Marko A. Kovačič / Javka (Report point) at the Red Star

29 November 2007 Pešci, ground floor

javka -e ž (a)  / during NOB secret undercover place for maintaining communication between the partisan units, report point

General secretary: Marko A. Kovačič
Commissioner: Jadranka Ljubičič

The Slovenians have a special attitude towards history, and it's best illustration is the term ''half passed history''. The concept seems absurd, for how can something be just half passed? But at the same time this proves, that we regard history particularly. We only pick out what suits us now in the present to interpret past events. It's a selective and non-scientifical use of past events.  Within this, we witness the ideological construction of history for political purpose, which is being turned into mythology.
Collective amnesia or denying of past is only a proof, that we are destined to repeat it. But you cannot erase history, it is always present, it is a part of all of us. A part of a generation and life. Or as the ancient said ''Historia magistra vitae.'' Unfortunately this means, that we ought to be familiar with it.

The Slovenian region doesn't have a museum that would illuminate our past happenings after the II WW and before the independence of Slovenia. We can find the ground motifs for that in lack of museum infrastructure and unfortunately also in insignificant political interest, that would recognize that era as a relevant part of our past. Obviously not enough time has passed by, which would enable a much more impartial view of that period. There are too many personal and emotional bondings left, that prevent us to step aside while regarding everything.
So we leave the time to write history. But we must not remain indifferent. We must pay attention if the history is really being written as a scientific branch. So, let us construct our own history, and within that, let's leave the objects and stories tell their own faith captured in time and space.

The artist Marko A. Kovačič has been constructing, restoring and collecting different sorts of objects from the era of socialism for several years. He is combinig objects and its' contents into read-made artefacts, that carry within themselves the artist's and the collective memory or history. The constant recycling of memory is upgraded with new contents, to which the artist adds new constructed meaning.  For that the object isn't taken it's own identity, but while constructing it's new identity it gains and confirms it's own being. By being aware of the historic role of an object, it's existance is reestablished.
The essential characterisitcs of the projects of Mark A. Kovačič remain throughout complexity, interdisciplinarity and use of many different media. The boundaries between individual usages and dialects became unnecessary and have gone lost. Kovačič emploies in methods, strategy and procedures of all artistic practise and instruments of diverse media and expressive methods. With all that, he establishes an active and direct contact with the viewer. This artistic production could be indicated as a contemporary, witty bricolage (as the opposite to the narrow thinkig and strict specialization), in which art does not speek in language of the past, but as a virus, that modifies all of the further messages.