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Video stills by Louis Detroit
Lust is a psychological force producing intense desire for something, or circumstance while already having a significant amount of the desired object. Lust can take any form such as the lust for sexuality (libido), money, or power.
In a black box theatre, surrounded by the audience, Serbian artist Branko Milisković performs an erotic dreamy situation in which the body touches, feels and smears itself, supported by the mesmerising sound piece of the same title, produced for the radio back in 2021, adjusted for this performance. The viewer is drawn into the scene as a voyeur, witnessing the image of seduction and pure pleasure of self delusion. The smooth body that radiates and mediates between the conscience and the primitive desires, becomes a fetishised object, a symbol of sexual desire that is self-stimulating, but also as a political body, a symbol of manipulation, greed, power and crime.
Artist: Branko Milisković
Sound: Croatian Radio 3, Zagreb
Mobility supported by Saša Marčeta Foundation
Online translation from Serbian
Artist Branko Miliskovic on the occasion of the New York performance LUST, in an interview for today
In order to perform, you have to be a maniac in every way.
Belgrade//
Artist Branko Miliskovic will perform his new performance titled LUST tj. Lust, Saturday 9. at the TANK Theatre in New York.
The performance depicts a naked, eroticized body, present on stage, accompanied by a very seductive and hypnotic sound background.
“This is not a play, but a surreal moment, without a past and a future, where the audience as a” public voyeur “observes a scene in which passion, taboo, primal sexual lust and self – deception are intertwined,” Miliskovic said in an interview for Danas.
Among the most important works of this artist in the past year, the FUTURE BELONGS to them, which was created in the form of photographic work, and began to develop in New York and at the residence in Graz as a collection of video, photo and text installations.
Several of his works were shown at the beginning of February this year in the gallery “Menjačnica” of the Goethe Institute in Belgrade, and the second part as a performative and video installation in the Kunsthaus in Graz, within the exhibition “Body and Territory”.
We talked with the artist about the particularity of performance art, but also about how its importance in institutionalized art circles is still not recognized enough.
To get to his current creation, we looked into the past and found out what attracted him to performance art. At the very beginning, Miliskovic reveals that in his biography it says that he is the last generation of Tito’s pioneers. But to him, this means only as a historical reference, the period of the end of Yugoslavia as a socio-political construct and the beginning of a new turbulent order that we still cannot define.
The art of soc realism, nurtured by communism, was characterized by the art of the NOB and Salon Art, The Art of classical painting, sculpture and graphics. However, at the end of the 1960’s and 1970’s, the art of the new avant-garde was born in this region, such as the art of body art and performance, which, along with Marina Abramović, a certain group of artists and art historians created in the “late” Student Cultural Center. The performance of the seventies was a performance of rebellion, body art. In the 1980’s, performance almost disappeared from the scene, as most artists return to painting and sculpture in order to survive. In the 1990s, the performance returns to the scene, but somehow more through video and installation. I am performance artist of the first decades of the new millennium – explains Milisković.
Branko Milisković began his artistic education as a sculptor, but in the second year of his studies he started to be interested in performance. It all started, he says, with listen to contemporary “classical” music. This helped him to recognize the power and importance of experiment and risk in art. At the same time, it also made him wonder where he was heading with his art of sculpting. He realized he needed something more.
The art of sculpture and visual art in general taught me the form. But when you finish, the question is what happens next. That’s how the idea for performance was born. I have always been interested in everything about this artistic expression, but I never wanted to be part of any established art form. From opera I was interested in the voice, from the music I was interested in vibrations, not the playing of an instrument, from the acting I took the body in space and time, not the acting itself… Performance art for me was “total art” – a Wagner coin that signifies that one takes and builds one’s own art from different forms of art. A work in which I will not have a director, an actor, but instead I will be an artist who builds a work, from beginning to end, and ultimately performs it himself – Miliskovic explains.
Asked whether his work can be verbalized, the artist points out that the interaction during the performance must be experienced, but he manages to conjure it with words.
“Performance art is demanding and difficult, because it is still nobody’s territory. It is based on the cult of personality. You just have to make a cult out of yourself to get an audience. I don’t like it in politics, but I like it in art and literature. When I read someone’s biography, I need to look at a photo of that man or woman, to get to know the person behind the work… – explains Milisković, drawing attention to the importance of researching the details and delving into the context of the act itself.
In order to be a maniac, you have to be a maniac in every way. And your work should be iconic.
“It can’t be done by a ‘normal’ person who works from nine to five, only by someone who is absolutely willing to sacrifice himself for the urge. My passion for art comes from my libido, i.e. my stomach. Everything that happens must accumulate this extreme sexual energy and desire, which is later transported and transposed into different forms. If you don’t have it in your stomach – forget about the performance – the artist points out, explaining that even without the “physical presence” this artistic expression cannot be realized.
The physical presence, it reveals, depends on many things, but above all the ego. The Ego has to be so powerful that it becomes unbearable on the stage.
“In life it is a disaster, but on stage the ego has to scream because the scene is huge and you have to make yourself a totem that is three times bigger, wider and more voluminous in order to be able to broadcast energy and personality in space. On the big stage, I do not need troops and dancers, I know how to consume the entire space with my own body, ” Miliskovic said.
The artist also expresses a controversial thought that some have already resented him, and it is: creativity is fatal for the artist. According to Milisković, only when 95% of the creative construction is completed in the head of an artist, can it move on to the scene. Improvisation for him is not an option, but adaptation is necessary.
“If you do not have a concept that is clear and structured enough, but start improvising on stage, you have to be either an absolute master of improvisation or you gonna make nonsense,” Miliskovic noted.
Asked whether there is room in this context for spontaneous and intuitive action, subconscious expression, the artist answers – perhaps in stand-up comedy, but I leave that to Entertainment.
It’s entertainment, and performance is not entertainment. Performance is a strict concept. When it rains, it will fall, and no one will ask the rain. It’s the same with performance. That is why it is a special form of art – points out Milisković.
Performance, he explains, creates energy that is channeled through a clear concept, and thus exchanged with the audience. The process begins with “scanning”, i.e. getting to know the audience, then taking energy, i.e. attention. The artist turns into an absolute and begins to create a boomerang effect.
Milisković realizes his works throughout Europe and America, however, we asked him for his view of the domestic scene. He notes that in Serbia we get the illusion that the art scene is happening, but that the reality is unfortunately sad.
“It intrigues me that we have no budget and have nothing – pure human energy, ideas that are exploited here to such an extent for no money, which is devastating. It looks that our art scene is booming rich and vibrates all the time, but it is not going anywhere, no one deals with it, except the people here. Our artists do not exist outside the borders of the former Yugoslavia, with some exceptions, are not included in international biennials, is not written about them in international art magazines – notes Milisković, adding that the reason for this is of a deeper nature.
As an example, he states that artists from Bosnia and Croatia were more exotic during the nineties. They had more space and opportunities. In the late 90s and early 2000s, for God knows what reasons, we (Serbians) were interesting. Now, the artist explains, Ukrainian artists and those from the Middle East are popular, while black and indigenous art in America have primacy.
“As a professional artist, who lives and earns from his work, you have to stand up and say – it’s discrimination, I want to work and create. But there is an absolute struggle with institutions and their programs. And performance art is in an even more special problem because it disrupts the structure of all festivals, biennials and other events, because it fails to be easily incorporated into the program – says Milisković.
In fact, performances sometimes last for days and fail to adapt to the structure of a museum, where after 6PM you go home. This attitude towards performance is contrary to artistic ideas.
“I’m inspired by things like the scene in Lynch’s movie Mulholland Drive, when two female protagonists go to the famous Theater – Club Silencio in the middle of the night, where an illusion happens on stage. That’s what I want to establish! Something that lasts and disrupts the administration of the institution. And that has its own rules and regulations-concludes Branko Milisković.
Una Miletić
Purchase your tickets here: https://thetanknyc.org/calendar-1/lust
For non Serbian speakers, here is a revised Google translate of an interview with me for Nedeljnik
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Your current exhibition at the Goethe Institute was created in New York. What was the idea in that first second, or minute, when you started thinking about it?
The project “The future belongs to them” began in Belgrade at the end of 2021, with a photographic work of the same title in collaboration with photographer Danilo Mataruga. When I started working on that intriguing portrait holding a test tube with an unknown biological weapon, I initially wanted to make a visual artefact of the manipulative and unpredictable times we live in, not knowing that we would sail from a pandemic to a war in Ukraine. In November of last year, I left for New York to strategically shoot several video works with slogans that I constructed. So I held the slogan “Your genocide is bigger than mine” in front of the UN headquarters, and “Next time we will be more than prepared” in Times Square and in front of the 9/11 memorial in New Jersey.
In some accompanying descriptions of the exhibition, unofficial, circles of friends characterize your exhibition as socially and politically engaged. Do you agree with that? And was that an idea too?
I often say that I was born in an area of great and constant political turmoil, where people in power can only be removed by assassination, natural death or bombing; that I am the last generation of ‘Tito’s pioneers’, accordingly, my body and my being is a political construct, so my works are also the result of all that. I believe that an artist should be socially and politically aware and that engagement is an inevitable consequence of detecting problems and natural revolt.
Is it desirable for art to be socially engaged because the analysis of society should not only be provided by sociologists, political analysts, but also by artists?
I think it is my duty to analyze and criticize the time in which I live through my art; to influence the consciousness of my contemporaries and through the works I create, to encourage people to see more clearly the socio-political circumstances that surround us, to recognize the hypocrisy of society and to react uncompromisingly to injustice, crime, corruption, and other pathologies, which over time, if not controlled, can become a desirable model of social behaviour and lead to fascism.
What was interesting when you were doing the installations in New Jersey, in front of the UN building? Were there any curious people or comments and why exactly in those places?
Installation ie. slogan in English “Your genocide is bigger than mine” in front of the UN headquarters in New York, I was filming in the “eye” of the hurricane that hit Florida the night before, and came weakened to Manhattan. The day was very warm for November, and the rain was pouring down from all possible directions. At the moment when I thought that my cameraman and I wouldn’t be able to film anything, and the night was already slowly starting to fall, as if the sky looked at us, the rain and wind stopped. We rushed to the UN Palace and were given six minutes to film a “guerrilla” performance. After that, it started raining again, driven by a strong wind. Two days later, while shooting a video installation in front of the little-known 9/11 memorial on the New Jersey shore, I couldn’t control passers-by jogging in front of my camera, mothers with small children in the distance walking in slow motion in wide frame, a shift of extreme clouds and the sun, which at times penetrated like a laser and “fried” my picture. Many things had to come together in short intervals in order to create these works. The slogan “Your genocide is greater than mine” could only happen in front of the headquarters of all nations, and for the slogan “Next time we will be more than ready” my intuition chose a place in front of two tall steel columns by the Hudson River, which belonged to the collapsed twin towers of the World Trade Center.
The future is a privilege…
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Branko Milisković
Interview by Branko Rosić
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