Dante Catches Light

Johannes Rauchenberger / 2009

Why Inferno and Paradise need a still life, a forest, a light bulb test station and a shining suit: notes on Zlatko Kopljar’s K12 and K13

How can competing conflict fields of contemporary understanding of the world – like micro- and macro-politics, localness and globalism, post-capitalism and post-socialism, materialist approach and metaphysical points of reference – develop an aesthetically uncompromising potential? The Croatian artist Zlatko Kopljar, whose work we can position at the intersection of visual art and performance, has since the 90s developed “constructions”1 (“K”s) to achieve that aim. They “map”2 his body into those tension zones with an immense demand for presence.

As a “public body”3, the artist embodies a radical representative function; in Zlatko Kopljar’s “constructions” the ethical element is manifested as “essential definition of his artistic act”4. The artist’s criticism is directed at blank self-reflection, even autism that he finds in contemporary social relations, but no less also in the conformity of artistic activities. However, Kopljar’s only moving force for his constructions is his inner voice. If we consider his criticism, this sounds almost too nice to be true, especially because maybe everyone at some point called this motive his or her own. But when have we forsaken this inner voice? When are we compelled to forsake it? For example then, when we expect success? Or when we reach economic awareness? Or the will for power?

With this uncompromising attitude in his artistic acts, Kopljar goes so far as to stage “pure impotence”5 without getting kitschy in the process. This can have the consequence that he simply kneels in New York, in front of the temples of cultural, economic or political power (K9); that he marks the spot on the asphalt road between Croatia and Bosnia only with the date of his father’s death from a bomb (K6); or that he obstructs the entrance into the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb with a seven-ton concrete block (K4)6 “It was actually this idea of construction that in conceptual respect gave Kopljar creative freedom, openness, and flexibility of form, as well as liberation from any usual artistic classification.”7

With a “kind of new existentialism” (M. Šuvaković8) Kopljar puts his confidence into the convincing power of images, interchanging between concept, construction and strong feelings: both last “constructions”, K12 (2007) and K13 (2009), presented in this book, shift the performative power of presence from the existential unconditionality of the performer into the demand for his validity in the core of indifference of contemporary perception of life. As a hybrid installation, K12 is about the ambiguity of existential borderline experiences which are shown in the form of a happening consisting of hopelessness, failure, and death, and their transfer into a kind of “other world”. K13 compresses a light figure, a light carrier, a house of light, and a light sphere in an interconnected visual experience that rises to an aesthetically unconditional counterpoint: the indifference of additions is turned into the unconditionality of glittering evidence by means a many times compromised metaphor.

K12

The connecting element of K12 and K13 is the experience of light. With K12 it is still a real visual experience of haptic sensing of a moon that fell to the ground as a wondrous metaphysical presence. In K13 this moon is still quoted, but simply left to lie in its place, because a much higher goal stands in front of the protagonist: to enter a house full of light bulbs. In both instances it is the forest that forms the beginning of images into which the artist puts his myths.

At dusk, on the verge of the forest, we witness a genre scene with half-empty bottles, a still life, so to say in a grand style, of a party in the country, acoustically accompanied by loud chirping of birds, but there is not a sign of “still alive”, because in the background the artist hanged himself on one of the trees. This desperate action is irreversible and the urge to witness it is an automatic media reaction. The editing is strict and the camera freezes the video in motion to a static image, there is no movement, only the slow dangling of the hanged in the rustling of the grove. This is the compressed time of an “after”, while the present dead corpse still hangs on the tree.

The performance artist Kopljar planned everything minutely: he wanted to turn a scene into a work of art where a situation that shows the total “post-“, the “afterwards” is frozen: party-like remains of the still life in the foreground, as if the witnesses had just left; they had a drink and went away. Obviously they actually were there. We can see what happens after the artist’s suicide, after the shock and after the regaining of awareness, before the real life takes its course again. We can only see the scene in which it is already too late, where everything is done, finished, definitely and irreversibly. The witnesses took refreshments, but left the hanged man on the tree. Precisely at this point of total absence and irreversibility, when the chirping of birds turns into threatening mockery, in the second video the artwork’s static camera changes into very animated zooms: we see the artist in his black suit and white shirt as he intimately fondles a light sphere, concentrated and totally focused, absorbed, even blissful. He kneels before the sphere watching it so intensely, as if the beauty of this image had mesmerized him. As a complete surprise, this video shows the moment of a possible transformation of life, maybe as a metaphysical act, as a visio beatifica (Joachim de Fiore) or simply as illusionist suggestion. In any case, Kopljar is here interested in a sensory, visual experience, detached from space and time, finally even in that “above which nothing greater can be imagined” (Anselm of Canterbury). Between the two videos we can see a photograph showing the artist before an illuminated structure. In comparison with the two videos, this is a longing gaze towards a house of light into which this person wants to enter. This is actually a kind of the author’s childhood dream, to enter this, in its pure light radiation almost surreal structure, the TEŽ-tower on the access road into the city of Zagreb, whose only purpose was obviously only in shining, which was of course even more perceptible at the time when the cities were not so over-illuminated.9 The interim station in the woods with the blissful visual experience of the desperately hanged protagonist in the juxtaposed video ends with the view of a house – this house, this tower is the aim of the latest K13.

K13

In Kopljar’s latest “construction”, K13, which will for the first time be shown at the Styria Autumn in the Minorite Gallery Graz and then at the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, this LIGHT TOWER becomes the place of an unconditional scene. It is again the forest that heralds the beginning of this transformation, but we do not see the protagonist either hanged or hugging the sphere; as a glittering light figure in a sophisticated suit he goes through the dark forest upwards, even disregarding the sphere that he fondled in K12; now it lies on the ground like a fallen full moon. Illuminations of medieval images showing the Creation irresistibly and timelessly picture the scene in which the world mutates into a small sphere with a large figure leaning over it. In the image memory of photography that in a seemingly faithful way depicts actual reality, the pictures of the rising Earth, shot exactly 40 years ago before the landing on the moon, have caused metaphysical shivers that juxtaposed the dimension of what is attainable to man to the vastness of the universe and the blackness of the sky as seen from the Moon. No matter if in K13 appears a thoroughly designed wearer of a light suit, a (literally translated) Lucifer, a Prometheus, a saved light figure that comes to the origin of its suit’s ability of illumination, or simply a salesman of lighting fixtures, at the end the often compromised metaphor – especially at the time of a glittering business – takes a victory.

Entering this industrial building from the 50s makes the mysterious interior of it visible: bulbs, bulbs, bulbs; spider web, iron doors, bulbs, bulbs, bulbs. Forty metres high, but only four metres narrow is this surrealistic structure that served as a test station for light bulbs – almost a museum item, because production has been transferred to China a long time ago. Now it has been 20 years from the definitive end of the secular Utopia of the 20th century, which at its beginnings for many presented the only alternative to capitalism of the 19th century and sacralized forms of government. It is the fine irony of ruling that it is the filament light bulb that at the beginning of the 21st century is turng into a symbol of a changing attitude to our resources, which does not have an impact only on the alleged technocrats from Brussels, but also on the deregulated market in the globalized trade: where do we actually get the light, not only for the illumination of thoughts, but above all for reaching a collective agreement on how we should proceed?

In the actually existing light bulb test station on the access road to Zagreb, which enables the socialist past of this city to charmingly participate in great light concepts of mankind, we become participants of an endless gaze of the light figure that has entered this space. The fascination of glaring bulbs – how much electricity is necessary for that? – is transformed into a gaze of absolute orientation. Walking past the bulbs on ten storeys mutates from aesthetic networking of a sensorily perceptive energy to implementation of a collective awareness of a literally enlightening ethics: enlightened insight enables responsible actions. “YOU ARE THE LIGHT OF THE CITY”.

“I believe”, says Zlatko Kopljar, “that with K13 I can establish a deeper connection between imagination and reality. I want to open a new field of truly common values. I would like this tower to become a house of light for this city in near future, a meeting and exchange place for the citizens of Zagreb. In this work I would like to link two concepts that normally get confused by city-planners, politicians, and project developers: the city as a theatre of collective awareness and the city as a theatre of collective, real events.”10 The civitas terrena of Zagreb is juxtaposed to a visionary event city of the artist: he means neither the old city centres of a European city, nor the churches with their sacred objects or apparition potential, also not shopping malls that will have an increasing impact on Zagreb, but a place of myth generation, of a real event, in complete opposition to the event location.

Kopljar is not leaving the question “What should we do?” in the symbolic form of delay, transcendence or plain satisfaction of urges and needs. His compromised and often misused metaphor draws the irresistible evidence of power that paralyses negativity. Considering climate changes it is a contemporary contribution to privatisation of a secularized necessity that Edison’s light bulb is being banned in the course of these months: energy relaunched so to say, and not at the expense of others, please. Also the origin of light must be thought of in mythical terms. Economy must necessarily experience a defeat there and even the relocation of the bulb production to China will not help in that matter. Light is, as Hans Blumenberg said in a memorable formulation, an absolute metaphor, insoluble in the world of notions11, which can though assume the form of aesthetic experience. Insofar is light a metaphor of truth.12 There, Zlatko Kopljar walks through the storeys of the light tower. Finally, for his unconditional demands at the time beyond all deconstruction, we can ascribe entirely Dantesque motives to him. However, Dante’s gaze towards Heaven and his view of Hell had primarily an appellative character, despite all scaremongers and negativists. The issue at hand is now and today. And the urgency, as Kopljar’s constructions show us, but also the history of the light bulb, does not subside.

A relaxed approach after all: in his time Dante simply came back from his walks through Heaven and Hell. As Zlatko Kopljar comes out of the TEŽ-tower that we can see glowing even from the helicopter perspective, his light bulb adventure ends. And so it does for us. The light figure is now simply gone.

But because exhibitions have the additional quality of being corporeal and real, subject to haptic and sensory experience, we can formulate a solace: the suit can be seen in reality. And it glows. This relic cannot be obtained even at the contemporary market: We have been embraced by light.

  1. For Zlatko Kopljar’s “constructions” see: Branko Franceschi: Resistance and Compassion
  2. See Miško Šuvaković (ed.): Mapping of the Body / with the Body, Zagreb 2005, p. 7-25
  3. 1996 performed Zlatko Kopljar his construction concept as a definition of his artistic work at the International Performance Week in Zagreb, The Public Body. See Franceschi: Resistance und Compassion, 32
  4. Ibid. 33
  5. Zlatko Kopljar in conversation with Johannes Rauchenberger at the exhibition
    Gestures of Infinity (Styria Autumn 2007), explains the K9.
  6. See note 2
  7. See note 4
  8. Compare  the essay by Miško Šuvaković in this book
  9. Email to J.R. on April 2nd 2009: “Long time ago, when I was 13-14 years old boy, I was passing Zagreb with my parents. It was night and tower of TEŽ was shining stronger than today. Since than tower was a mystery for me. Later, when I came to Zagreb I understood that tower is part of factory of lamps, that tower is examination station for electric lamps.”
  10. Email to J.R. on April 2nd 2009: “I believe that with K13 I’m making a deeper linking of imagination and reality. I want to establish a new field of collective values. I wish the tower will become a lighthouse of the city in the near future, a place of gathering and exchange of citizens of Zagreb. In this work I want to connect two concepts of the city, which usually confuse city planners, politicians and developers: the city as a theater of collective memory and the city as a theater of collective events.”
  11. Hans Blumenberg: Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie, Frankfurt/M., 1998, p. 12
  12. Hans Blumenberg: Licht als Metapher der Wahrheit, in: Studium generale 10, 1957, p.432-447