcolonial critique of hegemonic
Gallery Ljubljana and CC Tobacco 001 power regimes of the representation of
(both part of the Museum and Galleries of marginalized communities and focus on
Ljubljana). In 2009 she was the curator of the feminist, participatory, and collaborative
Slovenian pavilion at the Venice Biennale artistic practices and the presentation of
and co-curator of the 28th Ljubljana Graphic art by Romani artists. She was the initiator
Biennial, and in 2014 one of the curators of of and researcher for the Call the Witness
Curated by_Vienna. She has curated over – Roma Pavilion (Venice Biennale, 2011).
fifty solo and group exhibitions in Slovenia Her project The Renaming Machine (2008–
and abroad, working with artists such as 2011) consisted of a series of exhibitions
Vuk Ćosić, Maja Bajević, Jan Fabre, Harun and conferences and the publication The
Farocki, Irwin, Jannis Kounellis, Rabih Morue, Renaming Machine: The Book. She is the
Ivan Moudov, Dan Perjovschi, Marjetica editor of the reader On Productive Shame,
Potrč, Mladen Stilinović, Raša Todosojević, Reconciliation, and Agency (Berlin: Sternberg
Ulay, Katarina Zdjelar, and many others. She Press, 2016). She holds a PhD in visual
has written numerous essays and articles for cultures from Goldsmiths College London.
various artist books, catalogues, and other She was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar
publications, and has edited numerous art and received the Igor Zabel Award for
catalogues and artist books. Culture and Theory.
 9

In Slovenian and Macedonian (and perhaps also in some other languages),

the phrase “inside out,” in addition to meaning “with the inner surface
turned outward,” can also mean that, through this reversal, something is
revealed to the full, and thus some potentially unexpected and surprising
facets are brought to light. The title of the project Inside Out – Not So
White Cube occurred to us once when we were discussing different art‑
works resonating with the phenomena related to institutional critique, but
addressed specific local issues. Such works and projects from what is now
usually referred to as the “New Europe” – Central Europe, South Europe,
South-Eastern Europe, former Yugoslavia (or the Western Balkans) – have
been mostly overlooked in the context of institutional critique within the
dominant (Western) art historical narrative.1 Usually this is due to the
fact that they were largely unknown outside their region of origin, or to
their authors not keeping up with the discourse of institutional critique in
art, though nevertheless acting out its urgency. In comparison with their
Western counterparts, these artists addressed different problems and used
distinct methods to question the existing institutional framework determined
by their specific sociopolitical and economic contexts.
Due to the sociopolitical circumstances in the region (which also
differed amongst the countries), art projects criticizing art institutions mostly
used the cultural realm as one of the available contexts and tools to ques‑
tion their political and social surroundings (in Marxist terms, culture was
treated as the “superstructure,” which was unilaterally under the influence
of the economic and political “base,” since it could not exert any influence
back). The art system was inextricably intertwined with and dependent upon
political structures, and in most socialist countries this necessarily meant
following the strict cultural policies of “state approved art,” or else staying
underground. The decision to operate outside the official state art system
condemned artists to being left out of the official art historical narrative.
Critical thinking and professional curiosity led many artists to
peep through the keyholes of institutions, so to speak, to find out for them‑
selves and reveal to their audiences what was going on behind the closed
doors of offices and storage rooms, to present their findings in their art
works, either directly as research results or as conceptualized and performa‑
tive acts. To alter and improve what did not meet the expected standards
of professional ethics, conduct, work methods, and attitudes toward the art
subjects and objects, artists often turned to alternative research methods,
media, forms, and activities that went beyond the previously accepted
artistic practices. The monolithic political structures in some socialist coun‑
tries did not allow artistic practices that would openly and directly oppose
the official art system, such as it was. To scrutinize art institutions meant to
scrutinize the institutions of power, which led to using this as an opportunity
to confront the political structure of the State by artistic means. That is why
most of such critical art practices were carried out incognito, hidden from

Inside Out
 10

the prying eyes of the public and the official art apparatus (although in
former Yugoslavia some of the alternative initiatives were supported by the
state or by local municipal administrations). Some of these artists, projects,
and practices received official recognition after the fall of the Iron Curtain,
during the 1990s. Others were discovered and recognized only recently, but
this appraisal usually happened in their local art scenes, with their contribu‑
tions being added to their newly refreshed national art histories.
In the 1990s, during the so-called “transition” period, the art
systems of many of the so-called post-socialist countries had to reestablish,
reorganize, and redefine their cultural policies. Consequently, some artists
(in countries such as the Czech Republic and some of the successor states
of former Yugoslavia) became involved, at least for a while, in transforming
their institutional frameworks, thus moving center stage and becoming
active participants in the system they used to only observe and critique.
Alternatively, other artists established their own museums, galleries and
project spaces, organized archives, initiated collections or constructed entire
parallel historical narratives to the system they could now retrospectively
criticize. Unfortunately, today in some countries (such as in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, for example) there are again practically no functioning public
art institutions to be questioned or criticized, due to the general weakening
of the state as an institution. In these cases, the need for artists to work and
behave as an institution arises out of necessity: together with activists they
devise projects to raise public awareness, organize, and struggle to reestab‑
lish art institutions and make it possible for them to reopen their doors.
The general aim of the Inside Out project is to analyze the exist‑
ing theoretical and critical art practices proposed by artists, art collectives,
researchers, or institutions from Central and South-Eastern Europe that
focus on critiquing the existing models of institutions, their programs, and
the work conditions in art production, and on the urgency of pursuing new
alternative cross-institutional or trans-institutional models of institutions,
strategies, and the roles of art institutions. The exhibition and the other
parts of the project highlight the changing relations between the role of art
and artists and the role of museums, galleries, and other public and private
art institutions in producing, presenting, and collecting contemporary art
in the period of sociopolitical and economic transition. The project’s main
research questions are the following: How did institutions influence and
change one another while interacting and/or cooperating during the tran‑
sition from the centralized to the free market economy? What impact did
artists and art projects have on such transformations?

The Background of Institutional Critique

A concept that surfaced as inevitable and relevant to this project was

that of institutional critique,2 i.e., the longstanding tradition of obsessively

Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska

 11

discussing and critiquing the art system and its institutions. We were initially
hesitant to use this term due to the significantly different sociopolitical con‑
texts and backgrounds of the artists presented in our exhibitions. However,
it turned out to be impossible to avoid it; it is now ubiquitous in global
art-historical discourse, although it was not yet in use when some of the art
practices presented in our project started. So we decided to follow Richard
Rorty’s flexible opinion on the use of conceptual tropes.3
The project Inside Out attempts to challenge the definition of
institutional critique as originally produced by the Western art context, at
least by the first generation of artists associated with it, and turns to the dif‑
ferentiation and potentiality behind the methods used by artists to critique
institutions in different historical, sociopolitical, economic, and cultural
contexts. Particularly significant for our project was the already existing
critique of institutional critique. The “critique of critique” remains a domain
of highly sophisticated artists already belonging to privileged art circles
that are simultaneously the main targets of criticism. Thus it often ends up
trapped in a vicious self-referential circle that neglects the other roles of art
and artists in society.
The vicious cycle of institutional critique stems from its dichoto‑
mous nature, from the dichotomy arising from artists both critiquing institu‑
tions and needing institutional acknowledgement of their critique. This
dichotomy assumes a position that exists outside or beyond any institution,
in contrast to the institutional position that is being criticized. It implies a
severe critique of powerful, supposedly autocratic institutions, in contrast
to the preferred form of weak, supposedly democratic institutions that are
expected to deal with art production in a more creative and liberal way.
Due to this dichotomy, any discourse reliant on institutional critique para‑
doxically becomes dangerously internalized.4
The main questions asked by institutional theory about who has
the right to define art and how this consensus is achieved5 and the general
question of one’s own right to self-institute in order to redefine the societal
phenomenon of institutions “from within” anticipate the main paradoxes
behind this thinking.6 In addition, self-historicization and self-insertion in
international art history are particularly relevant issues in this respect as a
critique of art institutions – here we rely on a more general definition of the
term “institution” than the one suggested by John Searle – in the context
of globalization and as a reflection of the unequal development of the art
world in such circumstances.
A pertinent question of new institutionalism and post-institu‑
tional critique is how various art institutions can be analyzed in the larger
sociopolitical and economic systemic structures and frameworks,7 while
the main question remains whether artistic practices can produce relevant
points of departure for research and analysis in a situation where both
artists and institutions often work under the same precarious conditions.

Inside Out
 12

Thus the hegemonies and hierarchies are established according to very

peculiar and uncertain criteria dependent on much wider sociopolitical
determinants. The specific understanding of the role of art in society, and
its relation to work, labor, and production processes, as well as the overall
systemic difference in former socialist countries induced and fundamentally
influenced the specificity of art institutions in such contexts.
While the structure of institutions was changing as a result of
the social transition, artistic concepts were also changing parallel to the
general transformation of the art system. Artists, however, did not neces‑
sarily address the concrete issues faced by the institutions, and not at the
same pace on different national art scenes. Moreover, art institutions and
their employees could not always find adequate ways to employ the critique
formulated by artists, or just the opposite: they used it only to cement the
already problematized policies. According to Benjamin Buchloh, one of the
most important shifts in the structure of art and the art system was provoked
by the process of dematerialization, which emerged with conceptual art
and its transformative influence on the production process.8 The fact that
conceptual art forms replaced the previously assumed aesthetic experience
of an art object and often transformed art into a purely linguistic definition
enabled critical stances to be exhibited and interpreted as art. The issue of
autonomy from the power structures has always been important in contem‑
porary art debates; it is an inherent part of the critique of institutions and
engenders the urge to organize forms of resistance. Resistance and protest
can be ways of defending the critical autonomy of artistic production from
institutional, economic, and political forces.
The system of art consists of a network of diverse authorities – be
it institutions and (governmental) agencies or individual professionals and
experts – taking part in the definition, formation, and production of mean‑
ing and knowledge in contemporary art. All these authorities represent or
relate to different institutions as well as to the institutionalized roles and
responsibilities in the professional field of contemporary art. However, it
should be made clear that the system of art is inextricably interwoven with
the general political system, particularly in authoritarian societies. Art insti‑
tutions are part of the authoritarian structure, part of its broadest context
(political, social, economic, historical, and theoretical) and the specific con‑
ditions in which this context is involved in producing the discourse of power.
Thus we owe the recent outburst of activist art projects, boycotts, and other
forms of calls for social change in the framework of international art events,
projects, and exhibitions to institutional critique.

Examples of Art Practices and Discourses

Most of the institutions in the countries that the exhibition Inside Out –
Not So White Cube focused on are involved in an ongoing struggle for the

Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska

 13

basic preconditions for proper functioning. The economic and sociopolitical

changes have obviously influenced all spheres of society. The conditions
and ways of operating on the institutional level have changed substantially
(although not at the same pace in all countries) and the institutions have
had to rapidly adapt their ways of operating, programming, and policymak‑
ing. Starting from a historical and theoretical comparative analysis, the
main aims of our research were to present and question different critical
artistic reflections on the existing organizational models of institutions and
their prerogative to change them and establish new ones.
We decided to look at artists who focus on commenting on
the existing art institutions and on the urgency of finding new strategies
and roles for themselves, or even on bringing back some forgotten values,
standards, and criteria of work from the past. The exhibition at the City
Art Gallery Ljubljana presented works and projects that focus on the late
1970s and the 1980s, with some works from the 1990s and the 2000s featur‑
ing as counterparts. Some of these art projects were considered seminal
and particular to the “institutional debates” in the socialist context even
before – and often regardless of – the emergence of institutional critique
in American and Western European art. The sociopolitical and economic
circumstances – and thus historical conditions – in the socialist (and post-
socialist) institutional context produced a substantially different pattern of
relations between institutions, artists, curators, etc.
The transitional period after the fall of communism led to
confusing interruptions and turbulence in professional networks and work
methods that did not always replace the existing structures with better ones.
The specific subtopics and issues reflected in artworks and projects in the
Inside Out exhibition were framed by the historical and political contexts
and the systemic structures and relations between artists, different art insti‑
tutions, and the state. For example, Azra Akšamija’s CultureShutdown intro‑
duces the global campaign entitled Solidarity Day. Various art institutions
around the globe “crossed out” their entrances or work(s) in their collections
with yellow barricade tape for one day, to inform the local and interna‑
tional public of the ongoing cultural crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where
seven major museums have closed their doors due to their unresolved legal
status and financing issues.9
Another artist addressing the regional and international art
scene regarding the tensions between national identities and national
institutions is Albert Heta. The focal points of his works are Yugoslavia seen
as a political project and the Kosova national project. Thus, for example,
his artist’s book Kosovar Pavilion Venice Biennial 2005 is an appropriation
of the Albanian Pavilion through an advertisement on e-flux. The mock
advertisement became an imaginary Kosovar Pavilion, the pavilion of a
not-yet recognized state, thus also ironizing the international ignorance of
the difference between Albania and Kosovo. Another work by Albert Heta,

Inside Out
 14

Embassy of the Republic of Kosova, Cetinje, Serbia and Montenegro: The

work that killed one biennial and one prince, challenges the inclusiveness
or exclusiveness of national, regional, and international art politics. Such
themes employing the postcolonial critique of geopolitical hierarchies are
addressed in works that confront the international art scenes and global art
histories for ignoring the particular issues of diversity and including art of
non-Western origin.
Some artists, long-term projects, and initiatives attempt to
construct parallel narratives of art history that challenge the established
international (Western) art-historical canon. Projects such as Artforum
Covers by the IRWIN group or their Retroprinciple / Construction of Context
are examples of speculative art history and self-instituting as possible
strategies. The aim is not only to include overlooked artistic practices in the
context of the canonized art history, but also to disclose the complexity of
the given historical institutional structures by pointing out the potential in
overlooked principles and institutions. The repository of images of a former
country’s history preserved and “buried” as invisible cultural heritage and
memory in museums’ storage rooms is presented in Vesna Pavlović’s series
of photographs Fabrics of Socialism.
The issues of institutional programming strategies and infra‑
structural difficulties are addressed in Yane Calovski and Hristina Ivanoska’s
work Oskar Hansen’s Museum of Modern Art. Speculation as to what would
have happened had Hansen’s utopian architectural vision been accepted
by the Skopje Museum led the artists to propose an exhibition program
for the never-built museum, thus drawing attention to both the mundane
difficulties of the existing museum building and its dubious exhibition policy.
Liljana Gjuzelova and Sašo Stanojkoviḱ’s work An Inventory of Questions
and Answers addresses recurrent problems with the same existing museum
building (e.g. inappropriate maintenance and the consequent twenty-year
long closure of the collection) and ideologically-based criteria for the
selection of new acquisitions for its collection and its display. The artists
combined their individual critical projects into a joint statement in which the
Skopje Contemporary Art Museum serves as an “object of critique,” pointing
out the interference of state politics in curatorial decisions regarding the
collection’s content, which reveals the problematic country’s overall policy
towards contemporary art.
Tadej Pogačar’s Quarter to Two alludes to the work habits of
employees in state museums, stating that that is the time of day when they
are, figuratively speaking, on the starting blocks, just waiting to leave their
work place and go home for the day. This “frozen” time that prevents any
activity opens many questions regarding the unique relations between
labor, time, productivity, and value in the art context. Inter-institutional
hierarchies, internal structures, and working conditions in different art
institutions are the subject of Dalibor Martinis’s work Museum of Which

Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska

 15

Working Class. In his older work Artists on Strike, which was also presented
at this exhibition, Martinis turned all the exhibited works – in a group show
he participated in – towards the wall, alluding in this way to the strict
hierarchies within the art system of the time. Another older work employing
a strike to question and challenge the art system is Goran Đorđević’s The
International Strike of Artists from 1975. Consisting of a letter of invita‑
tion to international artists, in order to demonstrate the possibility of a
coordinated revolt and suggest an alternative to the processes of the insti‑
tutionalization of all artistic activities, this work exceeded the usual effects
of mail art of the time, establishing dialogue with peer artists from the
international community who answered with statements and, paradoxically,
even by sending artworks.
Another artist of the same generation, Goran Trbuljak, focuses
on questions addressing the mechanisms and evaluation criteria by which
something is accepted as art. In his work Old and Bald I Search for a
Gallery he points to the obvious flaws in the system – ageism, institutional
indifference, and the non-existence of an art market in the region – while in
Retrospective he shows his concerns about the institutional monopoly and
the exhibitors’ criteria that can make or break an artist’s career. In a similar
manner, using appropriation as a tool of critique, Nemanja Cvijanović’s
work Chronos Devouring One of His Children criticizes the possible privati‑
zation of public space based solely on the personal affinities and tastes
of the new elite. The artist reveals some of the contradictions in the art
system’s hegemony and the slippery and double position of art managers
as “middlemen/women” – in order to buy Cvijanović’s work, a collector or
museum director first has to create it and subsequently to present it.
Artists involved in practices of self-institutionalization and self-
identification with institutions often use their bodies as a medium or the
support of the image, of the visualization of the message. Slaven Tolj, for
example, ironically used his body as a canvas and had it tattooed with
the logos of the institutions in which he was involved not only as an artist,
but also as a director. First the logo of the artist-run space he operated
in Dubrovnik and subsequently the logo of the Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art in Rijeka, when he became its director. With this action
he stated his unwillingness to compromise his artistic and work principles,
despite moving from an NGO to a public, state-run institution. In her work
My Temporary Home, Vlasta Delimar turned one part of the exhibition
space of the museum she exhibited in into her living quarters, where she
spent days and nights together with her works, met visitors, had friends
and colleagues over for dinner, and similar. In her case, the “phantasm” of
changing the institution from the “inside” thus surpassed the metaphorical
and symbolic level: at least for the duration of her project, the museum
curators and technical staff had to follow her agenda, not the other way
around.

Inside Out
 16

Some exhibited works are involved in the critique of institutional

programs in terms of the intersectionality between nationality, class, gender,
and sexuality. Sanja Iveković’s Women in Art – Women in Yugoslavian Art
juxtaposes photo portraits and names of well-known artists from the West
with drawn portraits of their Yugoslav equivalents. The absence of the latter’s
names emphasizes the perceived ignorance of the international art system
regarding female artists from the East. On the other hand, Flaka Haliti’s
work My Balls!, an illegal intervention into a group exhibition at the Pristina
National Gallery, was a slap in the face to the male-dominated art scene in
Kosovo, questioning its capability to break with patriarchal traditions. The
gallery later invited her to stage a solo exhibition there and even organized
her 2015 Venice Biennale project as the official representative of Kosovo.
Narrating and interpreting the relations between artists and
other professionals in the field of art through different performative and
discursive events creates parallel discourses and/or counter-interpretations
of the definitions and meanings imposed by institutions through their
position of authority. In his work I Supply! You Demand? (Schadenfreude
Guided Tours), Luchezar Boyadjiev used the exhibition of an internationally
recognized curator to perform a guided tour and use it as a platform for
his own interpretations of the exhibited works, the relations between them,
and the ways of displaying them, thus placing emphasis on the multilayered
nature of the artworks and the relevance of constantly deconstructing
established (un)critical interpretations. Andreas Fogarasi’s work Vasarely
Go Home provides insight into two simultaneous events from the past –
the opening of a big Vasarely exhibition at the Műcsarnok Museum and
the one-person protest of the artist János Major at the same opening –
broaching questions about double standards in the official cultural policies
of 1960s Hungary. The more recent political situation in Hungary is the sub‑
ject of Ilona Németh’s long-term project Dilemma. The artist was confronted
with the question of whether or not to exhibit her work featuring the well-
known Hungarian philosopher Ágnes Heller, who had fallen into disfavor
with the political structures, when the political context, and thus the curators
and managers of the public museum in question, changed. Dan Perjovschi’s
ironic drawings emphasize the everlasting reciprocal but conflicting rela‑
tions between artists, institutions, curators, and collectors. His recurrent
subjects include commenting on the sociopolitical contexts, the local and
global art system, and the institutional framework (even when the same
curators or institutions are involved). Jusuf Hadžifejzović’s work Property
of Emptiness brings irony to absurdity. He buys and consumes a variety of
products, carefully preserving the packaging, which he then exhibits and
sells in a performative action. This action of selling emptiness (i.e., empty
packaging) resonates as the essence of art.
Some of the early artistic initiatives and neo-avant-garde
practices in this part of Europe tried to extend the traditional definition

Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska

 17

of art to encompass everyday life. In Stano Filko’s and Alex Mlynárčik’s

renowned HAPPSOC I (1965) and HAPPSOC II (1966), and their manifesto
What is HAPPSOC? (written together with the art-historian Zita Kostrová),
the artists appropriated events from everyday life and tried to instigate an
intense collective experience of reality.10 Ambitiously, although not without
irony, the manifesto’s authors proclaimed, mapped, and indexed Bratislava
and each of its citizens and objects as “art.” In his later individual work,
Filko even referred to “the cosmos” as the ultimate space of art, freedom
(and escape). Along similar lines, Josip Vaništa’s work in the form of an
invitation, Please Attend, attempted to take responsibility for presenting
art from the “hands” of the institution as early as 1962. In the invitation
sent to 50 addresses (borrowed from the address list of the Studio G gal‑
lery in Zagreb) neither the name nor the address of the space and the
event were stated. Similarly as in many other actions of the Gorgona art
group (of which Vaništa was both member and leader), this was a call for
unmediated and spontaneous interaction between an artist and the audi‑
ence, without abiding by any formal rules or even exhibiting art objects.
Although such practices and projects have long been interpreted as “nihil‑
ist” since they did not convey any radically critical political messages, their
subversive subliminal messages and conceptual, subtle counter-narratives
readily became part of the critical discourse.
Some of the attempts to overcome the vicious self-referential
circle of institutional critique, in which artists end up being represented
by the very same institutions they originally criticized, have evolved into
institutions conceived and constituted by artists and proposing different
principles of work. Even when they remain in the realm of never realized
ideas – e.g. the above-mentioned project of Calovski and Ivanoska entitled
Oskar Hansen’s Museum of Modern Art – or when they are established
as para-institutions existing in parallel to official institutions, they become
counterexamples that influence the stagnant institutions by way of compari‑
son, change, and possible collaboration.
In his long-term project The P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of
Contemporary Art, Tadej Pogačar started an institution on the premise,
as proposed by Michel Serres, that parasitism never appears as a form of
one-sided exploitation, but always already assumes a symbiotic potential of
mutual correlations in which institutions benefit from one another without
harming each other. Another long-term project, Lia Perjovschi’s CAA/
CAA (Contemporary Art Archive/Center for Art Analysis), establishes a self-
initiated museum of knowledge, an international database of art projects
and theory that serves as a platform for ideas, dialogue, and communica‑
tion. The Bulgarian artist Ivan Moudov took a different approach, due to
the lack of institutions of contemporary art in his home country. He organ‑
ized a complete PR campaign announcing the fake opening of a Museum
of Contemporary Art – MUZIS. With this highly successful art action – a

Inside Out
 18

prank – Moudov addressed the ignorance of state politics with regard to the
problems of the art infrastructure in Bulgarian society.

Contradictions and Conundrums:

Critique and the Issue of Autonomy

It has become increasingly significant to determine whether a critique of

institutions stems from a singular position of an artist, art critic, or cultural
producer, a position of a self-organized community of art and culture pro‑
ducers, a neo-liberal governmental position in an attempt to change the
existing social fabric, a conservative (nationalist) critique, or a civil society
organization’s position focused on the social and democratic change of
society in general. It is important to emphasize that, even though each of
the above-mentioned positions entails a different starting point, some of
the objectives of these different positions overlap and intertwine. Therefore,
any kind of institutional critique can only have a relevant impact on society
if its agents acknowledge that their critical positions are always already
informed and formulated from a certain institutional platform.
A more complex approach, however, suggests that the different
strands of institutional critique can be brought together under a common
denominator. Self-consciousness contains a certain intrinsic “otherness”
within itself, in that the self is conscious of what is other than itself. Self-
consciousness on the part of institutional critique is contradictory, because
it is conscious of both sameness and otherness.11 Counter-positions and
contradictions between top-to-bottom governing and horizontal self-
governance and self-organization often become blurred. The fundamental
challenge of each form of government is how to govern so that it is not
too much, or, as Michel Foucault famously put it: “The suspicion that one
always risks governing too much is inhabited by the question: Why, in fact,
must one govern?…In other words, what makes it necessary for there to be a
government, and what ends should it pursue with regard to society in order
to justify its existence?”12 The “art of government,” for Foucault, is actually
something that does not entail any universalized distinction between differ‑
ent governing systems. “Instead of making the distinction between state and
civil society into a historical universal that allows us to examine all the con‑
crete systems, we can try to see it as a form of schematization characteristic
of a particular technology of government.”13 In a similar fashion, according
to Gerald Raunig, “not only resistive individuals, but also progressive institu‑
tions and civil society NGOs operate on the same plane of governmental‑
ity.”14 Put in this perspective, the position of an artist does not seem all that
different from the position of an institution.
In this context, the distinction between art criticism, critique,
and criticality introduced by the British theorist Irit Rogoff can be helpful.
As coined by Rogoff, “criticality” is a term that puts “an emphasis on the

Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska

 19

present, of living out a situation, of understanding culture as a series of

effects rather than of causes, of the possibilities of actualizing some of its
potential rather than revealing its faults.”15 Contrary to the assumption
that meaning is immanent, that it is always already there and precedes
its uncovering, Rogoff believes that we have moved away from notions of
immanent meanings and that one should acknowledge the performative
nature of culture, that meaning takes place as events unfold. In other words:
meaning is never produced in isolation, but rather through intricate webs of
connectedness between participants: audiences, students, or researchers.16
Ever since the basic conditions for autonomy emerged, the
paradoxical nature of the autonomy of art has stemmed from several differ‑
ent definitions of autonomy that are interwoven and contradict each other
due to the different positions of those who claim such autonomy. One of the
biggest paradoxes from the starting period is that art became autonomous
only because it was commodified (so not yet completely independent)
through its involvement in the capitalist market system and the exchange of
symbolic values.
Adorno’s reflections on the relations between art and society
paved the way to different interpretations of autonomy, so there can be
several different levels of autonomy in art, which makes intersectionality
even more complex.17 The first claim to the autonomy of art is that which
originates with an artist; he or she uses this claim when speaking and
writing in public about his/her work of art. Indirectly, autonomy has been
claimed by many other artists who have tried to define for themselves and
for others their own artistic production and how it relates to society, in both
the Eastern and Western political and art systems.
The second claim to the autonomy of art comes from different
institutions that are responsible for the production and presentation of an
artwork. They mostly assume the responsibility for defining the autonomy
of an artwork and protecting it from intrusions from different sources. The
third is the position of published art criticism: texts that claim the right to
autonomy often help an art piece to be awarded a prize or sold. The fourth
position is that of the independent art scene and activist organizations of
diverse provenance, which are, importantly, not unified; they sometimes
claim autonomy also on behalf of certain artists and artworks. The call for
the autonomy of subjectivity as a position in the legal societal and political
context is of course the most complex issue to discuss, because this is never
clearly stated and protected by the state. It has quite often served different
purposes if its derailment started threatening the state itself and its
interests. Finally, positions such as the class, gender, ethnicity, race, and
sexual orientation of artists and the specificity of their art production have
made the issue of autonomy even more complex.
Today it is very difficult to imagine an artist who could still claim
complete autonomy, since this somehow assumes the individual is acting

Inside Out
 20

outside the art system and thus renouncing the right to be part of the art
field. Also, many questions remain unasked and unanswered if one accepts
the general assumption that autonomy is still needed and reflects an unre‑
solved contradiction of an artwork’s structure: What kind of autonomy and
for whom? And why do artists and institutions claim the right to autonomy
even in contexts where they have already entered into different political
and economic alliances? A more general division within autonomy might
clarify the inner paradox of the claim to art’s right to autonomy: the obvi‑
ous distinction between social and aesthetic autonomy, wherein the artist
and his or her artwork belong to different and often contrasting registers
of autonomy. At first it sounds like the aesthetic autonomy of the artwork
falls under the same rubric of autonomy as when an artist claims social
autonomy. But when the artist asserts that the work is also socially engaged,
then the claims become contradictory and diminish each other’s strength.
There is a dialectical relationship between social and aesthetic
autonomy, just as there is between autonomy and commodification, which
should not be forgotten. Artists are free to choose their paths and to
diversify their justifications for different positions in the name of art for art’s
sake: whether based on the need for a formalist separation of aesthetic
and moral values; or on giving priority to aesthetic values above all other
values; or due to claiming distanced and disinterested Kantian aesthetics;
or even due to the assertion that art is completely independent of life and is
subjected to wholly independent rules of development. Regardless of which
justification is used for the claim to autonomy, the only thing that has to be
clearly stated is that picking one of these stances may deprive the artist of
the right to claim another justification, without sending a ridiculously empty
and contradictory message.
The inevitable internalization of the critical position towards
institutions (“to bite the hand that feeds”) is a two-way street: on the one
hand, institutions very quickly internalize the critique aimed at them by
adopting the same vocabulary as their critics and sometimes superficially
incorporating the new structures in order to recuperate, as was already
anticipated by Guy Debord.18 Criticized institutions may, on the one hand,
become strengthened in the process, even if they continue to work under
the same rules as before: an institution can profit from being interpellated
by the right kind of critical opposition. On the other hand, critical subjects
internalize the institutional power by practicing the same forms of criticism
for self-criticism time and again, to the point where this starts to govern
their own activities. By continuing to use the same methods under the pre‑
text of receiving protection from powerful institutions, artists face the danger
of becoming the advocates and agents of a form of negation that itself
amounts to the exercise of power of a different kind.
The questions regarding the shift in the role of contemporary
art institutions in South-Eastern Europe, posed by both individuals and the

Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska

 21

newly-emerged nongovernmental art spaces, result from much profounder

and more long-term historical and political transformations. They have
become so present mainly due to the new critical, artistic, and curatorial
practices that started as far back as the early 1990s and have been care‑
fully nurtured by small, but very active art institutions, rather than by the
long-established private and state institutions, which are usually slower
and more resistant to change. In spite of the slow adaptations to the new
sociopolitical circumstances, there are some key examples of state institu‑
tions (e.g. Moderna galerija (the Museum of Modern Art) in Ljubljana) that
have played a crucial role in constructing a “new” art-historical perspective
over the past two decades.19 Their contribution through exhibition program‑
ming and collecting and preserving Eastern European art has opened new
chapters of inclusion of overlooked art into the dominant art historical nar‑
ratives of the West. It is important to stress that most of the new institution-
driven initiatives were viewed, at least at the beginning, as urgently needed
means of balancing, contesting, and even confronting the monopoly of the
powerful state-governed and state-supported art institutions. This view was
necessarily linked to the promise of a “flat” art world, an art world without
hierarchies, hegemonies, or privileges of one segment over another.20
In the context of an art exhibition, however, a much more rel‑
evant question seems to be that of how the role of the artist has changed
and been redefined following the fall of the Iron Curtain and the disinte‑
gration of Yugoslavia, which were followed by the destabilization or even
complete dissolution of the existing art system.
In recent years there have been – besides some good examples –
many missed opportunities to reinterpret the new role of the artists working
in or originating from the new countries that emerged in the 1990s. The
paradoxes that stem from the local circumstances have often blurred the
initial and fundamental intentions of their artistic practices.
Institutional critique, underpinned by the terminologies and vari‑
ous methods and models of theoretical critique employed in the conceptual
art context since the late 1960s (e.g. Joseph Kosuth’s critical response to
Kantian philosophy via Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of different philo‑
sophical traditions of critical discourse and understanding critique),21 can
lead to a collaborative policy that can engage both state and independent
institutions in the same critical projects and stimulate the development of
institutional awareness by promoting a critical yet constructive form of insti‑
tutional activity. This is also linked to various artistic strategies seen later, in
the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, such as over-identification, where artists take
society as the “fabric” of their work (IRWIN, Tadej Pogačar, Vlasta Delimar,
Dalibor Martinis, Slaven Tolj), or “reverse recuperation” in more recent artis‑
tic practices (e.g. Tadej Pogačar, Sanja Iveković, Ivan Moudov), with the aim
of improving society by recuperating the resources that governments and
governmental organizations tend to monopolize.22

Inside Out
 22

Instead of assuming that an institution has forgotten its original

mission when internalizing the power through the instruments of govern‑
ance simply because it is an institution with a higher position in the hier‑
archy, it is perhaps more constructive to remember that the institutions of
power are all around us, and that there is always the possibility of refraining
from using the power given.23 Trying to pursue some idealized, authentic
institutional structure uncontaminated by any ideology is therefore a para‑
dox. Institutions do not simply forget or ignore their sociopolitical and pro‑
fessional functions; after all, state art institutions have always been closely
linked with creating national identity.
In addition, one has to take into account the impossibility of
finding a general and universal miracle “critical cure” that would resolve all
dilemmas and difficulties in all contexts, since, on a par with the butterfly
effect in chaos theory, a small change in one local community may spark
unexpected turbulences in another, quite remote region. However, acknowl‑
edging this complex entanglement of power, its institutions and the artists’
critique of them, could bring us closer to a more refined and rationalized
critical position.
The process of assessing the imbalance between the roles of
institutions, artists, art groups and collectives, art objects, and audiences
is ongoing and particularly conspicuous in recent shifts towards participa‑
tory, socially-engaged, and “artivist” practices. This is an indirect result of
the artists and activists persistently exposing different suppressed patterns
of unethical behavior and critiquing the hegemonic, hierarchical, elitist,
privileged, racialized, and authoritarian art and cultural policies. The con‑
tinuously produced inequalities in the general geopolitical institutionalized
space of the art world need to be challenged in different ways (e.g. the
activities of the ArtLeaks collective).24
One possibility would be to see institutions and critical artistic
practices as allies instead of rivals.25 It is important to understand critique
in terms of friendly advice, from which not only the agents directly involved
can reap the benefits, but also the often critically-unaware audiences. Or,
instead of a “withdrawal from institutions,” Chantal Mouffe advocates inves‑
tigating different possible strategies of “engagement with institutions,”26
even when one is not in the same position at the outset and not even asked
“How do you want to be governed?”27 However, there remains the issue of
the methodology for comparing, on the one hand, the varying thresholds of
sensitivity of institutions towards critique in various historical and sociopoliti‑
cal contexts and their capacity to use critique for their own recuperation,
and on the other, the different critical positions and levels of radicality in the
context of diverse artistic practices.

The text was first published in the catalogue of the exhibition Inside Out –
Not So White Cube, Ljubljana: City Art Gallery, 24. 9. – 22. 11. 2015.

Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska

 23

1 Certain examples from this region in 6 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary

question are given in the book: Alexander Institution of Society (London: Polity Press,
Alberro and Blake Stimson (eds.), Institutional 1987), 373.
Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings 7 Nina Möntmann, “The Rise and Fall
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009). of New Institutionalism: Perspectives on
2 Institutional critique is usually a Possible Future,” Art and Contemporary
associated with the analytical art practices of Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional
several different generations of artists active Critique (London: Mayfly, 2009), 155–161.
since the 1960s. For them, art became a 8 Buchloh, 139–143.
means of critical reflection on the art system 9 The fact that it was artists who already
and its institutions and on the concept and in the 1980s initiated and conceptualized
social function of the art system. The first Jugoslovenska Dokumenta (Sarajevo,
generation included Marcel Broodthaers, 1984–1989), the last large initiative covering
Daniel Buren, Hans Haacke, Michael Asher, art from all of the former Yugoslav republics
Robert Smithson, Dan Graham, and Martha before the break-up of Yugoslavia, underlines
Rosler, while the artists active since the 1980s that the continuity of artists’ concerns with
include Louise Lawler, Antoni Muntadas, Fred institutional frameworks reaches far beyond
Wilson, Renée Green, Andrea Fraser, and their personal interests.
Mark Dion. 10 Primary Documents – A Sourcebook
3 In Rorty’s opinion, words that become for Eastern and Central European Art since
tropes due to their use in philosophy the 1950s (New York: The MOMA, 2002),
and theory can still be used despite the 182–191.
fact that their previous meanings were 11 Suzana Milevska, “Internalisation
associated with different discursive structures of Institutional Critique,” Evaluating and
and systems of thoughts. Richard Rorty, Formative Goals of Art Criticism in Recent
“Deconstruction and Circumvention,” Critical (De)territorialized Contexts, AICA Seminar
Inquiry, Vol. 11, Issue 1, Sept. 1984: (1–23), Proceedings (Skopje, Macedonia: National
20–21. Gallery, 2009), 2–7.
4 According to Simon Sheikh, and 12 Michel Foucault, “The Birth of
drawing on the earlier essays of Benjamin Biopolitics” (1979), trans. Robert Hurley, in
Buchloh and Andrea Fraser, institutional Paul Rabinow (ed.), Michel Foucault: Ethics
critique developed and changed due to the Subjectivity and Truth, Essential Works of
internalization and self-identification of the Foucault 1954–1984 (New York: The New
artists with institutions: Simon Sheikh, “Notes Press, 1997), 74–5.
on Institutional Critique,” in Gene Ray and 13 Ibid., 75.
Gerald Raunig (eds.), Art and Contemporary 14 Raunig actually tries to distinguish
Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional between the “classical Greek conception
Critique (London: Mayfly, 2009), 31; Benjamin of parrhesia” – constituted by those
Buchloh, “Conceptual Art 1962–1969: From who dare “to tell the truth to other
the Aesthetics of Administration to the people” – and a new truth game, those
Critique of Institutions,” October Vol. 55 “courageous enough to disclose the truth
(Winter 1990), 105–143; Andrea Fraser, “From about oneself.” The activity of speaking
the Critique of Institutions to an Institution the truth is much more important than
of Critique,” Artforum 44 (September 2005), setting up truth in opposition to a lie or
No. 1: 278–283; Claire Bishop, Artificial to something “false.” Gerald Raunig, “The
Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Double Criticism of Parrhesia: Answering
Spectatorship (New York: Verso, 2012), 13–18. the Question ‘What is a Progressive (Art)
5 This issue according to Arthur Institution?’,” eipcp, September 18, 2007,
Danto’s take on institutional theory is http://eipcp.net/transversal/0504/raunig/
what constitutes the main role of the “art en/, last accessed 10 August 2015.
world” and truthfulness of art. Arthur Danto, 15 Irit Rogoff, “From Criticism to Critique
“Artworld,” The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 61, to Criticality,” eipcp, 2003, http://eipcp.net/
Issue 19, American Philosophical Association transversal/0806/rogoff1/en, last accessed
Eastern Division Sixty-First Annual Meeting 10 August 2015.
(Oct. 15, 1964), 571–584. 16 Ibid.

Inside Out
 24

17 Andy Hamilton, “Adorno and Autonomy 26 Mouffe, 70.

of Art,” in Stefano Giacchetti Ludovisi & G. 27 The title of the 2004 exhibition by
Agostini Saavedra (eds.), Nostalgia for a Roger M. Bruegel, quoted in Mouffe, 72.
Redeemed Future: Critical Theory (Newark,
DE: University of Delaware, 2009), 287–305.
18 Paul Clements, “The Recuperation of
Participatory Art Practices,” International
Journal of Art and Design Education,
February 2011, Vol. 30, Issue 1, 18–30; Suzana
Milevska, From Institutional Parasitism to
Reverse Recuperation, Agency and Solidarity –
The Art of Tadej Pogačar (Berlin: Archive
Books, 2014).
19 Alenka Gregorič, Art Institutions in
Eastern Europe – Case Study Moderna
Galerija Ljubljana (Karlsruhe: Badischer
Kunstverein, 2008); Claire Bishop, Radical
Museology or, What’s ‘Contemporary’ in
Museums of Contemporary Art? (London:
Koenig Books, 2013), illustrated with Dan
Perjovschi’s drawings that were exhibited
in Inside Out exhibition in Ljubljana.
20 Pascal Gielen, “Introduction; When
Flatness Rules,” in Pascal Gielen (ed.),
Institutional Attitudes Instituting Art in a Flat
World (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2009), 1–11.
21 In addition, the artists engaged in
institutional critique mostly referred to post-
Marxist revisionist thinking, the Frankfurt
Critical School, institutional, postcolonial,
and feminist theory, or more recently to
queer theory, but less known was the Praxis
School of Zagreb and Belgrade philosophers
and their relevant critical intervention in
Marxist critical thought by introducing a
certain “critique from within” in the socialist
intellectual and art circles.
22 Suzana Milevska, “Kunst jenseits von
Gesellschaft: Subversion und Rekuperation
der zeitgenössischen Kunst” in Nina Bandi,
Michael. G. Kraft & Sebastian Lasinger (eds.),
Kunst, Krise, Subversion: Zur Politik der
Ästhetik (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2012),
149–67.
23 Foucault, 74–75.
24 We came across many formats and
models of artworks and institutions; some
of these were exhibitions, art spaces,
magazines, conferences etc. (Jugoslovenska
dokumenta, Sarajevo; Podroom, Zagreb;
Artpool, Budapest; ArtLeaks, etc.)
25 Chantal Mouffe, “Institutions as Sites of
Agonistic Intervention,” in Pascal Gielen (ed.),
Institutional Attitudes Instituting Art in a Flat
World (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2009), 66.

Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska

 153

Afterword:
A Conversation
 155

Instead of a definite conclusion, these editorial remarks are conceived as

an attempt to summarize some of the outcomes of the three-year research
period and the various activities encompassed by the project Inside Out.
Regardless of whether our initial assumptions and expectations were
confirmed or contradicted by the art works and texts of the various artists,
researchers, curators, and theorists we invited to collaborate, additional
questions about the potentials and limitations of institutional critique, both
as a term and as artistic practice, continued to arise and proliferate, thus
making our analysis ever more challenging.
The difference in our generational and cultural backgrounds –
as well as curatorial positions – enabled us to question and reflect on the
development and conundrums of artistic critical discourse in a multifaceted
manner. The comparisons and cross-referencing which we wanted to realize
from the very beginning aimed to identify the difference between the art
context where institutional critique was formulated as critical art practice
and the context of Central and South Eastern Europe, where art projects
concerning institutions were not initially filed under this rubric.
Gradually, we continued to add new questions and dilemmas
to the questions from the introductory text we originally wrote for the
catalogue of the exhibition Inside Out – Not So White Cube in the sum‑
mer of 2015. Thus the project initial question were supplemented by more
specific enquiries.1 For example, the project scrutinized the issues of the
monopolization of the role of institutions in marginal contexts as one of the
major targets of institutional critique in a non-Western context and looked
at the eventual ironic shifts of art production and distribution towards the
art market (as an interpretation of a certain relativization of the institutional
monopoly and hegemonic powers).
Such discussions particularly took place during the conference
in Ljubljana entitled Critical Artistic Debates Concerning Institutions, (City
Art Gallery, 20–21 November, 2015), when some myths and misconceptions
regarding the positions of contemporary artists in former Yugoslav Republics
were challenged in parallel with comparisons with the other Eastern Bloc
countries in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Furthermore, more recent compari‑
sons were introduced between the critique of institutions in the former East
and former West in the field of art.

1 The initial questions which were a centralized to a free-market economy?

formulated in our curatorial text and were What are the art projects’ potentials for a
distributed to the invited researchers and substantial impact on such transformations?
contributors to this publication were: Do the art projects dealing with institutions
How did institutions influence and change in a critical manner differ depending on the
one another while interacting and/or socio-political background and economic
cooperating during the transition from context?

Afterword: A Conversation
 156

[Alenka Gregorič]
Like most long-term research projects, Inside Out, conceived to
explore projects of institutional critique by artists from Central
and Eastern Europe, has provided some answers and raised a
host of new questions and points to reflect on. Not only does
institutional critique – i.e. critical examination of and reflection
on institutions of art – in the East differ considerably from that of
the West, but it also displays characteristics and principles that
are specific to the individual art systems (complex networks of
interrelations between diverse spaces and agents in the field
of art) in the region, reflecting the specificities of the particular
sociopolitical systems.
Unquestionably related to the system of government,
the art system represents a fragment of a state’s cultural strategy
and policy within complex national political structures. Thus we
can say that the “global art system” is some kind of “global com‑
promise”, a conglomerate of diverse guidelines, strategies, and
conventions on the international level, implemented in individ‑
ual local contexts as an umbrella system necessary for position‑
ing the local art historical developments and phenomena in the
international art narrative. For the most part, the local systems’
adaptations to and compliance with the global art system are a
logical compromise on the part of the individual society, with the
awareness that the nations writing the history of art also dictate
the basic postulates of the global art system.

[Suzana Milevska]
Through parallel probing and pondering, some more general
contradictions became inevitable, such as the paradox (already
pointed out by Claire Bishop) that the expectation that art
projects will change the broader social, economic, and political
conditions is in opposition to the dominance of the hermetic
and elitist theoretical discourses and articulations on which such
projects base their concepts. This could not be more relevant for
any other art practice and counter-narrative than for institutional
critique, which is, more than anything else, a critical discourse.
Subsequently, the wide spectra of differences that
prevailed among various former socialist countries (particularly
between Yugoslavia and the Eastern Bloc countries) in their
cultural policies towards contemporary art production and
presentation prevented any generalized conclusion about
artistic critical discourse regarding art institutions during the
last four decades of the twentieth century. On the one hand,
the orthodoxy of powerful and state-controlled (and protected)

Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska

157

institutions, which thus had reduced their accountability and

responsibility to and in the face of artists, led artists of the former
East to primarily challenge the political system (rather than art
institutions). On the other hand, the same institutional policies in
a way protected the artists from precarious working conditions
by enabling artists more profound inclusion in decision-making
regarding their societal position.
These differences increased in Yugoslavia, particularly
after 1952, following the Third Congress of the Writers’ Union
(held in Ljubljana), during which the country’s break from the
official dogma of “socialist realism” preached by the USSR was
announced by the renowned writer and essayist Miroslav Krleža
(as a follow-up to the distancing from the Stalinist regime). The
contemporary artists were thus “freed” and could pursue their
individual artistic interests in various art tendencies in a less
restrictive manner, which also contributed to their milder critical
attacks towards the dominance of modernist art in all of its own
elitist and hermetic formalist scope.
Some of the Inside Out conference discussants (and
the texts included in this publication) reflected on the future
alternative cross-institutional or trans-institutional models that
already have been conceptualized and proposed by artists, art
collectives, researchers, and institutions. The arguments that self-
instituting in art history as well as in institutions is fundamental
in order to overcome the paradoxes of institutional critique by
offering counter-narratives and counter-structures, and that
this can be achieved successfully by miming existing institu‑
tions in ironic art works or initiating new kinds of institutions,
were informed by the proliferating art practices that supported
the transformation of the existing institutional structures (from
“inside”) or the construction of new institutions as “critical”,
“monstrous”, “participatory”, or “feminist” ones.
One of the most prominent questions that kept
reoccurring was why – while the reasons for institutional critique
might have been different in various historical periods and
cultural contexts – the results of such artistic practices and
discourses often faced similar limitations, contradictions, and
failures. The postcolonial critique made us aware that the pace
and scope of exchange in the globalized art world are not equal
in all geo-political directions, but that the differences that once
appeared to be fundamental had shrunk, so accumulation by
dispossession worked in the art world similarly as in the wider
economic context.

Afterword: A Conversation
 158

[A. G.]
A closer look at the projects of the first generation of artists
engaged in institutional critique reveals a very obvious distinction
in the way institutions of art (especially museums) are treated
in different geopolitical regions and countries. Museums –
institutions for collecting, evaluating, and presenting art – are
among the most complex organizational structures of the art
system; they are established with a variety of missions, and have
widely differing constitutional instruments, and consequently,
legal statuses. In the West, particularly in the United States, where
artists in the 20th century produced numerous – now canonical
– works of institutional critique, museums are mostly private
institutions whose work depends on boards of trustees, sponsors,
donors, foundations, and, last but not least, the art market.
It is a different story on the other side of the Atlantic:
most European museums are public institutions, and thus, cru‑
cially, largely financed by the state. In the Eastern part of Europe,
the situation is complicated by the legacy of the socialist era
and the high level of involvement of the state in museum work:
in addition to being the exclusive source of funding, the state
also exerted its influence in matters of organization, program
design, and staffing, making the museum a ground for promot‑
ing the ideology of the state. In numerous countries the influence
of the state bureaucracy and politics has extended to this day,
despite the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989 and the Socialist
Federative Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991.
The artistic appeals now subsumed under the term
institutional critique were for the most part thus clearly not
triggered by the same reasons and reflections in the East as in
the West. Oftentimes, the projects in Eastern Europe were less
ambitious in their material realization and representation (which
becomes particularly obvious when they are exhibited), although
no less elaborate in their concepts or radical in their criticism,
despite the ephemerality of their gestures. The conceptual and
representational forms of works of institutional critique were
further affected by the possibilities for public discourse or public
critique, since the critique of art institutions was frequently
perceived as a direct critique of the state apparatus. In many
countries behind the Iron Curtain, critical projects dealing with
the state institutions of art (in the virtual absence of private ones)
were made far from the public eye. In Yugoslavia, the system
allowed for radical gestures and critique only in a few limited
spaces of “free” expression, which were nonetheless closely, even
if not overtly, monitored.

Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska

159

[S. M.]
Once the art institutions were “handed over” to the free
market even in previously centralized state economies, they
lost both state protection as well as the role of protecting
artists and art production from neoliberal relations. This
transformation of the art institution was also gradual and
took place at different paces and to different degrees from
one country to the next, which additionally complicated the
possibility of a common conclusion and agreement on the
initial arguments. Nevertheless, as a result of the dominance
of similar production conditions and relations, as well as of
the unequal distribution and global exchange, the calls for
the decolonization of art institutions, and not only on a geo-
political level, became immanent in and consistent with the
neoliberal world.
Today, almost fifty years after the formation of
the first internationally renowned collective initiative, i.e. Art
Workers Coalition (AWC) in 1969, based on the critique of art
institutions as regards various unethical acts of misconduct
towards artists and artworks and with regard to the historical
and political background and the provenance of the financial
support of institutions, it has become clearer that there are
several registers of critique, and that it is much more realistic
to expect concrete results from activist movements than from
individual art projects.
The relevant shifts in the relation between artists
and institutions (including critics, media, curators, independent
and artist-run spaces, and artists unions and collectives) and the
critique of specific cases of systemic and accumulative discrimi‑
nation and exclusion from art institutions came to prominence
with the emergence of numerous individual artistic projects of
artists dealing with institutional critique, as well as with local,
regional, and international activist movements, projects, and
declarations. Thus, both artistic critical projects and activist
initiatives, such as the Occupy Museums Manifesto, Debtfair,
Liberate TATE, fossilfundsfree.org, the Gulf Labour Art Coalition
(focused on the building of Abu Dhabi Guggenheim Museum),
ArtLeaks, WAGE, The Precarious Workers Brigade, articulated
the agonistic discourse that became interwoven in international
art practice. The artistic means and media make such shifts
visible and relevant and often act in collaboration and solidar‑
ity with activist initiatives, in the long run or during periods of
political urgency.

Afterword: A Conversation
 160

[A. G.]
The picture in Eastern Europe changed in the 1990s, as the new
sociopolitical orders gave rise to new cultural policies, thereby
redefining the old and forming new art systems. But the circum‑
stances were not the same across the board; in the region of for‑
mer Yugoslavia, for instance, war raged for years in some of the
newly-founded states. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, where today
the art system does not function at even a basic level, the war
and ensuing social and political instability undoubtedly played a
crucial role in producing the current dire state of cultural policy.
In the turbulent period after the dissolution of the common state,
the systems in the new states developed along slightly different
lines, implementing the models of the cultural policies and the
art system of the capitalist West with varying degrees of success.
Nonetheless, some common problem areas persist.
For example, the art market continues to be just a buzzword
used in national cultural strategies in all of the countries of for‑
mer Yugoslavia, while the worst stumbling block is the inability
to exclude political lobbies from the organizational and program
strategies of national museums. The cultural policy climate in
Eastern European countries thus evidently still calls for the critical
reflection of artists and other workers in culture.

[S. M.]
Thus, the fact that in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Slovenia, and
Macedonia the protests against the inefficient cultural policies
and conditions in art and culture were mostly targeted at state
politicians and political institutions rather than art institutions
proves that changes and transformations as regards the role
of institutions, their systemic structures, and their relations
with artists could not occur rapidly or smoothly. Interestingly
enough, sometimes these changes develop even more slowly
than in other social realms, perhaps exactly because the
contradictions and conundrums of the role of art institutions
are related to the definition of art in both a theoretical and
practical sense and changes to this definition are not always in
concurrence with other societal developments; on the contrary,
it is more appropriate to think of these transformations as
being agonistic and critical.
The project’s initial objective, i.e., to “analyze the
existing theoretical and critical art practices that focus on
critiquing the existing institutions and conditions,” revealed that
changes in certain laws and rules regarding art and cultural
institutions in different historical, political, and socio-economic

Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska

161

conditions provoked and/or enabled a great array of artistic

practices, which although they are difficult to be labelled as
institutional critique in the narrower sense of this classification,
definitely contributed to the contemporary international critical
debate on the role of art institutions. This discussion is ongoing
and urgent and we hope that this volume contributes towards
keeping it vital in order to help the improving of the eroded
ethical principles of the art system in general.

Afterword: A Conversation
162
 163

Selected bibliography of books, texts and conferences

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art since 1970, György Galántai & Julia Klaniczay (eds.), foreword by Kristine
Stiles, Budapest: Artpool, 2013.

Art Always Has Its Consequences, WHW [Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša
Ilić, Sabina Sabolović], Dóra Hegyi & Zsuzsa László [tranzit.hu], Ziółkowska,
Magdalena & Sloboda, Ktarzyna [Muzeum Sztuki], new media
center_kuda.org (eds.), Zagreb: WHW, 2010.

Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique,

Gene Ray & Gerald Raunig (eds.), London: Mayfly, 2009.

Art Institutions in Eastern Europe — Case Study Moderna Galerija

Ljubljana, Alenka Gregorič (ed.), Karlsruhe: Badischer Kunstverein,
2008.

Bishop, Claire, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of

Spectatorship, New York: Verso, 2012.

Bishop, Claire, Radical Museology or, What’s ‘Contemporary’ in Museums

of Contemporary Art?, London: Koenig Books, 2013.

Boltanski, Luc & Eve Chiapello, “The Test of the Artistic Critique,” in
The New Spirit of Capitalism, London: Verso, 2005.

Bryan-Wilson, Julia, “A Curriculum of Institutional Critique,” in

New Institutionalism, Jonas Ekeberg (ed.), Oslo: OCA/verksted, 2003,
89–109.

Buchloh, Benjamin, “Conceptual Art 1962–1969: From the Aesthetics of

Administration to the Critique of Institutions,” October Vol. 55 (Winter,
1990), 105–143.

Buden, Boris, “The post-Yugoslavian Condition of Institutional Critique:

An Introduction On Critique as Countercultural Translation,” eipcp, Centre
for Cultural Decontamination, 2007, http://eipcp.net/dlfiles/belgrade/
attachment_download/file

Bourdieu, P. & Haacke, H., Free Exchange, Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1995.
 164

Castoriadis, Cornelius, World in Fragments, Stanford, CA: Stanford

University Press, 1997.

Castoriadis, Cornelius, The Imaginary Institution of Society, London: Polity Press,

1987.

Castoriadis, Cornelius, “Radical Imagination and the Social Instituting

Imaginary” in Rethinking Imagination: Culture and Creativity, Gillian Robinson
& John F. Rundell (eds.), Routledge, 1994, 136–54.

Continuing Dialogues, Christa Benzer, Christine Bohler & Christiane Erkharter

(eds.), Vienna: JRP/Ringier, 2008.

Crimp, Douglas, On the Museum’s Ruins, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993.

East Art Map, IRWIN (ed.), London: MIT Press/Afterall, 2006.

Ekeberg, Jonas (Hg.), New Institutionalism, Verksted #1, Oslo: Office for
Contemporary Art Norway, 2003.

Fraser, Andrea, “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique,”

Artforum Vol. 44 (September 2005), No. 1: 278–283.

Gregorič, Alenka, “Cultural Jet-Leg: Fact, Curse, or Opportunity” in Extending

the Dialogue, Urška Jurman, Christiane Erharter & Rawley Grau (eds.), Ljubljana:
Igor Zabel Association, Berlin: Archive Books, Vienna: ERSTE Foundation, 2016,
308–321.

Gregorič, Alenka, “IRWIN’s “Back to the USA””, art-agenda, Published: 13

December 2013, http://art-agenda.com/reviews/

Groys, Boris, Art Power, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.

Impossible Histories, Dubravka Đurić & Miško Šuvaković (eds.), Boston, MA:
MIT Press, 2003.

Institutional Attitudes Instituting Art in a Flat World, Pascal Gielen (ed.),

Amsterdam: Valiz, 2009.

Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings, Alexander Alberro &

Blake Stimson (eds.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.

Institutional Critique and After (SoCCAS Symposium Vol. II), John C. Welchman
(ed.), JRP|Ringier, 2006.
 165

Institutions by Artists: Volume One, Jeff Khonsary & Kristina Lee Podesva
(eds.), Vancouver, BC: Filip Editions and the Pacific Association of Artist Run
Centres, 2012.

Interrupted Histories, Zdenka Badovinac (ed.), Ljubljana: Museum of

Modern Art Ljubljana, 2006.

Jakovljević, Branislav, Alienation Effects: Performance and Self-Management

in Yugoslavia, 1945–91, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2016.

Jugoslovenska dokumenta ‘87 - catalogue of the exhibition, Svetlana

Milanović (org.), Sarajevo: RO ZOI 84’, Olimpijski centar Skenderija, 1987.

Jugoslovenska dokumenta ‘89 - catalogue of the exhibition, Jusuf

Hadžifejzović, Mladen Jeličić & Radoslav Tadić (organizers), Sarajevo:
Olimpijski centar “Skenderija”, 1989.

Murawska-Muthesius, Katarzyna & Piotrowski, Piotr, From Museum Critique

to the Critical Museum, London: Routledge, 2015.

Meyer, James, What Happened to the Institutional Critique?, New York:

American Fine Arts, Co. & Paula Cooper Gallery. Reprinted in Peter Weibel
(ed.), Kontext Kunst, Cologne: Dumont, 1993, 239–256.

Milevska, Suzana, “Pushing the Limits of Institutional Recuperation: Sanja

Iveković’s works challenging post-Nazi context and racism” in Sanja
Iveković: Unknown Heroine-Reade, Helena Reckitt (ed.), London: Calvert 22
Foundation, 2013, 88–110.

Milevska, Suzana, From Institutional Parasitism to Reverse Recuperation,

Agency and Solidarity-The Art of Tadej Pogačar, Berlin: Archive Books, 2014.

Milevska, Suzana, “Internalisation of Institutional Critique” in Evaluating

and Formative Goals of Art Criticism in Recent (De)territorialized Contexts,
AICA Seminar proceedings, Skopje: National Gallery, 2009, 2–7.

Milevska, Suzana, “On History and Solidarity: Performative Reading of

Women’s Book by Liljana Gjuzelova” in Performing the Sentence Research
and Teaching in Performative Fine Arts, Carola Dertnig & Felicitas Thun-
Hohenstein (eds.), Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013, 190–200.

Möntmann, Nina, “The Rise and Fall of New Institutionalism: Perspectives

on a Possible Future” in Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing
Institutional Critique, London: Mayfly, 2009, 155–161.
 166

ON CURATING, Issue 21, (New) Institution(alism), Lucie Kolb & Gabriel

Flückiger (eds.), http://www.oncurating. org/index.php/issue-21-reader/

Political Practices of (Post-)Yugoslav Art: RETROSPECTIVE 01, Jelena Vesić &

Zorana Dojić (eds.), Belgrade: Prelom kolektiv, 2010.

Primary Documents — A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art

since the 1950s, New York: MOMA, 2002.

Protiv umetnosti Goran Đorđević: kopije 1979–1985, Branislav Dimitrijević,

Zoran Erić & Jelena Vesić (eds.), Belgrade: Museum of Contemporary Art,
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Raunig, Gerald, “The Double Criticism of parrhesia: Answering the Question

‘What is a Progressive (Art) Institution?’”, Published: 18 September 2007,
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Dejan Sretenović & Jelena Stojanović (eds.), Belgrade: Museum of
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Sheikh, Simon, “Notes on Institutional Critique” in Art and Contemporary

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Sheikh, Simon, “Instituting the Institution,” Open Institutions, conference,

MAMA/Pogon Zagreb, Published: 18 March 2011, http://openinstitutions.
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Stipančić, Branka, Josip Vaništa, Zagreb: Kratis, 2007.

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 167

Zabel, Igor, “Tadej Pogačar” in Život umjetnosti, Zagreb: nos. 67–68 (2002):
44–63.

What Ever Happened to New Institutionalism?, James Voorhies (ed.),

Cambridge, MA: Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts & Berlin: Sternberg
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Conferences, seminars (proceedings and web recordings)

and PhD thesis focusing on CSEE region

Inside Out – Critical Artistic Debates Concerning Institutions,

20 – 21 November 2015, City Art Gallery Ljubljana,
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Open Institutions – Institutional Imagination and Cultural Public Sphere,

MAMA/Pogon Jedinstvo, Zagreb, 2011, http://zagreb.openinstitutions.net/

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AICA, Skopje, Macedonia, 2009, http://aicainternational.org/en/evaluating-
and-formative-goals-of-art-criticism-in-recent-deterritorializedcontexts-
skopje-29-30-may-2009/

THE NEXT STEP, International Conference of Museums of Modern and

Contemporary Art, Moderna galerija Ljubljana, 2009, http://videolectures.
net/nextstep09_ljubljana/

New Paradigms, New Models – Culture in the EU External Relations,

Scientific Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
(in Slovenian abridged as ZRC SaZU) and the Peace Institute – Institute for
Contemporary Social and Political Studies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of
the Republic of Slovenia, Ljubljana, 2008.

The Post-Yugoslav Condition of Institutional Critique, eipcp, Centre for

Cultural Decontamination, 2007, http://eipcp.net/dlfiles/belgrade/
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Ćirić, Maja, “Curatorial Practices and Institutional Critique,” PhD, supervisor:

Prof. Dr. Milena Dragičević-Šešić, University of Arts, Belgrade, 2012.

Morariu, Vlad Victor, “Institutional critique. A philosophical investigation of

its conditions and possibilities,” PhD, supervisor: Prof. Dr. Malcolm Barnard,
Loughborough University, 2014.
 168

Bago, Ivana, “Post-Yugoslav Generation: Art, History and Theory at the

Unidentified Grave of ‘Yugoslavia”, PhD, supervisor: Prof. Dr. Kristine Stiles,
Duke University, (in process).
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Represented by MGML
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Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska CIP - Katalozni zapis o publikaciji
Narodna in univerzitetna knjiznica Ljubljana
Texts by
Zdenka Badovinac, Ivana Bago, Angela 7:069.53(082)
Dimitrakaki, Alenka Gregorič & Suzana 7.078"20"(082)
Milevska, Vít Havránek, Zoran Erić, Nina
Möntmann, Gerald Raunig, Hito Steyerl, ISBN 978-961-6969-18-5
Vladimir Vidmar.
logotipi
Introduction texts
Alenka Gregorič & Suzana Milevska Mol
MGML
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Dean J. DeVos
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Design and layout
Ajdin Bašić

Acknowledgements
We want to thank to all writers and
researchers who contributed to the
completion of this project for their generous
support. We also want to thank to the
publishers for the permission to reprint some
of the texts in the reader.

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