Marina Gržinić – Mauhler (Ed.), The Last Futuristic Performance

In the Ljubljana of the eighties, one could trace projects that were based on the idea of reconstruction of famous art works of the avant-garde art tradition. The examples of such happening are the projects that took place in 1986 in Galerija ŠKUC – The Last Futuristic Performance by Kazimir Malevič, the international exhibition of modern art (Armory Show) and the lecture Walter Benjamin: Mondrian ’63 – ’96. The author (authors?) of the projects remains unknown to the wider public; he namely uses the names of famous, but already deceased artists. The whole affair is a trend and research in the field of contemporary art, that is totally parallel to the world trends – artistic concepts. The author (authors?) has presented himself in New York in the nineties with the concept Salon de Fleurus, a project of paintings reconstruction and the ambient of a Paris apartment (on the Fleurus street – Rue de Fleurus) of Gertrude Stein from the beginning of the 20th century. In this case, the issue is an extraordinary fictionalization of history, an almost theatrical staging of a literary myth from the beginning of the century, that nevertheless poses key questions about the birth of modern art and the present system of observation of art production.