seecult.org writes, "BEOGRAD, 21. avgusta (SEEcult.org) - Najnoviji rad beogradskog umetnika Milovana Destil Markovica "Prototype Tokyo" sa istoimene izlozbe u Tokiju, otvorene od 15. do 31. avgusta, predstavljen je u Galeriji umetnika Portala za kulturu jugoistocne Evrope SEEcult.org."

Najnoviji Markovicev rad moze se naci u Galeriji umetnika Portala SEEcult.org pored ostalih njegovih radova, izlaganih sirom sveta od 80-ih godina, od kada zivi i radi u Berlinu.

Izlozba "Prototype Tokyo" posebno je predstavljena i u tekstu Roberta Rida (Reed) u dnevniku "Jomiuri" (Yomiuri), u broju od 18. avgusta.

Milovan Markovic's 'Prototype' artwork
By Robert Reed
Special to The Daily Yomiuri

Milovan Markovic was an expatriate Yugoslav living in Berlin when he watched his country break apart in vitriol and savagery beginning in 1991. Two years earlier he had joined the celebration the night the Berlin Wall came down--it was his birthday. When the first Gulf War erupted in 1991, Markovic was in New York preparing for the opening of a one-man show at the PS1 Museum, and the work he created for that show would be the first of his Prototype installations that have gone on to reflect the tumult around him in a site-specific, time-specific series created in venues from Berlin to Belgrade.

On Monday, the exhibition Prototype Tokyo opened at the Nichido Contemporary Art gallery in Yurakucho, Tokyo, as the latest in the series. At the opening, the artist talked about his work and the theme of minority struggle that has dominated it--and world politics--since the end of the Cold War.

According to Markovic, the word "prototype" in the original Greek means a first or No. 1 creation. In the old Christian tradition, he says, Christ was referred to as the prototype of mankind, the first among God's creations of human beings in flesh and blood. After the Industrial Revolution, however, "prototype" came to mean the first model created in preparation for a new product or a new invention.

"To me, art is the process of making prototypes," Markovic said. "But I am not God, so I don't create, I invent. My art is a process of invention".

Two of the major artistic themes Markovic deals with in his work are the minority versus the majority and the complex issue of self defense. "After moving to Germany in 1986, I became very much aware of the tragedy of the Jewish minority that Hitler tried to exterminate in the Holocaust," the artist said. "Then I saw the minorities of the former Yugoslavia, my own country, fight each other. But when a group fights as a nation, they always fight in the name of selfdefense. And inherently, self-defense is necessary for minorities to protect their civil rights".

Markovic says that the photographs of hands in the installation Prototype Tokyo are the hands of a martial arts practitioner. "But the movements of a martial artist are also a form of dance," he points out. If we weren't told, it would indeed be difficult to tell the difference when only the hand itself is visible. "I myself studied karate as a child in socialist Yugoslavia", Markovic adds.

In his 1991 New York Prototype installation, Markovic used photos of a saluting hand in a similar way--no face, only the hand. "That is the important point", he explains. "Without the relationship to the face, a hand in a salute, which is an act symbolizing subordination to authority, becomes just a human hand. In New York I juxtaposed a wall of these saluting-hand photos with images of icon heads with halos. The hand photos were along a wall of windows, and between two of the photos I happened to see the American flag of the post office across the street. That iz how I found my flag motif".

The artist was strongly aware that this was at the time when the Gulf War had just begun and Americans were questioning their allegiance to the national war effort as represented by the flag.

To Markovic, the flag is a symbol of a national majority with which the minority is often in conflict. The only flags that don't represent national majorities are those of the United Nations and the European Union, he says. As visual objects, he also finds flags to be beautiful compositions with highly abstract elements. In the current installation he used the Japanese flag as a background and found that it brought beauty and composition to the work.

Because of the very beauty of this assemblage of photographs, mirrors and glass, it might be easy to overlook the serious themes that have developed through the artist's Prototype series.

The glass "sleepers", lined up like railroad ties on the gallery floor, are made of glass mirrors and Plexiglas. In the past, however, he used actual railroad ties, which he covered with a thin leafing of gold. The railroad sleeper motif becomes a symbol of a spiritual journey, but also a symbol of ethnic strife.

It was the railroad network that was used by the Nazis to bring Jews from all over Europe to the concentration camps in Poland. Markovic makes this Holocaust theme clear with a tape of readings of the words of Holocaust survivors, which is played in the gallery as a part of the installation.

All of the works of Markovic's Prototype series are city-specific, which means he does prior research on the city where each exhibition will be held. They are also time-specific. A central two-piece panel in the installation has been created to depict the constellations in the sky over Tokyo on the show's opening night, Aug. 15--the day of Japan's World War II surrender 60 years ago.

As part of his preparation for the show, Markovic visited Yasukuni Shrine and the adjacent military museum. There was one exhibit there that particularly affected him.

"I saw this kerchief with a dark circle that looked like a hand-made Japanese flag," he said. "It also had two Chinese characters at the top that were made of braided human hair. I heard the explanation that this was a flag made by women during the war using their own blood to make the red circle in the middle and their own hair to make the characters "hitchin". And when they told me that flag was made by these women for the suicide torpedo corps and the characters meant 'must sink' (the enemy ship), it took my breath away. Amidst the other hard metallic exhibits of the kind that you see in military museums all over the world, this was so personal and human with the blood and hair. I was standing there with my skin crawling?.

Markovic knows that making this flag was an act conducted by these women in accordance with the propaganda and dogma of the military regime, but he has also seen how women in his own country of Bosnia were doing the same type of thing for the same reason, as they sent their sons and husbands off to fight. And in both cases it was a war of "self-defense" for the people involved.

Markovic says: "I am a minority living in Germany from a country that no longer exists. To me, art is a minority pursuit by people who want their voices to be heard. Minority is not just a matter of skin color or religion. There are many types of minorities who must fight for their civil rights. The homeless is one such group that I am very interested in. I am always interviewing homeless wherever I go, and I have begun to here in Tokyo, too. I hope that an art gallery can be a place where people gather to talk about social problems without fear of retribution or oppression".

"That was once the role of plazas in our cities, but that function a place of open debate has disappeared. An art gallery can be that kind of place".

Milovan Markovic: Prototype Tokyo Until Aug. 31; open 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday through Saturday

Nichido Contemporary Art in the International Arcade under the JR tracks in Yurakucho, a short walk from Yurakucho, Ginza or Hibiya stations on JR and subway lines.

Admission: Free.

Information: www.nca-g.com