The necessity for re-thinking and coming to terms with our "communist" past is the consequence of the cultural policy dominant in Croatia during the last decade, characterized by insufficient intellectual contextualization that incapacitated any serious reflection of both immediate past and present "transitional" moment. From today's perspective Communist Manifesto as political concept, philosophical text, cultural fact and synecdoche of social order, opens the whole range of subjects that the failure of communist realizations does not proclaim it over once and for all. Economic analysis and descriptions of capital functioning from Communist Manifesto today seem to be the most relevant. Economy doubtless shapes our daily life, covering extremely wide range of subjects. Then again, economy is politics, although the dominant picture of capital claims that capitalism is disinterested and objective state of things, governed only by firm market logic.

Invited artists react to these starting points in different media. The exhibition is located in House of Croatian Association of Artists, former Museum of the People's Revolution. Some works will be realized as actions and interventions at various city locations. As our aim is primarily to deal with art coming from the region, apart from participation of Croatian artists (Andreja Kuluncic, Damir Babic, Sandro Djukic, Darko Fritz, Tom Gotovac, Igor Grubic, Aleksandar Ilic, Sanja Ivekovic, Ivana Keser, Ivan Marusic Klif, Igor Kuduz, Kristina Leko, Vlado Martek, Renata Poljak, Tomo Savic-Gecan, Mladen Stilinovic, Slaven Tolj, Goran Trbuljak), we have invited artists from Slovenia (IRWIN, Ziga Kariz, Maja Licul & Joze Barsi, Tadej Pogacar, Marko Peljhan) Bosnia and Herzegovina (Nebojsa Seric Soba, Kurt&Plasto, Eldina Begic, Anela Sabic), Macedonia (Igor Tosevski), Yugoslavia (Milica Tomic, pRT), Albania (Edi Muka), Romania (Cristian Alexa), Bulgaria (Rassim Krastev), Czech Republic (Krystof Kintera), Hungary (Emese Benczur, Atilla Csorgo), Ukraine (Vasily Tsagolov), Russia (Yuri Leiderman) and Poland (Zbigniew Libera). Since Communist Manifesto is not solely the spiritual heritage of countries engaged in the process of transition from Real Socialism to real capitalism, but belongs to the universal intellectual corpus, the same as "universal" functioning of capital, we are also interested in responses offered by artists coming from Western Europe: Oliver Ressler (Austria), Kobe Matthys (Belgium), Matheu Laurette and Jean-Baptiste Ganne (France), and Ola Perhson (Sweden).

The series of presentations, workshops and lectures, entitled Social amnesia and the return of the repressed, will be held by curators, artists, and theoreticians from the region (Albania, Slovenia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina), countries mostly completely excluded from awareness of Croatian public during the last ten years, as well as prominent theoreticians from Germany, Great Britain and United States.
Event will take place in newly open multimedia/net.culture center mama during the opening weekend.

Social amnesia and the return of the repressed refers to organized amnesia of Eastern-European political/ideological past. The return of the repressed should be read in double-key: as the return of that which was repressed in the time of real socialism (ie re-capitalization of eastern Europe, ideology of free market, human rights, free elections, free media... but also ethnic conflicts and rise of nationalism we've been testifying during the last ten years), but also as the return of the repressed in real capitalism.