The structuralist filmmaker and agitator Tomislav Gotovac viewed art, not politics, as the vehicle for change. He marched naked in public spaces in an attempt to provoke a state built on mass docility, asserting his difference amid hardline social conformity in Yugoslavia. He ridiculed all positions of power, all those who serve power, and all political and social systems.
_Pokazivanje č_asopisa "Elle" (Showing "Elle" Magazine) documents Gotovac's first public action. Using a 35mm camera, he captured himself shirtless, at the popular Sljeme Mountain, near Zagreb, showing the well-known French magazine to his friends, who remain outside the frame. Through this simple act, Gotovac opened up a set of questions about male-female relationships, the dynamics of desire, the tension between the real and the imaginary, and the contrast between images of a distant consumer society and the everyday reality of socialism.
Gallery label from Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960–1980, September 5, 2015–January 3, 2016.
