Without borders? Some critical reflections on European and global border conditions. Workshop by Kontekst and h.arta
histories, free spaces, participative democracy, economical justice
september 2008- april 2009
Histories: emancipation, „transition’s costs”, politics of reproduction
Free spaces: solidarity, difference, queer, sharing, resist exploitation, grass-roots democracy, net activism, alternative economics, alliances
Participatory democracy: emancipatory education, empowerment, knowledge production, public space, visibility, culture jamming, free speech
Economical justice: women’s labour, transnational ethics, immaterial labour, precarity, women’s economic rights, reproductive labour, „efficient” bodies, glass- ceilings, gender hierarchies, sexual division of labour, migration
“Feminism” is a difficult word to use in present Romania. After the emancipatory politics of the early communist regime, that at the beginning of 1950’s led to a development of women movement, later, during the regime of Ceauşescu, “emancipation” and “feminism” became only empty words, covering the gloomy reality of the thousands of deaths of women as a result of the pronatalist politics. After 1989, during the transition time and in the present women and men publicly declaring themselves as being feminists have to face a double blame. On the one hand the word carries the implications of the former communist regime, and on the other hand, in the present mostly conservatory public discourses, “feminism” is generally considered as being a concept “imported from the West” that has no relevance for our society based on “Christian” rules.
As condition to the integration in the European Union, Romania adopted a series of laws with a gender content (the Law for Preventing and Combating all Forms of Discrimination (2002), the Law on Equality of Opportunity between Women and Men (2002), the Law for Preventing and Combating Violence in the Family (2003). The adoption of these laws is an important step in the struggle for gender equality. But still, the fact that these laws where adopted on a purely legislative level, without the appropriate institutional frame that would put them into practice, and the fact that their adoption was a result of external pressures and not an outcome of the pressures made by the civil society, by the ones whom these laws are actually addressing, all these are diminishing the effectiveness and the power of change of these laws. These laws are reflecting the “democratical” face of capitalism. Aspects with an important gender content, such as precarity, poverty, migration, aspects that have as a direct result violence and discrimination, are not under the incidence of these laws. If you consider that you live in a society where all the gender issues were successfully normalized, then the problems that you are actually living are becoming only your personal failures, without any general relevance. The illusion of normality that these laws are creating have an effect of desolidarization, in the conditions of a society where all the facets of life are commodified and where living beings and ideas are important only if they are contributing to the accumulation of capital.
An efficient discussion about patriarchy can be made only if its connection to capitalism is clearly shown, only if the network of privileges and power, on which global capitalism is structured, is analysed. A discussion that would not limit itself to the listing of different forms of oppression but that would refer also to the responsibility that each of us has to oppose these oppressions.
Feminisms is a tool for analysis and action.
Feminisms is a structure that brings together different initiatives, with their different purposes and approaches, a structure that creates a platform for discussions, interactions, alliances, for a multiple definition of the term “feminisms”, a definition that does not take the form of a label but that is a mobile and flexible basis for interpreting and for acting.
Are you talking to me ? Discussion on knowledge production, gender politics and feminist strategies
ed. : Katharina Morawek and h.arta group
Contributions by: Carolina Agredo, Anna Artaker, Elke Auer, Zanny Begg, Lina
Dokuzovic, Veronika Eberhart, Eva Egermann , Eva Cruells, Marina Grzinic, Simina Guga, h.arta, Ana Hoffner, Reni Hofmüller, Maja- Lena Johansson, Ivan Jurica, Vida Knezevic, Katharina Koch, Lisbeth Kovacic, Ladyfest Romania collective, Lovekills, Roxana Marin, Ivana Marjanovic, Julia Mitterbauer, Emil Moise, Katharina Morawek, Crina Morteanu, Lilo Nein, Gerhild Perl, Alina Poşircă, Rosa Reitsamer, Joanne Richardson, Karin Schneider, Sabine Sölkner, Esther Straganz, Andi Tennis, Lisa Torell, Julia Wieger, Veronika Wöhrer, Regina Wuzella, Vina Yun.
Loecker Verlag, Vienna, 2008
The book Are you talking to me? Discussions on knowledge production, gender politics and feminist strategies is a result of the collaboration between the Post Conceptual Art Practices (PCAP) department at The Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna/ Prof. Marina Gržinić and h.arta group at the invitation of Bucharest Biennale 3.
NATO Meeting (d’apres Ion Grigorescu)
by h.arta group
Between 2-4 of April 2008, a NATO summit took place in Bucharest.
The attempts to react to this summit or to use it as an occasion to bring into a public discussion subjects as war, stability and peace keeping missions in the context of global capitalism were the subject of intense monitoring and control from the part of the state.
An atmosphere of terror was created, starting weeks before the summit, through different means, like the mass-media campaign that constructed an image of the "dangerous anarchists" that will destroy the city and our image of nice, obeying country, like the denial of entry at the border to people on the reason that they had on them flyers against NATO and against violence, like the harassment of the people involved in organizing some form of protest and also of their families and friends, like the surveillance of phones and internet activity made official and legal, etc.
Different rules and regulations were specially created for the occasion of the summit, interfering with the everyday life of Bucharest. People were detained by police just for looking like “anarchists”, for carrying heavy bags with them, for walking around in bigger groups.
The city of Bucharest was cleansed of everything that may interfere with our image of nice, „European” country (from the removal of homeless people from its streets, people who were forcefully sent to “shelters” in the middle of nowhere, to the gathering of the stray dogs that were picked up from the streets and kept in shelters only to be sent back to the streets immediately the summit ended and to the intention to stop any form of resistance and protest, no matter how peaceful or discreet).
Despite all these forms of intimidation and control, some people did organise and did find ways to state their opposition to war and militarization. A space was rented in Bucharest as a place for discussion, workshops, screenings. On the 2nd of April, the first day of summit, the riot police entered this space, they beat up people and they arrested everybody inside without any legal basis, just on the presumption that "something might happen". Later on that day, they had to release everybody, as a consequence of the interventions of human rights groups and of people piqueting the police stations.
This abusive action from the part of the police created the conditions in which some forms of protest became possible. Quiet marches were organised through the city.
Having a constant interest in finding small, everyday, unpretentious strategies and models for resistance, we had planned to walk around in Bucharest wearing clothing with some simple, clear statements written on them, statements making the connection between war and violence on the one side and profit and capital on the other. In the conditions in which to express your citizen right to the freedom of speech would automatically make you a “terrorist”, we wanted to do these simple, everyday actions of taking a walk, window shopping and making tourist photos, by these questioning the association between violence and protest, association that was so elaborately constructed. The fact that on the 4th of April, we were able to have a long walk through the center of Bucharest, wearing our anti NATO messages and without being detained by the police, was made possible by the people taking action before us (since the first day of the summit) in spite of the fact that they were subjected to the abuses of the police.
In 1975, Romanian artist Ion Grigorescu clandestinely took photos in one of the so-called “spontaneous” electoral meeting for Nicolae Ceauşescu, meeting strictly controlled by the infiltrated members of the Securitate[1]. The disturbing presence of these observers is symbolical for the constant surveillance that was an essential feature of Ceauşescu’s totalitarian regime. During our walk through Bucharest (same as on the entire period of the summit and also on our way back to our town, Timişoara) we were constantly observed by members of the secret police. They appear in the photos that we took of ourselves on the sunny streets of Bucharest, anonymous, mixed with the regular people. Taking these photos was also our mean of reacting with some form of observing to their constant observing.
One of the main critiques of Romanian communism is constructed exactly in relation to this constant surveillance, to the fact that you could not trust anybody and that all your moves and all your words were unceasingly observed. Now, when in our country any idea of the left is so righteously condemned as "totalitarian" and "communist" with the purpose to reinforce capitalism even more, as the only possible alternative, the constant surveillance and control is still part of the everyday life. It is enough to state publicly your opinions, to try to have some sort of critical stance towards the way Romania is on now, and you will be subjected to the same sort of surveillance as before 1989, even if now we are living the "freedom" times of capitalism.
[1] Ion Grigorescu - Electoral meeting, March 6 1975, 28 photo-series
work presented in the frame of:
June 2008: „cannot do everything“. Civil and Social Disobedience, Galerie IG Bildende Kunst, Vienna and Kunstraum :emyt, Berlin, curators: Jens Kastner and Elisabeth Bettina Spörr
Four snapshots
A text by h.arta with comments by Monica Melin
The Art Academy
To enter:
An essay on the sculptural ensemble of Constantin Brancusi from Targu Jiu, a charcoal study and an oil painting study of a still life.
To exit:
An essay comparing different painting stiles in the XIX-th century (…or was it only a comparison between Realism and Impressionism?), a nude study using a colour contrast at choice and, of course the diploma work that had to be much bigger in size than any of the works done before.
…I remember that I didn´t care about the rules for the applications to enter.. never thought I would enter anyway.., but then, I entered, and it worried me.. the “general” artist identity was not really my bag. Probably things were changing…but 5 years later I was told that some of my student collegues hated my exam work and it didn´t surprise me. /Monica
Between entrance and exit there were five years around which revolved the same ideas. There were six years for the ones that graduated before me, four years for the ones that graduated after me, and starting with the generation that graduates this year, only 3 years, according to the Bologna system. I don’t know if this is good or bad, this shrinking of the years of study, when it comes to Art Academy.
12-13 years ago, when I joined Art Academy, there used to be a limited number of students and the education was free for everyone. Now things are different: there are much more students, but only for a very few of them the education is tax-free. Talking with Monica about this, about the huge number of students, about the education tax and about the difficulties that these students experience after graduation, when they try to find an art-related job, she asked me if art students are generally coming from wealthy families. The truth is that students are part of different social categories and that many of them are not from rich families. How come then that they choose such an insecure profession?
… wonder if the gap between art and the general public there in Timosioara is smaller there than here, I mean since it seams like it’s not only middle- and upper class that are studying art. I doubt, but anyway I have a feeling thatsome of the feministic art here in Sweden, in the latest years, at least has attracted a new group of general public to the Swedish art scene, but maybe it’s only in my mind.../ Monica
Me, I wanted to study something different, something interesting, something that would open up for me more possibilities. But I didn’t know that these possibilities are not so many, that this promised large number of possibilities could equal many times a large number of compromises. You become the specialist in the “beautiful”, and this means that you can give advises in things like what people should wear, how should they decorate their homes or how can a room be adorned for a corporate party. If you want to have a critical discourse and if you are interested in issues that have not much to do with the “beautiful”, this could mean that you failed in your carrier. You should have chosen to study something else. Political sciences, maybe? Philosophy?
During my five years at Art Academy, I have never heard the word “feminism”. I heard many times the word “feminine” instead. It was important to avoid that your work would be labelled as “feminine” even if the majority of the students were girls. We were constantly trying to go beyond our condition of women and to tackle as general and abstract things as possible in our works. Our experiences as women were completely irrelevant. The more “feminine” things could find their place only in the fashion design department and maybe in the art pedagogy department. In my five years of study I don’t remember doing any artwork that would have had a direct connection to my life experience.
Well in Sweden ... to be very personal, for women I mean, is at least more accepted now than 10 years ago, but who knows, have a feeling that it´s more or less “over and done” now… new trends are coming, or what to say.../ Monica
Painting, Graphics, Sculpture, Design, Art Pedagogy, Fashion design- this would be the order of the importance that the different departments have inside the Art Academy. When I was a student, the only women who had the title of professor were the ones that teach at Fashion design department. Of course there were other women working in the Art Academy, but they were only assistants. Meanwhile, things did change. While visiting the Art Academy with Monica and Dan, we had the big surprise to find out that the new dean is a woman from the graphics department, a woman that didn’t had an important position in the school formal and informal hierarchies while we were still students. Maybe things start to change? Can things change only because the dean is a woman? From the discussion that Monica had with the new dean, you could think that there is no problem whatsoever when it comes to the access of women to leading positions in the academy. Apparently the number of women and men professors is equal in the faculty, although of course women are dominating the more “feminine” departments. But still, why isn’t there any gender awareness in the Art Academy? Maybe, the women professors are afraid them too, same as their students, of being labelled as too “feminine”?
…seems similar… being connected with women’s issues sometimes means that someone else defines you as the “weak” or being a” man-hater” or the” less important”… almost somehow to be excluded even before you started. Very tricky… I prefer not saying anything about feminism in advancand not even after if no one asks. Then people get it in their own way, and things are not so clear, but of course both strategies are needed.../Monica
The Union of Visual Artists
“How old were you in 1989?” is a question that I am often asked, same as others from my generation. The end of the communist regime is something that we all feel as a landmark in our private lives, as something splitting our memories into “before” and “after”. In 1989 we were old enough to remember how life was “before” and we were also young enough to be not involved, not marked, not traumatised or not profiting out of the former regime. At least this is how I feel, now, when I am 30 and when my country is completely embracing capitalism, when more and more of the public property is sold out to private investors and when more and more aspects of life are controlled by the rules of the market economy: I feel old enough to remember and young enough to have the energy of taking a critical stance. I /we feel that it is really important to try to explain as clear as possible the complicated relation between our communist past and our (many times) unquestioned capitalist present, and we think that art and culture are an important field for this analysis to happen.
… makes me think about fear and maybe recollections of punishment, like being excluded. If there is something to loose, something that is valuable a radical change could seem like freedom even if you have to grasp it all, and for some it probably is... I keep thinking about the fact and the consequenses of depending on “someone’s” money to “survive”, as an artist …/ Monica
Also, I feel that a special kind of sadness, of diffuse nostalgia for some past that never really happened, some longing to find new meanings to words that were misused, all these are an important part of who I am as a person now, of my interior landscape at this point. I would like to hear people opposing words like “solidarity” and “equality” to words like “competition” and “profit”, even if solidarity and equality have a “communist” ring to them when used in Romania. I would like so much to be able to use sentences like “all people should be equal” without having in my mind the sound of this sentence in official propaganda of the communist times. To see old words and concepts getting new meanings, meanings that would build alternatives to the present mainstream.
It was in the 80ties, the beginning of the eighties, when things were changing, though I kept the idea of men and women being equal, for many years. As if my mind was vaccinated. Maybe because of some bad memory or because of very important social services like day-care for children. Or, Why not combined with the mantra: “Sweden, the most equal country in the world”. This “idea” of the Swedish women as equal made those with other experience even bigger losers. Later, in ‘98, my self-picture definitely had changed and also the idea about Sweden. I felt like no one (really) cared about what I did as an art student. Sad but also like a freedom to do what ever...but I sure DID miss the feeling of being equal and I probably had the longing to get it back...But today it is not so bad... or? /Monica
The Union of Visual Artists was created in Romania in 1950. Of course this was long before my birth and also the existence of this Union was completely unknown and irrelevant to me as a kid, before 1989. But the Union of Visual Artists played some important role in my life as a teenager, after 1989, as long as most of my teachers in art high school and most of my professors at Art Academy were its members. The Union of Visual Artists was officially created as an institution to protect the rights of the artists and also to insure the fact that art is available to everybody, that it is not the avatar of an elite but it is created by and for the common people. This was the official image of the Union. In reality the Union of Artists was an instrument by which the totalitarian regime could control art and artists, by which art was emptied by any authenticity and transformed into mere propaganda. Everybody who wanted to be recognized as an artist had to be part of the Union, this was the only way.
… would be great to have something that protects the artists rights, but what are the rights and who shall become or be considered an artist? We don’t have any “real” Union, but some organisations that fight for better circumstances. Sometimes I meet people who think that artists, in general, are paid by the state ...or that I can make a living my artwork...:-) / Monica
In the 1990’s the members of the Union of Visual Artists were still the ones who were constituting the mainstream in visual arts, still being the ones who received most of the state support. But this slowly changed and now the Union of Visual Artists is just some old, dusty institution, not taken seriously anymore, still having in its property some galleries and some artist studios but without any power on the market of ideas. Of course some artists still want to be members (especially because it is easier to get a studio this way), and some influence of this institution still resides in the fact that many of the art teachers and professors are Union members. In the boring, dusty galleries still belonging to the Union (placed in most of the cities in very central locations) they sell paintings of flowers and orthodox icons. The artists that used to paint at the command of the communist party images of workers and peasants joining hands to build a new world are now doing abstract paintings that are adorning the rooms of office buildings and the houses of the new rich.
How come I get the feeling that both rich and “poor” people in Sweden are more interested in decorative art? But I don’t have anything against beauty.../ Monica
It feels a bit strange to talk so much about the Union of Visual Artists when we try to explain some things about the present Romanian art scene. The Union has no role in it anymore, it is associated completely with a traditionalist, old-fashioned art and now the mainstream is contemporary art in Romania. But the Union of Visual Artists is just an example for words and ideas being misused. It happened that when talking to friends from countries outside the former socialist block, to realise that the Union of Artists means for them something valuable, some ideal that was never completely achieved in their countries. And also, if I read some official indications from the 1950’s about how the role of art should be to express the realities of the common people, about art that should be a mirror of everyday life, I realise that exactly these are the things that I myself think that art should be. And when I think about how precarious my life as an artist is, I think that it would be good to be part of an institution that protects my rights and gives me some sort of economical safety. I think about all these knowing that behind the words was never a reality.
Being part of a Union of Women Artists for example, this has a nice ring to it, isn’t it? Unfortunately, only in English…
In Sweden it would probably be considered as a way to confine (marginalize) women and to confirm the man as norm...and I am still waiting for the exhibition where it’s clearly outspoken that there is only men participating... maybe we could be separated, like in sports…, men’s Nobel prize etc. What if my art does not fit in what the women’s art organisations consider quality? / Monica
But, on the other hand, there are always other words to use. “Friendship”, “informal networks”, “non-hierarchical associations” are less ideologized words and more valuable and useful concepts.
Notes on Timisoara’s cultural institutions
Before 1989, when I was still a child, I knew that to oppose power and the social conventions is dangerous, that it can make you loose the chance to a prosperous life. Even if during communist times the wealth was something that you should hide in order to keep up the appearances of an equal society, still back then, same as now, the wealth, power and prestige were the equivalents of a successful life.
Well... it makes me think about my childhood and my fathe. On our house we had another facade towards the street, a more fancy and expensive one… the successful facade to compensate other failures I suppose…/Monica
The totalitarian regime from before 1989 was really efficient in blocking any attempt for alternative discourses. This is still effective when it comes to the ways in which people perceive the public space, the culture, their civic rights and this makes even more easier the installing of the capitalist domination.
Many people don’t have the courage to talk about things that really matter, to act in order to provoke a change. The change is supposed to be something that comes always from above.
...thinking about the revolution this seems a paradox...probably behavior patterns or something?/ Monica
A few months ago, we started to have meetings together with a few other people representing local alternative cultural initiatives. We knew that a building from Timisoara was supposed to be redirectioned to a cultural purpose and we were thinking to write together a plan for a cultural center that would promote contemporary arts and to apply with this plan to the municipality.
In Timisoara there is no cultural center, and, in general, there are only a few cultural institution for a city that has 350.000 inhabitants and it is an important university center. There is a National Theatre, an Art Museum with an improvised collection and an obscure curatorial program, a public gallery that belongs to the Union of Visual Artists and that mostly sells icons and paintings with flowers, a Philharmonic that functions in the concert hall of the Music High School after it was removed from the space of a cinema. Talking of cinemas, from the nine of them that used to exist before 1989, now only three of them are still functioning, and soon two more will be closed. But a big new cinema just opened inside a huge shopping mall. There is also a Youth Center that has no support from the city and has to rent its spaces for weddings and commercial fairs in order to survive and a Student Center whose building will soon be given back to its former owners that lost it during the communist nationalizations.
Certainly all these institutions have their histories of compromises during the changing regimes, so it is not surprising that it is hard to observe a critical discourse coming from inside them.
Culture and art are seen in an apolitical aura and it is considered to be inappropriate and of bad taste to talk about real life problems, about what is personal and political. To be critical is not “beautiful”.
When we started meeting with the people from alternative cultural initiatives and we started gathering ideas for a possible cultural center we had a good feeling at the beginning. Although we were coming from different backgrounds (visual arts, music, theatre) we were all interested in contemporary strategies. We are all representing some sort of “alternative” cultural scene. Everything went more or less well when we discussed formal and practical things. We all agreed that the center should deal with contemporary art and we had more or less the same taste when it comes to form. The problem occurred when we discussed contents. When we brought into the discussion words like “feminism” or “anti-capitalist discourses”, the problems started. Not for all of them, of course, but still it was strange to see how scared some people can be when it comes to things that can seem too “radical”. “You cannot criticize state policies on the municipality’s money,” one of them told us. Even if municipality’s money is actually our tax money? Then, of course, we got stocked in endless discussions about the importance of feminism and of critical discourses and about the necessity of taking risks. The question about what is relevant to be discussed in a public discourse remained open.
Anyway, the municipality decided to give the building in discussion to the National Theatre. This decision had no connection to our plans of a possibly (hopefully) critical space (as long as this plan was never made official) but instead it was determined by an official letter from the Ministry of Culture, letter recommending the Mayor who should get the space.
Notes on time, money, jobs
Since more than a year I don’t have a constant job that I do only for money. I feel very privileged for that. Before, I used to have for almost seven years a boring and tiresome job. Now, although I work a lot, I am living every day as a vacation. Working most of the time on art projects and doing things that are sometimes routine but that are most of the time interesting and challenging, I don’t consider that I am really “working”, even if sometimes I stay in front of my laptop the entire day, even if sometimes I’m too stressed to eat or sleep, even if sometimes I postpone meeting my friends outside the art world for months and months. Still, I feel so lucky because I can do something creative, something for myself.
This is so great to hear! Like dream come through. I remember reading an article about H.arta before going to Timisoara and it was actually written out that they were working only for money at the same time as they did there art. Nothing strange about that, but why is nobody writing about the Swedish artists situation? I mean, more so the general public could read. Maybe beside the presentation of the artists in the exhibitions!!! (Sorry! Only joking). For me, maybe working only for money has become a habit and I don’t know if I can change it! Though working a little bit less would be nice... But how would I finance that?/ Monica
Most of the time I am waiting for something. Waiting for answers from the financers, waiting for the curator’s reaction, waiting to see what will happen the next month. I am getting used to the constant insecurity and I can take it as being an unavoidable aspect of life. I can even take some pleasure out of this feeling of uncertainty, out of this not belonging to any place, not having a clear status. Like a constant travelling to unknown places.
Sometimes I get so frightened about the future, so panicked that so many things in my life are out of my control. But I think most of the people feel like that many times…
Probably I started with art too late so I don’t have the guts to take big economical risks… have always had some fear, or mad fantasy of ending up without a roof over my head, sleeping on a bench… not the best madness for an artist or is it not a madness any longer… in Sweden?/ Monica
One of the questions Monica asked us was about what did we expect during our art academy years that artist life would be like. We discussed for a while about it, about the myths and the silences, about the inadequacy between the image of the artist created in school and the realities of the life as an artist. Our stories were in many aspects similar. Later, I realised that I forgot to tell her about one aspect, or maybe I mentioned it but without explaining more about it. When art and real life as an adult came into discussion, starting with art high school and then continuing during art academy years, motherhood was always brought up as an issue. Although during the period of more than 10 years of being an art student (in high school and in academy) most of my colleagues were girls, still some sort of embarrassment was associated to my being a girl who studies art and wants to become an artist, some feeling that I am in a place that it is not rightfully mine. Sometimes also some sort of shy and uncertain pride that I am overreaching my condition as a woman and I am entering a male territory. I remember long discussions with my best friend from that time, about the fact that all the “geniuses” from art history were male and about the fact that the few women artists that we knew about did not such a great job. I remember my professor from art academy (a men in his sixties) constantly telling us (a class with a majority of girls) that it is a shame for our work and talent that would be wasted in the moment when we will become mothers. I think I was about16 when I “heroically” decided that I would never be a mother because I want to be an artist (I didn’t like small children too much, anyway).
... well when entering as an art student at the age of 36 I didn’t think about that it could be a conflict being an artists and having children... I felt proud being a woman, knowing about the historical male predominance... though our class was a mix, more or less 50/50…half malse, half females. But after I wasn´t the only one that noticed that we were treaded differently…/ Monica
Of course, now, these are stories that I can tell as jokes about the art education I had received. But on the other hand, if I am thinking about the possibility of becoming a mother and remaining an artist, maybe these stories are not that funny anymore, from a reason that has nothing to do with the “geniuses” from the art history. I can assume for myself the economical insecurity, the constant changes, the impossibility to plan ahead, but would I have the possibility and the right to assume all these for another person depending on me?
At this moment I am taking the precarity of my life as an artist as a more or less fair price that I am paying for the pleasure of doing a diverse, creative work, a work that helps me develop as a person. I rarely think about the possibility of having a child, but when I do, I don’t like the feeling that I have to make a choice.
Timisoara and Stockholm
mai 2008
text written as material for a reading performance in relation to Monica Melin's work Beyond the mission. Postwoman meets h.arta in the frame of the project Consider these policies,WIP: Konsthall, Stockholm
[...]
[…] is about the things that are considered unimportant and that cannot find their place in the public discourses, about things that cannot find an explicit shape that would fit the dominant patterns, about things that are missing from the text.
PROJECT SPACE
www.projectspacebucharest.blogspot.comwww.spatiul-public.ro
Romania transitioned from a totalitarian system, that did not allow any critical debate, to a system in which the right to critically judge the injustices around us is willingly surrendered and in which we seem to consent to another form of domination, one accompanied by the rise of nationalism, racism and sexism (all of which also existed in more concealed forms before 1989 but which are now openly revealed and promoted). These developments took place against the background of an all-encompassing market economy that permeates every aspect of life in Romania.
The events that took place as part of the Project Space brought forward people, attitudes, actions that overcome constraining situations; people who take responsibility and who consider that it is up to them to make a change; different initiatives that have in common their struggle against authority, their willingness to take risks, and their attempt to create the conditions necessary to think differently.
The program of the space will be structured around four modules: post-communism, feminism, education and display.
Post-communism: The events in this module refer to ways of analysing the past and the present while constructing free spaces from where we can influence reality. It is important to clearly show what communism really meant in Romania but it is also important to be conscious of the fact that in many cases, the critique of communism is used to validate conservative, nationalist and sexist positions, and also to claim that the path Romania is on now is the only possible alternative.
Feminism: This module’s events refer to the necessity to shape and publicly declare feminist positions in a context where every aspect of daily life (the mass media, the public and private sphere, etc) is saturated, almost exclusively, by stereotypical images of women: the self-sacrificing woman; the devoted wife and mother; the sexual object; the victim. This is a reflection of a culture and society dominated by a heterosexual male view that refuses to acknowledge any other perspective.
Education: The events in this module try to conceive a type of education that would not be based on competition but on collaboration, where the sharing of knowledge would not be hierarchical, and where learning strategies would generate new ways of perceiving and constructing our reality.
Display: The events from this module reveal ways in which dominant ideologies become manifest in the public space (in the city, in the media, in institutional organization and their public image) and also ways in which pockets of resistance to the dominant discourse are created, spaces where people can exercise their right to question and think critically, places where the possibility to choose differently remains open.
The presentations, discussions, workshops, performances that took place at Project Space tackled at least one of these four subjects.
Project Space is part of the project Spatiul Public Bucuresti/ Public Art Bucharest 2007, curated by Marius Babias and Sabine Hentzsch (www.spatiul-public.ro)
2008
2008 (published by IDEA Publishing House Cluj and Walther Konig Koln edited by Marius Babias and Sabine Hentsch) is a weekly diary, a practical object that people can use in their everyday life and which contains, in relation to some days of the year, texts and images commenting an event from the Romanian recent history, events that are showing the histories of the excluded and marginal ones, events that are showing the injustices of the dominant but that are also showing examples of resistance to the dominant. The notebook that has a limited time to be used (the period of one year) is a signal for the fact that history needs to be constantly rewritten. Also, the fact that the book is a practical object that you can use daily, your own handwriting intermingling and overlapping with the historical facts is some sort of constant demonstration that history is always here, shaping the present.
Being Afraid and Being Yourself
Poster with a text by Liviu Pop in the frame of the project Land of human rights by Rotor, Graz.
http://www.landofhumanrights.eu/eng/project/index.html
http://www.landofhumanrights.eu/de/projekt/graz/posterkampagne01/posters/h.arta-group.htmlBeing Afraid and Being Yourself
By Liviu PopVery often the unknown is instinctively perceived as evil. Minorities are often victims of this mental association simply because their differences are away from what we are used to and what we know. The way we acquire knowledge is finding the similarities with something already familiar and the small differences of the new situation. Sometimes these new differences bring fear if not understood properly.
A few hours before the Gay Pride parade, which took place in Bucharest on July 9, 2007, another parade marched through the streets of the city, one in which people who were afraid of the unknown were exhibiting their so called moral standards. One cannot ignore that in the name of a religion that promotes love among all human beings, they refused the humanity of those who weren’t similar to them. The relation between the ones protesting against the Gay Pride Parade and the church was obvious: religious icons and slogans like "We are orthodox. Romania is not Sodom" were carried by the protesters. Even more, orthodox priests wearing the cross and religious icons were praying and marching aside the crowd. The representatives of the high hierarchy of the Orthodox Church publicly announced that they will "pray for the return to normality" of the sexual minorities.
The small difference regarding sexual lifestyle was enough for the Christians to perceive gay and lesbian people as totally different from them. It is ironic that this comes from a religion which started out as a minority and faced the same reactions from the majority of those times.
The violence that took place a few hours later, against the participants of the Gay Pride march was entitled by the same “Christian moral standards” exhibited by the anti-gay protesters and by the public affirmations of the Orthodox Church representatives.
One of the arguments against the civil marriage of gay couples is that they shouldn’t have special rights. It’s obvious that they are not asking for special rights, but for the same rights that the majority has. We are living in a secular state in which the religious laws are not binding for society. And they are not asking for the Orthodox Church’s approval, they are asking for civil rights.
Via Vita/ Via Vita II
Two examples :
1. In Timisoara there is a Museum of the Roads, maintained by the Regional Office for Roads and Bridges, a museum which has the same exhibits and looks in the same way as during the communist period. Although immediately after 1989 the portraits of Ceausescu were removed from every public institution, here, in this museum, they were kept exactly as they were. Alongside with the statistics about the performances in the production plan and the photographs with Ceausescu giving advice to the workers, there are also exhibited pictures from the parties of the company employees, from the choirs, shows and sport competitions, albums with poems and drawings made by the employees.
2. Following a protocol between the City Council and Iulius Mall Timisoara, starting with 25 May 2006 all civil marriages in the city are officiated at the Iulius Mall. From now on, if one wants to have a legal marriage in Timisoara, one has to have it in a huge mall (they say it’s the second in size in Europe), amongst shops and advertising. Every Saturday, one can see tens of groups of wedding participants who are mounting the steps of the mall as in a sort of temple.
Via Vita and Via Vita II are two videos which are documenting the way in which dominant ideologies – communism and capitalism – are confiscating private life, turning it into a symbolic capital which legitimates them.
Via Vita and Via Vita II are two videos which are documenting the way in which dominant ideologies – communism and capitalism – are confiscating private life, turning it into a symbolic capital which legitimates them.
2007, Protokoll gallery , Cluj
Before and After
H.arta group’s project Before and after consists of four pieces: a documentary video showing the moments around the discourse of Timisoara’s mayor from the New Year’s Eve with the occasion of Romania joining the EU and three individual comments about the ways in which the past and our newly achieved position are constructing our identity.
Maria Crista’s work Back to Vienna is revisiting the project What would you do in my place in Vienna?, a project that the three artists realized in Vienna, in 2003, during a one month residency. The project was about asking friends and collaborators from Timisoara what would they like to do if they stayed for a month in Vienna. The artist performed these requests and sent back home postcards with the documentation of them. These wishes, as some slides from a
dreamed world, were specific for a certain way of viewing the western countries as idyllic and faraway countries. The work Back to Vienna consists in a text explaining the past longing for an idealized place, text written on the back of one of the postcards used in the project What would you do in my place in Vienna?. Between the reused image and the newly written text there is a tension created between an imagined and an existing world.
Anca Gyemant’s work I don’t know how to explain…consists in a video projection of a text explaining the dilemmas of objectively relating to Romania’s communist past where the leftist ideas were tragically misused during Ceausescu’s totalitarian regime. This rethinking of what communism really was has different nuances and implications according to where it is done, in Romania or abroad.
Condemning communism outside Romania can be misunderstood and taken as a condemnation of the leftist ideas in general, while declaring yourself as leftist in Romania can be misunderstood as an ignorance of what communism really was. Sliding around these different roles and the continuous need to explain is part of some kind of “eastern European artist” identity, label that is so necessary and in the same time so complicated to avoid. The flowing of the text in the video
projection is from time to time interrupted by short sequences showing advertisements of the new EU member Romania, which are displayed on billboards in Vienna.
I don't know how to explain...
Rodica Tache’s work Magic is an ironical comment towards the mechanisms that made possible the transformation of the totalitarian Romania in the newly joined EU member. Most people from Romania experienced the changes in 1989 as an almost “magic” outcome, seeing this change as due more to the will of god than as a result of political interest. Now Romania is taking part to the present spectacle, showing the merging of one ideology into another.
H.arta group’s project Before and after consists of four pieces: a documentary video showing the moments around the discourse of Timisoara’s mayor from the New Year’s Eve with the occasion of Romania joining the EU and three individual comments about the ways in which the past and our newly achieved position are constructing our identity.
Maria Crista’s work Back to Vienna is revisiting the project What would you do in my place in Vienna?, a project that the three artists realized in Vienna, in 2003, during a one month residency. The project was about asking friends and collaborators from Timisoara what would they like to do if they stayed for a month in Vienna. The artist performed these requests and sent back home postcards with the documentation of them. These wishes, as some slides from a
dreamed world, were specific for a certain way of viewing the western countries as idyllic and faraway countries. The work Back to Vienna consists in a text explaining the past longing for an idealized place, text written on the back of one of the postcards used in the project What would you do in my place in Vienna?. Between the reused image and the newly written text there is a tension created between an imagined and an existing world.
Anca Gyemant’s work I don’t know how to explain…consists in a video projection of a text explaining the dilemmas of objectively relating to Romania’s communist past where the leftist ideas were tragically misused during Ceausescu’s totalitarian regime. This rethinking of what communism really was has different nuances and implications according to where it is done, in Romania or abroad.Condemning communism outside Romania can be misunderstood and taken as a condemnation of the leftist ideas in general, while declaring yourself as leftist in Romania can be misunderstood as an ignorance of what communism really was. Sliding around these different roles and the continuous need to explain is part of some kind of “eastern European artist” identity, label that is so necessary and in the same time so complicated to avoid. The flowing of the text in the video
projection is from time to time interrupted by short sequences showing advertisements of the new EU member Romania, which are displayed on billboards in Vienna.
I don't know how to explain...
Rodica Tache’s work Magic is an ironical comment towards the mechanisms that made possible the transformation of the totalitarian Romania in the newly joined EU member. Most people from Romania experienced the changes in 1989 as an almost “magic” outcome, seeing this change as due more to the will of god than as a result of political interest. Now Romania is taking part to the present spectacle, showing the merging of one ideology into another.
The video Before and after is a recording of the festivities taking place in the Opera Square in Timisoara (the same place where the events in ’89 took place), festivities that marked the moment of Romania joining the EU. The mayor is also aware of the historical relevance of the place, constantly using the rhetoric of the Revolution in his discourse and stating that the dream for which people died in ’89 is now finally fulfilled by Romania joining EU. The recordings are taken from the confused standpoint of the regular citizen, without the glorifying views of television broadcastings and without the constructed greatness of a historical moment.
About us (and) the others
On the street, a little girl answering to the jokes of her mother's friend and explaining that her skin is so dark because she has just returned from the seaside, but she is not at all a gipsy. The look in the customs officer's eyes when he asks for your passport. Words accidentally heard on the street: "You stupid Jew…". The pride that you feel in a sunny morning when someone tells you how beautiful your town is. The need to explain that things are never black or white,
that they are always more than that. That nothing is absolutely “true”. The portraits displayed in the classrooms, especially in the Romanian and History departments, portraits that represent only men, long lines of serious, solemn men that the history and culture of the nation are built on. “When more than two women are gathering the devil sticks in his tail, too.” The way you see your country in a different light when you are travelling abroad. Our country with high mountains and with the sea and with broad plains that the clouds are projecting there shadows on, with old and nostalgic cities and with people that are speaking plainly. Our country with grey cities and with people that, when they are condemning others, when they say that the ones who are different should disappear, they are not even conscious that they are saying something
wrong. Our history full of heroes that protected the Christianity from the pagan invaders, our history of Christian and orthodox nation that gives us the right to judge the ones that are not Christians. The shame to be Romanians or to speak Romanian of some people, when they are travelling abroad. An artist asking us insistently if it will be very difficult to us to go back home, after we have lived for a month in a place so western, so beautiful and civilised. The anger that you feel when you see the ignorance and the injustice around you. The need to say clearly that some things are not “natural” but they have to be discussed and they have to become subject to negotiation.
The book "About us (and) the others" contains all the contradictory things that we see everyday and which are significant for the ways we construct our identity: examples of tolerance or of intolerance, examples for the ways you can feel at home in your country or, on the contrary, examples for the moments you feel excluded or willing to exclude yourself, examples for the ways we look at the others and for the ways we are looked at.
Eduard Constantin, Stefan Constantinescu, Ulf Eriksson&Gerhard Blum, Catalin Gheorghe, Felice Hapetzeder, Karl Holmqvist, Cezar Lãzãrescu, Johan Lundh, Nita Mocanu, Vlad Morariu, Ylva Ogland, Raluca Voinea and h.arta in interview with: Gerd Aurell, Stefan Constantinescu, Ulf Eriksson & Gerhard Blum, Ludwig Franzen, Emma- Lina Ericson & Moa Krestesen, Felice Hapetzeder, Anders Jansson, Maja- Lena Johansson, Magnus Liistamo, Anna-Lena Lundmark,
Dorinel Marc, Paula von Seth
edited by h.arta
2006
On the street, a little girl answering to the jokes of her mother's friend and explaining that her skin is so dark because she has just returned from the seaside, but she is not at all a gipsy. The look in the customs officer's eyes when he asks for your passport. Words accidentally heard on the street: "You stupid Jew…". The pride that you feel in a sunny morning when someone tells you how beautiful your town is. The need to explain that things are never black or white,
that they are always more than that. That nothing is absolutely “true”. The portraits displayed in the classrooms, especially in the Romanian and History departments, portraits that represent only men, long lines of serious, solemn men that the history and culture of the nation are built on. “When more than two women are gathering the devil sticks in his tail, too.” The way you see your country in a different light when you are travelling abroad. Our country with high mountains and with the sea and with broad plains that the clouds are projecting there shadows on, with old and nostalgic cities and with people that are speaking plainly. Our country with grey cities and with people that, when they are condemning others, when they say that the ones who are different should disappear, they are not even conscious that they are saying something
wrong. Our history full of heroes that protected the Christianity from the pagan invaders, our history of Christian and orthodox nation that gives us the right to judge the ones that are not Christians. The shame to be Romanians or to speak Romanian of some people, when they are travelling abroad. An artist asking us insistently if it will be very difficult to us to go back home, after we have lived for a month in a place so western, so beautiful and civilised. The anger that you feel when you see the ignorance and the injustice around you. The need to say clearly that some things are not “natural” but they have to be discussed and they have to become subject to negotiation.
The book "About us (and) the others" contains all the contradictory things that we see everyday and which are significant for the ways we construct our identity: examples of tolerance or of intolerance, examples for the ways you can feel at home in your country or, on the contrary, examples for the moments you feel excluded or willing to exclude yourself, examples for the ways we look at the others and for the ways we are looked at.
Eduard Constantin, Stefan Constantinescu, Ulf Eriksson&Gerhard Blum, Catalin Gheorghe, Felice Hapetzeder, Karl Holmqvist, Cezar Lãzãrescu, Johan Lundh, Nita Mocanu, Vlad Morariu, Ylva Ogland, Raluca Voinea and h.arta in interview with: Gerd Aurell, Stefan Constantinescu, Ulf Eriksson & Gerhard Blum, Ludwig Franzen, Emma- Lina Ericson & Moa Krestesen, Felice Hapetzeder, Anders Jansson, Maja- Lena Johansson, Magnus Liistamo, Anna-Lena Lundmark,
Dorinel Marc, Paula von Seth
edited by h.arta
2006
About art and the ways we look at the world
Despre arta si felurile in care privim lumea
"Receiving in a personal manner the artistic message from the visual universe.
Competence: Highlight the plastic language elements and their inter-connections,
with the purpose of interpreting bi- and tri-dimensional artistic images –
drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures and architecture.
Contents: morphology and syntax of the bi- and tri-dimensional image;
specific means: drawing; value harmony and contrast; colour harmony and
contrast; suggestions for material choice.
Competence: Analyse the way time and space are represented in the bi- and
tri-dimensional image
Contents: artistic composition structures: classical and romantic, static and
dynamic;
Competence: Plastic analysis, through personal interpretation, of bi- and
tri-dimensional works of art from the local artistic heritage
Contents: analyse bi- and tri-dimensional images (a drawing, a painting, a
statuary or architectural monument, an indoor sculpture, an outdoor statue,
on a street or in a park, a church and a city hall).”
(Ministry of Education, Research and Youth, National Curriculum Council –School curriculum for grades 9 and 10, junior high-school, plastic education)
These are the official indications about how to explain to 15 and 16-year-olds what art is and what its roles are, the law explaining to the teachers how to provide their pupils with "the universal key for decoding any image" . Once one knows the formal laws of producing artwork, if one knows how to recognize a contrast or how to discern between closed and open compositions,
one automatically understands the message as well. A phtotgraph of Joseph Kosuth's "One and Three Chairs" is printed in the ambient design chapter in one of the 10PthP grade schoolbooks.
High-school pupils are taught, generation after generation, that art is mainly a matter of technique, a domain in which, if one studies with reverence and attention the great masterpieces, one acquires knowledge about "accepting values form the universal heritage of plastic arts" and develops "a taste for the beautiful".
This vision, presenting art as a combination of traditional techniques and abstract symbols, undermines its place in society, causes it to be perceived, and therefore to become, a useless thing, pure decoration that does nothing to change our lives.
Young people continue to be educated in the spirit of the old totalitarian methods, which tried to separate art and culture from real life, so that they would lose their essential justification, lose the real reason for their necessity: their status as a realm of freedom, where reality is analysed critically, their status as an instrument that helps us be equal and able to listen to each other.
After graduation from the faculty of arts, one wonders what to do next, in a confusing context where the artist's status is, for various reasons, an awkward one. Whatever one says is not taken seriously, because artists are "dreamers", living in their own world; on the other hand, if what one says is too serious, it is no longer art, because art should always talk about "beautiful"
things. This being the situation, we ask ourselves what could break this logical chain. Maybe proposing a different point of view would change something, however little.
As a contribution to Periferic biennial, section Social Processes, curated by Marius Babias and Angelika Nollert, we have written an art schoolbook as we would like it to exist. A schoolbook that wouldn’t just teach its readers more things about art, but which would make them wishing to be better persons, more tolerant and open minded, wishing to live in a better society.
We structured the book around the different purposes that art can serve:
1. speak about our lives, make us recognise ourselves in it
2. induce dialogue and sociability
3. reconsider the notions we take for granted, question the culture we
usually consider immutable and sheltered from any doubt
4. help us accept/understand those around us
5. change our viewing angle, make us aware that there are many positions
from which to know a thing and that there is no transcendental and
atemporal truth
6. attract attention on problems, give a voice to the excluded ones
7. effectively solve problems in society
to each of these purposes relating a certain topic: everyday life, collaborative
projects, institutional critique, feminism, multiculturalism, political art,
art for social change.
For each of the chapters we have made a different poster using one question related to topics discussed in the text and an image from the Romanian context.
May 2006, Periferic Biennial/ “Social Processes”, curated by Marius Babias
and Angelika Nollert
Despre arta si felurile in care privim lumea
"Receiving in a personal manner the artistic message from the visual universe.
Competence: Highlight the plastic language elements and their inter-connections,
with the purpose of interpreting bi- and tri-dimensional artistic images –
drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures and architecture.
Contents: morphology and syntax of the bi- and tri-dimensional image;
specific means: drawing; value harmony and contrast; colour harmony and
contrast; suggestions for material choice.
Competence: Analyse the way time and space are represented in the bi- and
tri-dimensional image
Contents: artistic composition structures: classical and romantic, static and
dynamic;
Competence: Plastic analysis, through personal interpretation, of bi- and
tri-dimensional works of art from the local artistic heritage
Contents: analyse bi- and tri-dimensional images (a drawing, a painting, a
statuary or architectural monument, an indoor sculpture, an outdoor statue,
on a street or in a park, a church and a city hall).”
(Ministry of Education, Research and Youth, National Curriculum Council –School curriculum for grades 9 and 10, junior high-school, plastic education)
These are the official indications about how to explain to 15 and 16-year-olds what art is and what its roles are, the law explaining to the teachers how to provide their pupils with "the universal key for decoding any image" . Once one knows the formal laws of producing artwork, if one knows how to recognize a contrast or how to discern between closed and open compositions,
one automatically understands the message as well. A phtotgraph of Joseph Kosuth's "One and Three Chairs" is printed in the ambient design chapter in one of the 10PthP grade schoolbooks.
High-school pupils are taught, generation after generation, that art is mainly a matter of technique, a domain in which, if one studies with reverence and attention the great masterpieces, one acquires knowledge about "accepting values form the universal heritage of plastic arts" and develops "a taste for the beautiful".
This vision, presenting art as a combination of traditional techniques and abstract symbols, undermines its place in society, causes it to be perceived, and therefore to become, a useless thing, pure decoration that does nothing to change our lives.
Young people continue to be educated in the spirit of the old totalitarian methods, which tried to separate art and culture from real life, so that they would lose their essential justification, lose the real reason for their necessity: their status as a realm of freedom, where reality is analysed critically, their status as an instrument that helps us be equal and able to listen to each other.
After graduation from the faculty of arts, one wonders what to do next, in a confusing context where the artist's status is, for various reasons, an awkward one. Whatever one says is not taken seriously, because artists are "dreamers", living in their own world; on the other hand, if what one says is too serious, it is no longer art, because art should always talk about "beautiful"
things. This being the situation, we ask ourselves what could break this logical chain. Maybe proposing a different point of view would change something, however little.
As a contribution to Periferic biennial, section Social Processes, curated by Marius Babias and Angelika Nollert, we have written an art schoolbook as we would like it to exist. A schoolbook that wouldn’t just teach its readers more things about art, but which would make them wishing to be better persons, more tolerant and open minded, wishing to live in a better society.
We structured the book around the different purposes that art can serve:
1. speak about our lives, make us recognise ourselves in it
2. induce dialogue and sociability
3. reconsider the notions we take for granted, question the culture we
usually consider immutable and sheltered from any doubt
4. help us accept/understand those around us
5. change our viewing angle, make us aware that there are many positions
from which to know a thing and that there is no transcendental and
atemporal truth
6. attract attention on problems, give a voice to the excluded ones
7. effectively solve problems in society
to each of these purposes relating a certain topic: everyday life, collaborative
projects, institutional critique, feminism, multiculturalism, political art,
art for social change.
For each of the chapters we have made a different poster using one question related to topics discussed in the text and an image from the Romanian context.
May 2006, Periferic Biennial/ “Social Processes”, curated by Marius Babias
and Angelika Nollert
How did you decide to become an artist?
www.cummamhotaratsadevinartist.blogspot.com
In July 2005, during our residency at Iaspis, in Stockholm, we interviewed artists there and collected their answers to the question How did you decide to become an artist?. This project that we did in Stockholm, in a context that is so different from ours, had its starting point and its motivation closely linked to the circumstances in Romania, linked to the fact that it is so difficult to construct our identity as an artist in our country, linked to our work at h.arta space (work which is about this need to find a possible “definition” to our situation as artists in Romania, need to understand our context and react in a constructive way to it).
In October 2005 we had a presentation at Vector gallery in Iasi, where we talk about our work at h.arta and where we proposed to the interested art students to participate in the project How did you decide to become an artist?. The next days, during a week, we have met these students in different places, which they choused, in coffee shops, in parks, in their studios and we took the
interviews. There were 13 students participating (Alexandra Andriescu, Madalina Bancila, Lavinia German, Alexandru Grigoras, Ioan Ene, Andreea Nasoi, Oana Nicuta, Eugen Pop, Bianca Simionescu, Adrian Stoleriu, Mihaela Stirbu, Oana Toderica, Bogdan Vatavu) and we discussed about the art education system, about our expectations as artists, about the ways art and
artists are seen in the society, about the things that our parents and teachers told us about art, about the stereotypes associated with art, about how we see our future as artists. We edited their very interesting, useful and sincere answers in a text named How did you decide to becomean artist? - a story in seven chapters. This text, published in “Suplimentul de cultura” and as insert in “Idea arts+society” magazine was part of our contribution at Periferic 7, section Social Processes, curated by Marius Babias and Angelika Nollert.
October 2005, Iasi, Romania
media intervention, published in Suplimentul de cultura nr. 62, 4-10. o2. 2006, pp 10-12 and as an insert in Idea nr. 23/2006
www.cummamhotaratsadevinartist.blogspot.com
In July 2005, during our residency at Iaspis, in Stockholm, we interviewed artists there and collected their answers to the question How did you decide to become an artist?. This project that we did in Stockholm, in a context that is so different from ours, had its starting point and its motivation closely linked to the circumstances in Romania, linked to the fact that it is so difficult to construct our identity as an artist in our country, linked to our work at h.arta space (work which is about this need to find a possible “definition” to our situation as artists in Romania, need to understand our context and react in a constructive way to it).
In October 2005 we had a presentation at Vector gallery in Iasi, where we talk about our work at h.arta and where we proposed to the interested art students to participate in the project How did you decide to become an artist?. The next days, during a week, we have met these students in different places, which they choused, in coffee shops, in parks, in their studios and we took the
interviews. There were 13 students participating (Alexandra Andriescu, Madalina Bancila, Lavinia German, Alexandru Grigoras, Ioan Ene, Andreea Nasoi, Oana Nicuta, Eugen Pop, Bianca Simionescu, Adrian Stoleriu, Mihaela Stirbu, Oana Toderica, Bogdan Vatavu) and we discussed about the art education system, about our expectations as artists, about the ways art and
artists are seen in the society, about the things that our parents and teachers told us about art, about the stereotypes associated with art, about how we see our future as artists. We edited their very interesting, useful and sincere answers in a text named How did you decide to becomean artist? - a story in seven chapters. This text, published in “Suplimentul de cultura” and as insert in “Idea arts+society” magazine was part of our contribution at Periferic 7, section Social Processes, curated by Marius Babias and Angelika Nollert.
October 2005, Iasi, Romania
media intervention, published in Suplimentul de cultura nr. 62, 4-10. o2. 2006, pp 10-12 and as an insert in Idea nr. 23/2006
How did you decide to become an artist?
The project How did you decide to become an artist? consists in interviewing artists and collecting their answers to this very general and in the same time very personal question. Listening to the people's stories around their decision to become artists is not just a mean to find out about the actual circumstances and about their intimate convictions, hopes and reasons, but also a way to discuss more general issues about art, about art education, about the expectancies that people have of art and artists, etc.
How did you decide to become an artist is an ongoing project.
Video project, started in July 2005
How did you decide to become an artist?
(a few excerpts from the interviews)
”I had these interests in society, in political issues (...) but it was never connected to art. Then, after I got into Academy (...) painting felt more and more like it wasn't enough. Slowly, I quit painting and started working with other methods and also brought in, of course, my interest in other questions. Then, more and more, I started to see art as a place where you can investigate and discuss different issues and do this from different points of view.”
Johan Tiren
“As an artist, I’ve done, I think, almost everything that I was scared to do as a journalist. (…) When I was younger the thing that made me most mad was the fact that you could live in a society and have a sensation of self, a sensation of dignity as a person, but that the same society could treat that kind of self or integrity as nothing. It didn’t only happen to me (…) but I also saw it around me.”
Pal Hollender
“It took me like four years, when I started in art school, to understand what the job was about and I didn’t know, but, I think that now I know what this job to be an artist is about and I really like it and I feel very, very lucky. It’s like I’ve finally found what I was looking for when I was traveling around, pretending to be a drifter. That wasn’t for real, but this is for real and I’m very happy when I work on my projects. “
Bo Melin
“I’ve just met people that helped me, people that gave me all kind of information and stories and made it easier for me to find a way to define myself as a storyteller. Because this is what I actually am and this is my role as an artist: to tell stories that have a connection to me and that reflect the reality around me.”
Stefan Constantinescu
“I never saw so clear the limit between being an artist or not. Maybe I have been aware that I am an artist at the moment I got to do things that were very big and amazing for me and I was aware that I am doing those things because I am an artist, otherwise I would have never been allowed to do them.”
Lara Almarcegui
“And then I was at the Academy for five years and it was a funny experience to see all these people that want to become artists, and these professors that are artists, and one starts to realize that it's kind of vague the whole thing: what is an artist, what kind of artist, who is an artist, who is a real artist and all of these things.”
Rodrigo Mallea Lira
“I had this very naive image of the artist like this avant-garde type that is outside the society. I didn't like that image; I didn't want to be an artist in that sense. Even though I quit my education with physical planning and started to try out this art school thing, I didn't like the artist role, so I didn't want to become an artist. But with my first piece, I saw the opening for the art solving problems in the society or being part of the society.”
Per Hasselberg
“I had this very romantic idea about what it meant to be an artist and this was linked with a very strong feeling I had that life is absurd and that I have to find out what it is about, otherwise I am not interested in living.”
Loulou Cherinet
“I was very political during that time, very socialistic, and it was this kind of idea that it was too egoistic idea to become an artist. So, that was the reason why I wanted to become a teacher. (...) Of course, what I thought then what an artist was is very different from today. I think there are different steps to take in becoming an artist. It took at least ten years before I could call myself an artist, have the identity of an artist, say, " I am an artist.”
Matts Leiderstam
“I was in a very beautiful landscape, wondering about beauty and harmony and the contrast within contemporary everyday life and the tension of the desire of finding more harmonical ways of living or being (for some people at least). So, I thought that I was going to study about beauty.”
Monica Giron
“Maybe, in a sense, the fact that I wanted to be into art, to be part of that machinery, came from the longing of not being alone anymore.”
Henrik Andersson
“I think it is a very personal question, (…) it had something to do with dealing with my problems, definitely. I see this still as a way of dealing with society, of dealing with reality and that is helping, first of all myself, to go through life. (…) Even if I’m known as a critical, political artist, it is definitely a very selfish decision, because I do have something to say, but, first of all, I’m saying it to myself and than I’m seeing if somebody else is listening.”
Marcel Odenbach
“It is really double this thing about wanting to become an artist. In a way it is something that I had to do, it's almost like I didn't have a choice, I had to try it on, but in the same time the idea of being an artist didn't really exist in the place where I came from. (...) You are raised in a way that you should do some useful things and, of course, we can all agree on that art is something very important in the society but still it is not as important as if you do other things. So, for me this was and it still is very strong, this feeling of being a little bit ashamed for being an artist and this is so weird. (...) This is why I think I have to really make an effort for what I am doing, because otherwise I would be so ashamed. I think this is not just something that I personally have but, maybe, Swedish people in general have it.”
Johanna Billing
“I wasn’t in an art school, I was in the University doing something called cultural studies, so I wasn't supposed to become an artist, but there, as well, I used the possibilities. I had the possibilities to go on from that point, to work as an artist. I understood that more as a description for the possibilities of how you work and how you live and how you bring that together in a more or less concentrated form.”
Bernd Krauss
“I didn’t really decide to be an artist and I think there were probably other things that I could do and be happy, but I really think that making art is the most interesting thing because to some extent it incorporates everything else that I’m interested in.”
Andrea Zittel
“It seems that the art context still has this sort of freedom that isn’t so much bounded to economy. Artists are not perceived as somebody who necessarily has to create a profit. And I think that the gap in the whole capitalist production which exists within art platform is very, very important. Artists should be more aware about that gap, that it is a positive gap, that we can produce ideas that doesn’t necessarily lead to immediate profit.”
Apolonija Sustersic “
"(…) when I was sixteen, I stumbled over a picture of an art piece made by Ojvind Fahlstrom, the Swedish artist. He had made two oval signs, one saying ESSO and the other saying LSD. They were made in plastic, like the ESSO sign. I totally did not understand it, but I also totally got it, it seemed like crystal clear to me and it was in a way an eye opener, in the same way, I assumed, drugs could be, perhaps. It was clarifying but unbelievable, I wasn’t able to grasp it and that was interesting and a bit frightening. “
Jens Fange
”You get the feeling that things are in a way that you didn't think they were, and you discover that, and then you start to question what is right and what is wrong, I mean they could both be right and in that case who decides these things and what about your own choice?”
Markus Degerman
The project How did you decide to become an artist? consists in interviewing artists and collecting their answers to this very general and in the same time very personal question. Listening to the people's stories around their decision to become artists is not just a mean to find out about the actual circumstances and about their intimate convictions, hopes and reasons, but also a way to discuss more general issues about art, about art education, about the expectancies that people have of art and artists, etc.
How did you decide to become an artist is an ongoing project.
Video project, started in July 2005
How did you decide to become an artist?
(a few excerpts from the interviews)
”I had these interests in society, in political issues (...) but it was never connected to art. Then, after I got into Academy (...) painting felt more and more like it wasn't enough. Slowly, I quit painting and started working with other methods and also brought in, of course, my interest in other questions. Then, more and more, I started to see art as a place where you can investigate and discuss different issues and do this from different points of view.”
Johan Tiren
“As an artist, I’ve done, I think, almost everything that I was scared to do as a journalist. (…) When I was younger the thing that made me most mad was the fact that you could live in a society and have a sensation of self, a sensation of dignity as a person, but that the same society could treat that kind of self or integrity as nothing. It didn’t only happen to me (…) but I also saw it around me.”
Pal Hollender
“It took me like four years, when I started in art school, to understand what the job was about and I didn’t know, but, I think that now I know what this job to be an artist is about and I really like it and I feel very, very lucky. It’s like I’ve finally found what I was looking for when I was traveling around, pretending to be a drifter. That wasn’t for real, but this is for real and I’m very happy when I work on my projects. “
Bo Melin
“I’ve just met people that helped me, people that gave me all kind of information and stories and made it easier for me to find a way to define myself as a storyteller. Because this is what I actually am and this is my role as an artist: to tell stories that have a connection to me and that reflect the reality around me.”
Stefan Constantinescu
“I never saw so clear the limit between being an artist or not. Maybe I have been aware that I am an artist at the moment I got to do things that were very big and amazing for me and I was aware that I am doing those things because I am an artist, otherwise I would have never been allowed to do them.”
Lara Almarcegui
“And then I was at the Academy for five years and it was a funny experience to see all these people that want to become artists, and these professors that are artists, and one starts to realize that it's kind of vague the whole thing: what is an artist, what kind of artist, who is an artist, who is a real artist and all of these things.”
Rodrigo Mallea Lira
“I had this very naive image of the artist like this avant-garde type that is outside the society. I didn't like that image; I didn't want to be an artist in that sense. Even though I quit my education with physical planning and started to try out this art school thing, I didn't like the artist role, so I didn't want to become an artist. But with my first piece, I saw the opening for the art solving problems in the society or being part of the society.”
Per Hasselberg
“I had this very romantic idea about what it meant to be an artist and this was linked with a very strong feeling I had that life is absurd and that I have to find out what it is about, otherwise I am not interested in living.”
Loulou Cherinet
“I was very political during that time, very socialistic, and it was this kind of idea that it was too egoistic idea to become an artist. So, that was the reason why I wanted to become a teacher. (...) Of course, what I thought then what an artist was is very different from today. I think there are different steps to take in becoming an artist. It took at least ten years before I could call myself an artist, have the identity of an artist, say, " I am an artist.”
Matts Leiderstam
“I was in a very beautiful landscape, wondering about beauty and harmony and the contrast within contemporary everyday life and the tension of the desire of finding more harmonical ways of living or being (for some people at least). So, I thought that I was going to study about beauty.”
Monica Giron
“Maybe, in a sense, the fact that I wanted to be into art, to be part of that machinery, came from the longing of not being alone anymore.”
Henrik Andersson
“I think it is a very personal question, (…) it had something to do with dealing with my problems, definitely. I see this still as a way of dealing with society, of dealing with reality and that is helping, first of all myself, to go through life. (…) Even if I’m known as a critical, political artist, it is definitely a very selfish decision, because I do have something to say, but, first of all, I’m saying it to myself and than I’m seeing if somebody else is listening.”
Marcel Odenbach
“It is really double this thing about wanting to become an artist. In a way it is something that I had to do, it's almost like I didn't have a choice, I had to try it on, but in the same time the idea of being an artist didn't really exist in the place where I came from. (...) You are raised in a way that you should do some useful things and, of course, we can all agree on that art is something very important in the society but still it is not as important as if you do other things. So, for me this was and it still is very strong, this feeling of being a little bit ashamed for being an artist and this is so weird. (...) This is why I think I have to really make an effort for what I am doing, because otherwise I would be so ashamed. I think this is not just something that I personally have but, maybe, Swedish people in general have it.”
Johanna Billing
“I wasn’t in an art school, I was in the University doing something called cultural studies, so I wasn't supposed to become an artist, but there, as well, I used the possibilities. I had the possibilities to go on from that point, to work as an artist. I understood that more as a description for the possibilities of how you work and how you live and how you bring that together in a more or less concentrated form.”
Bernd Krauss
“I didn’t really decide to be an artist and I think there were probably other things that I could do and be happy, but I really think that making art is the most interesting thing because to some extent it incorporates everything else that I’m interested in.”
Andrea Zittel
“It seems that the art context still has this sort of freedom that isn’t so much bounded to economy. Artists are not perceived as somebody who necessarily has to create a profit. And I think that the gap in the whole capitalist production which exists within art platform is very, very important. Artists should be more aware about that gap, that it is a positive gap, that we can produce ideas that doesn’t necessarily lead to immediate profit.”
Apolonija Sustersic “
"(…) when I was sixteen, I stumbled over a picture of an art piece made by Ojvind Fahlstrom, the Swedish artist. He had made two oval signs, one saying ESSO and the other saying LSD. They were made in plastic, like the ESSO sign. I totally did not understand it, but I also totally got it, it seemed like crystal clear to me and it was in a way an eye opener, in the same way, I assumed, drugs could be, perhaps. It was clarifying but unbelievable, I wasn’t able to grasp it and that was interesting and a bit frightening. “
Jens Fange
”You get the feeling that things are in a way that you didn't think they were, and you discover that, and then you start to question what is right and what is wrong, I mean they could both be right and in that case who decides these things and what about your own choice?”
Markus Degerman
Painting our way through culture
H.arta, the alternative space we are running, needs every year an accountantreport. H.arta is a very small institution and has no budget, so we cannot afford to pay an accountant. Every year we are asking an accountant we know to help us with the paper work without being paid and she is very nice and helps us each time. This video shows us preparing a gift for her, a painting with flowers (her favorite kind of image). The painting is an approximate copy of a Monet canvas, with lots of yellow sunflowers and a blue sky and it is the subject of one of the stories about the ways we have to improvise in order to sustain h.arta. And the painting is, of course, a symbol of our “skills and knowledge”, of the things we were trained for as artists, a symbol of what is expected of us.
video, 5’, 2005
H.arta, the alternative space we are running, needs every year an accountantreport. H.arta is a very small institution and has no budget, so we cannot afford to pay an accountant. Every year we are asking an accountant we know to help us with the paper work without being paid and she is very nice and helps us each time. This video shows us preparing a gift for her, a painting with flowers (her favorite kind of image). The painting is an approximate copy of a Monet canvas, with lots of yellow sunflowers and a blue sky and it is the subject of one of the stories about the ways we have to improvise in order to sustain h.arta. And the painting is, of course, a symbol of our “skills and knowledge”, of the things we were trained for as artists, a symbol of what is expected of us.
video, 5’, 2005
Brend
We read a text called Art or Brend? written by Henry Flynt in 1968. The text is about some utopical alternative to art, alternative, that consist in the simple things you do for the mere pleasure they cause you, things that you don’t usually pay much attention to and that you don’t value especially. These things that can be anything (fluffy pajamas or watching out he window or…anything) are called in the text „your brend”. We found it interesting and useful to organize
meetings and discussions using the brend as a starting point, as a pretext. We chose it as a reason for meetings because we feel that we need to relate to art in a less pretentious and rigid way and to have a simpler and more authentical attitude towards what we can do as artists. So we asked our friends and collaborators what their brend is and for a few days we met at H.arta and we talk about what we consider as being art and how can we work together.
The brend is of course just a game, but we hope it to be a starting point for some interesting discussions. We transformed partially the space, trying to make it really comfortable and appropriate to spend more time in it (with big armchairs and colorful walls), while the rest of the space stays rough. We are also working on a book with images and texts in which the participants to the project (students and young artists) are explaining their brend.
November 2003 discussions at H.arta space
September 2004- discussions and exhibition at KF Arad
We read a text called Art or Brend? written by Henry Flynt in 1968. The text is about some utopical alternative to art, alternative, that consist in the simple things you do for the mere pleasure they cause you, things that you don’t usually pay much attention to and that you don’t value especially. These things that can be anything (fluffy pajamas or watching out he window or…anything) are called in the text „your brend”. We found it interesting and useful to organize
meetings and discussions using the brend as a starting point, as a pretext. We chose it as a reason for meetings because we feel that we need to relate to art in a less pretentious and rigid way and to have a simpler and more authentical attitude towards what we can do as artists. So we asked our friends and collaborators what their brend is and for a few days we met at H.arta and we talk about what we consider as being art and how can we work together.
The brend is of course just a game, but we hope it to be a starting point for some interesting discussions. We transformed partially the space, trying to make it really comfortable and appropriate to spend more time in it (with big armchairs and colorful walls), while the rest of the space stays rough. We are also working on a book with images and texts in which the participants to the project (students and young artists) are explaining their brend.
November 2003 discussions at H.arta space
September 2004- discussions and exhibition at KF Arad
What would you do in my place in Vienna?
We asked this question to 38 people – our friends and co-workers - and we recorded their answers that reflect their views about a place they know only in a mediated way, but which is more or less physically inaccessible to them. We tried to realize the actions they asked us to do in Vienna and symbolically fulfilling their wishes. We documented these actions and we have sent postcards of these actions to their initiators.
The people we have interviewed are associated to the projects of the contemporary art space h.arta, in Timisoara (Romania), a space run by our group. The majority of the people who gave us their answers travelled very little outside Romania and have never been to Vienna. Even for the ones who visited Vienna before, this wasn’t something they would do on a regular basis, but it was a kind of exceptional event. Although borders are open for Romanian citizens, the economic conditions make travelling very difficult. All of their answers – the playful ones as well as the more serious ones – reflect the fact that they see the West only as a space they could encounter as tourists and not as an environment where they could perform professionally. Just to be here, to stay in this hardly accessible place seems to be enough.
What would you do in my place in Vienna? is a project that is mediating the ideas of pleasure, communications, and comparisons connected to the traveling from one (art) context to another one.
1-30th of June 2003, residence in Vienna offered by A9 Transeuropa
(Museums Quartier); the project was presented in our room, inside Museums Quartier
We asked this question to 38 people – our friends and co-workers - and we recorded their answers that reflect their views about a place they know only in a mediated way, but which is more or less physically inaccessible to them. We tried to realize the actions they asked us to do in Vienna and symbolically fulfilling their wishes. We documented these actions and we have sent postcards of these actions to their initiators.
The people we have interviewed are associated to the projects of the contemporary art space h.arta, in Timisoara (Romania), a space run by our group. The majority of the people who gave us their answers travelled very little outside Romania and have never been to Vienna. Even for the ones who visited Vienna before, this wasn’t something they would do on a regular basis, but it was a kind of exceptional event. Although borders are open for Romanian citizens, the economic conditions make travelling very difficult. All of their answers – the playful ones as well as the more serious ones – reflect the fact that they see the West only as a space they could encounter as tourists and not as an environment where they could perform professionally. Just to be here, to stay in this hardly accessible place seems to be enough.
What would you do in my place in Vienna? is a project that is mediating the ideas of pleasure, communications, and comparisons connected to the traveling from one (art) context to another one.
1-30th of June 2003, residence in Vienna offered by A9 Transeuropa
(Museums Quartier); the project was presented in our room, inside Museums Quartier
Mapping h.arta
According to Brian O’Doherty the characteristics of relationship between gallery and public can be extracted also from analyzing the typical representation of the spectator in installation photographs. O’Doherty talks about photos in which the visitor is always seen from behind, alone, photos in which his/her attitude is a special one, adequate only to this isolated space and in the same time different to his/her daily gestures and attitudes. In the h.arta documentary photos, exhibitions have always been presented in relation to the public, who is an active participant and not a lifeless object which is part of the display. In these pictures, people talk, listen to each other, go through info materials, drink coffee, watch videotapes, ask questions, discuss the works, etc. The most important thing that can be extracted from these pictures, the truly essential quality captured in them consists in people’s gestures, in the way in which these gestures interact with each other, beyond the space which hosted them, beyond the exhibitions which were nothing but a pretext to these gestures. Because of all these only the images of those people have been preserved in the work, people who actually visited the gallery, their presence being the essential element for h.arta.
2003, The Last East European Show, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade
According to Brian O’Doherty the characteristics of relationship between gallery and public can be extracted also from analyzing the typical representation of the spectator in installation photographs. O’Doherty talks about photos in which the visitor is always seen from behind, alone, photos in which his/her attitude is a special one, adequate only to this isolated space and in the same time different to his/her daily gestures and attitudes. In the h.arta documentary photos, exhibitions have always been presented in relation to the public, who is an active participant and not a lifeless object which is part of the display. In these pictures, people talk, listen to each other, go through info materials, drink coffee, watch videotapes, ask questions, discuss the works, etc. The most important thing that can be extracted from these pictures, the truly essential quality captured in them consists in people’s gestures, in the way in which these gestures interact with each other, beyond the space which hosted them, beyond the exhibitions which were nothing but a pretext to these gestures. Because of all these only the images of those people have been preserved in the work, people who actually visited the gallery, their presence being the essential element for h.arta.
2003, The Last East European Show, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade
H.arta
When h.arta is empty it gives you the feeling that it is a space of yet unfulfilled hopes and
expectations.
H.arta is the name of the alternative space that we are running in Timisoara. It has 350 m2 and it is located at the second floor of a former industrial hall (a building from the 1980’s). It is a large, white space, with many windows and a lot of light, with no furniture, no computer, no telephone (we are borrowing all that for each project). Many times, it was just an empty space (from different reasons, but especially because of the scarce founding). But, sometimes, h.arta is alive and important and full of people and ideas, when our public and us are there working on a project. It is the place to which our hopes are connected, our hopes to understand our context, our hopes to establish the so needed connections to the others, our hopes to finally find out which are the right questions and to get to meaningful answers.
2002, “Position Romanien” – Quartier 21, Museums Quartier, Vienna
When h.arta is empty it gives you the feeling that it is a space of yet unfulfilled hopes and
expectations.
H.arta is the name of the alternative space that we are running in Timisoara. It has 350 m2 and it is located at the second floor of a former industrial hall (a building from the 1980’s). It is a large, white space, with many windows and a lot of light, with no furniture, no computer, no telephone (we are borrowing all that for each project). Many times, it was just an empty space (from different reasons, but especially because of the scarce founding). But, sometimes, h.arta is alive and important and full of people and ideas, when our public and us are there working on a project. It is the place to which our hopes are connected, our hopes to understand our context, our hopes to establish the so needed connections to the others, our hopes to finally find out which are the right questions and to get to meaningful answers.
2002, “Position Romanien” – Quartier 21, Museums Quartier, Vienna
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