* The text is published on the occasion of the exhibition "Suite for masses" which was held in June 2025 in Galerija Miroslav Kraljević in Zagreb. Translation: Anita Smolčić.
Neša Paripović is a Serbian conceptual artist who made his best-known 8 mm film “NP 1977” in 1977. The camera follows the artist moving across the city of Belgrade. However, rather than strolling around the city like everyone else, he jumps over the walls, walks in areas not designed for pedestrians, jumps off the balcony, crosses the street in a risky way, gets through hidden passages in courtyards etc. Swift movements, the urban clothes he is wearing (a formal jacket, a scarf instead of a tie…) and the illusion that his movements are linear, following a route that only he is familiar with, suggest that the artist is intentionally going somewhere. As film progresses, the audience realizes that there is no goal, no destination where he is heading to because the film ends in the same manner it begins: the artist is jumping over yet another urban obstacle…
Who moves around the city in such a manner? Surely not a respectful citizen complying with the rules. If the artist was filmed running, panicking, looking back as if being chased down the street, then the reference to criminals or gangsters would be adequate. However, this is not the case. Although obstacles are challenging, he somehow manages to regain his composure after each of them, fixes his hair, straightens up and keeps going on (at one point he even lights a cigarette and looks smugly at his own reflection in the shop window).
The artist deliberately avoids representative spaces. He moves across abandoned backyards, school playgrounds, rooftops – the places devoid of surveillance that is twofold in big cities. On the one hand, there is the authorities’ surveillance of public spaces of financial (banks, malls, social insurance building) and symbolic (public administration building, schools, museums) importance. On the other hand, representative urban space (squares, boulevards, outing spots) always implies participation in the spectacle of observing – to see and to be seen is at the core of urban mundane life.
During the 1970’s Paripović made four Super 8 mm films and four video art works. Miško Šuvaković, the artist’s occasional associate and an expert on his work, says these works represent “(…) visual (film) speculations on the nature of art (painting and sculpture)” (in Miško Šuvaković “Avant-garde, Neo Avant-garde, Conceptual Art – Selected Chapters on Radical, Tactical, Experimental and Critical Art Practices in Serbia, Orion Art, Belgrade, 2022, p 347).
According to Šuvaković, film “NP 1977” offers four layers of meaning. The first is the problem of the artist: the artist and not the artwork is the representative of art. The second layer is that the film is about the mundane (walking around the town). The third layer is about the nature of the film medium while the fourth one refers to the interconnectedness between film picture and painting. For this interpretation, we will delve into the second layer by going back to what we see in the film and broaden the context of Paripović’s art practice with the social context and the historical period in which the film takes place.
Let’s go back to the way the artist moves throughout the film. Paripović’s hero is not a stroller; he is not a flaneur. A modern flaneur was characterised by wobbly, idle wandering, but here the artist walks briskly through the city as if going somewhere. In addition, jumping over obstacles or jumping off high places is apparently no problem for him – occasionally he risks being injured or even killed when crossing the road. Moreover, he seems to take great pride in his agility and strength of his body. In one moment, the artist stops, fixes his suit and hair, lights a cigarette while looking at himself in the shop window. Still, him stopping is not a counterpoint to movement – it is not a contemplation – but rather a short pause. In one short moment the pleasure of movement is intensified with a pleasure of seeing himself in the glass reflection (self-assertion of the ego).
For a moment, a graffiti “Everyone vote!” comes into focus, which is in stark contrast with Paripović’s avoidance of representative urban spaces and their inherent forms of political power. No matter how ephemeral or accidental that scene is one can assume the graffiti is a hidden reference, the red line that can provide us with a different interpretation of the film.
To put it briefly, Yugoslav society in the 1970’s was a society stripped of illusions about a bright communist future. A series of traumatic events started with the economic crisis in the first half of the 1960’s, which included breaking down of a planned economy and de facto inaugurating market economy in 1965 with the purpose of increasing productivity and consumption. For the first time in a socialist society, the consumption became the major factor of economic development while workers’ self-management was replaced by market business principles: popularizing principles of meritocracy, promoting competitiveness, etc.
However, Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia and the setting of the film, was a place where a violent conflict between students and law enforcement took place in 1968. Students’ demands such as democratization of the university and stopping class stratification – the process that widened the gap between the intellectual and manual work – were declined as ungrounded by the authorities. Dozens of prominent intellectuals and professors at the Belgrade University, particularly those at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, were banned from pedagogical and film work. Consequently, many of them left the country or identified as inner emigration. Students who participated in demonstrations or showed any form of disobedience to dominant ideology, primarily as a part of the youth counterculture, were marginalized and even imprisoned.
If one wanted to summarise key characteristics of the Yugoslav society in the first half of the 1970’s, two momentums would come to mind: firstly, by applying principles of the market economy, country was brought closer to the capitalist social production and communication; secondly, due to economic crisis, students protests and political tendencies towards weakening the federation, the authorities required utter obedience from the citizens. The Yugoslav government considered that all the major problems, such as class stratification, international relations etc., could be solved by improving living standards so political practise put economic goals above everything else.
For these reasons, the ideas from Kenneth Galbraith’s book “New Industrial State” can be applied to the Yugoslav society, even though the book was written as a criticism of the Western capitalism:
“If we continue to believe that the goals of the industrial system – expansion of production and consumption, technological development and delusions of the supporting public - are coordinate with life, then all our lives will be in the service of those goals. We will have and will be allowed only what aligns with those goals; everything else will be prohibited. Our wants will be managed in accordance with the needs of the industrial system, the state policy will be under the same influence, education will be bound to the ends of the industrial system, and discipline required by the system will become a conventional morality of the community. All other goals will be made to seem artificial, unimportant or antisocial. “(John Kenneth Galbraith, Nova industrijska država, Stvarnost, Zagreb, 1979, p 360-361)
Gradually, the ideology of economic rationalization and instrumentalization affected everyday life. The student rebellion of 1968 that took place not only in Yugoslavia, but across the globe, tried to bring social focus back on the importance of a psychic life of an individual, his/her emotions, desires, and drives as a politically valid category. Even though these revolts would eventually be supressed or lost their momentum and a psychic life of an individual was commodified, some forms of this behaviour managed to survive as autonomous, free acts of defiance.
Paripović’s film is charged with libido and male energy while non-conformism, a key strategic element of counterculture, sets the tone for the whole film. Although he does not break the public law like his fellow colleague Tomislav Gotovac who was running naked down the streets, nor does he turn criminal for the sake of transgressive pleasure like a hero of the film “Young and healthy as a rose” (1971.) by Jovan Jovanović, Paripović still succeeds in outlining the issue of a social position of an artist.
Therefore, it can be argued that the film “NP 1977” deals with the fifth layer of meaning, which is the relationship between an individual and a community: in this case the artist himself and the city of Belgrade. This is how this relationship is portrayed in the film: the artist does not move around like most people do because he uses the city as the symbol of a larger urban community, in his own way. He uses it to practice a certain level of individual freedom and power, but not by negotiating, which is the term used by Michel De Certeau in his book “The Practice of Everyday Life” who sees “elephant paths” as a particular kind of civil disobedience and a form of resistance to ideological regulation of life.
Although the artist in the film uses shortcuts and non-representative urban spaces, he does not do it guerrilla-like because nothing in his behaviour indicates that he is in the subordinate position and pressured to compromise. On the contrary, his behaviour shows self-assurance and his right to move freely for no other reason but for being a human being. The relationship between a natural right of an individual and a community has been one of the key issues in the history of political philosophy. No matter how one defines human nature (for instance, Thomas Hobbes sees it intrinsically destructive while Rousseau thinks otherwise), there is a consensus that every human must give up some of his/her natural rights to be a part of a community. Every community, therefore, must have a contract to regulate a relationship between an individual and a community, usually in the form of laws and norms prescribed by political powers.
This brings to mind Spinoza, and his theory of a social contract defined in his books “Theological-Political Treatise” and „Political Treatise”. Spinoza differentiates two kinds of power. Potestas is the power of authority that needs someone else (another body); it is above else a relation to other bodies and can be performed as a dominance over others or voluntary subordination. Potentia, on the other hand, is a strength or intensity of a relationship that an individual has with the world and to perform this power one does not need another body.
Further interpretations of Spinoza’s theory accepted the opinion that potestas refers to every form of political power while potentia has been linked to both masses and an individual. A good social contract for Spinoza was the one in which the political power (potestas) provides conditions for fulfilling potentia. Masses, or an individual, require a social contract that will come the closest to the fulfilment of an individual or collective desire – his/her/their potentia.
The central question of Spinoza's theory of social contract can perhaps be summarised like this: how far the multitude (an individual) is ready to go to protect the social contract before they claim their natural right to power to relate to the world in the fullness of their desire, completeness of their being, regardless of the political power? How much of an individual’s inherent natural power can be reconciled with the constraints of a community or if they can be reconciled at all; when and to what point should one subordinate to the power of the other (potestas) etc.? These problems have occupied many ever since so one can assume that the problem of the relationship between a socialist community and its members, in particular intellectuals and artists, was important in the time when Paripović’s film was made.
If one compares the artist moving through the city in Paripović’s film with a main character in the film “Monday or Tuesday” by Vatroslav Mimica, both of which are exhibited here as two sides of the same coin, a different perspective can be given on the main points of the first film. Despite the overall atmosphere of melancholy and depression, Mimica’s hero, a journalist Požgaj, goes to work every day and participates in the processes of social reproduction. With unquestionable obedience he fits in the channels of social reproduction: travels by tram or car, participates in production, spends his free time consuming what city’s spectacle has to offer… Paripović’s hero, however, moves around the city in a completely different manner. He seems to start off his journey with a purpose, but towards the end it becomes clear that he goes nowhere, that he simply and without anyone’s help just keeps going, which gives him tremendous pleasure and a boost of undefined energy. In other words, Paripović, the artist in the film “NP 1977” demonstrates and claims his right to potentia.
Let’s bring this essay to its end by a quote taken from Gilles Deleuse’s “Abecedaire” that further illustrates a complex relationship between an individual and a community (the English quote is taken from the web magazine The Funambulist). It is where Deleuze gives his interpretation of Spinoza’s concepts of potestas and potentia, using French words pouvir and pouissance that both translate into power in English.
“There is no bad power (puissance), what is bad, we should say is the lowest degree of the power (puissance). And the lowest degree of the power (puissance), it is the power (pouvoir). I mean, what is malice? Malice consists in preventing someone to do what he can, malice consists in preventing someone to do, to effectuate his power (puissance). Therefore, there is no bad power (puissance), there are malicious powers (pouvoirs). Perhaps that all power (pouvoir) is malicious by nature. Maybe not, maybe it is too easy to say so… […] Power (pouvoir) is always an obstacle to the effectuation of powers (puissances). I would say, any power (pouvoir) is sad. Yes, even if those who “have the power” (pouvoir) are very joyful to “have it”, it is a sad joy; there are sad joys. On the contrary, joy is the effectuation of a power (puissance). Once again, I don’t know any power (puissance) that is malicious. The typhoon is a power (puissance), it enjoys itself in its very soul but…it does not enjoy because it destroys houses, it enjoys because it exists. To enjoy is to enjoy being what we are, I mean, to be “where we are”. Of course, it does not mean to be happy with ourselves, not at all. Joy is the pleasure of the conquest (conquête) as Nietzsche would say. But conquest in that sense, does not mean to enslave people of course. Conquest is for example, for painter to conquest the colour (...)”
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