Autopsia: MIRROR OF DESTRUCTION

Autopsia comes out of nowhere. It has neither a place of origin nor the address. It appeared in 1980 with the fanzines Bank Rot and Prose Selavy, even today its biography remains unwritten, available information about the group are scarce, reduced to several articles and reproductions. In principle, it is non-communicative, hermetic and elitist. Enjoying the cult status among small group of industrial music afficionados, boasting respectable discography, the group peformed only two concerts, at the beginning of their non-career. The group exhibited its visual production several times (the last time in 1987), only to willingly leave everything to oblivion. The group deals with the topic of death, the method is repetition, whereby speech is impersonal. Autopsia is a genuine and bastard offspring of independent and intermedia subculture scene, gathered around punk and new wave, yet whose program and goals reach further than the joys of DIY home productions and club fetes of erruptive creativity. By accident or not, the forming of Autopsia coincides with the epochal event of the death of the creator of Socialist Yugoslavia, the start of ideological-institutional crisis of the Yugoslav art-culture system and overwhelming feeling of the „end“ and being thurst back into the uncertainty of the „zero state of being“ of the early post-Socialism. Similarly to Laibach (with whome it shares certain aesthetic principles and visual-musical synergy), Autopsia demonstrated refined sensitivity for historical pregnancy of the moment and it recognized in front of itself an open space for intervention of the art at the very heart of the political economy of the culture. With its projects - conceptual, deep, informed by theory, exclusive by content and intriguinging by language, Autopsia has positioned itself in the space between „high“ and „low“ culture, mainstream and alternative, imposing itself, as one of the most authentic and uncompromising art projects that sprang on the area of former Yugoslavia.

(Dejan Sretenovic)

Selected works from Autopsia’s visual opus from 1980 until today will be displayed (graphical works, books, fanzines, experimental films, computer art, photography, articles) on the exhibition, as well as musical documentation and listening room.

Autopsia is depersonalized art projection involved in musical, visual and film production. Autopsia is gathering the authors of different professions in the realization of its projects. The art practice was started in London at the end of 1970’s, only to be continued during the eighties in the art centres of former Yugoslavia. Starting from 1990, Autopsia is operating from Prague. At the beginning of its work, Autopsia released 10 MC’s, while in the period from 1989, it published 20 CDs. Music production is accompanyied with the comprehensive visual production, containing original graphic items, design of flyers, booklets, CDs, books and films, as well as web page autopsia.net and its branches Autopsia TV and Illuminating Technologies.

www.autopsia.net www.illuminating-technologies.com

Autopsia 
MIRROR OF DESTRUCTION
Kurator: Dejan Sretenovic
Ort: Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrad