From "l'Unità", 14 February 2000

LIFE AND DEATH OF THE INEXISTENT ARTIST DARKO MAVER

One of the protagonists tells the umpteeth prank of the bologna's group, conceived to expose to ridicule the art world.

by Antonio Caronia

The truth has therefore been revealed. Darko Maver, the Serbian artist who set Italy and Europe buzzing last year for the glumness, the radicalism, but also the weirdness of his artistic actions, is an inexistent person, he is a figment of the lively (according to someone), morbid (according to someone else) imagination of a group working in Bologna and known as 0100101110101101.ORG, the harsh name of their Internet site, which is one of the centres of their activities. Since 1998 a webzine called "EntarteteKunst" ("Degenerated Art" ), a periodical edited by some guys from Bologna, near to the Luther Blissett Project, is available on the Internet. It is from there that the early news about a mysterious performer-artist start to circulate: a man who travels across ex-Yugoslavia leaving, in motel rooms and old empty houses, gruesome sights of murders, realised with puppets (but that, at first sight, seem to be real, disconcerting the neighbours and the police arrived on the scene).

Some scanty biographical information is spread as well (the birth in 1962 near Belgrade, the leaving of the Academy of Fine Arts, in the same city, the move to Ljubliana, the travels to Italy, the beginning, in 1990, of the travelling project "Tanz der Spinne", "Dance of the Spider"), and also some short texts, clearly delirious, about the "Disappearance of the body" and an unlikely "Anaphoragenetica".

In August 1999, the Kapelica Gallery organises in Ljubliana the first exhibition with the documentation of "Tanz der Spinne", this show will be repeated the following year, in February, at the "Livello 57" in Bologna. Meanwhile Darko Maver is arrested and released, in Serbia and Kosovo, on several occasions, with the charge of anti-patriotic propaganda, and he is locked up in prison in Podgorica since the beginning of 1999. Maver's supporters in Italy spread the notice through bulletins signed "Free Art Campaign". In March 1999 two Italian art magazines write about Maver: "Tema Celeste" simply reports the press release, "Flesh Out" publishes a more accurate article, with images signed by the person who is now writing. In May comes out the announcement of Darko Maver's death, in prison, in enigmatic circumstances. An article in "Modus Vivendi", in July of the same year, establishes a connection between Maver's death and the NATO war against Serbia.

And the death put the final seal on his fame: Maver leads to the 48th Venice Biennale, last September, while a complete retrospective of the artist is organised in Rome at the "Forte Prenestino". In June, a theatrical performance dedicated to Maver was presented to the "Biennale of young artists", in Rome too.

Now the claiming of the prank. But which is the meaning of this action? In this same page, people from 0100101110101101.ORG, answer this question. But a few words are due also from the author of this article, who wrote about Darko Maver, as we said, in "Flesh Out" magazine last March. Actually I was informed about the inexistence of the artist, and if I decided (together with the editorial staff of the review) to reveal nothing of what we knew, but on the contrary to support the operation, it was because I believed in its usefulness: I knew very well that, sooner or later, the prank would have been claimed, since it was conceived for this purpose. This kind of actions are not new in the art world. It would be enough to remember the huge penis belching fireworks ("The Victory"), built by Jean Tinguely, which appeared to the amazed eyes of thousands of people gathered in Duomo square, in Milan, the 28 November 1970, during a festival on the Nouveau Realisme (the day after, an embarrassed press decided to skirt the provocation). Or the female identity of Rrose Selavy with whom Marcel Duchamp, during the Twenties, signed some ready-mades, building on the inexistent person a whole net of mysterious hints and funny and arcane finds; among others is a photo taken by Man Ray which, in reality, portrays the artist in female dressing. These, and many other similar conceptual works, were thorough critical interventions, as well as artistic expressions, made by figures deep-rooted in the art world but, at the same time, conscious of the fictitious nature, in a way inauthentic, of the artworks. The operation Darko Maver, to a great extent, shares this tension to reconnect (through the paradox) art with life, but it has a more specific meaning. Which is not much that, as it can seem at first sight, to cheat critics and journalists, with the purpose of heaping discredit on the art world. The aim of the authors of the prank was also, of course, the will to point out the artificial nature of this world, the role played by critics and curators to establish the success or failure of artists, more than their mysterious "inspiration". And, in the background, as always, the fundamental role of the media, which contributes more and more to attest the "reality", in the eyes of the citizen-consumer. But all this, somehow, is well known also out of the underground borders, even if, often, nobody thinks enough about it. The most interesting thing in all this story, in my opinion, is that it brings out, with the power of the joke, the social nature of artistic production. If there aren't specific social institutions (museums, galleries, specialised reviews, but now also squats, even groups of radical opposition) which "guarantee" the art work, art doesn't exist. If someone in whom I trust (a critic, a commentator) doesn't certificate the existence and the value of an artist, the artist doesn't exist. But the agreement that delegated to these specialised cultural institutions the job of "managing" art (and culture in general), is now creaking, under the impulse of the new technologies, of the Internet, but not only, also under the impulse of the huge social decomposition and recomposition which shakes capitalism, at long last globalizated. And then, between the turns of these process, anybody can begin to speak, not to make fun of art or to declare its "death" in the name of an avant-garde, but to show its possible disappearance, reabsorbed into the flow of social creativity. Darko Maver is not all of this yet, of course, it's only a sign that this can be done.