This Thursday, Serbian artist Jasnôçzei Ljubomïr visited campus to install his groundbreaking piece “Tundric Dissonance No. 8” in the center of Foss Hill. The work is comprised of the unaltered entirety of the hill, manipulated in no way by Ljubomïr himself.
“My idea is to distill and encapsulate in one space the mean, medium, and mode of human communication or dialogue,” said Ljubomïr of his work, which he classifies as “meta-transgressive un-spatial manipulation of abstract-organic negative space.”
Reception of the work has been varied. One sophomore brought to tears by the piece said she’d spent all morning sitting at the bottom of the hill: “I just can’t take my eyes away. It’s like I’m observing my soul, but through some sort of divine, translucent liquid.” A freshman lauded the installation, saying, “It’s like someone has held a convex mirror up to me and I’m looking at a bloated facsimile of the absolute truth of my identity.”
There have also been negative responses. “He’s a hack,” argued one junior, citing Ljubomïr’s long history of “bullshit, half-baked, and pretentious” artworks: “He’s totally riffing Møjolsski and Ürthö and he knows it. This is just ‘Inverse Ultraviolet’ rehashed. Total garbage.” Another sophomore agreed, explaining, “I’ve seen good meta-post-sculpturalism and bad meta-post-sculpturalism, and this is awful.” A junior observing the finished piece from directly in its center described the work as “pretty retarded.”
One unidentified student was heard shouting. “It’s just Foss Hill! Are you blind? Foss Hill! Why on earth are you encouraging this horrible idiot?”
Ljubomïr is the 2009 recipient of the prestigious Wyatte Elher grant, and his short residency at Wesleyan marks his fifth installation of “Tundric Dissonance.”
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