Milica Rakić
– born in 1972 in the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. She obtained her PhD at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade and has presented her works at 30 solo exhibitions and over 400 collective exhibitions in the country and abroad. She is a member of the Communist League of Yugoslavia and the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia, with the status of independent artist. Her works explore the ways in which language and culture determine personal identities. She is living and working in Belgrade.
I base my artistic production on a quasi-archive logic that is founded on opposites such as found-constructed, factual-fictive and public-private by using the procedure of appropriating objects, texts and photographs. I seek to preserve in the present what has passed, to (re)shape and establish a possible motion towards the future. I don’t comprehend socialist history as something that has simply passed away and been preserved in an unalterable form. It exists, for the purposes of my work, as a construct that is being built and transformed. By virtue of being transferred into the art context, each acquired or found archival document becomes a new document in which I inscribe both universal and personal experience in relation to political events then and now.
The experimental film entitled Red, if you were nonexistent, you should be invented1 was made precisely according to such a logic, and that is by combining archival documents of the Women’s Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia (1947/49) and archival photographs on the one hand, and on the other, a constructed experience of COMRADEss Rakič2 and her alter-ego (Vladimir Bjeličić)3. It paints a documentaristically simplified picture whose meaning is created through connecting film shots and establishing their interrelations. It focuses on the problematic of female emancipation in post-war Yugoslavia, and criticises the interpretations and codes of socialist ideology in a historical as well as contemporary context.
In today’s domination by democratic patriarchy it is not only that we do not have a single female political organisation that would represent our interests and rights, but that we have also shunned our own revolutionary past in an artificial way, and forgotten the role of women in it, degraded and thereby destroyed this. The feminist emphasis on female writing, speech and action in the post-Yugoslav space is not popular even today since society is aligned to male art and every attempt to move out of the expected frameworks recalls the communist past which is not only difficult to accept but, moreover, must (not) be accepted. Most female artists don’t have a feeling of subjugation (not being aware of what they really are) to this democratic patriarchy, although nowadays politics and ideology impose their own rules according to which Marxism and feminism– as some of the key projects of the modernist epoch they belong to – have gone out of fashion.
The visual contents of the self-titled Yugoslav heroine COMRADEss Rakič4 are based on the intersecting of art and poetry, visuality and language or watching and reading. I don’t correct her personal history, but recreate it instead by examining personal and collective identity as parts of Yugoslav history and heritage. Some of the slogans are: “You have killed the past in the name of an abstract future and you have killed the damn future in the name of a glorious past, so what do you want now?; – Fear requires the expenditure of strength, and I am a lazy woman5; – If I am not a hero, what is a hero then?6; – My nerves are historically damaged7; – I am not a part of the majority since it can lead me to bear false witness; – I am chronically sick of maltreatment8; – I know my defeats by heart; – I have been robbed blind, so I have nothing now, not even my own past; – While he was pledging allegiance to the fatherland I was feeling sleepy; – There are not so many heroes, if I don’t include the ones that I have unhappily made up; – Revolution is not dead, it was just raped; – Only your value increases in a time of price cuts; – I haven’t given birth to a hero, and thus my contribution to history amounts to nothing; – My freedom is not in accordance with your tastes; – Women, don’t be fooled any more, tear down the existing society and build one in which you will be free; – You don’t know a woman’s courage; …”. These messages were conceived by looking up slogans from the socialist period whose discourses were oriented towards the words of others, common truths that belonged to everybody and to no one in particular. Every day I note them down, correct them, transform them, (self-)imagine and adapt them to my own artistic archive and private legacy. I write them down wherever I find a suitable place for them – from archival documents, graphic sheets, painting canvas to restaurant bills. I offer the public two kinds of reading: one which is immediate, and other between the lines.
Death to Fascism – Freedom for the People!
Photographic archive of COMRADEss Rakič:9101112131415.
The text is written in collaboration with Simona Ognjanović (2022).
1Image: The experimental film Red, if you were nonexistent, you should be invented, 2021, 20’09”, 68th March Festival – Belgrade festival of documentary and short films, Dom Omladine, Belgrade, photo: Aleksandrija Ajduković.2Image: The poster for experimental film Red, if you were nonexistent, you should be invented, 2021, 20’09”, 68th March Festival – Belgrade festival of documentary and short films, Dom Omladine, Belgrade, photo: Aleksandrija Ajduković.
3Image: The experimental film Red, if you were nonexistent, you should be invented, 2021, 20’09”, 68th March Festival – Belgrade festival of documentary and short films, Dom Omladine, Belgrade, photo: Aleksandrija Ajduković, Vladimir Bjeličić, art historian and artist, http://cargocollective.com/vladimirbjelicic.
4Image: COMRADEss Rakič is not imaginary, but an artist that exploits, for the purposes of her artworks, an entire discourse of socialist ideology in order to establish an artistic archive and a private legacy. The experimental film Red, if you were nonexistent, you should be invented, 2021, 20’09”, 68thMarch Festival – Belgrade festival of documentary and short films, Dom Omladine, Belgrade, photo: Aleksandrija Ajduković.
5Image: Lepa sam kao revolucija [I am as Pretty as the Revolution], Galerija Ilije M. Kolarca, Belgrade, 2019, photo: personal archives.
6Image: The painting Milica Rakić, Lepa sam kao revolucija [I am as Pretty as the Revolution], Galerija Ilije M. Kolarca, Belgrade, 2019, photo: personal archives.
7Image: Lepa sam kao revolucija [I am as Pretty as the Revolution], Galerija Ilije M. Kolarca, Belgrade, 2019, photo: personal archives.
8Image: Rođena bez razloga [Born for no reason], Galerija saveza udruženja likovnih umetnika Jugoslavije, Belgrade, 2011, photo: personal archives.
9Image: Ja nisam oslobodila Bograd [I haven’t Liberated Belgrade], Galerija savremene umetnosti Salon 77, Niš, 2020, Radna soba Konstantina Koče Popovića, Istorijski arhiv Beograda, photo: Aleksandra Bošković.
10Image: JUGOvizija [YUGOvision], Staying Here with You exhibition, light installation, bioskop Balkan, 2019, photo: Saša Marčeta Foundation.
11Image: Rođena bez razloga [Born for no reason], Gradska galerija Požega, 2013, photo: personal archives.
12Image: Rođena bez razloga [Born for no reason], Gradska galerija Požega, 2013, photo: personal archives.
13Image: Rođena bez razloga [Born for no reason], Centar savremene umetnosti, Podgorica, 2012, photo: personal archives.
14Image: Priznaj ja sam muško a ti si žensko [Admit that I am male and you are female], guided tour of the exhibition Drugovi, ja se ni sada ne stidim svoje komunističke prošlosti! [Comrades, I am not ashamed of my communist Past], Galerija FLU, Belgrade, 2017, photo: Sanja Latinović.
15Image: Priznaj ja sam muško a ti si žensko [Admit that I am male and you are female], guided tour of the exhibition Drugovi, ja se ni sada ne stidim svoje komunističke prošlosti! [Comrades, I am not Ashamed of My Communist Past], Galerija FLU, Belgrade, 2017, photo: Aleksandra Bošković.
– rođena je 1972. u Socijalističkoj Federativnoj Republici Jugoslaviji. Doktorirala na Fakultetu likovnih umetnosti u Beogradu. Predstavila je svoje radove na 30 samostalnih izložbi i preko 400 grupnih u zemlji i inostranstvu. Član je Saveza komunista Jugoslavije i Udruženja likovnih umetnika Srbije, sa statusom samostalnog umetnika. U svom radu ispituje način na koji jezik i kultura oblikuju lični identitet. Živi i radi u Beogradu.
Svoju umetničku produkciju zasnivam na kvazi-arhivskoj logici koja počiva na opozicijama pronađeno-konstruisano, činjenično-fiktivno, privatno-javno, koristeći proceduru aproprijacije objekata, tekstova i fotografija. Nastojim da u sadašnjosti sačuvam ono što je prošlo, da prošlost (pre)oblikujem i utvrdim moguće kretanje ka budućnosti. Socijalističku istoriju ne shvatam kao nešto što je naprosto prošlo i što je sačuvano u nepromenljivom obliku. Ona se za potrebe mog umetničkog rada pojavljuje kao tvorevina koja se gradi i menja. Svaki otkupljeni ili pronađeni arhivski dokument prelaskom u umetnički kontekst postaje novi dokument, u koji upisujem univerzalno i lično iskustvo vezano za politička dešavanja nekad i sad.
Eksperimentalni film Crvena, da te nema, trebalo bi te izmisliti1 nastaje upravo u skladu s takvom logikom rada, i to kroz kombinovanje arhivskih dokumenata Antifašističkog fronta žena Jugoslavije (1947/49) i arhivske slike s jedne strane i konstruisanog iskustva ДРУГарице Ракич2 i njenog alter ega (Vladimira Bjeličića)3 s druge, stvarajući sliku koja je dokumentaristički pojednostavljena, a čiji smisao nastaje povezivanjem kadrova i uspostavljanjem njihovih međusobnih odnosa. Fokusiran je na problematiku ženske emancipacije u posleratnoj Jugoslaviji, a kritikuje interpretacije i kodove socijalističke ideologije kako u istorijskom tako i u savremenom kontekstu.
U današnjoj vladavini demokratskog patrijarhata, ne samo da nemamo nijednu žensku političku organizaciju koja bi zastupala naše intrese i prava već smo i svoju revolucionarnu prošlost veštački prevazišli, a ulogu žena u njoj zaboravili, umanjili i samim tim uništili. Feminističko ukazivanje na žensko pismo, govor i delovanje na postjugoslovenskom prostoru nije ni danas popularno, jer je društvo prilagođeno muškoj umetnosti, a svako istupanje iz očekivanih okvira podseća na komunističku prošlost, koju ne samo da je teško prihvatiti već se (ne)sme prihvatiti. U vladavini demokratskog patrijarhata većina žena/umetnica se ne oseća počinjeno (ne znajući da zapravo jeste), iako današnja politika i ideologija nameću svoja pravila, po kojima su marksizam i feminizam – kao jedni od temeljnih projekata epohe modernosti kojoj pripadaju – demode.
Vizuelni sadržaj samoproglašene jugoslovenske heroine ДРУГарица Ракич4 nastaje na preseku umetnosti i poezije, vizuelnosti i jezika ili gledanja i čitanja. Njenu ličnu istoriju ne prepravljam, već iznova stvaram, kroz propitivanje ličnog i kolektivnog identiteta, kao dela jugoslovenske istorije i nasleđa. Neki od slogana su: „Ubili ste prošlost u ime apstraktne budućnosti ubili ste prokletu budućnost u ime slavne prošlosti šta sad hoćete; – Na strah treba trošiti snagu a ja sam lenja žena5: – Ako ja nisam heroj šta je onda heroj6; – Moji živci su istorijski oštećeni7; – Ne pripadam većini jer mogu da me navedu da lažno svedočim; – Hronično sam obolela od zloupotrebe8; – Svoje poraze znam napamet; – Od neke babe brđanke ostalo mi čudo u oku; – On se zaklinjao domovini meni se spavalo; – Tako je malo heroja ako izuzmem one koje sam sama nesrećno izmislila; – Revolucija nije mrtva ona je samo silovana; – Samo još tebi raste vrednost u vreme sezonskog sniženja; – Nisam rodila junaka moj prilog istoriji je ništavan; – Moja sloboda nije po vašem ukusu; – Žene ne varajte se više srušite današnje društvo i podignite društvo u kome će te biti slobodne; -Tebi je nepoznata hrabrost žene; …“. Poruke nastaju po uzoru na parole socijalističkog perioda čiji su diskursi bili orijentisani na tuđe reči, na opšte istine, koje pripadaju svima i nikome posebno. Svakodnevno ih beležim, prepravljam, prekrajam,(samo) izmišljam i prilagođavam svom umetničkom arhivu i privatnom legatu. Ispisujem ih gde god zgodno mesto nađem – od arhivskih dokumenata, preko grafičkih listova, slikarskog platna do kafanskih računa. Nudeći publici dva čitanja: jedno neposredno, drugo između redova.
Smrt Fašizmu – Sloboda Narodu !
Foto arhiva ДРУГарице Ракич:9101112131415.
Tekst je napisan u saradnji sa Simonom Ognjanović (2022).
1Ilustracija: Eksperimentalni film Crvena, da te nema, trebalo bi te izmisliti, 2021./20’ 09’’, 68. Martovski festival - Beogradski festival dokumentarnog i kratkometražnog filma. Dom omladine Beograda, Foto: Aleksandrija Ajduković.
