The merry inferno of pitchwise

Exhibition The merry hell of poetry it was opened on November 29 this year, precisely on Republic Day, on the birthday of the homeland of Vojislav Despotov. A large inscription/quote on the wall of the exhibition explains why: "Yugoslavia is the environment in which I was born, in which I worked and in which I believed." Twenty years ago, I didn't even know that the republics were constitutional parts of Yugoslavia", Despotova said in 1989.

photo: marko ercegović

Everything that is exhibited at this exhibition, which is open to the public until January 12, 2025, the year in which it will be a quarter of a century since the great artist is no longer with us, is no accident. It was chosen with the great knowledge of the art historian and curator of this exhibition, Nebojša Milenković, who also in the past presented to us the history of situational art, which, among other things, was practiced in Novi Sad by Bora Vitorac and Dragan Pavlov (Dei leči), about Vujica Rešin Tucić, Vladimir Kopicl, Balint Sombati, Slavko Matković and who also wrote the study "Goodbye, avant-garde", about the Novi Sad and Yugoslav artistic avant-garde from 1968 to 1972 (thematic issue of the magazine "Gradac") and others.

When asked why Despotov was a special artist among all those who created avant-garde art in the second half of the 20th century in Novi Sad, Milenkovic told Vreme: "Vojislav Despotov is perhaps our first poet who understood that poetry it does not belong in literature - or, if it does, it should be urgently removed from there. Synonymous with Despotov for me is precisely that dedication, expanding the boundaries of the text where, according to the author himself, the experiment in the text turned into an experiment of existence and - succeeded! His contribution to the new arts is manifold - as a creator, translator, publisher of private magazines/fanzines and unique books in a limited number of copies - but, above all, his sensibility. With the spirit of the avant-garde and constantly exceeding the limits in everything he did. If Nabokov claims that the writer is equal to the style, then with Despotov the most important thing would be the spirit. Playfulness. Unconventionality. An almost programmatic refusal to be part of the tradition of dead singing and dead thinking”.

photo: marko ercegović

This exhibition really emphasizes the lesser-known areas of this artist's work: dealing with visual and conceptual art, publishing art magazines in the 1970s, and creating and publishing unique artist books, mostly in one copy, performances... One visitor, looking at photos of Despotov's performances in In Zagreb in the early seventies, during which he dropped his book into the city sewers, she commented: "At that time, we didn't call it a performance. We called that 'pitchwise'”. An interdisciplinary exhibition, as was the work of Vojislav Despotov himself The merry hell of poetry points to the complex connections between literature/poetry/prose and the visual arts, all within the expanded concept/field of culture. As a writer in whose novels footnotes may play a key role - Despotovlje's marginalia shed new light on this author, presenting him as a total artist. The documentary quality of this exhibition is priceless, especially considering the fact that it exhibits items from the family and archives of friends and associates of Vojislav Despotov.

FOUR LOVES

Nebojša Milenković spoke about the exhibition itself at the ceremonial opening of the exhibition: "I tried to make the four great loves of the Despot visible. The first is love for his family - wife Milica and children Đita and Nemanja - and friends, where I especially emphasize his friendship and spiritual brotherhood with Vujica Rešin Tucić, and then with Slavko Matković. Another is love for poetry, that is, text. More specifically, extended text areas. The third, especially apostrophized love is his affection for the American counterculture: through artistic works, translated and published books and, above all, through the editing and publication of the magazine "Hey Joe" in 1990/91. at a time when xenophobia is 'blooming' in our society and culture, and especially anti-American sentiment, Despotov, as a true cosmopolitan, decides not to accept the so-called reality. That gesture of his would be equivalent to someone trying to print a magazine dedicated to Russian culture and literature today, for example, in Western Europe. Which, as a concept, wouldn't be bad at all. In the end, Voja Despotov's last, fourth love was a bar, and it was also not skipped at the exhibition...".

...

As a total artist, Vojislav Despotov personally illustrated his own books - illustrations from novels are on display Andraci, jepuri and other most important monsters of Petrovgrad and Middle Banat, published in 1998.

A book Dnjizepta bibil zizra uhunt which, according to the author himself, consists of elementary poems, the linguistic and visual substance of the experience, was published by ŠKUC in Ljubljana in 1976. This book was republished by the City Library "Žarko Zrenjanin" in Zrenjanin in 2003. The exhibition also includes a letter from Despotov to Slavko Matković in which he explains how this book should be read/viewed. By hand, with scissors and glue, in 1968 and 1969, Despotov made 29 copies of artists' books. A dozen booklets were published in the project called SEED/ROOT/FLOWER/FRUIT. A book is on display Soul calendar from 1969, which was produced in 30 copies.

photo: marko ercegović

FRIENDSHIP

Vujica Rešin Tucić wrote in his text on the news of the departure of Vojislav Despotov, among other things, that over time, all the truly great poets of today found themselves in front of the wall. "I found that wall while reading Vojislav Despotov's last book. In it, he teaches us that one can pass through the wall - the secret is that one must be a child", and at the end of that text he concludes that Despotov loved and was loved, moving between the blank sheet of paper and the blue wasteland of the computer screen. Vujica says for himself that he himself stopped somewhere on that road, like a shadow on the wall through which Despotov passed.

Colleagues said of Voja that he was always in the first person singular. He was not one of those who sing in a choir, but a soloist. He did not belong to collectives, but was always an individual, and over the years he became an institution of his own. Therefore, a trip through the showcases at the exhibition is an experience in itself. For example, in the early 1970s, Vojislav Despotov was engaged in publishing the samizdat magazine "Neuroart" - a magazine for nervous art with Dušan Bjelić, "Pesmos" and "Kontaktor 972" with Slavko Matković and members of the Bosch + Bosch group. The publications emphasize the ideal of transience and the programmatically calculated ephemerality of the effects produced by the avant-garde of the 70s. The magazines were duplicated in a small number of copies and distributed within the circle of like-minded people. In addition to being unique, they also contained the programming principle of gradual disappearance - thus "Neuroart" comes out in fewer and fewer copies with each issue, until number zero, when it passes into the domain of a pure idea. Comic boards from "Neuroart" are now on display for the first time.

photo: marko ercegović

The spirit of the times, relationships, hopes and illusions of the members of the movement to which Despotov belonged is also evidenced by the personal correspondence he maintained with the poet and close friend Vujica Rešin Tucić. Correspondence, the artistic action of Vujica's burying Despotov's book in the sand of Deliblatska Peščara, as well as the court verdict against the two of them for "disturbance of public order and peace" on February 28, 1986, because on November 6 of the previous year they were walking around half past two in the morning and "all a voice sang: 'We fags are people too' in Dunavska street" .... In the verdict, it is written that both of them have to pay 2000 dinars each or face a prison sentence and that they justified themselves by saying that they "drank a little more because they were celebrating the publication of the book".

According to critics, Vojislav Despotov always belonged to creators of multiple vocations. He was primarily a poet, but he also dealt with borderline forms of verbal and visual art, translation, essay writing, prose, magazine editing, and in all of this he was always new and unusual. Very close to the very core of our neo-avant-garde, one of its "stubborn prisoners", he developed a special fondness for creative meaning from the ground up, from the zero traditional level where no convention is spared from merciless doubt and where the being of the text is broken down into tiny component parts - texts of "atoms" ", from which the construction of completely new "molecules" begins. His need for always new beginnings, the rearrangement of both poetry and art in general, is considered a key feature of his texts. He published about twenty books (mostly poetry and prose). Arranged and translated many more. He also edited the magazines "Ulaznica" (Zrenjanin) and "Transkatalog" (with Vladimir Kopicla, Novi Sad), and "Glasilo drunkards, artists and nostalgics from the cafe gallery Most" (Novi Sad). He is the founder of the publishing house "Čevrtti talas". Six of his visual works (collages) from the 1970s are preserved in the MSUV collection. Immediately after finishing the promotion of his last novel, he died in Belgrade on January 19, 2000.

DEPARTURE FROM THE LITERARY EVENING

At the exhibition, you can also listen to recordings of several interviews that Despotov gave to journalists. One of the historical ones is the TV interview with Mica Jokić who spoke together with him and Vujica Rešin Tucić. At the exhibition, you can also hear parts of his last interview, which he gave to a journalist from Radio B92, immediately after the promotion of the novel in the Cultural Center of Belgrade on January 18, 2000. Vojislav Despotov died the next day from the effects of a stroke after the promotion and that interview.

photo: marko ercegović

It was, in short, "death on its feet". At the end of giving that interview, he fell, hit by a drop of water, after which he did not regain consciousness until his death. It was, therefore, almost exactly his, through and through literary death, which, as early as 1977, in the book Poetry training, was written in the poem I write poems.: "I write songs. My head hurts. I write songs./My stomach hurts. I write songs. I vomit./I write poems. I'm calling 1994. I write songs./They take me to the hospital. I write songs. They put chloroform in my mouth. I write songs./They operate on me. I write songs. I will not survive./I write poems”. "It was, in fact, 'in a hair's breadth', the same death that was in the book in XNUMX Ten blankets of souls, wrote in a poem Things fell into place”, Boško Ivkov wrote about his death and added that Vojislav Despotov died from what he lived on; from the high voltage of living. In one of his, now long-ago songs - because after death everything is long ago - he also wrote this line: "Mother, I will explode like a 'Challenger'!..."

The most important thing is that the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, with this exhibition, made it so that after death it was not so long ago and that everything was shown to the public. Vojislav Despotov deserved it because he was, in every sense, An unexpected man, and that, let's recall, was the title of the book of essays in verses published by "Stražilova" in 1991.