He Is Lying, He Is Not Lying
This man takes responsibility for all natural disasters of the last 2,000 years. Deliberately? Why him? An encounter.
“Seven
Euros for the dead Africans!“, he screams like being on a market.
The auction start offer is shouted through the steril room. In times
of war and refugees, such a call sounds more than just politically
incorrect. Yet, as part of a series of auctions taking place in
Vienna these days, many other tragedies are at stake. Natural
disasters, and the responsibility for those disasters. „Seven
Euros, ten…fifteen, twenty…One…“ - „Twenty-five!“, calls
a female voice from the back. The epidemic in Nigeria, causing 1,700
deaths in 2009, finds interest in the visitors to this auction in the
gallery Bildraum. The
auctioneer’s index finger shoots in to the second row: „Forty,
Three!“ Applause,
followed by restlessness in the room. Next set. Flood in India 2013,
5,000 deaths.
The current holder of the responsibility for this
disaster stands next to the auctioneer, with parted hair and the
gesture of a ruling person, his hands put on a small white desk with
a stack of acquirable certificates. He
already showed his big mouth beforehand. „I, Milan Mijalkovic of
Macedonia…“ …meaningful pause … „take full responsibility
for all natural disasters of the last 2,000 years. By choice.“ Just
out of generosity, he furthermore decided to share parts of it.
„We
shall be careful when dealing with people who take responsibility in
a big-mouthed manner“, says philosopher K.P. Liessmann. This 35
year old Milan Mijalkovic really oozes a big-mouthed manner, showing
deep wrinkles on his forehead and chuzpe behind his deep eyes. What
does he want to do with this responsibility? Why does he take on
something no one would have to? Shall we be careful when dealing with
him?
It
is a foggy winter’s morning, when Mijalkovic enters the Café Hotel
Imperial on Vienna’s Ringstraße. It
is one of the most prestigious places in town, known since the days
of the Kaiser, meeting place of the rich and the powerful. Mijalkovic
takes off his dark-grey coat and orders a soup and a glass of beer.
This is something, he says, which is affordable everywhere, pointing
out that the places of powerful people, the deciders who define their
social position by their wallet, shall not be left to them alone.
Mijalkovic
is not a member of this social club of deciders. Born 1981 in the
Macedonian capital Skopje, he left the country and came to Vienna
shortly before the war broke out between Albanian rebels and troops
of the Macedonian
The
truth is actually boring, he says. Being a student for architecture,
he received a students visa; he stayed and works as an architect and
free artist. Whereby he says, the occupations cannot actually be
separated from one another. To his mind, architecture is a highly
responsible art. It defines how people live, it creates and generates
social interaction. Yet Mijalkovic wants more. „I want to provide
space inside the heads.“
As
he says, he uses the space to handle the responsibility. For the last
13 years, legend has it, he collected details and facts on natural
disasters, set up categories and built up a private archive for them.
The thought behind it: „The biggest responsibility is taken by
fictitious figures.“ God, for instance, has been the one figure
taking almost all responsibility. „People did not have to worry
that much. Yet, since the days of enlightenment, this has changed.“ Hence,
Mijalkovic took this task. He initially took responsibility for his
archive of disasters seven years ago as part of a performance, where
he publicly declared his task, and hereby stylized himself as a
godlike figure. This has nothing to do with guilt, he says. What
matters is the act.
Politicians take responsibility for mishaps and
suggest they function as a kind of martyr acting in an altruistic
manner by holding their feet to the fire for the people. For
terrorists, he claims, the deed is often less important than the
message to the public, that they take responsibility for. This
sometimes leads to situations where TV experts have difficulty in
deciding what confessor’s note or video is reliable. Things
are not that different in art. It is hard to find art projects that
do not claim to take „social responsibility“ in their vindicatory
descriptions. „Today,
artists in Western Europe are expected to take responsibility. The
artist should depict social defects of society.“ Critical art is
easy to handle for the system, Mijalkovic argues, while expressing
his anger towards symbols of status such as walls of CEOs and bright
offices of politicians full of art. It has become a hobby for
oligarchs and prosecco drinking visitors of vernissage shows. To
Mijalkovic, this is first of all: „Boring“.
Instead
of taking a role in the background of this system, Mijalkovic went a
step beyond. „I hope to exceed all expectations with that. They
expect from me to be responsible? Well, so I take all responsibility
for natural disasters.“
In
stead of pointing at unjustness, these performances turn around the
roles. Yet, this alone, is not enough, Mijalkovic says.
„When you
really want to take responsibility, you have to share it.
It does not
work another way in this system.“ Following this approach, the next
step for his project developed. To stand in the middle of the art
market and auction parts of the selected natural disasters publicly.
A scenery which, on the one hand, could not be more off-taste, and
also not more enlightening. „Nature becomes big art“, explains
Mijalkovic with big gesture, „The sublime elements are for sale.“
If
the art business is self-important - Mijalkovic can push this to
another level. The artist - a master of staging himself „I
am god, I am the first victim“, says one of his slogans that he
likes to utter full of pathetic gesture and subtle irony, making his
work more ambiguous and transparent at the same time.
The
semolina soup, brought by the waiter with a decent bow at our table
of the Café Imperial, has gone cold. Instead of taking the spoon,
Mijalkovic repeatedly opens his blue notebook full of yellow post-it
notes with thoughts, fragments of sentences and ideas. „Democracy?“
is the title of one Suhrkamp book, a collection of essays written by
left-wing thinkers like Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Zizek. Democracy
will be the focus of Mijalkovic’s next solo exhibition in the
Kunsthaus Vienna. To the artist, this exhibition represents a logical
consequence. „With the responsibility thing, I excelled myself“,
he states in a confident tone. He even fell into a crisis, until the
epiphany hit. He himself, Milan Mijalkovic, now had to become
democracy. Usually, he is facing a pitiful view of being a victim of
an inferior system. „To many, I am the poor guy from Eastern Europe
who came to the West, now being able to take free decision and take
responsibility for the first time.“
„Precondition
to all Responsibility is the freedom of the human being“, as K. P.
Liessmann says. „Only free people can act in a responsible manner.“ Hence,
Mijalkovic argues: „So, if everything is possible, now I am total
democracy.“
Just
before Mijalkovic leaves the Café of the Viennese elite, he comes
back to his own story. He wants, so his promise, to think of a good
story. For, as he confesses, in art, he always tries to be a liar:
„By lying, truth can be found, and even more than the simple truth.
Yet, to take responsibility for sheer lies is much more complicated
than for things that are obvious“, states the master of
self-staging. „To lie in a responsible way, you have to think about
the person in opposite much more. You always have to be present.“
2016
Text: Judith E. Innerhoferfoto
English translation: Carsten Schmidt
Photo: Sigmund Steiner
Text: Judith E. Innerhoferfoto
English translation: Carsten Schmidt
Photo: Sigmund Steiner
Copyright: Milan Mijalkovic, 2020