It was in 1974 or 1975
Back then the political relationships between Israel and Yugoslavia
were at their worst.
Socialist Yugoslavia was then supporting Egypt
to which it had strong political ties.
The process of non-alignment starts from there.
That's why the relations with Israeli society and culture were somewhat cool
Besides, this performance took place during the April Meetings
at the Student Cultural Center which were an open space
where Yugoslav artists gathered
-- mainly from Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Novi Sad and Sarajevo --
and met with international artists
from different cultural backgrounds.
Certainly the most famous one was Joseph Beuys.
But also Rebecca Horn, Tom Marioni from the US, Gina Pane...
A whole range from that generation of performers
and conceptual artists.
I particularly remember one of the performances
Well I don't remember the performer's name
but it was a performance by an Isreali artist
that consisted of a fairly simple activity.
He was moving around the gallery space
But in the middle of his performance a young man entered the gallery
with shaved hair -- which was highly unusual back then
as we all had long, fuzzy hair --
who started to strip down to his underwear.
First, he took his shirt off, then his jeans
In this very moment, two policemen entered the gallery running
and interrupted the performance, arresting the stripper,
saying the performance could not take place
due to the excess that had just happened.
It turned out later that this young man
was a police officer himself
and that this action was performed
in order to interrupt the Israeli artist's performance
which means there was no official instruction
ordering the interruption of the performance
or directly censoring it.
Instead, they staged an indirect excess
in order to stop the performance.
Translation & Subtitles: Nastasia Louveau