Irena Lagator Pejović

works

The Society of Unlimited Responsiblity

2006
artist book: school notebook, hand pencil drawing
21 x 12.5 cm; 72 pages
Text: Irena Lagator
Exhibition/Venue:
-Artist-in-residence 2005+2006, Neue Galerie am Universalmuseum Johanneum-atelier Graz, Austria, 2006.
-part of the solo exhibition: The Society of Unlimited Responsibility. Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia. Curated by: Dejan Sretenovic & Una Popovic, 2012.
-part of the solo exhibition: Società a responsabilità limitata (S. r. l.), Villa Pacchiani, Santa Croce sull'Arno (Pisa), Italy. Curated by Ilaria Mariotti, 2012.
Photo: Irena Lagator

The artwork The Society of Unlimited Responsibility is a notebook which I produced in artistic residency at the Neue Galerie in Graz, during the winter of 2006. It was through the process of translation, that I witnessed as an active emancipatory and intellectual agency in socialist Yugoslavia, that I, facing my world, very early on in my artistic practice, became so interested in the forms of a book and a notebook. Also the relationship between text and drawing in dealing with societal issues conveys a sense of fusion between the arts, which I often refer to through the principle of Mallarmé that ‘the world exists to lead to a book’. The work The Society of Unlimited Responsibility contains pencil drawings on each page with a squared grid pattern, in which each of the humanoid pictograms inhabits individual squares. Each claims its own space; each is free to move within and through the boundaries of their space. Thus, flipping through the pages of this piece provides an optical illusion of their movement, free dialogue and expression. Their plurality creates the society. Their society creates individuals. As a collective, in their silent co-presence, they move without bounds, individually and reciprocally, because they are beings of the UN-limited responsibility society.The artwork The Society of Unlimited Responsibility is a notebook which I produced in artistic residency at the Neue Galerie in Graz, during the winter of 2006. It was through the process of translation, that I witnessed as an active emancipatory and intellectual agency in socialist Yugoslavia, that I, facing my world, very early on in my artistic practice, became so interested in the forms of a book and a notebook. Also the relationship between text and drawing in dealing with societal issues conveys a sense of fusion between the arts, which I often refer to through the principle of Mallarmé that ‘the world exists to lead to a book’. The work The Society of Unlimited Responsibility contains pencil drawings on each page with a squared grid pattern, in which each of the humanoid pictograms inhabits individual squares. Each claims its own space; each is free to move within and through the boundaries of their space. Thus, flipping through the pages of this piece provides an optical illusion of their movement, free dialogue and expression. Their plurality creates the society. Their society creates individuals. As a collective, in their silent co-presence, they move without bounds, individually and reciprocally, because they are beings of the UN-limited responsibility society. (Irena Lagator Pejović)

Excerpt from my essay: Irena Lagator Pejović, A Diary of Ceaseless Quest for a ‘Society of Unlimited Responsibility’, MIJESCE 8/2022, journal published by the Faculty of Management of Visual Culture of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Edited by Karolina Majewska-Güde.