Newsletter. AIR Programme 2019 curated by Mihaela Varzari, organized by Club ElectroPutere

AIR Programme 2019 organized by Club ElectroPutere

Club ElectroPutere  is pleased to announce the launching of the 2019 edition of ElectroPutere AIR. Mihaela Varzari (RO/UK), the curator of this edition, invited the artist Beatrice Loft Schulz (UK) and the artistic duo UBERMORGEN (AT/DE)to spend July and August of 2019 in Craiova and Bucharest undergoing research. As part of their artistic research, UBERMORGEN will be joined by the artists Nye Thompson (UK) and Zenk the Henk alias Alexander Zenker (AT/DE).

UBERMORGEN, DOTOILDOT - Be Sotf, 2009, video stil, courtesy of the artist

Beatrice Loft Schulz is an artist from London living in Glasgow. Her work uses digital and manual crafts, as well as performance, to articulate relationships between pleasure, labour, and gender. The process of making a work may be triggered by a coincidence, a conversation, or a rock. Most of her recent work has been intentionally private and therapeutic. She sometimes works with other people. The Sticks, with Laura Morrison, was part of Glasgow International in 2018.

She performed with queer musical ensemble Beep as part of the Staying Out Tour (2018), exploring the legacy of section 28. Domestic Melodrama was a film performance, made together with Alice Brooke, and performed at Tramway, as part of the Glasgow Artists Moving Image Festival 2016. She is currently working on a show with Lindsay McMillan, opening in June at Kunstraum, London.

UBERMORGEN ((AT/DE) is an artist duo founded 1995 in Vienna by lizvlx & Hans Bernhard. As part of the digital avant-garde of the 1990s (Net.Art) and spearheads of the digital actionism and digital concept art of the 2000s, UBERMORGEN are representatives of a radical-subversive approach to data and matter, as well as to institutions and markets. UBERMORGEN own more than 175 own websites/domains. Their projects have been featured in over 3000 news reports and art reviews and CNN called them 'Maverick Austrian Business People' whereas the NY Times called their work 'simply brilliant'. UBERMORGEN have shown their work at the Centre Pompidou, the MoMA/PS1, the Sydney Biennale, the MACBA Barcelona, the New Museum New York, SFMoma, the ICC Tokyo and the Gwangju Biennale, and were commissioned by Serpentine Galleries (Ziron) and the Whitney Museum (Clickistan). UBERMORGEN were awarded the Swiss Art Award, ARCO Beep Award, Ars Electronica Award, Transmediale Award and the glorious IBM Award. Their main influences are Rammstein, Samantha Fox, XXXTentacion and Pixibücher, Olanzapine & LSD, Kentucky Fried Chicken's Coconut Shrimp Deluxe and Viennese Actionism.
http://ubermorgen.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubermorgen

Nye Thompson (UK) is an artist turned software designer turned artist. She creates data-generating artist software systems to explore the impact of new technology paradigms. Her recent creation The Seeker is a machine entity that travels the world virtually - looking through compromised security cameras and describing what it sees.

She has exhibited around UK, Europe and the Far East, including Tate Modern, The Barbican, The V&A, ZKM Karlsruhe and The Lowry. Her first solo show Backdoored.io - described by C4 News as “too controversial to broadcast”-became global clickbait and triggered an international government complaint. Her work has been featured on BBC, C4, CNN Hong Kong, the Guardian and Wired, and was recently guest presenter on BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Art of Now: Surveillance’. She was the recipient of an Arts Council England G4A award in 2017, a British Council/ACE travel award in 2018, and an Arts Council England Projects Grant award in 2019. She was a Lumen Prize 2018 finalist.

zthehenk (b. 1988, AT/DE) alias Alexander Zenker lives and works in Leipzig, Cologne and Vienna. His main interest evolves around psychological regulatory systems and around identity and control within logical game and advertisement environments. His most prominent Installation 'Schaltkreis – Alle unter einem Ton’ is an immersive interactive cybernetic organism. He´s exploring fields between being individual and collective.

Zenker creates gamedesigns and organizes tribe-building parties in Leipzig and he is part of the ‘Keine Fische aber Grethen’(no fish but bones) collective. He holds a diploma in visual communication from the University of Kassel, College of Art (Kunsthochschule Kassel). Since 2015 Zenker assists the artist duo UBERMORGEN in their global ventures dealing with psychopathologies (no-limit.org, 2015) and the Alt Right (Binary Primitivism, 2016-)

Mihaela Varzari (RO/UK) is an independent curator and a PhD candidate in History of Art at University of Kent, where she focuses on artist collectives emerging around 1994 dedicated to employing the internet as an artistic medium. Her research makes use of narcissism, as it has been theorized in psychoanalysis, and political economy, as expressed by the philosopher Bernard Stiegler’s specific use of proletarianisation.

She has previously studied at Birkbeck and Goldsmith Colleges between 2009 and 2015. In the exhibitions and events she curated over the years, she has worked with artists like Liliana Basarab (RO), Ziad Antar (LB) and Heath Bunting (UK). In 2008 she has started publishing art criticism texts for Revista ARTA (Bucharest), thisistomorrow (London), IDEA arts+society (Cluj), as well as a series of catalogue essays. Her future projects during 2020 include an extensive group show at Studio3 Gallery, Canterbury centered around algorithms and poetry, and guest writer in residence at Murree Artist Residency, outside Lahore.

Club ElectroPutere is a Craiova/Romania based center for Art, operates as a non-profit organization. Founded in 2009 by Adrian Bojenoiu and Alexandru Niculescu, CEP is devoted to establishing close cooperation between artists, curators, researchers, and other cultural actors through interdisciplinary programs and residencies. The center's activity focuses on producing and researching contemporary cultural manifestations. CEP promotes especially alternative art, new creative media, multiculturalism and interdisciplinary, attempting to create connections between the local context and the international cultural environment. Since 2009, CEP has developed various cultural projects based on a structure of programs, including artistic production and exhibitions, curatorial and artistic research, book publishing and conferences.

Cultural project co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or the manner in which the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding recipient.

Supported  by:

 

 

Opening text. ARTIST TALK//////HEATH BUNTING AT UNIVERSITY OF KENT, the 15th of March 2019

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ARTIST TALK//////HEATH BUNTING AT UNIVERSITY OF KENT
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Panel Discussion

Date: Friday, the 15^th of March 2019

Time: 11 - 12 AM - Art, Law and Politics seminar
           4 - 5.45 PM - Studio3 Gallery
                                   School of Arts (public event, all welcome)                

                                   Jarman Building
                                   University of Kent
                                   Canterbury, CT2 7UG

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 School of Arts, Kent Law School, together with Centre for Critical Thought & Studio3 Gallery warmly invite staff and students to two collaborative events with artist Heath Bunting (1966, UK). This joint venture was initiated by Mihaela Varzari, Phd candidate in History of Art/independent curator and Connal Parsley, senior lecturer in Law.

http://www.irational.org/_readme.html Heath Bunting, Own, Be Owned, or Remain Invisible, (1998)


Heath Bunting’s international artistic career, spanning over 30 years, has roots in local political and social activism in Bristol with a strong focus on anarchism. The emergence of the internet in the mid 90’s in UK, perceived by Bunting as a social revolution, allowed him to immediately embrace it as an artistic medium, as well as a tool for social change. Street art, sports, permaculture, information sharing via networks, or forest trips, to mention only a few, become artistic ways of representation. Considered a pioneer of net.art, Bunting’s work is also associated with the second wave of institutional critique, known for challenging via networks and exhibitions available only on-line, the hyper commodification of art markets in the West. As politics and the nature of the internet have changed, so does Bunting’s questions and interests. His strong interest in recent legislation, commerce and systems of control, as seen in Status Project (2008), renders his work difficult to categorize, but nevertheless richly informative for students of history of art and law.

Each presentation will be followed by discussion with Connal Parsley and Mihaela Varzari, chaired by Dr Michael Newall, senior lecturer in History and Philosophy of Art, for the School of Arts event.

 BIO
Heath Bunting was born a Buddhist in Wood Green, London, UK and is able to make himself laugh. (currently, reduced to only smile). He is a co-founder of both net.art and sport-art movements and is banned for life from entering the USA for his anti genetic work. His self taught and authentically independent work is direct and uncomplicated and has never been awarded a prize. He is both Britain's most important practising artist and The World's most famous computer artist. He aspires to be a skillful member of the public and is producing an expert system for identity mutation. At 01:42 on 31/12/2011 at his home in Bristol, he invented web 3.0 and is offering it for sale for 100 million dollars.

BIO
Connal Parsley is a Senior Lecturer in Kent Law School, and Deputy Director of the University of Kent’s Centre for Critical Thought. His research concerns the intersection of law, political thought and visual culture. Connal is the convenor of the CCT seminar series “Art, Law and Politics”, as well as an undergraduate module by the same name.

BIO
Mihaela Varzari is a PhD in History of Art at University of Kent. She has previously studied at Birkbeck and Goldsmith College between 2009-15. She is an independent curator who has worked with artists like Liliana Basarab (Ro), Ziad Antar (Lb), Heath Bunting (UK) and her recently curated solo exhibition IN IN THE THE FUTURE FUTURE featured works by Kristin Wenzel (Ger/Ro) at electroputere Gallery. In 2008 she has started publishing art criticism texts for Revista ARTA (Ro), thisistomorrow (UK), IDEA arts+society (Ro) etc.

BIO
Michael Newall is Director of the Aesthetics Research Centre at the University of Kent. He is author of A Philosophy of the Art School (Routledge, 2019), What is a Picture? Depiction, Realism, Abstraction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), and many articles on art and aesthetics. Before entering academia, he trained as a visual artist, and worked as a critic and curator.


INTRO BY MIHAELA VARZARI

Like a pebble in one’s shoe or a spike at one’s buttonhole, or what would be a good way to start talking about someone’s life coded and inscribed through art practice. It requires the help of an experienced fiction writer. The writer Herta Muller says in her essays that literature did not give her one good sentence, and as far as she is concerned LESEN(to read) and LEBEN(to live) could be easily swappable as only one letter differentiate them. The same rule applies to SCHREIEN (to scream) and SCHREIBEN (to write), she continues.

I won’t repeat what I wrote on the newsletter and just add that there is a transition in Heath’s work from the time when he was part of a generation of net artists, mainly from Europe to his interest in identity or ecology related issues. It's known that online is always about off line but it would be good to hear it from him. We might hear from him about how more recently he lived in a forest for 9 months without computers and how it relates to his practice. I m sure you are all jealous of anyone who spent so much time in the woods away from screens, daily admin and emails. Heath is also known as a net artist who can spend long hours researching small print administrative language, legislation and finds pleasure in reading over and over again his council tax bill….. because it puts him face to face to a system of power.

I am not suggesting necessarily a repressive system of power even thou that’s quite possible. Power, like law can be both restrictive and generative. Heath is not interested in an empty ‘No’ – as form of refusal -  to structures of power, but in questioning them in relation to his own subjectivity, as well as making them  perhaps stronger and more ethical, as well as more self reflective. A ‘No; to something needs to come with a different vision, one that takes into consideration a variety of factors, some of them contradictory and paradoxical.

Lust for Light. Solo exhibition. Artist Andrei Chintilă (Romania 1958, died 2010). Exhibition text by Mihaela Varzari

Lust for Light. Solo exhibition. Andrei Chintilă

Text by Mihaela Varzari

SUPRAINFINIT Gallery

22 Mantuleasa St

Bucharest

Romania 

English version 

Lust for Light is a long overdue solo exhibition of Andrei Chintilă, an artist whose work unpardonably still remains in the shadows of history of art. The 16 paintings plus one photograph that feature the exhibition encapsulate two decades, starting with 1985 in Romania and moving over into the 1990’s when the artist relocated to Belgium for a few years.

 Vlad Iacob listening to music (1987) by Andrei Chintila, Courtesy to SUPRAINFINIT Gallery

Adrian Guță, art historian and critic, himself immersed in the 80’s generation, places Chintilă on its front line alongside artists like Ghoerghe Rasovsky, Ioana Batrânu or Vlad Iacob, profoundly marked by post-modernism in full swing associated with poets and short story writers. Vlad Iacob Listening to Music (1987) belongs to the trajectory defined by anti-establishment impulses, conducive to reframing the Romanian figurative art under the influences of German and American neo-expressionism. Iacob, a close friend of the artist, is perhaps paradoxically depicted with dark skin. Under the ferocious, blazing, summer sun, bodies change shades and enjoy a particular type of freedom associated with the youth on prolonged holidays by the Black Sea and alternative lifestyle on the camping beaches of 2 Mai, Vama Veche or Sfântu Gheorghe. Fascinated by this oasis of freedom, Chintilă dedicates a series of paintings depicting bodies dancing effortlessly on the beach in a state of bliss filled with sexual energy. 

Blue Velvet by Andrei Chintila, Courtesy to SUPRAINFINIT Gallery

The women of this exhibition are mostly depicted alone in various poses ranging from Siren of the Sea, an oil painting almost impressionistic in its technique with a pop twist, an instantiation of timeless glam or they react to the male gaze at a party, as in Ecstasy, Separation  and Blue Velvet where some light pop art directions are visible. In Boys on 2 May Beach (1992) ad-hoc ‘communities’ are formed by young, athletic men hanging out on the beach in these mundane, snap-shots like representations, reminiscence of Paul Cézanne’s The Bathers (1905) only not with women as artist subjects. If Chintilă allows for some of his characters to turn almost black, Madness Study  depicts what seem to resemble to an Afro-American boxer during an era when Muhammad Ali was making headlines across the world. Chintilă’s attitude is innocent of cultural appropriation since ante ‘89 Romania was responding to other ideological stimuli.

Chintilă’s flirting with pop art is subtle and quite a provocation given the context he operated within still under the influence by the divide between high and low art. Lust for Light suggests that this divide collapses while the heat, violence, rhythm and velocity collude to impress upon the canvas a state of transgression.  
 

Boys sunbathing on 2 May Beacch by Andrei Chintila, Courtesy to SUPRAINFINIT Gallery

 ***

Andrei Chintilă, (born 6 August 1958, died 2010) was a Romanian painter, graphician and photographer. As an important contributor to the neo-figurative painting of the 1980’s, he is considered one of the most important representatives of his generation. 
 
***

Romanian version

Lust for Light este mult așteptata expoziție personală a artistului Andrei Chintilă, a cărui practică rămâne impardonabil în subsolul istoriei artei. Cele 16 picturi plus o fotografie, însumează două decade, începând cu 1985 în România și până spre finalul anilor 1990, când artistul a locuit temporar în Belgia. 

Criticul și istoricul de artă Adrian Guță, își plasează congenerul Chintilă, în prima linie a opzecistilor alături de artiștii Ghoerghe Rasovsky, Ioana Batrânu sau Vlad Iacob marcați de Postmodernismul poeților și a scriitorilor de proză scurtă. Vlad Iacob ascultând muzică (1985) se încadrează în liniile trasate de impulsiva agresiune fată de sistem, care a condus către remodelarea artei figurative românești la interferența cu repere semnificative ale neo-expresionsmului german sau american. Iacob, prieten apropriat al artistului este reprezentat în mod paradoxal în tonuri de maro închise. Sub impactul soarelui neândurător de vară, pielea corpului capătă nuanțe întunecate și se bucură de o degajare specială asociată cu tinerii în vacanțe prelungite la malul Mării Negre și cu stilul de viața alternativ încurajat de atmosfera plajelor de la 2 Mai, Vama Veche sau Sfântu Gheorghe. Fascinat de această oază de libertate, Chintilă surprinde într-o serie de lucrări euforia și energia sexuală emanată de corpuri umane dansând cu degajare pe plajă.

Femeile sunt reprezentate deseori singure, în ipostaze variate precum în Sirena mărilor, o pictură în ulei aproape impresionistă ca tehnică dar cu o usoară nota pop, instanțierea glam-ului la malul mării sau par să reacționeze la gaze-ul masculin în timpul unei petreceri ca în Ecstasy, Despărțire sau Blue Velvet. Băieți la plajă surprinde cotidianul în comunități ad-hoc formate de tineri bărbați cu corpuri atletice ce petrec timp impreună pe plajă sau la piscină, o posibilă trimitere la Les grandes baigneuses (1905) de Paul Cézanne. Femeile apar deseori singure, în ipostaze variate precum în Sirena mărilor, o instanțiere a glam-ului la malul mării sau reacționând la gaze-ul masculin în timpul unei petreceri  porecum în Ecstasy, Despărtire sau Blue Velvet, unde nuanțele pop art-ului se evidențiază. Dacă adesea Chintilă îşi reprezintă subiecții în tonuri de maro, Studiu pentru Madness ilustrează un boxer afro-american, posibil influiențat de nume din boxul american, printre care Muhammad Ali era una din marile celebrităti internaționale ale momentului. Coincidență sau nu, artistul este inocent de orice sugestie asociată cu aproprierea culturală din moment ce România pre ‘89 răspundea altor stimulti ideologici.

Chintilă flirtează cu arta pop in mod subtil, suficient însa pentru a provoca divizarea înca operativă la acel moment, între cultura înaltă și restul. Lust for Light sugerează o colapsare a acestei diviziuni, în timp ce căldura arzătoare, violența, ritmul și velociatatea ‘conspiră’ pentru a reda pe pânză o stare de transgresie.

Andrei Chintilă (născut pe 6 august, a murit in 2010) a fost pictor, grafician si fotograf roman. A adus o contributie importantă picturii neo-figurative din decada 80, pentru care este considerat unul din cei mai importanți reprezentanți ai generației.

Exhibition essay // IN IN THE THE FUTURE FUTURE, Solo by artist Kristin Wenzel // curator Mihaela Varzari // host CLUBELECTRO PUTERE GALLERY

IN IN THE THE FUTURE FUTURE

Kristin Wenzel
Curated by Mihaela Varzari
21 September - 21 October 2018

Club Electroputere Craiova
56 Calea Bucuresti
Romania
***

Ruins are unstable by definition. They are forms altered physically by time, culturally always. As art they are only partly aesthetic since they stand as remains of something else, of which they become shadows or echoes informing a critique. The exhibition IN IN THE THE FUTURE FUTURE casts a shadow in reverse by engaging with ruins, as future in the past, not as in the English grammatical verbal tense, but in its literal sense. This landscape marked by abandonment, made up of remains of Modernist architecture claims to be timeless. If an apocalyptic scenario is usually placed in the future, the black and white photograph of a rainbow taken in 1986 sends us back to the past. This photo projected on the wall was adapted for a slide projector, an obsolete piece of technology whose mid XX century’s metallic, familiar sound sharply punctuates the passing of time. The carousel is placed on a stand, partly aesthetic, partly functional, a constant element of classical modernist architecture. We can imagine, this landscape as a time capsule, temporally located at the moment when this photograph was taken by Kristin Wenzel’s father in former East Germany where the family lived. This personal detail is read as an artifact not in its literal sense but as an artistic position founded on the need for self-mythologizing.

Exhibition view

The photo has a counterpart, an immaterial image of a ‘’rainbow’’, artificially created with light reflecting water, just like in the secondary-school lab. Largely speaking, the rainbow is a pure childlike image. Children make soap bubbles, make objects out of folding paper or cardboard. Within the architectural setting of the exhibition, Wenzel places the three parrots made out of cardboard in order to activate personal memories, an act which also triggers a re-evaluation of a whole set of socio-political structures. Everything is organized as to evoke the final image J. G. Ballard’s 1975 SF novel High-Rise, where the birds are the last inhabitants of a Modernist block of flats. Similarly, the parrots become the only witnesses to tell it further but to whom, since no cultural object can retain its power when there are no longer new eyes to see it. 

Exhibition vie

The exhibition includes an approximate 1:1 replica of a newsstand, a kind of one person booth which juxtaposes outside and inside. Wenzel scouts for her perfect locations. Kiosks, abandoned display windows or provisional architectural structures with stories to tell starting from the 70’s in Bucharest or Berlin, become exhibition spaces for her temporary interventions. Excavating within our recent past is also revealing certain ideologies in/forming how institutions choose to archive our cultural heritage. If architecture is by definition political, Wenzel is in constant search of new and more complex ways to highlight it. The view of one of the parrots sitting on top of a four meter something high tower is partly obstructed by the ceiling beam from different positions of ElectroPutere gallery’s exhibition space. A purposefully violent act on behalf of Wenzel, whose interest in Modernist architecture comes with its associations of top-down management, its inbuilt universalism or purity of design. Small tiles partly cover the sculptures or are spread out on the floor next to them. They are copies after ceramic tiles picked up on the streets of Craiova, where they were produced before ‘89 by a now defunct factory. Her latest projects treat the obsolete as fertile ground for dealing with so much debated transition from state economy to global capitalism. Chapter 8 installation initiated in 2018 by CNTRM WRNHS Project Space is a site-specific intervention in an abandoned guard house in former East Berlin to be demolished by the end of 2018. Wenzel’s response to their invitation was to build a 1:4 scale replica of the same booth which she placed inside it, as an act of personal homage.

Exhibition view

This cultural heritages which indeed are just ruins now are treated like that bachelor uncle at the Sunday family lunch, who you don’t quite know where to place him at the table. The dominant state of mind in Romania is still under the auspices of a self-imposed amnesia. Communism is generally understood in Eastern Europe, as an intermission or delay in the ‘normal’ development – a delay which, once it was over, left no traces other than a expected certain appetite to ‘make up for lost time’ and build a capitalism of the Western type. To recuperate and rescue some of disavowed ideals and artistic practices, as well as historicize objectively that period through the lens of its utopian ideals, is much needed now while keeping away from falling prey to nostalgia and become obsolete. 

Exhibition view

In popular culture around the globe, dystopian visions have not yet obliterated utopian hopes for more favourable futures. The abundance of films depicting the end of world has elicited a well rehashed phrase that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism, which in the good old fashion postmodernism springs up without having its source quoted. Yet, resistance to the maladies of the present can also be seen rising and falling as circumstance allow, sometimes enabling us to renew our attachments to life by embracing both its real sorrows as well as its possible joys. If dystopian landscapes are usually about some sordid future for the 99%, the exhibition IN IN THE THE FUTURE FUTURE reflects the future through the lens of an event belonging to the past. One hypothesis I have lately came across is that the end of the world already had happened, that we couldn’t get more self-destructive than we already have done so, which would allow us to focus on re-construction.

Lecture given during the opening of Komplett Fast exhibition, artists SIGRID KRENNER and ERNST MIESGANG, 22nd of March 2018

Lecture given during the opening of Komplett Fast exhibition (23 March-14 April 2018) artists SIGRID KRENNER and ERNST MIESGAN

Many thanks to the curator Andrea Kopranovic and PERISCOPE art space who invited me to present reflections/notes/impressions on the exhibition.

***

You would wonder, I imagine, why I’m here, in this space, where the exhibited artworks speak for themselves and don’t need much introduction. I was invited for this presentation, in order to unpack and unpick these works to the best of my ability and according to what resonates with my own references, the kind of art I am looking at or the books I m reading. 

Intro

‘Art would like to realise, with human means, the speech of the non-human.’ This sentence was published posthumously in Theodor Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory (1970), which is full of phrases beguiling as this, always perched just between insight and jargon, ready to veer into either direction at any one moment. How far can I allow myself to speculate when imagining the speech of the non-human? One direction is that the speech of the non-human stands for ways of communication, which are precise, effective, embedded within a system and more important totally alienating if you are not part of the same species. So this is art, a system with its own internal logic, which has the capacity to render impossible, or improbable, qualities; one being to include and exclude at the same time. I think making art is difficult, writing about it is also difficult but I guess that’s why we are all here tonight because we like difficult things and we like to put ourselves in vulnerable positions. The other quality I extract from Adorno’s short definition of art aside from this paradoxical relationship to self-referentially alludes to the visceral quality, which I’d like to explore by occasionally making reference to the abject. 

Ernst Miesgang’s sculptures are replicas of human or animals’ organs found inside ceramic based mass produced collectibles. The membrane covering the heart for example exposes areas full of anatomical components sprouting out. They are disturbing and yet amusing. While they may seem gory and ghastly at times, they are inscribed with scientific truth downplayed by its ludic and amusing appeal. They are precious and their rather small size instigate a feeling in the region of affection. This response is immediately supplanted by a sense of being in the presence of something abject, when confronted with the overflowing guts and internal organs as if you’d open a door which once opened cannot be closed anymore. I see what I am not supposed to see. Immaculately executed, as science would require and exhibited in this way, on white plinths they become curiosity provoking specimens – items befitting a museological space; members of a class of like objects. This chosen method of display only enhances Miesgang’s direct interest in scientific truth and his work undertaken within the last years, is in his own words, ‘a homage to science’, inscribed in the sculptures and collages displayed here. 

Exhibition view

These decorative objects entered the common imaginair somewhere after WWII which those of us brought up in Central Europe and Eastern and, especially if you happen to come from a working or lower middle class family, like I do, remember the exotic animals, the ballerina, the bride and the groom or the Chinese lady (we in Romania got this a lot… sometimes you go to someone’s house and they would have two identical Chinese ladies or more. They were so many of them when I was growing up that to my mind it was the Romanians who invented them). 

As kitsch, these are quintessential objects of ideology. Gustave Flaubert decided as much on Kitsch as the organising principle for his book Madam Bovary, for which the cultural ‘geist’ was captured exclusively through the fleeting trends and shallow affective character of the popular and sentimentalist art of his day. (It is worth mentioning that while the main character Emma Bovary was too modern for her time, she also read romantic literature in her youth.) The Chinese lady of my upbringing traverses Flaubert’s romantic novels and mannerist hand made statues of his 19th century, winding up as the epitome of 20th Century kitsch for which the ‘mechanical reproducible’ has culminated in a veritable abyss of kitsch production. The unassuming brevity of the term ‘post-fordist’ appears designed to allay the mental (and ethical) exhaustion of trying to conceive of the terrifying scale and force of production and its counterparts, in our historical moment. 

These Kitsch objects of my youth were the next best thing to an original, indicators of taste, and hence, of social status. This “disembowelment” performed on these objects by Miesgang, the sometimes halving of the object to creating a cross section, as if operating with a skapell on a dissecting table, satisfies a perverse curiosity; the desire to comprehend the hidden mechanics of a gadget, or perhaps the meaning of graphics in the financial times or how a whole infrastructure works. This desire mixed with anxiety seems in tune with the urgency demanded by our times, marked by, amongst other things, the very real possibility of extinction. Extinction of the species, the final countdown if it’s to follow the biologist Lynn Margulis’s speculation: ‘a species only progresses successfully according to evolutionary rules when it develops towards its own self-destruction.’

I’d like to entertain this idea of the abject a bit more and suggest that it is present in a smaller dosage in the works of the other artist of the exhibition, Sigrid Krenner. I am making reference to a video installation from 2010, titled Just for you. The work features a film of approx. 6min showing Sigrid eating a chocolate bar containing almonds, which she spits out and place in a bowl shown in a photograph, which completes the installation. One reading of it is that by separating the almonds from the chocolate bar, she is creating found objects – she is generating rejects. Instead of picking up abandoned, unloved objects she’s literally making them, except that she’s using her body fluids, namely saliva - which brushes in my mind against the abject. A bowl of almonds – an express invitation to dip in, to partake, a social custom, a micro-social space at a cocktail party - has reached the exhibition via someone else’s mouth. It is not a definite case of abject if we think of an inveterate music fan, religious fanaticism or relic worshiping, and so on; any such prosthetics related to ecstatic states, serendipity or spirituality add value to these objects. If we are programmed to find bodily fluids disgusting, it’s because Christianity and how the maternal body is viewed, has something to do with it, according to the philosopher Julia Kristeva’s thesis. Kristeva describes the abject as the place where ‘meaning collapses,’; ‘Not me. Not that. But not nothing, either. A somethin’ that I do not recognize as a thing.’(Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection by Julia Kristeva)

Kristeva defines the abject in a non-definition, one that is there but she cannot display in words. Being a music fan is no lesser than a fervent God worshiper and a tissue impregnated with Madonna’s sweat (as in the pop start) can be as sought after as Jesus’ shroud or a lover’s bodily traces. Being a music fan was previously explored by Sigrid in This combination is not recommended (2017), realized in collaboration with artists Karina Kueffner and Julia Gutweniger. This work invites visitors to pick up onl y one copy from the two stalk of postcards representing the two Modern Taking German band members, Thomas Anders and Dieter Bohlen, signifier of a past its glorious moment mass cultural product.

The title of this exhibition was selected by Krenner and it follows from her practice of using phrases heard in the street from passers-by, which make an impression on her. One could call it the poetry of controlled randomness. From what I gather by using google translate and asking Sigrid for clarification since I don’t speak German, the title KOMPLETT FAST plays with the essential indeterminacy of words since it could also be FAST KOMPLETT. It sounds like a product of google translate, which can actually produce involuntary poetry. In his quest to find the sublime in the nonsense, the play writer Eugene Ionesco proposed translating texts literally just as google translate does now. The work Sigrid is presenting here borrows the title from a computer update A condition analysis is carried out (2017) and is formed of a replica of a found wood cabinet (perhaps suitable to display Sigrid’s reworked collectibles, just like I used to see in my childhood) into a non-functional, mysterious object complete with a multi-colorful wrapper found in the drawer. This cabinet, a rip off of late Modernist style is placed on a simple, red carpet, which in a surrealist twist covers the floor and the wall. A framed photograph of a peeled banana hangs unassumingly on the wall. The banana is a recurring artistic devise in her practice, an interest she has in bent, elongated objects turned motiff, which she previously explored in drawings and ceramic works. All three objects composing this work together with Miesgang’s sculptures, which previously inhabited someone’s living room before being discarded to the flee markets are 1:1 representations, which only add to the feeling of domesticity recreated in a theater setting like situation, where something is about to happen. Within this setting, the banana gives the impression of a crescent moon, evoking, in turn, perspective via this nighttime ‘horizon’. The wrapping paper becomes here a signifier of randomness and how contingency plays a fundamental role in meaning formation. for the current exhibition. 

Exhibition view

In 2016 Miesgang started the series of collages titled Critters. He explained to me his working method which implies dozens of litter newspapers with the same date, which he collects from European cities he finds himself in. Some images or shapes he finds attractive are ripped off by hand and then glued together to create these in between anatomical details and underwater formations created in the dark. Again, as in his sculptures, I’d like to suggest that we are presented with something we are not supposed to see but which is nevertheless part of our environment. The cardboards on which these collages are made force in their own history since they actually are the backsides of paintings or photographs he had found in the flee markets of Vienna, where he lives and works. Miegang’s collages can take different shapes but the one exhibited here stands out. It is a reminisce of a franc-masonic logo or some kind of esoteric sect. It is a signifier of the times are all experiencing at the moment, a depressing post 2008 era for Europe, where sadly we have been noticing an increased need to engage in essentialist and populist narratives. Because these cardboards are so precious they actually determine the working method to a certain extend since one cannot start all over again as you’d do with an easily replaceable canvas. Like in the sculptures, where there is no definite control over how the cracks will turn out, the cardboards with their stains and traces of time are incorporated in the process making and impact the final outcome allowing for the contingency to play a significant role.

Exhibition view

I will conclude with a few last ruminations on Sigrid and Ernst. Both artists operate with the element of contingency. Both artists recycle leftovers, which worked their way over time into obscurity, whose peak has passed and turned culturally obsolete. The title of the exhibition and of Sigrid’s works reveal the limits of language and they too function as found objects, still adrift, which as if almost by accident they have been illuminated as ‘work’. If artists’ intentions from the outset are different, where Ernst uses scientific truth while Sigrid favours the contingency, their interest in the mundane, in recycling found objects and perhaps exploring the theme of the abject create a productive tension. 

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Open letter addressed to Calin Dan, director of MNAC, Bucharest, October 2017, published on FB

22/10/17

Dear Calin Dan,

My name is Mihaela Varzari one of the 4 international curators and researchers in residence selected as a result of the open call launched in 2016 by MNAC (National Museum for Contemporary Art), Bucharest, Romania under your directorship. I was looking forward to carrying out my project in Bucharest when 2 weeks prior to the starting date I was informed (in a 2 line email) that my residency was cancelled because of the budget. My many attempts to discuss alternatives with you didn’t get anywhere as you never endeavored to respond to any of my emails, letters or phone calls. I even met you face to face, by sheer coincidence, at an art opening, but you told me you were too busy to discuss my situation. Only once someone from MNAC called to let me know that it was not a cancellation but a rescheduling. Nothing was followed up, despite a number of emails I sent in the hope of getting the ball rolling. I can’t help but think now that the promise of re-scheduling my residency was a tactical way of evading the problem altogether in the hope that I would eventually lose interest in pursuing this opportunity. My reaction to this cancellation and the treatment on behalf of yourself and your staff was one of immediate shock and disbelieve. A publicly funded institution decides on a whim to discriminate against 1 of 4 residents (the other 3 residents carried out their respective projects) without feeling it at all necessary to offer more than a 2 line explanation and what transpired to be a false promise. In preparation for my time in Bucharest I had organized to sublet my room. As a result of the cancellation I had nowhere to live for a month and was forced to stay at friends and pay for a room with airbnb. The initial explanation was in relation to the budget but recently I just noticed that a new open call was launched my MNAC which indicates the opposite.

For any art practitioners who have encountered similar things or understand the ethical dimension a national museum is bound by:
- What avenues are there at my disposal for interrogating such unprofessional attitudes verging on abuse of power? 
- Does MNAC have any responsibility to explain itself, especially since it’s a public institution when asked to?
- What kind of legal format does such a relationship between an invited resident and such institution can take?
- What about the social contract or just basic human decency?

P.S. If any of you are lawyers, please offer me some advise. Please feel free to share on FB, it would be great if this letter actually reaches them.

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23/10/17

MNAC's response (copy paste from MNAC's FB page, under REVIEWS):

Mihaela Varzari, the National Museum of Contemporary Art is consternated with the public stance you are undertaking regarding this issue, which only partially reflects the situation. As with all our residents, we were keen to have you as part of our team in 2017.
Our team - the Director of Development, the Residency Program Coordinator, the Residency Program Caretaker and the Management Assistants had numerous conversations with you in order to make your residency happen. Despite extended negotiations, we could not reach a consensus on practical matters regarding housing, transport and the residency period - all necessary conditions required to draw a contract. During this laborious and unfruitful process, unexpected budgetary constraints forced the Museum to reduce the scale of the residency project. Since such issues were not raised by the other three residents, their contracts were signed in due time so that their projects could be carried out accordingly.
In conclusion, having failed to reach a consensus over a long period of time, the museum was forced to suspend your residency, in the context of unexpected cuts in our operational budgets. This was not an issue of discrimination, but the sole consequence of an agreement not being met at the administrative, legal and financial levels.
Additionally, it is common knowledge that in Romania there are no multi-annual budgets, which means that state institutions cannot finance projects from a year to another. Thus, the 2018 residency project call relies on an estimated budget for the following year.


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23/10/17

My response, published on FB

For future MNAC open call 2017 applicants:

this is a false and exaggerated version of events and it shows the unnamed author’s lack of assuming any responsibility or engaging with reality. Please do your fact checking first and stop this charade right here and now. I have emails to prove the opposite. You are masking your patronizing attitude by trying to place the blame on me.

1. MNAC curtailed my residency from 6 to 4 months because of weather conditions. No other explanation was offered. Did the same happen to other residents? My emails with the staff member show that we were in agreement on the residency period (1 of May – 30 of Sep, four months in Bucharest, one in London).

2. I was in touch with the same staff member about the accommodation conditions etc and we were looking for such options in Bucharest. No one at any point told me anything about the negotiations going sour. There were not extended and at no point I was under the impression I was doing anything wrong, as you suggest. Such email exchanges were not laborious or fruitless but the type of conversation which is practical and absolutely mundane. 

3. Transport? Perhaps you mean the flight ticket? My conversations with the staff member reached the point where I gave my details for the flight ticket to be bought and then nothing happened. 

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Documentation of the performance, CATCH THE ARTIST (4th floor, all floors): 23 nov 2017
Artists: Gabriela Mateescu, Virginia Lupu and Valentina Iancu
Courtesy of MNAC (National Museum of Contemporary Art) facebook page, Bucharest, Romania
Performers (foto): curator Valentina Iancu & artist Gabriela Mateescu

Disclaimer: Iancu wears an armband with the words ‘Mihaela Varzari etc’ sewed with lilac thread on white cloth in solidarity with Varzari’s public open letter addressed to Călin Dan (director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania). Etc stands for the multiple cases of abuse of power and autocratic behavior of the director demonstrated in his relationship to ex-employees or collaborators of the museum.