(...)
#6 Art and legality (2)
From a legal point of view, there is an important distinction between radical politics/direct action and art. In the contemporary Western legal systems, art is seen as a fundamental right. There is therefore a tendency to tolerate, legalize and defend something that is considered art. Enacted radical politics are always directed towards forms of governmentality, and the most cohesive expression of this governmentality is the law. Take the form of revolution as the privileged form of enacted radical politics: it is fundamentally illegal. It is this definite distinction between the tendency of legalizing art and illegalizing radical politics that is at the core of the configuration of the harmlessness of art.
Fragment from "So You Think You’re Political ?! Seven Notes on the Harmlessness of Art" published in ArtLeaks Gazette, #1.
2012
Other Us project
The Other Us/Ceilalți Noi
workshop on re-imagining identity
20 November - 9 December, 2012
Platforma, Bucharest.
On the verge of the re-emergence of nationalisms due to recent geo-political changes, the Other Us is an attempt to draw a critical political position towards national identity. Organized through an open call to participation, the workshop gathered about 40 participants including about 10 facilitators. The program included artists, social scientists and activists that engaged in various forms of discursive exchange with the participants and public. By reconfiguring identity politics and through a practice of active critique, the participants of the workshop engaged in a process of re-imagining national identity and the politics of art in the makings of this identity.
The workshop was composed of three slots: 1) a program of lectures and debates, 2) a performance with alternative (other) flags created by participants and 3) an exhibition of interventions and resources developed throughout the duration of the workshop.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Debates and lectures program
Program synopsis
The
Circle for Feminist Readings
(Cercul de Lecturi Feministe) inaugurated the workshop with an open
session on „What
is the nation?” starting from a reading of Nira Yuval-Davis'
Gender
and Nation
and developing the inherent genderized structure of the nation-state.
Irina
Costache's
intervention, “The Fathers of the Nation: the European dimension of
attempts to limit access to abortion” effectively illustrated the
real anti-women consequences of nationalism. The role of affect and
the genderized affective roles in the “Love for the Nation” were
explored by Florin
Poenaru.
Ovidiu
Tichindeleanu
outlined the possibilities of linkage with the local Romanian context
of post- and anti-colonial concepts and struggles for creating a new,
emancipatory “Us”, situated in a geo-political context. Through a
visit to the National Military Museum organized by the Fan-club
of Romanian Successes
(Fan-Clubul
Reuşitelor Româneşti), the contemporary institutional textures of
nationalism were explored in the historical representation of the
military men of the nation. A historical approach was also conceived
by Cristian
Cercel
with his analysis of the foundational text of the Romanian
Proclamation of Independence, the same text that marks the 1st
of December, the nowadays national day. Ovidiu
Pop
together with Veda
Popovici
sketched a portrait of the national subjectivity by investigating its
creation by 19th
century scholars and revolutionaries. The status of the national day
was problematized by Marian
Ursan
as he talked about the difficulties encountered by AIDS activists
such as himself in the Romanian context because of the coincidence of
the AIDS international day with the Romanian national day. The
position of the “Other” was also tackled by Mihai
Lukacs and
Ovidiu
Anemţoaicei
in a theoretical approach on the body and bodies of Self and the
Other. The debates and lectures series of the workshop ended with a
lenghty discussion on the political potential of art and its relative
harmlessness in the context of national identity formation (with
Simona
Dumitriu, Alice Monica Marinescu, Veda Popovici and
David
Schwartz).
Below: mind map created during the workshop by the contribution of all participants.
Other Us (exhibition)
opening: 05.11.2012 @ Platforma
We have dutifully celebrated the 1st of December (the alleged Romanian National Day). With a talk on the situation of AIDS-diagnosed people in Bucharest. The workshop for reimagining identity has ended. From the Other Us remain various flags, video and written documentations, read and unread books, messages on walls, drawings, mindmaps and some blue, yellow, red canvas.
Flags by:
Irina Botezatu, Larisa David, Răzvan Drăgoi, Simona Dumitriu, Ileana Faur, Veda Popovici, Jean-Lorin Sterian, Alexandra Terzi, Daniel Tristan, Roxana Vasile.
Resources and interventions:
Resources and interventions:
the Alternative Library (Biblioteca Alternativă), the Library of the Fan-club of Romanian Successes (Biblioteca Fan-Clubul Reuşitelor Româneşti), Larisa David, Ger Duijzings, h.arta, Mihai Lukacs, Arnold Schlachter.
Other Flags performance (part of the Other Us/Ceilalti Noi project)
the Other Flags from veda popovici on Vimeo.
Other Flags (public performance)
1st December 2012, Bucharest, University Square
camera: Iulius Costache;
video editing: Larisa David
With:
Irina Botezatu, Larisa David, Simona Dumitriu, Ileana Faur, Alice
Monica Marinescu, Veda Popovici, Daniel Tristan, Roxana Vasile, David
Schwartz, Arnold Schlachter.
Flags by:
Irina Botezatu, Larisa David, Răzvan Drăgoi, Simona Dumitriu, Ileana Faur, Veda Popovici, Jean-Lorin Sterian, Alexandra Terzi, Daniel Tristan, Roxana Vasile.
part of the Other Us/Ceilalti Noi project, Platforma art space, December 2012, Bucharest.
Tree @ the Blind Museum
The Blind Museum presents: The Tree Under Which I Grew.
part of MMCP: More Than Perfect/Perfect Continous
18-30 September 2012
Platforma Space
Within the framework pf the Blind Museum, a careful research was initiated to find out the inner genealogy of the Department of Painting of the National University of Arts in Bucharest. For this, we have chosen all the professors that have been educated at this department and/or have educated future professors. Thus, the selection purposefully leaves out the persons that have not been educated at the Painting Department and who have not had students that became professors at the same department. However, even with this omission, the people selected form the majority of the professors that have taught at this department.
...
Indispensable to the representation of the nation-state, the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest, the today National University of Arts, has from its inception considered the painting department its cornerstone.
In this disciplinary model the central figure is the Master or the Professor. His function is a key position for establishing the norms for the figure of the modern artist. Our research has followed various embodiments of this function. The multitude of names designating these embodiments pertain to various working styles, attitudes and mentalities. Only one dimension seems to be common: their masculinity.
Full text here.
the Blind Museum presents: Future Exhibition Preview.
Future Exhibition Preview
part of the Open for Inventory collective project, Platforma Contemporary Art Space, October 2012.Participants: Marina Albu, Emil Avasilichioaiei&Sabin Gârea, Ștefan Bandalac, Raluca Croitoru, Larisa David, Marian Dumitru, Ileana Faur, Cosmina Ivanov, Iulia Mocanu, Veda Popovici/muzeul orb, Diana Ursan.Facilitator: Simona Dumitriu
The project consisted of the exploration of the collection of Romanian art of the National Museum of Contemporary Art by a group of artists that eventually developed works/interventions/concepts starting from the material found in the deposit. As a result, a number of artworks from the 70s and 80s were taken out of the deposit and exhibited.
The Blind Museum's intervention in the collection was to select works pertaining to the nationalist tendency of the 70's and 80's and to exhibit them facing the wall, in what seems to be an exhibition that is just about to be mounted. The "Future Exhibition" is a glimpse into a not-so-improbable future where nationalism is again in the institutional spotlight.
Each artwork awaits to be hung on a nail hammered in the wall just above it.
Details: "Vasile Pop N., Hommage to the Great Unification, 1983" (left) and "Patriotic composition" (right).
On the back of each artwork there is the title. The audience is left to imagine how the artworks actually look by reading the titles, and thus participating in their actualization.
BEZNA #3
The new Bezna covers the controversial Shelter at the House of People events.
BEZNA = CONSISTENT DARKNESS + DIFFUSSED FEAR
READ IT! FEEL IT! SPREAD IT!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
BEZNA @ truth is concrete in graz.
Thanks to: Critical Practice.
BEZNA = CONSISTENT DARKNESS + DIFFUSSED FEAR
READ IT! FEEL IT! SPREAD IT!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
BEZNA @ truth is concrete in graz.
Thanks to: Critical Practice.
Eva Peron at the House of People
The Presidential Candidate offers Shelter
@ the House of People
25 - 29 April 2012, in the House of the PeopleWith: Valentina Desideri, Vali Zaharescu aka The Romanian Bum, Franco Bifo Berardi, Aparat Security, Elena Adam (SamuSocial), Mihai Lukacs, the Bureau for Melodramatic Research, Akseli Virtanen, Florin Flueras, Alexandru Gurita, Caroline Keppi-Gurita, Ion Dumitrescu, Eva Peron, Cosima Opartan, FRR.
Everyday at the Shelter:
- Simple yet Nourishing Food - Simina Guga, Ovidiu Anemțoaicei, Ștefan Tiron.
- Political Therapy - Valentina Desideri
- Medical Care - Iuliana Stoianescu
That what had to be done in my country was nothing less than a Revolution. And when what needs to be done is a revolution, then the persons capable to venture all the way on a such difficult path are not many. They are actually so few, that we could say they are missing. Many revolutions have been started here and elsewhere. But a revolution is a new, difficult road and it is only for those that feel an irresistible attraction for risky endeavors. This is why have failed and will always fail those revolutions desired by the people and even done with its total support. (…)
It is important to talk about “Evita”, and not out of pride, but because the one who understands “Evita”, can more easily understand the descamisados, the people themselves, and it will never feel of itself more than it is... Never will it become oligarchic, the most feared thing that can happen to a Peronist!
Fragment from "What is Eva P.?"
text in Bezna #3.
(...)
There is a great prophecy which says that in the end times, the prostitute will lead the world. Those are the times of Apocalypse, the lifting of the veil, the times of dis-order and chaos. Eva Peron was the closest to the fulfillment of such a prophecy, however authoritative agencies kept his-story going and the fantasy postponed. Called upon at the Shelter, Eva Peron becomes Eva P., an incantation for the reality of the Apocalypse prophecy.
The time of the AntiRepublic haunts our present. It is there in the anti-communist ideology, in the virulent demonization of the looser of the Cold War, the so-called anti-democratic, communist East. It is there in the recent fall of the so-called Arab dictatorships. It is also there, in the visions of anarchists of all times and now in the practice of the ones in Greece. The AntiRepublic is also so present in the measures of radical neo-liberals that prophet the reign of the free market. But most of all, the AntiRepublic is already present everywhere in what is obvious to many: the failure of representative democracy.
Eva was the first of her kind to vote but eternally enable to be voted. She is always just about to be named the Leader. Eva P., a ghost of true representativity, is powerless, she represents no real multitude. She is just an image of the Other, the one perpetually out of the space of authority, the imperfect powerless double. Brought to the Shelter, Eva P. is the model of anyone becoming a candidate for leadership and never a leader, the perpetual candidate for the great position of presidency, an archetype for the times of the AntiRepublic, when everybody will be a candidate and nobody will be president.
(...)
About the Shelter:
It looks like what we, The Presidential Candidate, have been anticipating in the last years, with our "no hope" messages and slogans, is already at work. This is not perceived as an eccentric, provocative vision anymore, it is the banal reality that everybody can feel. So what now? What’s happening when you give up hope and you are pushed into the corner?
There is a feeling of urgency, fundamental issues need to be immediately confronted and we will do exactly that. The House of the People (Ceauşescu's Palace) will be transformed temporarily into a real house of the people, where, for a few days, free education, free health services, free food, political therapy, a bit of everything that now is disappearing, will be provided.
Still, there is a sensation that it's too little and, maybe, already too late, so we don’t know if we can avoid adding a dystopian dimension to the whole situation. The events within the House of the People will be a good opportunity for thinking the present and feeling the (no) future in this first Postspectacle shelter.
Details on the program here.
BEZNA #2
A new, fascinating issue crossing apocalypse with the January-March protests in Bucharest.
READ IT! FEEL IT! SPREAD IT!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
(...)
Tons of white, cold matter still cover the city. It feels cold, hard and deadening. Snow has become from an object a subject. It determines our lives, our needs, our actions and even politics. The few protesters who still remain in the streets sometimes sing: „The Souls melt the the Snows”. They already feel that the snow is the new body, the new flesh of the revolts, as the oppressive State-Media duo tell us. Carne vale, goodbye to the flesh is now a somber perspective. We are the snow and the snow should be cleaned, collected and disposed of.
READ IT! FEEL IT! SPREAD IT!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
fragment from "The Carnival, the Spectacle and the Non-event"
text in Bezna #2
(...)
Tons of white, cold matter still cover the city. It feels cold, hard and deadening. Snow has become from an object a subject. It determines our lives, our needs, our actions and even politics. The few protesters who still remain in the streets sometimes sing: „The Souls melt the the Snows”. They already feel that the snow is the new body, the new flesh of the revolts, as the oppressive State-Media duo tell us. Carne vale, goodbye to the flesh is now a somber perspective. We are the snow and the snow should be cleaned, collected and disposed of.
Invitation to War
Statement
On Friday, the 16th of March 2012, the artist activist group Voina (Russian: „war”) had a public presentation at the National Museum for Contemporary Art situated in the House of People in Bucharest.
Each person attending this event had to pass through a control of his/hers belongings and a body control through a metal detector, including the Voina artists. They were even longer and more thoroughly searched. The reason for this is that the building is a military objective. A space totally dedicated to State authorities, it hosts various institutions of „national importance” like the Parliament.
We consider the event a invitation to war.
The war is against today's form of the Romanian State, a police state that has progressively straighten its repressive character in the last six months. The fundamental right to protest and contest state authority has been and still is seriously broken. Too many activists and not only have been picked up and fined abusively and even physically assaulted by the military arm of the State, the privileged Jandarmeria.
Inside the House of People, the war can only be symbolic, a representation of that real war through which the protest is, as each day passes, domesticized and annihilated. We have come to war in the only way we can: with toy guns. Just as freedom of speech is just a toy and protest just a simulacra in the eyes of the authorities. We played the role of harmless harlequins, toy-terrorists, a role that the same authorities attribute to artists. Responding to a symbolic war invitation, we try to push the limits of security and surveillance at the security check of the Museum. The toy guns are confiscated at the entrance, the art gesture is amputated in the hallway of the Great House. The reason: with toy guns one can threaten and create panic. In the space that the State dedicated to contemporary art, contemporary artists are not welcome if they undermine its authority. Two pistols out of five manage to get across the tough security check. Throughout the presentation, anyone could observe the other guns left next to the metal detector. At the first floor of the Museum, the Voina presentation is about to begin. At this moment, we place ourselves in front of the obedient audience, two of us holding our guns at sight. The others are wearing the message: „I came to Voina, but this plastic gun had to stay at the security check of the Museum”. Although we threaten the audience with our guns, nobody panics.
We are perfectly safe in the most guarded building in Romania.
The limits of security and surveillance seem unreachable.
A threatening as a simulacra and the neutralization of any conflict, this is the only Voina possible at the House of People.
Arnold Schlachter / Bogdan Drăgănescu / Mihai Bumbeș / Mihai Lukacs / Veda Popovici.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
An extended version of this text was presented at the Anarchist Studies Network Annual Conference, 3-5 September 2012, Loughborough University, U.K.
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The Manifestos of the Harmless Nature
The Manifestos of the Harmless Nature (text, site intervention and installation) in Eight and a Half Works, group exhibition at the Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest. Curators: Magda Radu, Alexandra Croitoru.
The Dilettante’s Manifesto
Starting today we don’t care anymore of you. You are here just to be cited. We cut, we copy, we paste, download and steal. Especially steal! And what a robbery. We rob you of your beloved culture, build in so much time. Oh, bearded, white one: we had till today to deliver you bows. From now on that’s over! Your God has showed its true face: it is like your own dirty cheek. Take a good look: from now on we steal even what you are!
We are now specialists in quantum physics, closed circuit systems, postructuralism.
We spit formulas, theories, critiques. Non-stop.
Take a better look: we are already like you. We are alike. We ingurgitate you. And then regurgitate you.
We have no education, no mother, no father. We have no country. He have no s h a m e.
Tomorrow, today, we are already here from yesterday.
From before Homo Sapiens. It is us, the monkeys. And we are here to claim you! Your monkey-like masturbation
spits truth, so you say. Your most precious essence, the most authentic one, the marvel of philosophy!
We swallow it and then we spit it back.
We’ve melted your golden God into a Chinese plastic calf!
We speak your language, we make your gestures, we’ve reproduced all your brands.
It is time for you yourselves to be assimilated. Don’t worry though, our beaten knees won’t be your own. We won’t give you
pyramids to build or guns to make. Your place is in the sweet cemetery that you’ve already built: the museum!
From now on, you’ll remain locked here, in your own crypt.
From persons, you’ve become references. From Heros, citations!
Suckers, history is not over! History is burying you!
Manifestul Diletantului
De azi nu ne mai pasă de voi. Sunteţi aici doar pentru a fi citaţi. Tăiem, copiem, alipim, descărcăm, furăm.
Dar mai ales furăm. Ce furt! Vă furăm cultura aceea atât de dragă vouă, construită atâta amar de vreme.Bărbosule şi albule: trebuia până acum să îţi livrăm plecăciuni. De azi, gata! Dumnezeul vostru şi-a arătat adevărata faţă: e precum obrazul vostru mânjit. Uitaţi-vă bine: de azi vă furăm şi cine sunteţi!
Suntem specialişti în fizică cuantică, sisteme de circuit închis, poststructuralism.
Scuipăm formule, teorii, critici. Non-stop.
Uitaţă-vă şi mai bine: suntem deja ca voi. Vă semănăm. Vă ingurgităm. Şi apoi regurgităm. Nu avem şcoală.
Nu avem mamă, nu avem tată. Nu avem ţără. Nu avem r u ş i n e.
Mâine, azi, suntem deja de ieri.
De dinaintea lui Homo Sapiens. Suntem noi, maimuţele. Şi am venit să vă revedicăm! Masturbarea voastră maimuţărită scuipă adevăr, cică. Esenţa voastră cea mai scumpă, cea mai autentică, minunata filosofie!
Noi o înghiţim şi o scuipăm înapoi. V-am topit Dumnezul de aur într-un viţel de plastic chinezesc! Vă vorbim limba, vă mişcăm gesturile, v-am reprodus toate brand-urile. E rândul ca voi înşivă să fiţi asimilaţi.
Nu vă faceţi griji însă, genunchii noştri bătătoriţi nu vor fi şi ai voştri.
Nu vă vom da piramide de construit sau arme de fabricat. Locul vostru e în dulcele cimitir pe care vi l-aţi construit deja, muzeul! Veţi rămâne de acum înainte încuiaţi aici, în criptele voastre.
Din persoane aţi ajuns referinţe. Din eroi, citări!
Fraierilor, istoria nu s-a sfârşit! Istoria vă îngroapă!
The Epileptic's Manifesto
You open your eyes. The terrible pressure overwhelms you. The entire world is pushing on you. You can’t lift up your head. It is heavy like the burden of two thousand years. You move your hands just a bit , enough to know that you are still alive. This is the true face of the world: it squashes you close to death, just enough for you to know you’re clinging to life.
Science, medicine, progress! The bullshit of modernity! We are tired of your lies.
Behold: nobody and nothing can explain our delirium. Tell me, doctor, how come my brain overcharges with electricity functioning at its fullest capacity and we just crash? How come?
But you stay quiet, you have nothing to say, because you don’t know anything.
You thought the Apocalypse will come from a tiny electronic brain... Ridiculous!
You haven’t taken a look in the mirror to see in yourselves the electrical spark that will overcharge the world and will galvanize it!
We are the answer: we exist to taste the drop of death, of nothingness in life.
We fall one by one into nothingness and we remind you, unworthy ones, that everything is dust!
Your being stops and then you start over. The absolute opens through us!
The new metaphysics is already here! It is pathology!
Who isn’t, will wish to be an epileptic!
Your body lives without you. 2000 volts, it carries through it in the most intense experience possible for a human being.
The brain functions totally and the revelation of the world comes totally! Poor Friedrich, he didn’t understand anything!
We are the Übermensch!
We deliver the image of absolute and sublime!
The über-life of the epilepsy is a drop of death through the screeching teeth of the little man.
The world will shiver in spasms!
Manifestul Epilepticului
Deschizi ochii. Te copleşeşte apăsarea extraordinară. Întreaga lume te apasă. Nu-ţi poţi ridica capul.
E greu ca povara a două mii de ani. Mâinile ţi le mişti doar puţin cât să vezi că eşti în viaţă.
Iată adevărata faţă a lumii: te striveşte aproape de moarte, atât cât doar să mai ştii că te agăţi de viaţă.
Ştiinţă, medicină, progres! Iată balivernele modernităţii. Ne-am săturat de minciunile voastre.
Iată, delirul nostru nu-l poate explica nimeni şi nimic. Spune, medicule, cum de creierul se supraîncarcă brusc de energie electrică funcţionând la capacitate maximă şi noi ne prabusim. De unde?
Dar voi tăceţi, nu aveţi ce spune, pentru că nu ştiţi nimic.
Credeaţi că apocalipsa va veni din pana de curent dintr-un mic creier electronic... Ridicol!
Nu v-aţi uitat în oglindă, să vedeţi în voi scânteia electrică ce va supraîncărca lumea şi o va galvaniza!
Noi suntem răspunsul: Noi existăm pentru a gusta picătura de moarte, de neant, de nimic în viaţă.
Cădem unul câte unul în neant şi vă aducem aminte, nevrednicilor, că totul e praf! Te opreşti punct
şi o iei de la capăt. Absolutul se deschide prin noi! Noua metafizică e deja aici! E patologie!
Cine nu este, îşi va dori să devină epileptic!
Corpul tău trăieşte fără tine. 2000 de volţi îl străbat în cea mai intensă experienţă posibilă pentru o formă de viaţă. Creierul funcţionează total şi revelaţia lumii vine total! Sărmanul Friedrich, n-a înţeles nimic!
Noi suntem supra-oamenii!
Noi livrăm imaginea absolutului şi sublimului! Supraviaţa epilepsiei e strop de moarte printre dinţii scrâşniţi ai micului om. Lumea va fi cuprinsă de spasme!
The Dilettante’s Manifesto
Starting today we don’t care anymore of you. You are here just to be cited. We cut, we copy, we paste, download and steal. Especially steal! And what a robbery. We rob you of your beloved culture, build in so much time. Oh, bearded, white one: we had till today to deliver you bows. From now on that’s over! Your God has showed its true face: it is like your own dirty cheek. Take a good look: from now on we steal even what you are!
We are now specialists in quantum physics, closed circuit systems, postructuralism.
We spit formulas, theories, critiques. Non-stop.
Take a better look: we are already like you. We are alike. We ingurgitate you. And then regurgitate you.
We have no education, no mother, no father. We have no country. He have no s h a m e.
Tomorrow, today, we are already here from yesterday.
From before Homo Sapiens. It is us, the monkeys. And we are here to claim you! Your monkey-like masturbation
spits truth, so you say. Your most precious essence, the most authentic one, the marvel of philosophy!
We swallow it and then we spit it back.
We’ve melted your golden God into a Chinese plastic calf!
We speak your language, we make your gestures, we’ve reproduced all your brands.
It is time for you yourselves to be assimilated. Don’t worry though, our beaten knees won’t be your own. We won’t give you
pyramids to build or guns to make. Your place is in the sweet cemetery that you’ve already built: the museum!
From now on, you’ll remain locked here, in your own crypt.
From persons, you’ve become references. From Heros, citations!
Suckers, history is not over! History is burying you!
Manifestul Diletantului
De azi nu ne mai pasă de voi. Sunteţi aici doar pentru a fi citaţi. Tăiem, copiem, alipim, descărcăm, furăm.
Dar mai ales furăm. Ce furt! Vă furăm cultura aceea atât de dragă vouă, construită atâta amar de vreme.Bărbosule şi albule: trebuia până acum să îţi livrăm plecăciuni. De azi, gata! Dumnezeul vostru şi-a arătat adevărata faţă: e precum obrazul vostru mânjit. Uitaţi-vă bine: de azi vă furăm şi cine sunteţi!
Suntem specialişti în fizică cuantică, sisteme de circuit închis, poststructuralism.
Scuipăm formule, teorii, critici. Non-stop.
Uitaţă-vă şi mai bine: suntem deja ca voi. Vă semănăm. Vă ingurgităm. Şi apoi regurgităm. Nu avem şcoală.
Nu avem mamă, nu avem tată. Nu avem ţără. Nu avem r u ş i n e.
Mâine, azi, suntem deja de ieri.
De dinaintea lui Homo Sapiens. Suntem noi, maimuţele. Şi am venit să vă revedicăm! Masturbarea voastră maimuţărită scuipă adevăr, cică. Esenţa voastră cea mai scumpă, cea mai autentică, minunata filosofie!
Noi o înghiţim şi o scuipăm înapoi. V-am topit Dumnezul de aur într-un viţel de plastic chinezesc! Vă vorbim limba, vă mişcăm gesturile, v-am reprodus toate brand-urile. E rândul ca voi înşivă să fiţi asimilaţi.
Nu vă faceţi griji însă, genunchii noştri bătătoriţi nu vor fi şi ai voştri.
Nu vă vom da piramide de construit sau arme de fabricat. Locul vostru e în dulcele cimitir pe care vi l-aţi construit deja, muzeul! Veţi rămâne de acum înainte încuiaţi aici, în criptele voastre.
Din persoane aţi ajuns referinţe. Din eroi, citări!
Fraierilor, istoria nu s-a sfârşit! Istoria vă îngroapă!
The Epileptic's Manifesto
You open your eyes. The terrible pressure overwhelms you. The entire world is pushing on you. You can’t lift up your head. It is heavy like the burden of two thousand years. You move your hands just a bit , enough to know that you are still alive. This is the true face of the world: it squashes you close to death, just enough for you to know you’re clinging to life.
Science, medicine, progress! The bullshit of modernity! We are tired of your lies.
Behold: nobody and nothing can explain our delirium. Tell me, doctor, how come my brain overcharges with electricity functioning at its fullest capacity and we just crash? How come?
But you stay quiet, you have nothing to say, because you don’t know anything.
You thought the Apocalypse will come from a tiny electronic brain... Ridiculous!
You haven’t taken a look in the mirror to see in yourselves the electrical spark that will overcharge the world and will galvanize it!
We are the answer: we exist to taste the drop of death, of nothingness in life.
We fall one by one into nothingness and we remind you, unworthy ones, that everything is dust!
Your being stops and then you start over. The absolute opens through us!
The new metaphysics is already here! It is pathology!
Who isn’t, will wish to be an epileptic!
Your body lives without you. 2000 volts, it carries through it in the most intense experience possible for a human being.
The brain functions totally and the revelation of the world comes totally! Poor Friedrich, he didn’t understand anything!
We are the Übermensch!
We deliver the image of absolute and sublime!
The über-life of the epilepsy is a drop of death through the screeching teeth of the little man.
The world will shiver in spasms!
Manifestul Epilepticului
Deschizi ochii. Te copleşeşte apăsarea extraordinară. Întreaga lume te apasă. Nu-ţi poţi ridica capul.
E greu ca povara a două mii de ani. Mâinile ţi le mişti doar puţin cât să vezi că eşti în viaţă.
Iată adevărata faţă a lumii: te striveşte aproape de moarte, atât cât doar să mai ştii că te agăţi de viaţă.
Ştiinţă, medicină, progres! Iată balivernele modernităţii. Ne-am săturat de minciunile voastre.
Iată, delirul nostru nu-l poate explica nimeni şi nimic. Spune, medicule, cum de creierul se supraîncarcă brusc de energie electrică funcţionând la capacitate maximă şi noi ne prabusim. De unde?
Dar voi tăceţi, nu aveţi ce spune, pentru că nu ştiţi nimic.
Credeaţi că apocalipsa va veni din pana de curent dintr-un mic creier electronic... Ridicol!
Nu v-aţi uitat în oglindă, să vedeţi în voi scânteia electrică ce va supraîncărca lumea şi o va galvaniza!
Noi suntem răspunsul: Noi existăm pentru a gusta picătura de moarte, de neant, de nimic în viaţă.
Cădem unul câte unul în neant şi vă aducem aminte, nevrednicilor, că totul e praf! Te opreşti punct
şi o iei de la capăt. Absolutul se deschide prin noi! Noua metafizică e deja aici! E patologie!
Cine nu este, îşi va dori să devină epileptic!
Corpul tău trăieşte fără tine. 2000 de volţi îl străbat în cea mai intensă experienţă posibilă pentru o formă de viaţă. Creierul funcţionează total şi revelaţia lumii vine total! Sărmanul Friedrich, n-a înţeles nimic!
Noi suntem supra-oamenii!
Noi livrăm imaginea absolutului şi sublimului! Supraviaţa epilepsiei e strop de moarte printre dinţii scrâşniţi ai micului om. Lumea va fi cuprinsă de spasme!
Harmless Artist Manifesto/gânDac Manifesto
The Harmless Artist Manifesto
I am a harmless artist.
I sit in front of you and I cannot do you anything. I struggle and toss. I mutilate and kill myself. I model my body like plaster. But it all stays at me. I do not touch you.
The only production is of my own self.
You just go on living, loving, working and buying! Most of all, buy! With every share you buy, you neutralize us more. I got these four white, immaculate walls. Walls like invisible limits, they are here and they are not. Pushed towards o seductive cage, you’ve made us hate our harmlessness. Made us want your power!
The power to impose, hit, manipulate, posses and despise!
The power to kill!
But today is a new day: the harmless one is not ashamed anymore! Today, we impersonate choice.
The small power to propose and not impose. I choose for myself, and you will follow me only if you choose for yourself. This is the radical change! To choose for oneself! We do not offer the illusion of choice: the freedom to choose between whitening washing powder or a colored one. We offer the choice between white and colored!
The cynical nature is through! There’s no more need to pretend that you know,
to pretend that you’re happy, to pretend you have security in your future.
Follow us!
The cynical nature is through even in the self-forgotten art! To pretend to be political when you force me to wear my political identity like a coat?! Like an ornament?! To play the monkey even more?!
We declare today: we are harmless and affirm it! We cannot impose anything on anybody. And our stubbornness to not submit will move mountains.
Our power is so small, it is the smallest. Our power is zero.
And from this point on, it all begins.
Manifestul Artistului Inofensiv
Eu sunt un artist inofensiv.
Mă aşez în faţa ta şi nu-ţi pot face nimic.Mă zbat şi zvârcolesc. Mă mutilez şi sinucid. Îmi modelez corpul ca pe o plastilină. Însă rămân la mine.Nu te ating.
Singura producere este a propriului sine.
Voi trăiţi, iubiţi, lucraţi şi cumpăraţi în continuare! Mai ales cumpăraţi. Cu fiecare acţiune pe care o cumpăraţi, ne neutralizaţi mai mult. Am primit patru pereţi albi, imaculaţi. Pereţi ca nişte limite invizibile, ce sunt şi nu sunt. Împinşi către o cuşcă seducătoare, ne-aţi făcut să ne urâm inofensivitatea. Să ne dorim puterea voastră! Puterea de a impune, de a lovi, de a manipula, de a poseda şi batjocori!
Puterea de a omorî!
Dar azi e o nouă zi: inofensivului nu îi e ruşine. Azi, noi întruchipăm alegerea. Puterea mică de a propune şi nu impune. Eu aleg doar pentru mine, şi tu mă vei urma doar dacă alegi pentru tine. Iată marea schimbare! Să alegi pentru tine! Noi nu oferim iluzia alegerii: libertatea de a cumpăra detergent pentru rufe negre sau detergent cu înălbitor. Noi îţi oferim alegerea de a fi alb sau negru. S-a terminat cu natura cinică! Nu e nevoie să te mai prefaci că nu ştii, să te prefaci că eşti fericit, să te prefaci că ai siguranţă în viitor. Urmează-ne!
S-a terminat cu natura cinică şi în nefericita artă! Să mă mai prefac că sunt politic când voi mă puneţi să îmi port identitatea politică ca pe o haină?! Ca pe un ornament?! Să vă mai joc pe mamuţa?!
Noi, declarăm azi, suntem inofensivi şi ne-o asumăm! Nu putem impune nimănui nimic. Şi încăpăţânarea noastră de nu ne supune va muta munţii.
Puterea noastră e atât de mică, e cea mai mică. Puterea noastră e zero.
Şi de aici începe totul!
Manifesto of the gânDac *
The most dac(ian) of all the dac(ians) is the ganDac.
It is small, dark but strong. It spreads unnoticed everywhere. Under the rocks, dumpsters and kitchens, he crawls rapidly. He spreads today, slowly but surely his anti-civilization throughout all Europe.
Europe, Mother, what’s wrong with you? The fear for the total mushroom is eaten away your ideals! The Cold War is over and you are still not through with it. Don’t worry, mother, if it will get rid of you, we remain. We will survive you.
The hero, History, God, all are pathetically agonizing. Only the ganDac knows no death.
The post-atomic world will be his. Until then, it crawls, it crawls.
When the Dacians were following their glorious destiny through the merciless Ancient History, they were dreaming of what will be the true fulfillment of their historical destiny: the ganDac!
Once, great battles have been fought on the old motherland. The Dacian, the bravest of all warriors, was dieing, but he was dieing in freedom! His thought on the verge of death was towards himself: the Dacian dies a free man!
This is the historical root of the ganDac.
Since then centuries of sweeping history have passed. The masters have come, ruled, oppressed and exploited. They left and others like them came. But the thought of the free death of the Dacian has been kept somewhere buried deep in the motherland. There have been attempts: from beneath the earth the vampire emerged. But he was just a Dacian simulacra. In a short time, his cold flesh became a commodity. But the ganDac cannot become a commodity. And why? Because he has already sold himself. His husky shell, the so called “labor-force” is already the exchange coin of corporate octopuses. Patience, though.Crawling and crawling, the ganDac is becoming from instrument, Subject.
He knows no humiliation, has no pride or needs. He will be the total master!
Tomorrow a new day awaits, the Sun will melt the ice, the water will drown life and behind it will remain the
anti-civilization over which the ganDac will reign.
*ganDac = wordplay between gandac, Romanian for cockroach, and dac, Romanian for a member of the ancient Dacian population, an Indo-European people, very close to the Thracians, inhabitants of Dacia (located in the area in and around the Carpathian Mountains and east of there to the Black Sea including the present-day countries of Romania and Moldova, eastern Ukraine, Eastern Serbia, Northern Bulgaria, Slovakia and Poland. The Dacian identity is used in some Romanian ideological discourses to trace the ethnic direct descendance of modern Romanians.
Manifestul gânDacului
Cel mai dac dintre toţi dacii este gânDacul.
gânDacul e mic, negricios dar puternic. Se răspândeşte neobservat peste tot. Pe sub pietre, tomberoane şi
prin bucătării se târăşte agil. Îşi răspândeşte azi, încet şi sigur, anti-civilizaţia prin toată Europa.
Europa, Mamă, ce-i cu tine? Teama de ciuperca totală îţi mănâncă idealurile! A trecut Războiu Rece şi tu tot
n-ai scăpat de ea. Fii fără grijă, măicuţă, dacă scapă ea de tine, noi rămânem. Noi îţi vom supravieţui.
Eroul, Istoria, Dumnezeu, toţi agonizează patetic. Numai gânDacul nu cunoaşte moarte.
Lumea post-atomică va fi a lui. Până atunci însă, se târăşte, se târăşte.
Când dacii îşi croiau destinul glorios prin nemiloasa Istorie, de atunci visau la ce va fi
adevărata îndeplinire a sensului lor istoric: gânDacul!
Mari lupte s-au dat pe bătrâna glie. Dacul, cel mai vajnic luptător, murea, însă murea liber! Gândul său în
pragul morţii a fost către sine: dacul moare liber! Aceasta e rădăcina istorică a gânDacului.
De atunci, secole de măturare istorică au trecut. Stăpânii au venit, au domnit şi exploatat. Au plecat şi alţii
la fel au venit. Însă gândul morţii libere a Dacului s-a păstrat adânc adormit în glia-mamă. Au mai fost
încercări: din pământ a ieşit vampirul. Însă a fost doar un simulacru dac. În scurt timp carnea sa rece
a devenit marfă. Însă gânDacul nu poate deveni niciodată marfă. Şi de ce?
Pentru că el deja s-a vândut. Carapacea lui scorţoasă, aşa zisa „mână de lucru” e deja moneda de
schimb a caracatiţelor corporatiste. Răbdare însă. Târâş-târâş, gânDacul devine din instrument, Subiect.
El nu cunoaşte umilire, orgoliu sau nevoi. Va fi stăpânul total!
Mâine va fi o nouă zi, soarele va topi gheţarii, apa va îneca viaţa şi în urmă va rămâne
anti-civilizaţia peste care va domni gânDacul.
Silent Nature performance @ Slutwalk/Marsul Panaramelor, Bucharest, 2011
photo credits: vadim ghica
photo credits: vadim ghica
photo credits: andrei pungovschi
photo credits: mugur varzariu
silent nature, collective performance with carnations, Slutwalk Bucharest.
the Blind Musem, model for a building and poster for the next exhibition.
(the Blind Museum at the Ist Fair of the Spectral Institutions, June 2011, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Brukenthal Museum, Sibiu, Romania). Photo frames (plaster).
Details.
Above: text on the base of the model;
(The Blind Museum – model for a future site. -poster for the next exhibition: Marcel Broodthaers, Musee d’Art Moderne. Department des Aveugles/Museum of Modern Art. Department for the Blind.
Scale 1: 2000)
Under: print on the top of the model.
FLAG (ro: „work sets one free”)
installation, acrylic on canvas, mirror, 2010.
In FLAG, the gaze falls over the shoulder on an event that happens behind the viewer. The tunnel from the journey towards extermination of jews in the 2nd World War becomes the hole in the Romanian revolutionary flag of December 1989. Between the two moments there is an historic void, a gap that disolves humanity and the individual. A certain History is always happening behind our back, out of our sight. It is the History of the Nation and of nationalism. It assumes the passivity and the lack of responsability of the individual. He becomes the subject that works not to become free, but rather to be enslaved. He works for the cynicism of this History where Good and Evil become ambigous: the holocaust coincides with the revolution.
anti-windows
anti-windows
together with Arnold Schlachter, video, 13’, 2010.
Anti-windows is a documentation of all the bricked up windows in the area surrounding the Carol Park.
Taking long strolls through the neighborhood we recorded all the windows that are walled up completely and are part of buildings in use. The anti-window is, thus, a bricked up window, an obturated path of the passerby’s gaze. He is the flâneur, the one who strolls along the streets searching for the city. Walter Benjamin evokes the flâneur that discovers the iron and steel arcades, those urban elements of passage in 19th century Paris. These objects determine the specificity of the Parisian flâneur. The flâneur, always a dilettante, an amateur, wanders around through the city searching for the shapes that make its particularities.
In Bucharest, the bricked up window seems a frequently seen sign of the specific relation between the public sphere and the private. In our stroll, the public space is interogated at the level of its visuality, questioning the gaze of the wandering subject. The visuality of the public space reaches a pause through the anti-window. The anti-window is a blocking of the curious gaze that seeks the dialogue of the public with the private space. In this way, the anti-window radicalizes difference between the two spaces. Although the private has isolated itself, traces of the dialogue are still visible: decolored squares following the former limits of the window, untouched windowsills, sometimes even frames or plate glasses with bricks built behind them. The visuality of the public space reinvents itself, it becomes something else, but still keeps scraps of another way of „seeing”.
What does the street become because of this change? Who is the flâneur of this street? Does the anti-window make him a potential danger? Either way, in front of the window that has become a wall, the flâneur becomes more present and more isolated.
museum slash Museum
http://www.vimeo.com/14827176
museum slash Museum
part of the Double Life project of Olga Kisseleva
video, 4’, 2010.
Soundtrack text:
My name is Veda Popovici. I am an artist. And I earn my living working as a teacher at secondary school.
I teach art practice and art history to 11, 12, 13 and 14 year olds. I could say that my job is to teach children how to express themselves. Which it is. But more importantly, my job is to make sure they understand and learn society’s established notions of art.
What is art? What is an artist? Who made art and why? What are the most important artists, movements of our culture? Well, it isn’t exactly our culture. It is just the culture.
I actually don’t know the answer to any of these questions. But the teacher must know and with this knowledge form young subjetivities.
I show them virtual reproductions of works of art that I like and that correspond to the style I must teach. I hope they will remember at least some of the works and build an imaginary, personal, however small museum. It will be a museum of replicas, wannabes, copies.
Not a strong but a fragile museum built to be eventually demolished. A fictional museum. But what kind of a museum could I expect them to built? Fake museums are the only ones they can experience in this society, the society they live in. Museums empty of reality, that have only wrapping. These institutions consist only of the reinforcement of their historical authority.
Tell me, dear, have you learned the lesson on Baroque? If its Baroque it means its with a 13 year old I’m talking. I couldn’t teach him pop art. History must be respected. History is here a progress, and it’s always Western, always masculine, always white.
Sitting obedient in their little desks with their paper, crayons and colors they wait for me to tell them what to do. How to make art. Madam, what should I draw today? Is it good, is it beautiful? Is it finished?
I am no Madam and I have no answers. Still, I must tell them something. Eventually I tell them the what and the how. Of course it’s beautiful. All that they do is just beautiful.
What I did lately was establishing the Blind Museum. The Blind Museum hasn’t got any works to show. More precisely its works are hidden, kept away from the eye of the viewer. They are wrapped, buried. The gaze that this museum forms is a blocked one. It is censored, blinded.
It is a museum of no masters and no masterpieces. It proposes no role models to admire or despise. The Blind Museum is in search for its tradition. History is too heavy. Too difficult to handle. So this museum just overlooks it.
The Blind Museum isn’t an alternative. It echoes an everpresent structure of power and authority. It is a sign of the burden of powerplayed history.
The museum has a catalogue. It provides information about its establishment, its artists and its objectives.
The blind museum celebrates no particular history and it designs no particular future. It is an inoperable instrument of modernity. It could announce a failure or a success.
It is neither good, nor evil.
It does not try to form subjectivities. It is just a testimony of an aged and dysfunctional story. And, thus, harmless.
Muzeul Orb/the Blind Museum
The Blind Museum, established in 2010, is an autonomous institution with the aim of negotiating the lacks in history based on the museum's authority. Claiming itself form the particularities of 20th century art system, BM doesn’t have any models to forward. It exists even though it doesn’t (yet) shelter or exhibit works of art. The museum is in search of both a premises and a gaze which to model.
The condition that launched the Museum is the lack of historical discourses of recent Romanian art. As a young artist that needs to reflect upon the history of his/hers society and needs to find within this history artists and works to which to react to, either critically or in admiration, the lack of coherent narratives of recent art history is reclaimed as an aberration. The Blind Museum is the context in which this situation is reflected upon.
Further on, the institution developed into reflections on the authoritative nature of the institution of the museum, the ideology of the white cube and the hegemony of masculine canon in Western art.
Recently, the museum has worked as a framework for identifying invisible mechanisms of power involving contemporary and historical conditions.
It remains an institution which elaborates on a formalism of dystopia and paradox.
The Blind Museum , first opening, Atelier 35, april 2010. Views of the installation below:
The condition that launched the Museum is the lack of historical discourses of recent Romanian art. As a young artist that needs to reflect upon the history of his/hers society and needs to find within this history artists and works to which to react to, either critically or in admiration, the lack of coherent narratives of recent art history is reclaimed as an aberration. The Blind Museum is the context in which this situation is reflected upon.
Further on, the institution developed into reflections on the authoritative nature of the institution of the museum, the ideology of the white cube and the hegemony of masculine canon in Western art.
Recently, the museum has worked as a framework for identifying invisible mechanisms of power involving contemporary and historical conditions.
It remains an institution which elaborates on a formalism of dystopia and paradox.
The Blind Museum , first opening, Atelier 35, april 2010. Views of the installation below:
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