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Man of Great Gesture 


ARCHITECT AND EXTREMIST. Milan Mijalkovic is, in every aspect, willing to give space. If this space is infinite, even the better.



Milan Mijalkovic seems to dance on the sympathetic fine line of self-irony and self-inflation. Sitting in the non-smoking area of Vienna’s Café Stein with a notebook in front of him, which helps him to deconstruct his „dumpling-like thoughts“, as he calls them. Actually, it is a collection of theses, whereby he knows their most important representatives he already knows, while introducing his thoughts with words like „I just recently found out that…“.
What he just found out, is that it is easy to categorize irony. He found out that superstition is the best working system for everyday life. „I can just leave responsibility to my grandma and black cats.“

In the case of Mijalkovic, we really deal with a fanatic when it comes to responsibility. This is also connected to his profession. Being an applied architect, he states: „Architecture is an art form with a very high standard of responsibility. The aesthetic and planning responsibility for living space lies in your hand, how people will live for generations.“ Hence, whoever wants to be an architect, has to take responsibility, he argues.
Two years ago, he did this in the biggest style imaginable. „I, Milan Mijalkovic, take full responsibility for all natural disasters of the last 2,000 years.“ He printed this statement on a poster. To enable others to take their part in this martyr-like gesture, he auctioned the responsibilities in well documented portions. A scenic act of privatizing, in conscious opposition to his actual ideas and goals.

In the centre of those goals we find democracy and its development. In the Red Carpet Showroom, Mijalkovic presents a flag showing on it the simple yet powerful slogan EVERYTHING (German ALLES), as a reaction to pessimistic future scenarios as well as wrong handling of Europe’s integration politics. Everything, he claims, demands the necessary democratizing of everything: The room, the strength, and the infinity.

2015
Text: Mareike Boysen
English translation: Carsten Schmidt
Magazine: VORMagazin
Thanks to: Manuel Gras and Red Carpet



Copyright: Milan Mijalkovic, 2020