The Eternal Flame of Rage, 2007-

Irregular temporary monument project, (Data Recovery*)

“Automobiles, bombs and movies keep the whole thing together ...” Adorno/Horkheimer
The project commemorates the act of rebellion which takes place, irregularly but frequently, on the margins of the big cities, and as by the rule expresses itself by a burning car. It seems that this fragmented, pre-political and unconnected rage needs a burning car as a common shape-symbol. By performing the artistic action of burning a car we intend to appropriate all such expressions of dissatisfaction, rebellion and rage which have already happened, or will happen in different occasions and places. By placing this act in the context of art we will maybe understand all the future car-burnings as the parts of some, more clearly structured conceptual, metapolitical framework. At the same time, we return all those lost images of burning cars which came and/or will come from Paris, Beirut, Nablus, Baghdad, Berlin, or Belgrade, back to the pavement (and social memory).
*Data recovery is a process of partial salvaging of lost data from the memory without a context which originally gave them positive informational, social or other sense. Similarly to the data loss in computer this procedure is an attempt to salvage fragments of an action, event or situation which disappeared in our all encompassing memory loss. The most important thing is that the event does not become contextualized through the interpretation, historicizing and manipulation of the lost meaning.

Picture 1 - Ljubljana 2007

Picture 2 - Zagreb 2008

Picture 3 - Subotica 2009