BARBARA BORČIĆ Plastos. A Collection On a Civilisation That Survived the Catastrophe

Culture is intrinsic to humans, what Plastoses most probably aren’t. That is why we have to expand the notion of culture or introduce its Plastosoid equivalent.
Milena White, author of the book Homo Plastoidus

In recent years, Marko A. Kovačič dedicated his work to conceptual studying and contextual narration of Plastos civilisation - »the sole surviving creatures following the great atomic catastrophe of the twenty-third century, discovered by experts in Catastropolis, a place beyond the Urals.«

The framework in which the Plastoses are manifested consists of exhibitions (objects, maps, tools, remnants, parts of bodies, portraits, mechanisms and habitats), performances and lectures by Dr. Skavčenko, symposia, newspaper, photographs, and video works.

Genre-wise, we may determine the projects from this cycle as Science Fiction that builds the civilisation of our descendants in a satirical yet endearing manner. In formal sense, here we encounter combined techniques and procedures – from construction, additive and animation procedures to staging, casting and montage. The projects unite the traits and methods of various instruments, tools of expression, media and speeches - all the way from civilisation techniques of the Industrial Era up to the communication technologies of Information Society. The artist’s knowledge, skills and experiences in the fields of sculpture, performance and video as well as film, theatre and music represent the crucial factor in these projects. The actual displays and enactments treat the space as the essential constitutive element and the figure (of spectator) as the one that ultimately rounds up the project by his/her movement and reaction. The projects’ site usually consists of a metal construction that forms a spatial web - a nodal system with entrapments for the eye (sculptures, mechanisms, chambers, screens, found objects, peepholes, illusion devices and magic boxes) and the ear (sound, hum, voice, noise, music). Thus each installation, with its visual and sound complexity, also becomes a symbolical space of communication in which the spectator plays an active role of decipherer of meanings, a connector and trigger of events.

The levels of significance of this entire artistic practice evoke multi-facetted references and associations that are connected to preceding attainments - chiefly those of (historical) Avant-gardes as well as the individuals that stubbornly persisted in their own utopian projects. The artist brings together the old and the new - something we might call the past and the present and even the potential future. If our consciousness is the result of interactions between the present and the past, then Kovačič's artefacts tell us that our future is also an unmistakable actor in this world of fragmentary perception and crumbling relations. The past memories might fill in our holes whereas the future expectations might make our lives more bearable.

Marko A. Kovačič presented the cycle »Plastoses« for the first time in 1998 at the exhibition The Physiognomy of Plastoses in Modern Gallery in Ljubljana. It was conceived as a photodocument on the existence of creatures that came into existence as a combination of human, animal and mechanical parts. In the occasion of this 'project-in-process', he wrote: Otherwise physical winners, Plastoses were thus psychologically defeated: prisoners of the conquered space they couldn’t grasp. And, as the official science asserts, they shouldn't. At this point, this is the least we owe to our predecessors. If the zoologists don’t allow for their extermination, let’s at least ignore them.

In his following exhibition, Surviving City (Kapelica Gallery, 1999), he pursued a more in-depth research, presenting this time also the Plastoses’ habitats – chambers that, in their appearance similar to Constructivist sculptures, remind of the relics of the Industrial Era. As we approach the chambers and observe the reconstruction of those habitats through optical peepholes, we may get an idea on their behaviour and customs, hibernated thanks to our intrusion.

With the project Plastos: Paleonthropological Museum I, II (Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana and Exhibiting Salon Rotovž, Maribor) in the years 2000-2001, Marko A. Kovačič expanded his research on Plastos civilisation to a number of collaborators, renowned experts in different fields - from Plastology and electronic neurology to global stucturology - who presented their findings at a symposium and in the magazine Plastos. The journey of Plastoses between Ljubljana and Maribor (Plastoses Travel) was accompanied with info posters in public transportation means (trains, buses), a radio play and a TV scientific programme. The weekly magazine Mladina wrote in the occasion of that exhibition that it was ‘the best archaeological exhibition of the year, the best anthropological exhibition of the year, the best futuristic exhibition and the most logically arranged display of contemporary art.’

The most complex display to this day was The Plastos Civilisation in the Ljubljana National Museum in 2002. The genesis and evolution of Plastoses were presented in the form of (paleonthropological) museum collection, including archaeological findings, their physiognomic analysis, the reconstruction of their habitats and technical utilities. Among the museum exhibits were also the relics of biological and mechanical parts of those creatures that testified of their dual origin, along with the samples of tools and instruments for specific transplantation and xenotransplantation procedures that enabled the Plastoses to preserve their identity. As always, the artist familiarises the audience with Plastoses through a series of specific lectures-performances in which, acting out as a scientist and expert, he spoke of the specific traits of that civilisation, its culture, rituals - particularly the most important rites of celebrating the cult of speed - as well as of its battle for survival connected to genetic cloning. He also disclosed some details from the everyday life of Plastoses.

The Plastos Collection thus grows richer almost on a daily basis for yet another important finding or interesting detail, or a new resolved secret. An extensive part of the collection consists of archive materials provided by researchers - anthropologists, ethnologists, sociologists, culturologists, historians, geographers etc. - on various époques in the history of Plastoses, thus contributing to the establishing of a young and dynamic science of Plastology. Among the important materials is also a historical map testifying on Plastoses’ migrations; a vehicle for space and time travel; and an electronic device named energotron - a transformer of inter-planetary energy. Besides the highly diverse samples of Plastoses, the visual material presently also encompasses a full-size figure as well as bust portraits in larger-than-life sizes, inhabited metal chambers, photographs, slides and video recordings of selected samples and their living conditions.

In the installation Plastoratorium, on display in Kapelica Gallery in 2004, the artist managed to show the samples of those small creatures in their fairly awkward yet functionally precise mechanical movement. Up until then, namely, Plastoses did not move in the presence of humans; we might even say that they would petrify – this is perhaps why they seemed to us as dead museum exhibits. On this occasion, we saw them for the first time as they vivaciously and incessantly repeated some choreographic chore.

At the exhibition in the Ljubljana Art.si Gallery, Marko A. Kovačič presented metal castings made after those dynamic creatures that he could persuade in his good intentions. In doing this, he took as examples the castings recently discovered by scientists in the vicinity of Catastropolis. This time, the artist showed Plastoses in their re-discovered living environments and mutual relations. That is why, the artist claims, this exhibition is for him an exceptional scientific-communication achievement as he succeeded to penetrate the communication world of Plastoses after years of hard work. We can only rejoice together with him the fact that we will soon enter a more intimate relation with the creatures that seemed at first so alien and odd.



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