Olga Majcen: E.A. 1/1 S.V. Menswear shop #1 Formally speaking, the menswear shop of Silvio Vujicic is a genuine installation, since it communicates its visual and reflexive content only as a whole. The fashion articles, or the "collection" set up as a part of the installation, have been selected for their universally understandable language, rather than the fact of being fashionable. When Silvio Vujicic opens up his shop, it contains all the elements that a shop must have: an electrical display and a huge jumbo poster in its shop window, attractive fashion articles, and a designer's signature evident in its interior decoration. The only missing element is what actually defines a shop - the possibility to buy something. Silvio has made it impossible for his visitors to buy his products. Why is that so, we might wonder? Isn't the goal of every designer to have the "whole city" wearing his designs and to have some financial gain from it? The clothes that Vujicic is making stand somewhere half way between art and functional articles. Since he is often designing in the screen-printing technique, he considers his clothes as a sort of graphic art, which is why he has given his "shop" that name: E.A. 1/1 S.V*., a sign for the first and only graphic print in a series, at the same time cynically referring to his shop as being only the first one in a row. But his cynicism actually goes much deeper than that, for when we take a look at the current state of our society - there are almost no real fashion shops in the city. Most of them are actually confection stores selling popular brands. In this sense, Vujicic's cynicism is about his own status as a fashion designer in a society in which no one or almost no one actually needs your creative ideas. His idea of opening a shop in which his designs will be offered for viewing only, with a website where the "customer" will face nothing less than a feedback evaluation, expresses a simple statement. The artist is sending a message to the world that his person and its extensions - his creative process finally materialized in a product/object of fashion - are not for consummation. The author alone decides who has the right to consume him or his products, and his criteria are far from transparent. Or rather, his criteria are such that no one can satisfy them. Silvio Vujicic only grants his customers a portion of "impotence" as a result of their unfulfilled desire. Both the shop as a whole and its parts - the fashion articles themselves - fit into this story of men as bad consumers. The clothes are designed as articles of "haute couture" in the sense that they are barely wearable and almost for one-time use. The material / as the extension of the author / is mostly paper, void of all decoration. The only ornament that appears are come corroded pins. Exposed to the process of destruction by water, the artwork is being slowly and systematically defeated by nature. The Empire, as it was termed by Hardt and Negri at the time of late capitalism, is an all-encompassing system that makes it practically impossible to remain outside. Consummation and production that makes it possible have made their impact on our way of life; and consummation no longer refers only to things, but primarily to people. According to some theories of art, artists are the only ones that can remain outside the system, moreover with the society's blessing. Silvio Vujicic is using precisely that opportunity to remain outside, in a space that has been offered by the system, and to express his attitude with regard to communication - to himself. One may consider this project rather narcissist and misanthropic, that is, if we believe that Vujicic's reason for not selling to us what we are accustomed to buy is his estimation that people are unworthy of his designs, his conclusion that the clothes he is making are "too good" to be owned by someone - but it isn't so! With his laconic approach, the artist has opened up a space for playing, and his game consists in not taking the world and ourselves too seriously. In that case, the clothes may indeed be made of paper perforated by metal, they may be unfinished, disintegrate in the rain, corrode, and hurt when we wear them - and perhaps they won't even sell you something in the shop, simply to show you that it was not meant for you in the first place... * E.A. Épreuves d'Artiste