SKART Đ ADDIONAL SURVIVAL COUPONS

DRAGAN PROTIC AND DORDE BALMAZOVIC, BELGRADE, 1997-2000

Additional survival coupons

Skart Beograd, July 2002

SKART is an experimental art and design group, founded in 1990 by Dragan Protic and Dorde Balmazovic (Belgrade), whose work is based on the »critical communication« through the distribution, actions and open-media incitation of their skart-products. »SURVIVAL COUPONS«, produced by Skart, are the warning objects of living/social and personal controls, limits and wishes by the actions in public spaces (as the first level of irritation/incitation/ communication) and web-sited for the other (potential) consumers. Reactions and comments will be recorded and performed/presented as the second level of REAL SURVIVAL CONDITION.

Additional SURVIVAL COUPONS:

Đ production of coupons for: orgasm, miracle, fear, power, masturbation, money, against, more, revolution, ... the end

Đ street actions: distribution of coupons at country fairs, distribution of coupons in queues for oil and bread, distribution of coupons on makeshift street stalls, distribution of coupons at other people's exhibitions, distribution of coupons after cinematic screenings Ľ distribution of coupons at political rallies, throwing coupons into mailboxes ...

The seventh year of war already (depending on how and from which point you count). To be in Belgrade at that time meant to be a couple of hundred of kilometres from bloodsoaked, thundering battlefronts, and at the same time, keep up a false impression of being able to keep the distance and aloofness of the citizens of »a country which is actually not at war«, which is what the former regime was barking and blustering through all of its media mouthpieces.

»It's good, it could be worse,« murmur people in queues for oil and bread, in queues meandering around banks promising deceptive hyper-high interests on their meagre deposits, in queues for public transport. »It's good, we have no war here«, people used to say before the war broke out. Now, when this plague eventually knocked at our door, a new (worse) system of values was devised. Trivial matters are important. Pushing and shoving around the remnants of their small lives, people managed to forget what had brought them to this point and where this would all lead to.

Experiences of occupied/controlled territories in World War II, then collective poverty in course of realist- utopian reconstruction and development period, followed by »shortages and crises« during the »stabilisation« of society in the era of self-management type of socialism offered an excellent opportunity to establish a new order by means of Additional Survival Coupons. Hideous past, which no one wants to remember Đ against hideous present, which no one wants to face.

Through notions and terms which people were quite reluctant to confront (fear, power...) or simply felt embarassed at the mention of these expressions (orgasm, masturbation) we endeavoured to clear up the space of (self-)criticism and draw the last remaining traces of thought that still had not sunk into dismal and hopeless everyday life routine.

After initial rejection, abusive and insulting comments (»you're the ones to blame for this«, »spies«, »leave us alone«...) and even violence (tearing coupons in fits of rage in queues for daily bread, fight at the country fair in the village of Beli Potok...), coupons had gradually become a local means of communication (people began collecting, exchanging them, even planting coupons on other people), and finally the last ones, »coupons for the end«, were warmly welcomed with optimist-critical comments (»I just don't know how to send them to him«, referring to the Yugoslav president S. Milosevic), »Give me a couple of coupons more to leave them to a mobster in my neighbourhood«...). Strategy of small steps still lives on.

http://www.institutdesign.com/bien/site/ pparticu/skart/skart.html