Sunday, September 18, 2011

Featured Item: Ad Hoc Project





Ad Hoc Project by Rafaela Drazic, focuses on the topic of censorship in the arts.  The book deals specifically with two projects.  The first is a controversial photo show of street graffiti that was cancelled at the City of Museum of Split in Croatia (and subsequently shown in an alternative space).  The second is the Secret Exhibitions project, where artists facing censorship were asked to participate in a "secret" exhibition: namely, the artists were to fax in their work at a specific time to an apartment that would be showing the work.  The ad hoc nature of the project, "will the artists and designers invited to participation reply to it at all (considering they all had to send their works at the same time, although many of them live in different time zones), will the fax machine borrowed for the occasion function properly, will there be enough paper, will international calls be established without problems..." helped to set up an atmosphere where censorship could be considered from a variety of perspectives.  The book, published in English and Croatian, offers text on the subjects as well as black and white reproductions of much of the work.