Mathemes of Re-association comprises video projections – Towards the Metheme of Genocide, the video documenting one of the self-organised sessions by the Monument Group dedicated to attempts of articulating and mathematizing genocide. This complex discursive object is constructed on the no-man’s land between modern science and international law. By constructing the matheme of genocide, the Monument Group re-examines key concepts of science and law: victim, witness, re-association, identification code, counting and identification.
In their conversation on the four discourses by Lacan, which describe the relations between knowledge, truth, subject and object, i.e. the social ties between the four subjective positions: those of master, academia, hysteric and analyst, members of the Monument Group try to construct the discourse of genocide, that is, to establish the place it occupies within the four existing discourses of Lacan’s concept of mathemes. One of the outcomes of this session is genocide as a concept resisting the possibility of mathematisation, as it occupies the place of joy, which is irrepresentable within these four discourses.
Monument Group (Branimir Stojanović, Damir Arsenijević, Milica Tomić)
Belgrade, March 2009
“Mathemes of Re-association” is a platform created by the Monument Group, where artists, theorists and activists engage in joint public discussions concerning the ways in which the ideology of reconciliation, through forensic science, causes depoliticization of genocide (with the Srebrenica genocide as their point of departure). Mathemes of Re-association try to create a public space in which the production of new forms of political subjectivity would be possible, by connecting forensic analysis with the very language of politics; where naturalised categories of ethno-religious identity become destabilised; and where non-identifiable, non-ethnifiable and thus indivisible residue of genocide, such as bones in ossuary – the resistance and refusal of ideological co-optation of the bureaucratic-scientific-religious link – may be ascribed significant agency.
Monument Group (Damir Arsenijević, Ana Bezić, Pavle Levi, Branimir Stojanović, Milica Tomić, guest: DeLve – Where Everything Is Yet to Happen, SPAPORT BIENALE 2009/10) Tuzla/Ljubljana/Rijeka/Belgrade/San Francisco/London, 13 January 2008-2014.
Authors of the Work: Monument Group / Damir Arsenijević, Svebor Midžić, Darinka Pop-Mitić, Branimir Stojanović, Milica Tomić
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon and the Artist Collection
Mining agreement: III-5-43/03.03.2023.
Inventory no: 179
Photo: The Authors
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
The Monument Group is a Yugoslav artistic and theoretical platform which gathers artists, theorists and workers from Belgrade, Tuzla, Ljubljana, Rijeka, Zagreb, Mostar, Pristina, Berlin and London, and cooperates with many collectives, centres and individuals in establishing the sociality built on the discursive practices of the subjugated knowledge concerning the 1990’s wars in Yugoslavia. The work by the Monument Group is based on practicing a unique methodology of action, where “the group” does not represent a fixed identity or collective, but rather a platform, each successive transformation of which carries a potential for gathering and empowering different participants and collaborators, and often generating and emancipating new platforms (DeLve – Gdje se sve tek treba dogoditi / Where Everything Is Yet to Happen, SPAPORT BIENALE 2009/10). 2001- 2007, the Monument Group (Nebojša Milikić, Branimir Stojanović, Milica Tomić) engaged in the field of theory, as well as of contemporary art, using its exhibition, performance and production structures for political thinking of the two symptoms: inability of building and naming a monument and inability to name the 1990s war(s) in Yugoslavia. 2007-2014, the Monument Group continued dealing with articulation of the war trauma and genocide, advocating the emancipatory politics of memory contained in the postulate: Where there was a genocide, a political subject would exist. In this phase of their work, the Monument Group, with their political-artistic practice, produced the space of counter-public sphere and proclaimed it a locus of Yugoslav Studies. Work archive 2007-2019, Monument Group (Damir Arsenijević, Ana Bezić, Jasmina Husanović, Pavle Levi, Nebojša Milikić, Darinka Pop-Mitić, Svebor Midzić, Jelena Petrović, Branimir Stojanović, Milica Tomić, guests: Ivana Bago, Andrew Herscher, Albert Heta, Branislav Jakovljević, Nebojša Jovanović, Antonia Majača, Jelena Vesić.