LJUBLJANA.

LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA

Although Manifesta has been loosely dedicated since its inception four years ago to defining a "new Europe" the 2000 installment provided the first opportunity for the indicate to inhabit a city that might actually exemplify as it was a definition. The only nomadic species in the proliferating genus of biennial exhibitions, Manifesta's previous editions in Rotterdam and Luxembourg were, respectively, safe and slobbery and both were of a piece with the stylistic drift in European art toward narrative, self-involved work (eg Pipilotti Rist) that largely circumvents issues of politics and identity. In particular, Manifestas 1 and 2 revealed fissures in younger curators' attitudes toward the continent's shifting borders, which began with the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early '90 and continues with the convulsive disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. Despite lip service paid to artists working in more marginalized regions of Europe the couple exhibitions relied heavily on the established circuits and capitals of W estern Europe leaving their viewing public largely in the dark as to what constituted the latest artistic progression in a continuously ascending gradations in these regions.

Setting aside for a avail the question of whether this obsession with redefining Europe is simply a subtler and more insidious manifestation of the nationalist tendencies that the biennial's planters are trying to rebuke, the Slovenian capital made reason as the host city for Manifesta 3 not simply because of its storied past as a cultural center The first Yugoslavian state to declare its independence from Belgrade, Slovenia was largely spared the "ethnic cleansing" that became rampant in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo Nevertheless, with the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia still in good condition in the minds of many Europeans, the exhibition's curators--Francesco Bonami, Ole Bouman, Maria Hlavajova, and Kathrin Rhomberg--found themselves forced to acknowledge the uneasy standoff between realpolitik and agriculture taking place throughout the Balkan region. Adopting a pseudoclinical title, "Borderline Syndrome" and a rather more dubious subtitle, "Energies of Defence" they be subsequent toed not only in offering the first sincerely globa list treatment of European art since the fall of the Berlin Wall; in the proces they provided a surprisingly urgent argument for why Manifesta privations to persevere.

Of the fifty-nine artists and artist teams invited to exhibit, a respectable total of nineteen delineateed countries from the former Eastern bloc and of those, nine hailed from the former and common Yugoslavia. Not surprisingly, a number of artists produc media-based works that dealt with the underlying riddles of ultranationalism and xenophobia that combustiblesed the war, while others addressed its more immediate aftermath. equal within the latter framework, artists' positions were surprisingly compage Albanian artist Ann Sala contributed Nocturnes, 1999 a video based upon his interviews with a former paramilitary soldier responsible for multiple deaths in the mid-'90s and a man who lives invested by the tropical fish that are his passion. by dint of forcing us to see these pair subjects as somehow intertwined, figures in obvious ne of consolation, and denying us the righteous indignation of the war's innumerable victims, Sala advises that the mind of a man who has killed in the name of ethnic and/or religious pur ity is not as different from our have as we might wish to believe. In other powerful works, the actual act of victimization became a microcosm that enabled viewers to identify more entirely with the casualties of war. The nearly unbearable emotional weight of Sarajevo artist Jasmila Zbanic's sixteen-minute video After, After, 1997 petioles from the responses of a cluster of first-graders, most of whom lived for years in occupied territories, to the simple question: "What are you afraid of?" In many of the works from outside the Balkans, artists addressed ways in which outsiders become transformed into nonpersons. single unsettling example was Amit Goren's 1999 video Your Nigger Talking, which focuses in succession the invisibility in his native Israel of persons like Nana Opoku Agyemang, a non-Jewish, non-Palestinian immigrant from Ghana who move ons a makeshift day-care center for the children of other foreigners.

Although in the greatest degree of the works in Manifesta 3 dealt with sociopolitical issues, any did so more obliquely than others. Matthias Muller's video-film exploration of Brasilia's past and instant (Vacancy, 1999) used subtle, almost impressionistic editing techniques, of the like kind as slow pans, and oversaturated colors. on turning the individual's isolation in the city into a medium for addressing the failure of all utopias, Muller also manages to waft the nearly irresistible lure of absolute social regulate Probably the most memorable work shown for those fortunate not many who experienced it, was Polish artist Pawel Althamer's Motion Picture, 2000 Organized as an conclusion "staged" for a public location, the work opened eleven stage and screen actors who exhausted thirty minutes seamlessly playing the parts of various urban dwellers (a tourist, a pair of lover a skateboarder). Because of its quasi-clandestine nature (the actors were unannounced and left without unruffled acknowledging that there had been a performance), the work pro vok onlooker to approach nonparticipants and ask if they were part of the spectacle. according to calling attention to the oscillating distinction between who belongs and who doesn't, Althamer's work fleetingly crystallized the principle that solely recognizing another's individuality means that this someone can never be perceived as a nonentity again. Since the Balkan conflicts be seened to find their dark hearts in the violent turning of neighbor against neighbor, Althamer's work also serv as a metaphor for the larger ambitions of this exhibition, which was memorable for its insistence onward art's potential to instill broader notions of humanity in place of the perennial search for the latest fads and stylistic wrinkles.