REMOVED FROM THE CROWD: Dionysian Socialism, (Non)Action, Delayed Audience
/Open research/ @ Tranzitdisplay, Prague

Removed From the Crowd is an ongoing research and publishing project focusing on conceptual and experimental artistic and curatorial practices that challenged established notions of the public and the common. Based on the initial study of selected phenomena of the New Artistic Practice in Yugoslavia in the 1960s and 1970s, the project traces the histories of temporary "inoperative" communities and evolves around the notion of delayed, or postponed audience.

In collaboration with Tranzitdisplay, Prague and local researchers, artists and collaborators, a new constellation of the research archive is being formed daily, based on the interaction of the existing and new material. The Prague chapter of the research is focused on projects in Czechoslovakia from the 1960s and 1970s happening outside the sphere of immediate visibility, exploring the interstices between the action and escapism, individual and collective, the urban sphere and nature, immediate and delayed audience.
The methodology of research and its presentation is likewise based on rethinking the idea of audience and the imperative of visibility: the archive takes shape through one-on-one meetings with artists, art historians, 'witnesses'; potentially taking the form of a lecture for one where, the roles of the lecturer and audience get destabilized and interchangeable. It also questions the role of art historians and principles of formulating an interpretation. Instead of an enclosed procedure of creating an art historical interpretation, followed by the public presentation of it as a coherent and closed unit, the process of its formulation is open for interventions and contestation while in the making. The network of people involved thus becomes the immediate public of the research as well as participants in the interpretative procedure, a temporary community of individuals involved in the writing of art history, not unlike the communities around the artists of the period that is the topic of investigation.
As the collection of the research notes grows, anyone interested to join the process or contribute to the research is encouraged to get in touch and schedule a meeting.
*The title of the project is borrowed from a 1976 piece by Mladen Stilinović
...........................................................
Concept: Ivana Bago and Antonia Majaca (Institute for Duration, Location and Variables | DeLVe)
Research associate and coordinator: Vjera Borozan
Contact: delve@delve.hr
Supported by: Tranzitdisplay, Prague; Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports – Croatia; Zagreb City Office for Culture