RETRIBUTION
By Dragan Ilic
www.draganilic.org
18h
14 September 2011
Trg republike
ispred Staklenca
The urgency for 'RETRIBUTION' on all five continents, an interactive site specific critical performance installation by Dragan Ilic, came about in recognition of the economic, religious, political, generational but most of all epistemological crisis affecting the entire planet.
"RETRIBUTION", which will begin in Europe (Belgrade), and continue in Asia, Africa, Australia, South America, ending in the U.S.A is a critical act about the power structures not allowing the necessary changes to the system.
The idea for this high-risk worldwide retributive justice conceptual art project evolved out of Dragan Ilic's previous performances- 'THE PEOPLE I DON'T LIKE' - which he began in Australia in 1977.
The world's problems have reached a boiling point worldwide, a crisis shared simultaneously through the use of social media, a key organizing tool. People, but particularly the young and minorities have been marginalized; they can no longer sustain the growing mega gap between rich and poor, old and new beliefs and value systems. The biggest stumbling block, however, is the fact that young people are not allowed to participate and contribute new ideas; the social and political structures consistently exclude them. Therefore, critical masses at first grew into peaceful protests. Stubborn regimes did not want to accommodate change, and peaceful protests gave way, in a domino effect, to the uprisings and revolutions, most evident in the Middle East. Regimes could change only when millions of people were on the streets protesting and refusing to work.
HOLDING THE PERPETRATORS ACCOUNTABLE:
Dictators and politicians in every corner of the world have to be subjected to retributive justice and be held accountable for their deeds and actions. On Dragan Ilić's list are Bashar al Assad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, Silvio Berlusconi, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Muammar Gaddafi, Hu Jintao, Benjamin Netanyahu, Fidel Castro, Vladimir Putin, Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong-il, Rush Limbaugh, Tomislav Nikolic, U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner, Michele Bachmann, a right-wing 2012 U.S. Republican presidential candidate, and multinational companies Exxon, Shell, BP, Siemens, Monsanto (genetic engineering crops) that rule the world and politicians.
Photographs of politicians (size 30 x 42 cm) with descriptions of their bad deeds and actions and photographs with logos of multinational companies will be nailed through with sharpened red pencils, a symbol of the necessary critical action and consequent epistemological revolution.
Dragan Ilić and spectators will nail photographs down on the ground or on the walls, trees, facades. After the nailing is completed, we will leave them on the site.
The entire process will be documented by photographs and video and will be exhibited on various locations around the world. The first exhibition, after the completion will take place at the Video Pool Media Arts Center, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dragan Ilić is a (1948), transnational (Serbian - Australian - American )experimental artist and activist who lives and works in New York and Belgrade. For the last forty-five years. Ilic's work has been featured in twenty solo and 200 group exhibitions, in performance spaces, galleries, and museums internationally: Documenta 7, Fashion Moda Group 1982, East village in PS 1, MoMa, the Center for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade, Queens Museum of Art. In April, 2010, he performed at the Museum of Science in Boston during National Robotics Week.
