Original scientific paper

Three gestures: Jurjević, Burđelez, Tolj

Marko Stamenković

Abstract

The paper develops one possible theoretical framework, linked to the post-socialist context of South Eastern Europe, in order to examine three paradigmatic positions in contemporary visual arts regarding Božidar Jurjević, Pasko Burđelez and Slaven Tolj. It is not designed to be an exhaustive account of their respective practices but to focus on three gestures in their selected projects, permeated by the concept of ‘dark play’. I consider them to be exemplary for what can be named counter-terror of negativity under the necropictorial regime of power. By employing a global comparative perspective centered on life/death politics, the aim is to discuss these gestures as micro-political forms of revolt and resistance – most notably in what concerns the neoliberal ‘ethics of happiness’ and its ‘terror of positivity’, rising in the global imperialist ‘North’. On the basis of such ideas, while pursuing the hermeneutic inconsistency of any postsituation that still claims to be counter-hegemonic, I argue about the theoretical conversion of ‘post-socialism’ into the epistemological sphere of the global antiimperialist ‘South’.

Keywords

post-socialism; global anti-imperialist South; necropictorial regime; counter-terror of negativity; dark play

Hrčak ID:

185600

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/185600

Publication date:

1.7.2014.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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