… and the winner is…, Exhibition review: Thuth/s, solo artist, Liliana Basarab, Dayton Visual Art Centre, Ohio, 2011

...and the winner is...

Text by Mihaela Varzari

published with Revista ARTA, issue 4-5, May 2012

(http://www.revistaarta.ro/liliana-basarab-iar-castigatorul-este )

Film still from Truths by Lilaina Basarab
courtesy to the artist 
link liliparalili on Vimeo.

For the past decade, the artist Liliana Basarab has launched a continuous investigation into such universal concepts like truth or beauty by creating participatory events within certain communities she has been working with. It is certain that every age systematically reconstructs its own value system and the beauty of the past, consisting in perfect symmetry or colour coding for example, it is not applicable today. Through her subtlety, often-light humorous sculptures, performances or videos, Liliana Basarab forces us into looking at how we operate with such notions on a daily basis and creates thus a moment of essential disturbance based on self-inquiry. In her latest new work called Truth/s, produced as a result of a two-month residency at the Dayton Visual Art Centre, the collaborative nature of the project becomes paramount as the artist invited different participants to ‘help’ her realize the project. The final show comprised of a 4 min video piece and showed three dancers, simply dressed in simple blue jeans and either black or white t-shirts performing, in a rehearsal studio, accompanied by some kind of heavy metal soundtrack, in a rehearsal studio.

Liliana Basarb’s works are performances which engage often fellow artists, lay audience, school children or dancers and choreographers, like in her latest project, who collude with her and become 'co-authors' of the final result. There is as much emphasis on the journey as on the destination, and the risks and chances inherent in Basarab’s collaborations ultimately give surprising shape to the final works, whether these are videos, costumes, sculptures or post cards. The idea behind this project is the popular game Charades, whereby one has to guess as soon as possible the word mimed by somebody else. On this occasion, for the first stage of the project, three separate videos of three young female dancers miming the word truth were produced. They could then be accessed on a website, specially designed for the project, where members of the community could vote for the dancer who they thought represented the word truth best. Once the voting was finished and a winner was announced, a choreographer was asked to take the project further according to his vision. He chose to work with all three dancers instead of just one, the winner, and he then re-interpreted their contributions into one dance piece. His version of the audio was the song Truth by Alexander but for the final video the artist added a different soundtrack by local bands from Dayton.[1] Truth/s is evolving therefore like a work in progress, through a gradual collection of subjective accounts of the members of the public, the dancers and the choreographer, all of them contributing with their own interpretation of the word truth. It is a way a redistributing creativity and opening the work to a certain whatever-ness in order to re-think what an art work can be and how it can be made. 

By constantly recycling symbols, Basarab’s practice has been revolving around deconstructing certain social morals and also questioning the current social structure based on such grand notions like truth.

Truth/s is evolving therefore like a work in progress, through a gradual collection of subjective accounts of the members of the public, the dancers and the choreographer, all of them contributing with their own interpretation of the word truth. By constantly recycling symbols, Basarab’s practice has been revolving around deconstructing certain social morals and also questioning with her characteristic humor and grace the current social structure based on such grand notions like truth. Originally influenced by the artistic group from Iasi, Romania, galvanized around Vector Association at the beginning of 2000, she gradually detached herself from it, taking on an increasingly personalized view on unfolding the innumerable layers of the individual as a social construct. 1989 represented for many of the European ex-communist countries a quick change of value system. The lessons learnt were no longer valid and an abrupt modification in ways of perceiving reality started to take shape. The constant condition of schizophrenia present amongst the population, as a result of living under a highly totalitarian regime was gone and individuals found themselves free and eager to embrace the standards of a more economically advanced society whose values centered around individual goals and aspirations based on individualism as opposed to collective performance. 

Liliana Basarb’s works are performances which often engage fellow artists, lay audience, school children or dancers and choreographers, like in her latest project, who collude with her and become ‘co-authors’ of the final result. There is as much emphasis on the journey as on the destination, and the risks and chances inherent in Basarab’s collaborations ultimately give surprising shape to the final works, whether these are videos, costumes, sculptures or post cards. She positions herself as the alienated outsider trying to peek through the values constructing our guiding principles. In her previous projects, at the end of each of her staying in three different countries (Romania, Germany and U.S.) Basarab realized a series of public sculptures, titled monuments for concepts. The participants were asked to pose for an online gallery and the general public was then invited to vote for the person who represented the concept of normality, individualism or acceptability. By involving the participants to actively vote, which enables them to tick a certain box next to a certain person, Basarab exposes our fragile value codes playing with our projections and operational systems of beliefs. In the process, her seemingly harmless yet inevitably subversive gestures touch at the very core of how our perceptions are informed by notions we operate with on a daily basis.

The artist’s interest seems to lies in her in ability to scrutinize different societies from a single position by way of a sort of using the same detection system, a system whose method she appropriates, no less, from the discourse of democracy (i.e. voting); a discourse meant to offer the illusion of power and of having a choice. By doing so, she manages to successfully inquire into cultural differences… but what differences since our current desires across geography tend to be satisfied in shockingly similar ways. What are then, the incentives left for a personalized value system within the current increasingly uniformed society? 

The uncertainties surrounding the realization of an exhibition were not hidden, as Basarab explains. On the last occasion in 2010, such a sculpture was supposed to be erected but the ceramic based object once out the kiln broke into several pieces and at the opening a broken sculpture was showed. Trained in an antiquated, academic manner at the Arts University from Iasi, Romania, the teachings of perfecting yourself as an artist by realizing a perfect copy is no foreign to her. Like the artist Stefan Constantinescu’s newly exhibited paintings realized after communist propaganda photographs, Liliana Basarab is making use of her apprentice years as an artist, in a conceptual way.

Mister Acceptability - Monuments for Concepts 2010, Dayton, Ohio, US

In one respect, these sculptures therefore appear to bring forth, figures of the community equals to themselves, susceptible to being assigned to one common criteria simultaneously carries with it, the syndrome of democracy and the illusion of power. A line from the American film To Die For by Gus Van Sant (1995, U.S.) springs to my mind. A minor character, (Lydia Mertz played by Alison Foand) after being used and abandoned by Miss Stone, a local very ambitious TV presenter, played by Nicole Kidman, who tricked her into helping her organizing her husband’s death, said: Miss Stone used to say that : ’You are not really anybody in America unless you are on TV. Cos’ what the point of doing anything worthwhile if there is nobody is watching? So when people are watching it makes you a better person. So, if everybody was on TV all the time, everybody will be better people. But it everybody was on TV all the time, there wouldn’t be anyone left to watch. This is where I get confused.” 

It is certain that every age systematically reconstructs its own value system. And indeed is the era, which differentiates the possible changes and not geographical location anymore. In a society promoting individualism but not an individual belief system, no wonder our aspirations and dreams will turn out to be the same.

Basarab’s sculptures trigger the collective perspective as well as the individual account on values we operate with on a daily basis. Monuments taken into the public are always political in their essence. In their artistic practice they analyze the relation to the tradition of artistic production, in which traditional sculpture and monument play a central role. Working with time and many times against time, Basarab’s projects are the outcome of a very intricate process based on a constant negotiation to the point where the art works are some clusters of multiple meanings. Arm yourself with wit, grace and humor and engage in the multifarious works of Liliana Basarab.

www.lilianabasarab.com/truths

Design by Costel Chirila

Performers: Alexandra White, Jesseca Smalt, Madalyn White. Choreographer: Rodney Veal

Soundtrack: Filthy American Swine, Strawberry Thundercunt, The Score (Dayton, Ohio, USA)

"please don’t give us £5 for charity", Episode III by Renzo Martens, documentary review, 2008

Review by Mihaela Varzari

Episode III (2008)

Documentary by Renzo Martens

still from Episode III, Neon Installation, Congo 2008, courtesy to the artist

s

Renzo Martens spent two years in Congo travelling and filming with his video camera and at the same time questioning the importance of the UN troops and other charitable organizations in this country. Episode III manages to take the pretentiousness away from this rather ‘embarrassing’ ethical issue for the West, by cutting through layers of media saturated clichés, not in an attempt to offer solutions but in order to reconfigure the premises of Congo’s multi-complex problems. In a time when, in US alone, the money donated towards the salvation of the banks, could sort out the world’s poverty, the release of this Dutch visual artist’s documentary could not be more justified. In this revolutionary, provocative counter-documentary, Renzo Martens smartly allows the camera lens to play the role of the border between exploiters and exploited, between the West and perhaps the rest.

Accidents, Mutation and Mistakes, ceramic works by Liliana Basarab, 2008

Text by Mihaela Varzari, published with ilovebucharest.blogspot.co.uk, Bucharest, 2010 (http://ilovebucharest.blogspot.com/2010/04/accidente-mutatii-si-greseli.html)

  

Family Connection, 2008, courtesy the artist  

Different Teams, 2008, courtesy the artist

In our western culture a tripartite installation is never innocent of the loaded symbolism to do with the family unit, Christianity or the idea of perfection served to us via classical symmetry. Visual artist Liliana Basarab does not shy away from using the canon to its imminent exhaustion. The three ceramic based sculptures titled Different Teams, Family Connection and Untitled (Pregnant bottles) examine with wit and energy the impotency and frustration of familial, thus inescapable relations. Crippled representations such as shoes, bottles, football players all suffer from the uncanny, for having gone through severe modifications. The narrative starts with the pregnant bottles which, due to their maternal qualities make possible the appearance of a perverted, dysfunctional family where mother, father and baby are interlinked through the continuous rear straps of the sandals while the brothers share one leg with catastrophic consequences for their football game. Oppression of and futility at one’s action due to strict social interconnections create the imagine of a doomed family with no future prospects.  Liliana Basarab's incorporation of the unexpected - a product of readdressing the need for representation in western culture - becomes particularly important here.  

Untitled (Pregnant bottles), 2008, courtesy the artist

Galeria MORA and Liliana BASARAB presents Accidents, Mutation and Mistakes ceramic works.

Private view: Friday, April 16, 19H00

The exhibition remains open until May 6 Monday-Friday 11H00-17H00 by appointment at 021 3165541

Liliana BASARAB (born 1979), visual artist, lives and works in Iasi, Romania. In 2005-2006, she participated in the residency programme of the Pavillon / Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France.

Vanessa Billy: Who Shapes What, Exhibition Review, 2011

Review by Mihaela Varzari, published with www.thisistomorrow.info, 2011 (http://www.thisistomorrow.info/viewArticle.aspx?artId=267)

Artist : Vanessa Billy

Title : Who Shapes What, installation shot

Website : www.limoncellogallery.co.uk

Credit : Courtesy of the artist and Limoncello, London

Vanessa Billy’s second solo show ‘Who Shapes What’ at Limoncello Gallery initially begins an investigation into semiotics and perception through its unconventional press release. Drawing upon Francis Ponge’s enquiry of ‘Sliding With Things’ (1942) and his approach towards symbolism, we are simply asked how to define a pebble if in doing so one has to make reference to the ineffable concept of a stone. Indeed the exhibition unfolds as an exploration of our perceptions, through a presentation of substantial materials and implications, which waver on the verge of the ephemeral.

Entering the exhibition space, passage is unexpectedly channelled by two flat, rectangular patches of sand on the floor titled ‘Glass Ceiling Once’ and ‘Glass Ceiling Twice’, immediately initiating a dialogue with the audience by demanding our attention not to step over, but confront it. ‘Weight, Appearance, Expectation and Neighbour’ is a training mat and ball, painted black and sitting in one corner. Easy to miss is a sleeve carrying debris, hanging from the ceiling and ‘Horizontality/Verticality’, which depicts two black and white ’60’s style, and seemingly found, photographs. An elderly man and woman handle a blow up doll, or the life size picture of a young woman, over a hole in the ground that appears to be a grave. Puzzled and nevertheless amused, one moves across the rather small gallery space to watch the video ‘Hands Bar’ featuring a female gymnast training on professional flexible training bars.

‘Who Shapes What’ comprises of eleven pieces in total, arranged as a treasure hunt-like game, each possessing their own raison d’etre and yet sparking off each other. Through poetic association with found objects, Billy’s show triggers analysis of our perceptions - the way we have been taught to think and respond, and the logic that exists prior to experience. The work here presents a plea for sustained consideration as a way to ‘see’ in order to make the invisible visible, and to encourage one to go beyond conventional meanings and values ascribed to matter. The exhibited ‘objects’ are memory carriers, working as reminders of the past, but nevertheless obstructing progression. Such a hindrance reflects media theorist Marshall McLuham’s influential dictum ‘We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.’

Don't try this at home / A nu se incerca acasa, Performance Review, 2008

text by Mihaela Varzari

published as part of Periferic 8 Biennale's research project initiated by Dora Hegyi, art as a gift, 2008, curated by Dora Hegyi (HU), Iasi, Romania

English version 

For the uninitiated, the introduction into performance as an artistic representation could become an instrument for understanding and interpretation of one's inner issues. One of my first experiences, that I can remember, took place at the French Cultural Institute, Iasi, during the Periferic Biennial in 1998. Bearing in mind that I was a young Spanish & English Literature student of 20 years old,  thus coming from a different area of interest but nevertheless experienced through and with reading literature, the meeting with this new form of art was quite unique. I counted myself amongst the very few ones who saw Gustáv Ütö  &  Rékà Könya's performance. The Romanian artistic duo was eating quietly for a few minutes at a table in front of a 30 people audience, when they started stubbing each other using forks, which remained still on their protected vests.

As a spectator, the first feeling to experience was of freedom generated by this new artistic form. The close vicinity in which the performance took place gave birth to a tension which implied emotional involvement on audience's behalf. The fact that we were dealing with a domestic, a la Ionesco, scene, created an abrupt interruption of rhythm, which ultimately facilitated a meeting with the self. The exteriorization through performance created freedom like feelings but nevertheless angst. Through the shamanic and exorcizing use of the body, the encounter with performance freed myself from a confused mind set and created another one following and leading a personal process of introspection; it also initiated an interior chaos, in which every gesture, expression, body movement became a performance, a gesture full of meanings. I tried to follow the organically newly thus created chaotic and liberating personal universe and I wrote my own draft for a performance but was told by an artist friend that was worthless.

***

Romanian version 

Pentru un neinitiat cu tipul de reprezentare artistica numita performance, ea poate deveni un instrument de intelegere si interpretare a propiilor problematici. Una din primele experiente de acest gen de care imi aduc aminte, a avut loc la Centrul Cultural Francez, Iasi in 1998, in cadrul Bienalei Periferic. Pentru cineva care vine din alta zona de interes dar cu o imaginatie exersata prin lectura, a fost o experienta cu adevarat inedita. Este vorba de un performance, mai putin cunoscut duo-ului artistic  Gustáv Ütö  &  Rékà Könya, in care cuplul de artisti romani maninca asezati la o masa, pe scena, in fata unei audiente de 30 de persoane. Artistii maninca linistiti, ca dupa citeva minute cei doi, sot si sotie incep sa-si infiga furculitele unul in pieptul celuilalt. Furculitele ramin intepenite in vestele captusite cu polistiren purtate de cei doi iar totul se desfasoara intr-o completa liniste.

Primul sentiment generat a fost de libertate personala indusa de posibilitatea creata prin aceasta noua forma de manifestare artistica. Tensiunea izvorita din proximitatea in care se desfasoara actiunea cere un grad mai inalt de implicare afectiva din parrtea privitorului. Faptul ca scena trateaza un subiect domestic de genul "ionescian" creeaza cu atit mai mult o intrerupere brusca de ritm existential, facilitind astfel o intilnirede grad superior cu sinele.

Exteriorizarea prin performance mi-a stirnit trairi datatoare de libertate dar si de angoasa. Samanic si extorcizant prin folosirea propriului corp, intilnirea cu performance-ul m-a eliberat de niste stari de confuzie si daruit altele care urmaresc un proces personal de introspectie; initiaza un haos interior in care orice gest, expresie, miscare, atitudine devine un performance, un gest artistic plin de intelesuri. Am incercat sa-mi urmez organic noua orinduire pe cit de haotica, pe atit de eliberatoare si am scris propriul "scenariul" pentru un performance, care dupa parerea unui prieten artist nu avea nici o valoare.

'All that Remains... the teenagers of Socialism' , Waterside Project Space Gallery, Exhibition Review, 2010

Text by Mihaela Varzari

Stefan Constantinescu's participation at ‘All that Remains…the Teenagers of Socialism’ show, Waterside Project Space Gallery

13 March – 11 April 2010
http://waterside-contemporary.com/exhibitions/all-that-remains/

As part of the exhibition ‘All that Remains… the Teenagers of Socialism’ at Waterside Project Space Gallery, curated by Maxa Zoller, the artist Stefan Constantinescu’ double participation with a short film and an installation, becomes emblematic for the entire show. A significant piece within his body of work, the short ‘Trolleybus 28’ becomes analogues with a constant negotiation between his personal memories and Romania’s communist past during the 70’s and 80’s. Showed for the first time at Venice Biennial 2009, within the Romanian Pavilion, the short was part of the exhibition ‘Seductivness of the Interval’ and was curated by Alina Serban. The film was well received at the time and it later travelled to Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, as part of the same exhibition.
   The 20minutes long film is the first from a series of 7 and addresses couple relationship issues and taboos. A man in his late 30’s gets on a trolleybus in Bucharest makes a phone call from his mobile phone but the conversation gradually resumes to life threatening, intimidation, bullying and shouting. A lady in her 50’s seating next to the person is visibly becoming increasingly irritated and embarrassed with the situation but shows a refrained posture. The man makes a second phone call when the violence of the language spills out with vehemence in a nonchalant manner and ‘I kill you and your family’, ‘shut up your trap’, ‘you stupid whore’ is everything he has to say. Then he makes a third and a fourth phone call. Every time he makes a phone call, we get the impression that the person at the other end somehow manages to calm him down but without too much success, as one phone call follows the other.

Film still from Trolleybus 92, courtesy to the artist

   After spending 20 years away from his native country, Constantinescu becomes self-reflexive in trying to understand himself as the product of a certain era, a social structure and a political system. The physical resemblance to the character is not incidental, as the artist admitted. The scene is, to a certain extend, a re-enactment of a similar situation witnessed by the artist three times on the trolleybus 92 in Bucharest. The angry man is the artist himself, he too feels like bullying, abusing and intimidating but does not allow it due to self-censorship. As peculiar this type of interaction might seem, seen in the light of power relationship within a political regime, it actually universalizes the victim abuser pattern, where the victim avoids assuming responsibility and the abuser reiterates this type of hierarchy. But what makes one a victim? How can one be a victim in an abusive relationship when no outside reality is known? This kind of inquest is reminiscent of the entry scene of the Romanian film ‘Mic Test’ (1980) by Mircea Danieluc, where a young female after being beaten up and raped by some man, wakes up the next day alone, hostage in a flat and starts cleaning and tiding up. Is this the case of serene acceptance or mute endurance on behalf of the victim or the person in question is so used to violence to the point that she either gets used to it or she thinks is deserved somehow and does not allow herself to voice it. Oppression was a crucial feature of social existence and after '89 becomes primarily, like in Constantinescu’s film, a problem of psyches confronting each other in society. To take this debate further on psychological realms, the obscenity and vulgarity of the language predict the strive for recognition on behalf of the individual which under a totalitarian regime is crushed under its weight. The individual becomes mute and insignificant without rights and when allowed to speak would do anything to make him/herself heard. This is characteristic for 90’s Romanian films where the violence of the language is unprecedented, attitude which becomes less obvious in the new millennium ‘s films. Or is an attempt at damasking a deeply macho-istic society, which would make Constantinescu a feminist.

   Romanian artist Ion Grigorescu, who belonged to the Romanian underground art scene back in the '70's, also questions the very foundations of the social and political order by turning his sex and gender into a medium of expression in home made 8-mm films. Any authoritarian system or its extreme totalitarianism can function safely only with constant and hierarchical social structures whose foundations seem to be phallocentrist. If Constantinescu investigates the consequences of the politics on the human behavior, Grigorescu aims at developing a tool kit directed at scrutinizing the authoritarian social and political structures. In one of his home made video, the artist is boxing alone, naked as if fighting an invisible enemy, as to say the state.

In relation to the its recent past, there is a tendency in Romania of turning the page without necessarily reading it thoroughly. This desire for a resolute forgetting of the past was mostly politically motivated. The vast majority of Eastern Europeans were involved one way or another in the structures of communist power and helped to maintain them. A certain distance in time, and sometimes in space, was needed for a younger generation of artists to come to terms with the past than the norms imposed by institutionalized history and memory. This approach is encapsulated in his artist’s book, the second work present in the exhibition, titled ‘The Golden Age for Children’, presented in the shape of a pop up book. It features Romania through moments of personal history, propaganda materials under the Ceausescu regime between 1968 and 1989, which coincides with the years spent in the country by the artist.

   It is through the prism of answering questions about his own past and identity that Constantinescu is trying to give meaning to something as ubiquitous as the communist part. The personal tone that Constantinescu chooses to use is a sign, that closure with the moments of the past might not be possible yet, as Romania strives to fulfill its new given destiny as an EU member.

CONGO MEETS THE WEST IN FANTASY, Exhibition Review , 2009

Review by Mihaela Varzari, published with 
IDEA arts+society, Cluj, issue, 32 2009 (http://idea.ro/revista/?q=en/node/41&articol=637);     www.thisistomorrow.info, 2009 (http://www.thisistomorrow.info/viewArticle.aspx?); 

blog of Intermedia MFA at the University of Maine (http://www.intermediamfa.org/imd501/index.php?)

For Romanian version http://idea.ro/revista/?q=ro/node/40&articol=637

translation by Alex Moldovan

The Double Club in London – a bar, a restaurant, a discotheque, a Carsten Höller Project by Fondazione Prada.

An art project dealing with the clash between civilisations is no novelty for English society, built as it is on fertile soil inseminated with a long running and deeply grounded tradition in multiculturalism. Dealing with culture clash is, however, a new terrain for the German born Sweden-based artist Carsten Höller. Placed in the rather affluent borough of Islington in North London and tacked behind Angel tube station in a warehouse, Double Club is a six-month long art project (extended to eight months due to its success), created by Carsten Höller, financed by Fondazione Prada and designed in collaboration with architects Reed Kram and Clemens Weisshaar.

It does what it says on the tin. It is a bar, a restaurant and a discotheque all in one, a space divided by an invisible line: the bar area is half Congolese, ornamented with plastic chairs and a barbeque, while in the disco space both Western and Congolese food is available and music is played. The dialogue between cultures continues with the artworks covering the walls; a self-portrait by Congolese artist Cheri Samba with a paintbrush in his teeth and Flying City, designed by Russian architect Georgi Krutikow in 1928. The mechanics behind the existence of this utopian city are left unquestioned.

As per the good Western tradition, a percentage of the profit will be going towards City of Joy (not exactly a utopian city), a charity for Congolese genocide rape victims. Höller’s relationship with Congo goes back to around 2001 when he started visiting the country and found himself fascinated by the high quality of music and the power it exerted over people’s lives. Indeed music is the power, as Fela Kuti suggests, the Nigerian iconic musician who also played a political role in the struggle against dictatorship. So, bringing Congolese musicians over to London to perform at the Double Club presents an opportunity to get to know Congo through music, following the Mali example.

As the intention of the project suggests, the audience is mixed. The aloof and arty London crowd is well represented, also students and others experiencing each other’s cultures within this cocooned environment, watched by no less than six very friendly bouncers. Mingling and chatting with random people in the crowd, it seems that the project indeed works in the sense that people are generally having a good time.

Double Club plays a unifying role in Höller’s oeuvre, as it is identified as the driving engine behind a plethora of mediums, covering almost all forms of artistic representation. What becomes almost representative of Höller is the practice of creating a safe environment where danger is present, in order to channel different methods of perception. Double Club is presented as an art project which DOES NOT address more problematic issues raised by putting together Western European with Congolese traditions. Even though it is certain that any project addressing Congo is a strong elicitor of all kinds of projections, Carsten Höller advocates a light-hearten approach and sidesteps the issues raised by massacres, genocide and refugees: “I am proposing this model as a situation, where you think you have to decide between this and that, but you don’t!” Indeed, doubt is above all the main engine of Höller’s personal system of beliefs and artistic legacy. When he initiated a project he calls The Laboratory of Doubt (1999), Höller drove in to Antwerp in Belgium trying to spread doubt. With the help of a microphone and speakers on top of the car, he was faced with his own inability to deliver his objective. He then started asking individuals how to spread doubt, but no one could provide him with an answer, leaving him to find out how to do it alone.

By being an art project which requires a time frame, we shall never see whether this place for bringing different cultures together has the potency of developing organically into a reference venue, like the ones in Brixton, South London, for example, where the existence of the club/church, Mass, has proved the possibility of Afro-Caribbean and Western traditions to coexist through the bond of music. At the same time, by looking around the Double Club with the knowledge of Congo’s tragic history in mind, one might be inclined to think that the point cannot just be these good looking black bouncers, “wanna-dance“ tunes, the tin roof of the bar and the smell of barbequed kebabs.

Carsten Höller states that this is a non-political project. However, his art is based on challenging the perceptual apparatus. As the name suggests, the project, apart from being divided physically in two, can have a double meaning. There must be more to it, otherwise the Double Club becomes an unauthentic set design, fetishising Congolese culture and making it palatable for the general public where people’s enjoyment or experience becomes a by-product. Indeed it is very difficult to approach the Congo problematic without showing images of starving children, dead people and raped women. By deliberately not using any of these clichés, Höller acts in a kind of post-traumatic way: he suppresses reality and withdraws himself into a fantasy world governed by music. In order not to victimize Congo again, Höller proclaims a kind of silent protest and throws a subtle provocation in the face of Western Europe. He holds a mirror up to the Western Europeans and delivers what is expected from the Congolese tradition: good music, cheap food, fun loving people.

The Congolese relationship to the West, more precisely to Belgium (where Höller grew up) and the UK has a long and entwined history, as described by Conrad in the famous novel The Heart of Darkness. This book (published in 1902) anticipated Congo’s independence from Belgium in the proceeding decades, and the same kind of flagship was raised by the documentary film Enjoy Poverty (2008), made by the Dutch born Belgium based artist Renzo Martens. Shot over three years, the documentary in Congo clearly states the ongoing colonialism and domination by the West in the shape of Doctors Without Borders, UN Troops and plantation owners. Martens smartly allows himself to be cynical and ironic, declares himself impotent, caught in artistic self-referentiality, even vanity, as he presents himself in the film.

One should take into consideration the double interpretation of Double Club at least for fear of making Höller play the saviour; one who takes himself seriously and has the power to import Congolese musicians to make their fellow countrymen proud of their tradition and restore their external image. He thus brings to attention the problem of Congo, mainly the unacknowledged holocaust and the ongoing colonialism. As Deleuze would say “there are not only right and wrong solutions to problems, there are also right and wrong problems”. In our case we are dealing with a false problem, which is not that of Congo having a bad image but that of inequality, exploitation and injustice on a massive scale. The project shows the opposition between those who are born into the culture, completely ruled of it and those who enjoy it. Höller can be self-critical of his role of successful contemporary artist who lives in an airplane and commissions his works from airports. He admits suffering with a kind of “hysterical production, where one is so busy with producing so much that he or she does not let doubts “come by”. Producing then becomes the cause and effect of having doubts, which is the only way to acquire clarity of thought.

Carsten Höller’s work is being followed incessantly by the idea of doubt as a result of allowing oneself to play a double role, of both the subject and object in order to achieve self-reflexivity. His interest seems to be partly determined by his own personal professional experience, where he is educated to doctorate level in psychopathology and agronomic entomology and by his exuberant energy to produce art. Moving from an over-specialized area of science to a very wide range of artistic mediums affected his artistic vision to such an extent that his participatory sculpture and installation is derived from devices and techniques originating in different areas of scientific research. The most famous example is Test Site (2006–07), the ultimate in experimental and interactive installation. These giant slides were installed in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London, where indeed an impressionable number of visitors did slide down. If doubt is what Höller is trying to get people introduced to in order to achieve clear judgment, then it is most unlikely to have happened in this situation, since one needs critical distance, whereas the slides are more likely to produce amazement, a state of joy in the here and now. Adding the slides under the doubt-creating artworks would be wrong, as the state of doubt and the state of amazement are two different things.

JENS HAANING’S PERFORMANCE BICYCLE HOLIDAY IN POLAND, 1979, Performance Review, 2009

Text by Mihaela Varzari, published with Public Preparation catalogue, Estonia
commissioned by the curator Rael Artel, 2009

Jens Haaning’s performance Bicycle Holiday in Poland, 1979
Crisis Special in November 11, 2009

Museum Sztuki, Lódz, Poland

Faithful to his discourse formed as a politically driven conceptual artist, Jens Haaning presents his project Bicycle Holiday in Poland, 1979 in a self-criticizing manner whether he addresses the Scandinavic political system or himself as being part of it. On this occasion he shifts attention from the excluded due to political systems, a familiar subject to his previous work, to how we identify each other as nations. As to say, we are subjects to our different cultural background and ultimately products of the political system we are affected by.

   In his performance, the artist introduces a series of 24 photos taken while holidaying with his Danish parents during the summer of 1979 in Poland. Each photograph is accompanied by the artist’s mother commentaries, as he remembers them. The Haanings took the initiative for this bike vacation to Poland out of curiosity raised by the Marxist propaganda leaflets received through their letterbox, back in Copenhagen. Denmark represented at the time a Scandinavian model of social democracy, which made Copenhagen the gateway between Scandinavia and mainland Europe. Marxist interest was more common in posh areas where intellectuals lived. Haaning family lived in one of these areas in Copenhagen, even thou they were neither rich nor highly educated. Family pictures depicting the parents and the three children traveling through Poland are common snapshots. The mother’s comments range between sweetness and warmth with a general tone of  sincerity and genuine naivety. Meeting a different culture that you know of through socialist advertising is bound to establish some preliminary thoughts on what you are to encounter and upon one is going to form an opinion. Whether the East for the Haaning family represented a socialistic dreamland or the sight of queues for rationed food shortages is going to act as a barometer or reference point for further interpretations of the new environment. How are to deal with this baggage is also investigated in a project dealing with a similar issue - where how we identify each other as notions on the basis of our perceived knowledge in relation to the Other and which has ultimately a self-reflective potential - was commissioned to David Cerny by the European Community in Brussels in order to create an installation called Entropa, 2009. The project consisted in the artist being in charge with commissioning other 27 artists, representatives of all European Union’s members, whose artworks were supposed to depict the prejudices they harbor one of each other. Without consulting anyone Cerny decided to make himself all 27 artworks, which in the end had legal repercussions. The Netherlands was shown as series of minarets submerged by a flood, Romania as a Dracula theme park and Bulgaria’s location on the European Community’s map was represented by a Turkish toilet. In the end the project had to be removed at the demands of the Bulgarian government, due to the country’s representation as a Turkish toilet. This project sets out on unmasking the very misconceptions that one is operating with when asserting the other, how this process works on the basis of projections and that it mainly brings to light features belonging to the speaker. In Cerny’s case he only depicted what different countries are known for in order to show how ignorant and ‘naively’ prejudicial one of another we may be. Both artists Haaning as well as Cerny are set out to expose how we generally color our ideas of the unknown with our notions of the known. We populate a new land with remains of our own reality, history and expectations. With slight misconceptions of reality we fabricate our hopes and beliefs and we behave like poor children who make believe they are happy by living off crusts that we call cakes. And this is how a particular system generally known as civilization works. The idea of a different civilization consists in giving something a name that does not belong to it and then dreaming over the result. In the case of Jens Haaning’s mother, her description joins to the true dream and create a new reality and thus the object does change into something else, because we make it change involuntarily. The physical borders start taking shape of mental borders, the latter being more difficult to erase as is usually inherited from the previous generation in a process known as ‘mental mapping’. In order to explain how deconstructionist works in relation to politics, one should focus on Homi Bhabha’s, by now influential quotation – “Nation is narration” [1][1] which implies that the so called unity of narration is a construct realized as a result of discursive and literary strategies. One’s experience of any culture differs according to how one is positioned by and positions oneself within it according to a variety of parameters like age, gender, and economic situation. These parameters in themselves are subject to a constant modification which gives rise to new identifications and affiliations

What’s like living in your reality? Don’t answer it!

   Were Marxist ideas flourishing and being appreciated in the West, on a territory reigned by freedom of speech, or better say fetishist in the same way as the beauty of a naked body is only appreciated by cultures that use clothing? The funny thing is that socialist ideology in the East now is a kind of recycled version of what once existed and it comes back via West. After 30 years since the photos were taken, Poland does not represent any longer the exotic other but the new Europe that is subject to all the changes like the other new EU members are. While the rampant economies of hedge fund investors, creative financiers and ‘adventurous capitalists’ of the turning of the 21st century vane on the horizon, the satellite states of the European Union look to neo-liberal system still as their only possible economic salvation. Betrayed by socialist ideals, they are embracing what remains of the economic haven offered by the European Union as an attractive option. Western model of democracy is being spread mechanically to other societies with different historical experience and cultural traditions.

But it was soon very clear that western capitalism, too, deprived of its old communist adversary and imagining itself the undisputed victor and incarnation of global progress, is at risk of leading western society and the rest of the world down another historical blind alley. The current economical crisis comes with a temporary rebirth of a social conscience in the Western World and acts as an indicator of what the belief that ultra liberal capitalism is the only way forward and so eagerly embraced by the new EU states. Given the current economical situation and the recent reshaping of the global map there is the urgency for self-reflexivity and the need to rearticulate itself despite its economic superiority.

Let me color your reality
   Within the current global climate cultural boundaries are never fixed but subject to constant change, which does not quite fit the idea that the West still posses of the East. As the world is progressing towards looking as a sole organism, the old economical barriers between different countries are now to be found within the same country where first, second and third worlds co-exist. Within this increased homogenized political-economic space the issues of ‘we’ and ‘them’, the processes of ‘otherness’ have to be redefined according to the change of paradigm engineered by the increasingly predominant division between rich and poor. The 19^th century project of the creation of national identities is being replaced by that of transcending them, which in the case of Europe do not necessarily translate into a shared European consciousness, especially as the media usually present European issues through their national element.[2][2] It came as a response to pressures from national state and their citizens to resist any further erosion of national identity as well as sovereignty. Under this influence which still prevails binary bifurcations and pyramidal system there is a long way before emancipatory concepts will start to take shape. According to cultural theorists such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak[3][3] or Boris Buden[4][4] it is in this context that the notion of cultural translation is of paramount importance. It first of all combats the very idea of an original cultural identity, which multiculturalism, as the basis of future Europe, is grounded on and secondly it focuses on rearranging relations between countries engaged into a reconstructed concept of universalism. Cultural translation is drawing away from the literary translation where one word is given a different meaning in several languages and takes one step beyond into a zone which neglects the existence of original and reproduction.

   In a broader sense, Jens Haaning’s work identifies a step towards perceiving a different culture no longer as something alien, determined by the abstract notion of nationality, but as a reality that people live. In other words a reality which is the result of a mediated and negotiated relationship where one is mirrored in the other not on the basis of old dichotomies like identity-alterity, inside-outside, East-West.

---

[5][1] HK Bhabha (ed), Nation and Narration (London and New York: Routledge, 1990) p. 204

[6][2] As a Romanian living in London around the time of joining the EU, I was exposed to a tendency in the media which would put an emphasis on more of the negative elements of Romania or Romanians living in the UK, as an ‘explanation’ on why we should feel forever grateful and indebted for having been accepted.

[7][3] eipcp.net/transversal/0608/spivak/en (accessed February 20, 2010)

[8][4] www.eipcp.net/+boris+buden+cultural+translation (accessed December 18, 2009)

---

Towards Post-Re-Construction - Young Artist Biennial Bucharest, 2008, Exhibition Review, 2008

Text by Mihaela Varzari, written as part of the Workshop for Young Art Critics run by Adam Budak, Contemporay Art Biennial for Young Artists, Bucharest

October 2008 Dalles Hall Bucharest - this year Contemporay Art Biennial for Young Artists’ venue - presents one space of multifactious artworks under the umbrella term, Re-Construction, chosen by the internationally renowned French curator Ami Barak. At its third edition, the biennial is confronting and translating into contemporary art domain, the issues raised by the intense and radical economical and political transformations that Romania has been undergoing during the, by now, “never-ending” period of transition started in December 1989. During its struggle to become internationally visible, Romania is running the danger of a cross-cultural normalization in the form of cultural homogenization. The feeling and searching process for a 'normalization' is part of the necessity to enter and integrate within the processes of contemporary post-modernization. The necessity of being part of the world stage is sought by embracing experiences which are culturally different without developing a critical understanding of the cross cultural implications.

   The biennial invites the viewer to meditate on the multiple possibilities of interaction between local and global. The curatorial statement reinforces the idea that this years’ main slogan “think global and act local” does not deliver anything if there is not an international recognition of the artists as well as a relationship between the objects of visual representation displayed globally and the local community.

Film still by Olivia Mihaltianu

Courtesy the artist

Fifty five international artists’ works, representing twelve countries, cover entirely the whole space, which becomes somehow insufficient, when dealing with such a high volume of art. In an attempt of trying to subtly induce the transitory road of the - once popular idea - market, which now has become super-market leading towards - under the well known path followed by the heavily capitalized countries- excess, as a future-vision as the state. Is Romania already leaving in the era of excess of production and consumption, as a path towards normalization? The problem of contemporary post-modernity and deconstruction processes, particularly when applied to Eastern countries, is principally grounded in a discourse of total acceptance. The reconstruction of a new society is made according to visual deconstructive parameters in the attempt to refute the failures of the past in their totality as a rejection of a failed cultural identity.  
                                                                   

   The personal stories in this context are the stories of the individuals' struggle to reconcile this transitional process. In this sense the video work of Olivia Mihaltianu, reminding of Cindy Sherman, is examining the influence of the western look and life style by the means of cinema from the late ’50 till recent days. Also, the impact of the western culture on the former communist countries is being investigated in Dan Acostioaei’ video work, this time on spirituality. Both examples introduce the idea that by moving from national cultural identities to global cultural identities in a an-critical manner, the individual feels the reality of contemporary globalizing processes and supranational institutions as a form of local cultural de-evaluation. The stories therefore necessarily become personal stories that address the difficulty in merging into a globalized lifestyle, into supranational networks, in forms of alienating exploitation of work and skills.

Film still from Crossroad by Dan Acostioaei
Courtesy the artist

   The artists move between the local and global and then back from the global to the local in search of the lost identity, having experienced the failure of a deconstructive normalization which is a forevermore alienation of the individual from its local roots as well as alienation of the individual by the post-modern global corporate frameworks. Lost in spaces, in between identities, torn apart and deconstructed, the artists try to dialogue. Bora Petkova’s work in progress occupies the main area of the exhibition, marking thus the biennial’s statement, in a more than obvious way. The works seem to be divided under different themes and deal with different issues like violence, religious problematic, cultural translation, globalization, border, national identity and history.

   The problem with choosing Re-Construction as a title is that it becomes too general and broad, too easily approachable and adaptable to and for any historical space. At the same time it illustrates the idea that Romania like other countries from East European but not only is undergoing a necessary process of re-construction. Thus, Fernando Sanchez Castillo is reconstructing imagines dipping into Spain’s recent history in his epic video Architecture for the horse, 2002, shot at Autonoma University in Madrid, where the artist is ridding a horse inside the building. The building was constructed after May 1968 in such a way that it would allow a policeman ridding a horse to enter and stop any revolutionary form on behalf of the students. Three old coats are hanging on a cloth hanger having the Romanian flag sewed in. It is Victor Man’s installation Untitled. Epic and evocative and perfectly installed on the exposition site but greatly misrepresented and misunderstood in the biennial’s catalog, Man chooses to represent the idea of nationality as something personal, intimate, which becomes very interpretable when seen in respect to collective memory.

Victor Man 'Untitled'

  The exposition seems crushed under the multifactious and versatility of the concept Re-Construction, too general to be pinned down. If the new economical and political context is demanding a re-writing of history, a rethinking of the national identity, the biennial explores and represents successfully all the possible variations, connections and dynamics that may arise.