Exhibition - Autopsia: The Mirror of Destruction

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Exhibition - Autopsia: The Mirror of Destruction
March 11 - April 11, 2010

Exhibition opening: Thursday, March 11, 2010, at 8 p.m.
Exhibition curator: Dejan Sretenović
Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Pariska 14, Belgrade

The Autopsy comes out of nowhere. There is no place of origin or address. It first appeared in the fanzines Bank Rot and Prose Selavy in 1980, its biography has not been written to this day, the available information about it is scarce and reduced to several texts and reproductions. In principle, it is non-communicative, hermetic, and elitist. It enjoys a cult status in the narrow circles of fans of industrial music, it is distinguished by a respectable discography, it held only two concerts at the beginning of its non-career. It exhibited hits visual production several times (ending in 1987), and then arbitrarily let it be forgotten. Its theme is death, the method of repetition, and its speech impersonal. The Autopsy is an autochthonous and bastard offshoot of the independent and intermedia subcultural scene formed around punk and the new wave, but whose program and goals go beyond the joy of home-made production and club celebrations of the eruptive death of the creator of socialist Yugoslavia, the beginning of the ideological-institutional crisis of the Yugoslav system. Culture-art and the general feeling of "end" and being thrown into the uncertainty of the "zero states of being" of early post-socialism. The Autopsy, similar to Laibach (with whom it shares some aesthetic principles and visual-musical synergy), expressed a keen ear for the historical pregnancy of the moment and recognized an open space for artistic intervention in the very fabric of political economy of culture. With its conceptually profound, theoretically informed, content-exclusive, and linguistically intriguing projects, Autopsia positions itself in the space between "high" and "low" culture, mainstream and alternative, imposing itself, retroactively, as one of the most authentic and uncompromising art projects in the former Yugoslavia.

(Dejan Sretenovic)

The exhibition will present selected works from the visual opus of Autopsy from 1980 until today (graphic works, books, and fanzines, experimental films, computer art, photography, texts) as well as music documentation and an auditorium.

Autopsia is a depersonalized art projection that deals with music, art, and film production. Autopsia brings together authors of different professions in the realization of their projects. The artistic practice began in London in the late 1970s and was continued in the 1980s in the art centers of the former Yugoslavia. Since 1990, Autopsia has been operating from Prague. At the beginning of its operation, Autopsia released a dozen MCs, and in the period after 1989, about twenty CDs. The compositions of the Autopsy can also be found in numerous compilations published by various publishers around the world. The music production is accompanied by extensive visual production that includes original graphic objects, design of flyers, booklets, CDs, books, and movies, as well as the website autopsia.net and its branches "Autopsia TV" and "Illuminating Technologies".

www.autopsia.net
www.illuminating-technologies.com

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Artifactography
Solo exhibitions:
Economy of Death, SKC, Belgrade, 1985
Alvernia, SKC, Belgrade, 1985
Death of the Machine, CM Gallery, Osijek, 1987

Group exhibitions:
Groups in Yugoslav Art of the 1980s, Meander Gallery, Apatin, 1987
Modern & Postmodern, SKC, Belgrade, 1987
Marginal Peculiarities: Avant-garde Art of Ex-Yugoslavia 1914–1989, MSUV, Novi Sad, 2006

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