From the Archives of the Transition: The Collages of Josip Vaništa 1990–2000

Following the analysis of the 20 th century, carried out by Alain Badiou in his book The Century , the text begins with the quotation of Osip Mandelstam's poem The Age , in which the new century is seen in organic metaphors such as the “beast”, whose “spine” has already “broken” while emerging, thus foreboding  that already in 1923, when the poem was written, the century of hope, the Soviet Century in its very nature, carried the seed of its own destruction. Consequently, the breakdown of this “century” in the field of so-called transitional social processes in all post-Communist societies is seen as a tragic, cruel privatization, a wild initial accumulation/pillage of capital in a new historical context, with new protagonists, and a new soulless morality. For the most part, this text deals with analysis of the collages of Croatian neo-avantgarde artist Josip Vanista, created during the period of transition and war in Croatia and the former Yugoslavia from 1990 to 2000. With minimal artist intervention, by simple collage and cutting of titles, short texts and photographs from the quondam press, Vanista draws attention to the tragedy and absurdity of transitional social space. Article received: March 31, 2018; Article accepted: April 10, 2018; Published online: September 15, 2018; Original scholarly paper How to cite this article: Cukovic, Petar. "From the Archives of the Transition: The Collages of Josip Vanista 1990–2000."  AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 16 (2018): 29−41. doi:  10.25038/am.v0i16.252