Re: Syndicate: UN art

[Friddy Nietzche <nietzche@godmail.com>]

Dear ana.peraica ;

first of all we shall ask you/the list to apologise the length and confusion of this post, but it had to be said.

You should realise that the artists whose point of view is being presented are neither established nor expirienced in their activity, but strive rather to provide a vibrant and inspiring angle/view that will, hopefully, acquire further value when and if they indeed mature some more, artistically, and become expirienced and consequently possibly even established.

Anyway we (as a conceptual emulated imagined we assumed by the F.N. virtual persona) will present to you the viewpoint of young East European art group Analog Time Theatre. We have also consulted there colleagues from the vague and evasive philosophical circle related to the KUU Uzgon group, that was for a while known as the Department of the Collective Subconscious and Theoretical Strategies of the said Analog Time Theatre. Complexities of interpersonal relations/reputations involved here however should not be considered relative to the truth or falseness of the statements made in this ad hoc mini essay.

Thank you for your understanding.

THE EASTERN ARTIST vs EASTERN ARTS

The Myth and the Tales (more or less narrative structures based on the Myth) centered around __The__Artiste__ from Eastern Europe nursed and financed by the UN are 
----not about East and West, !!!
but about Artists and the Powers To Be; or putting it more clearly, about the semiotics of careerism, semantics of collectivism and the processes through which the subject/significator== 'artist' acquires a role/meaning in the structures of 'society', 'state', 'federation', 'world', 'economy', 'his own time', 'art scene', 'his family', 'his town', 'his neighbourhood' and finally, but certainly nothing least about it, 'the Market'.

The role of arts, and, to that issue rather relative, relationship between form and function within the art itself appears to have always been a rather complex and vague issue for the East European, and in particular, the ex-Yugoslav area. 

There appears to be an obsession in the area with 'being an artist'. I am not quite sure where that started, it may, however, have something to do with the out-dated system of artistic education, for instance. It could be historical as well.

It appears that an Eastern artist expresses himself more through how he wishes to position himself and present himself, through Role Design of his person as an artist, less then through crafting of an actual Artistic Object. It could do with the marginalised position art has enjoyed/suffered in the East throughout history that one feels his arts speaks not loud enough, and may need to shout, may have to make his own person louder then the work itself to make a point. 

This is also connected with the whole serious of schism within the Eastern culture. One appears to be between form and function, the other between popular and 'high' art et cetera, and continous throughout with a misfortunately troubled relationship between self image and other aspects of self == expression and that which needs to be expressed. 

Naturally, these processes are very present in all cultures at various stages of their development and we do not claim it to be an Eastern European trait. We don't actually support this East/West dualism (in the classical sense) anyway, but speak from that perspective for we find it necessary in the context of this discussion. In order to shed light on any of these issues one would have to think of what culture and arts are and what their role is to begin with, not only within a nation state (for that is a rather recent concept) but in general, to humanity. Art can be viewed as a process of self-affirmation and a contact re-establishemnt scheme, or a collective reality support mechanism. 

Primarily it acts on the subconscious plane - examining and redefining archetypes, moulding semiotic maps, placing values into objects, etc. This is why, possibly, art can cause change and scandal.
The birth of Art from Folklore to me appears to be in the invention of distance, and from distance came courage, and from courage came questioning, doubt and change. We shall return to this point later.

Let us now concentrate on the ex- Yugoslavian area in particular.

There seams to be a peculiar deficency of change and scandal by means of Culture in the area. One immagines a lonesome Renaissance bard, alone in his lonely castle - we invite you to immagine that castle in full physical, psychoanalitical and metaphorical sense, in his own reality, lost in a sea of people who don't even speak the language he writes in, who in his mind mould into The People, towards whom he develops an almost Erotic/Messianic attachment, placing himself in the position in which his historical role is not to create art, but to be an Artist, to be a Bard, to be a voice of that whose voice he isn't able to express. So the paradox of a Wanna Be Eastern Bard is not the romantic concept of expressing the unexpresable, but continuously striving to express that which he never understood to begin with. He is a puppet, fed reality as needed, both a slave and a nobleman, floating in the doubt weather he even exists, and writing letters to his imaginary friends in the im!
 ag!
inary West to save his imaginary people from the imaginary Turks (that were very much real, but not to him). Who could he strive to scandalise? His servants? His People? The Turks? The immaginary civilised western Lords and Popes he writes to for help? Noone. He is locked in an eternal childhood, the alone-ness of infancy, unable to part his self from the world self. And from this unfortunate situation, century after century, the current situation of an Eastern artist is born. Today he has no castle but he has his art school, where he is told art is an abstract and great thing, vaguely, and he has to work very hard to one day maybe be an artist and be able to express himself. Around him there is, yet again, noone and nothing. No galleries, no greatness, no genius. These are only words to him, words that lose power a bit every day by pointless repetition. But he is already an artist. He goes to art school. Afterwards he will most certainly exhibit his work. Then he will grow !
 ol!
d and his name will become respectful 'in certain circles'. Then he will die as an artist. 

The plague of abstraction devouring all. One is trained to ignore the popular culture around him and to westernise as much as possible. Yet again there are the imaginary friends somewhere on the west, who 'understand him' and the faceles populus around him whom he has to educate and save. Or even worse, he is consumed by his own non-westerness, thusly not his easterners, not his proper culture by means of penetrating it and facing it from within, but by refusal of all abstract 'elseness' in defence of a phantasm that is his Suffering Nation. And as all suffering, ill, weak things, the perverse construct of Mother Lover Nation State doesn't let him speak loudly or go out at night, wear female clothes or write obscene poetry.

To help shed ligh on this I will need to consult Slavoj Zizek, whose work we may have our doubts about, but who definitely broke the walls between Saying Artistically, Saying To The World, Saying To Oneself and Saying Something, and managed to express real concerns, about existing situations, directly to the people, at the same time to The World, etc. We could also view NSK as a successful Artistic Act, a bit of a deflowerment of the Collective Subconscious Of Eastern Europe By Means Of Art, and find even irony in it. But we shall do so after this quote, which is, strangely, from a writing about Joyce, but illustrates this argument well enough.

"
In one of his letters, Freud refers to the well-known joke about the newly married who, when asked by his friend how his wife looks, how beautiful she is, answers: "I personally don't like her, but that's a matter of taste." The paradox of this answer does not point towards an attitude of selfish calculation ("True, I don't like her, but I married her for other reasons - her wealth, the social influence of her parents..."). Its crucial feature is that, by providing this answer, the subject pretends to assume the standpoint of universality from which "to be likeable" appears as an idiosyncrasy, as a contingent "pathological" feature which, as such, is not to be taken into consideration. The joke therefore relies on the impossible/untenable position of enunciation of the newly married: from this position, marriage appears as an act which belongs to the domain of universal symbolic determinations and should as such be independent of personal idiosyncrasies - as if the very noti!
 on!
 of marriage does not involve precisely the "pathological" fact of liking a particular person for no particular rational reason.
"
Slavoj Zizek

An avarage East European artist personally doesn't like Art, but is married to it.

The East Europe needs to devour its mirror first of all, to fall in love with itself, passionately, go through a serious Narcissist phase where it will care nothing of the wests, easts, norths and souths of this world. But it can't be the current blind, fake version of the sentiment that is lived through nationalism.

It will happen by saying the truth to oneself, seeing oneself naked in the mirror, indulging both in the beauty and the ugliness of the site. It has to start with facing the non-articity and in-articul-arity of the object that inspires art, to then express that which one has seen by means of art.

In short, the Artist will have to stop being artistic for a while, to through rough, risky and dirty faceless creation itself, reassume not the role but the Job of it. The role of a Useful Easterner will also need be abandoned, the mirror one should view his Eastern-icity in should not be that broken hand mirror handed down by the anglophile west (a Joyce reference that is). 

Going back to the NSK example, it is exactly because they faced the abused position of the artist as not the Doer but Signifier that they managed to penetrate the process, shed light in and on it, and say something where and in a way that it be heared. They didn't whisper to themselves, they didn't yell out at the world, they Spoke. It was an act of Submission and Dominance, in a way, and were as liberating to The Person Of European Artist as inactments of S/D can be to an individual. 

They made art matter, made it a place of Doing and not Pretending, made it a playground of identity, laboratory of angles, stage, etc. I am not trying to add to the NSK myth, solely state their work as an illustration.

There is another point that we said to return to: the birth of art from separation from folklore, and the role of distance. East European artists tend to lack in a sense of individuation and irony, being too sentimental and attached to the role of their own person in history. It is again to do with the education where they are continuously tought in dualities - on one hand there are the Great Historical Processes that happen in the West, and on the other the Small Nation onto whom the waves of Historical Changes occasionally crash. And what can make one feel more helpless and small then being a Small Poet of a Small Nation? He fails to see that the Great Wests, Easts, Norths and Souths of this world are just composites of equaly troubled, confused nations as his own, et cetera. 

This puts one in a confused feverish state where he goes from assuming a 'civilised westerner' front to those in his own country, and pouting like an offended child any time his National Identity is theatened by the Big Kids - that is the "Proper Civilised Westerners".

I say, in order not to get further lost in the topic, at this moment, that none of this should be taken tragically. Sure, I was a bit critical but only to get the thinking process started. I could be equally critical of any individual, group of people, country one asks me about. I could criticise Italian Bakers, Welsh Miners, etc. as easily as East European Artists. I could criticise West European Artists, for instance. Or European Catholics. And so on. The whirlpools of identity are paradoxical and playfully complex.

And its a strange sort of playfulness that I suggest as a way out from the vicious circle of Artistic Infancy, 
it has to do with asking 

::::

Why? 

::::

to begin with.
Why is it that "I" am expressing myself artistically, why in this particular "I", through this particular artistic form, who am I trying to communicate with, what tabu shall I chose to attack, etc. I strongly suggest the burning down of all ivory towers, the thashing of all lovely crowns with title 'Artist' on them, the firm betrayal of all expectations by curators, family, maybe even friends, if necessary, and returning to the mentality of 

:::::

Play.

:::::

I suggest one whould risk harshness, irony, cynicism, ugliness, embarassment in the process. Even more brutally and un-academically, I suggest one should fuck around a bit before marrying the Great Ice Cold Phantom of Civilised Arts.

>here is something regarding Eastern European pathos turning into 

One should even risk pathetics, in the lovely tradition of Serbian cinematography, which touches it and dances through it with bravado, to transcend it with grace.

>that does not allow to be bordered with the details. Puppets of the world
>politics as Milosevic and Tudjman unfortunately, with own nations were,
>become a woodoo dolls, and exorcism will last all until the real question >is forgotten.

The real question can't be forgotten, for it wasn't yet asked.
Care to ask it?
Out loud?

>relation of the East / West, socialism / capitalism, war / art... Eastern
>European art appeared as an after-image of the identity art, but now being
>territorial in the old models of Renaissance schools.

It is a simple problem of taking the easy way about things, happens all the time.

>This flat distinction has taken a variety of predictable forms, cliches of

Do you hate the Serbs?
Who are 'the Serbs'?
Are you 'a Serb'?
Are you 'a Croat'?
Do Serbs and Croats smell differently?

Is hating Serbs a form of self hate?

>depicting more sensible relations of the first of all art, and then >second -
>of the politics itself. If not politicians in real, artists are invited to

What is politics?

>Somebody Say Totalitarism? (2001), between Serbs and Albanians on Kosovo,
>asking them to 'give each other a hand and stop shooting' (as it is simple
>as that).

Giving a hand is never simple.
Nothing about hands is simple.

Are you turned on by complexity?

>All through the last decade East European artists have been given 'an
>opportunity' (on Devil's contract of which Boyadjiev speaks the best) of
>presenting their work in several politicized (though not really political)
>contexts. An impression has been given that art arriving from East Europe

Festivals are evil indeed.

>necessary is political and engaged, or authentic with what was seen as the
>political in the last decade. Unfortunately, the situation was more than
>politically misunderstood - the problem of the area was it was precisely -
>in being not political. Otherwise, it would not have happen, what indeed
>has. Or; if this bunch of artists have spoken at time, many things
>would not have happened. Is that a pithiness of art or pithiness of
>politics? But, is it the matter of the free voice, art, anyhow?

What is a voice?
What is a freedom?

>Unfortunately, political facts are those names did not spoke in the
>political context at the time, and an old dilemma of - should this kind of
>art be understood as a political action or the art phenomenon arises. And
>then of course - who gives the criteria of distinction if the Sarajevo's
>life was not a better and realer performance than all of those that are
>visiting the West altogether now? 'No pity for Sarajevo' (Baudrillard), 

Life is not art, dear. 

Even performance art is not a slice of life, even if it may, to an untrained eye, resemble it. Here is a good classical example of the distinction between tragic and tragedy. Sarajevo event was 'tragic', but not a tragedy. A tragedy, could, however, be written about it. Et cetera.

Thousands of years of art and art theory give plenty of critearia in that sense.

>pity
>for the poor artists visiting the West!

The goal of art is not pity.

>How this phenomenon in art occurred? Is the art a territory of simulating
>what the world politics desired as would have happened, as it did not?

Sometimes.

Artists are humans. Their choices are sometimes greatly influenced by their need to survive as such. This shouldn't be an obstacle for greatness. Michelangelo painted Catholic propaganda and made it a masterpiece. It is a personal dilemma/task to find one's way towards personal master-dome.

>Taking a look at the sponsoring list uncovers a fact on the art of >nineties
>itself, that for this decade was indeed political, it is obvious - UN art
>occurred.

Catholic church, rich merchants, UN, what is the difference? Some are create, some buy. It is no justification for the artist.

>East Europe is servant to tyrants, and this fashion is just another one,
>they are appearing in mass, in groups, but not individually, appearing
>name-less, embodying the identity of the addressee of the desirable
>narrative and identity. Once manipulated by own tyrants, and now, the >second

East Europe is a slave to its own fear and confusion, first of all, the Western Tyrants are just something one can easily project these sentiments onto, someone to play out a role in the Obscene Theatre of Self Obscuring. The real self obscure, to then bring in the Super-ego of heroic salvation, purified by its history of a Victim, who shall not quite save the real self from the Demons of West, but weep, weep forever.


Are you an Eastern European or East Europe personified?

The mechanism you speak of "enslave" the western artists silly enough to fall into its trap as well as the Eastern. It is their nature. They are like a Disney lion, if you laugh and disbelieve it it is quite harmless.

Irony is a powerful weapon, hope it gets imported into Eastern Europe, fast.

>time by the cheapest (in all but market values) fashion of gallerism of
>East/West-Communist Past/Chaotic Present-War/Period-after phenomenon.
>Eastern European art is a bitch, gives itself easily forgetting the last
>'user'. Socialist realism easily continues in the admittance to UN (or
>whatever capital letters can replace YU, USSR. as for the car
>registration) -art.

Give me several examples of this prostitutious art, I am quite interested.

>All is political; all is art, we know - except what is politicish and

Wrong. Words Art and Politics would be made meaningless by such an equation. Of Course only art is art, and though all can be viewed from a political angle, all is not to be labelable as 'political'.

>artish, except what embodies the aesthetics of itself and presents it as
>unique. All is political except the past; all might be art except of what >is regarded as the art of future. Those are oxymoron.

And who claims these strange oxymorons?
I sort of lost you there...

>melancholia is allowed, but not the recreation), of war that is over (and
>antagonism is resolved as the mistake forgiven). Mea culpa art or not
>directly political ironisation of it - a nasty child that ironises own
>wishes, not speaking on it properly. Even those against UN are entering
>financing of the UN. Of course, UN then is appearing as new metaphysical
>instance - ready to forgive the sin.

All these are dangers that present themselves in any artistic work, traps that an artist must overcome to reach deeper into his source of inspiration and speak truely that which needs to be said. As Picasso might have said it, art shouldn't be free, but contionously fight for its freedom. Art can't be free by definition, for there is always a secret broken for artistic beauty to be created, if you didn't morph your demons into Great Western Beasts you would see that those bareers are always present in serious artistic creation and interior in nature. One faces ones passions, ones guilt, helped by irony, abandons irony, a child one moment and older then the world the next. 

An artist is always a wild weed growing out of an unfriendly environment, for no society is designed for monstruous greatness.

>In works of more aware artists, of the first hand East Europe art, it had
>already reached the cynical point (as Slaven Tolj's latest performance of
>drinking vodtka and wiskey periodically or works of Luchezar Boyadjiev 

Maybe you do not understand the full meaning of the word 'cynical'.

Maybe you don't understand Slaven Tolj.

>at the banality of the art market). But after them, a new generation of >the artists and curators (that would be in the terms of art history >entitled 'a school of ?' emerged). They are willing to provide more for a >lower prize...

Yes, human weakness is a sad/humourous afair, maybe they grow out of it.

By the way, who specifically do you mean?

>home, and live on the trashyard of fashionable art phenomenon, not >political and not artistic enough.

Art isn't fashionable in the East, however.

It is considered dull.

Self-burning is even more dull.

Concept art is the dullest thing of all.

I say, enough with the dull.

Oh well, better send this already, before it is too huge to be read.

Best regards,

Go and play;

fRE:fRE,the proxy point refractor of New Eastern Though;


"The Holy Office"

Myself unto myself will give
This name, Katharsis-Purgative.
I, who dishevelled ways forsook
To hold the poets' grammar-book,
Bringing to tavern and to brothel
The mind of witty Aristotle,
Lest bards in the attempt should err
Must here be my interpreter:
Wherefore receive now from my lip
Peripatetic scholarship.
To enter heaven, travel hell,
Be piteous or terrible
One positively needs the ease
Of plenary indulgences.
For every true-born mysticist
A Dante is, unprejudiced,
Who safe at ingle-nook, by proxy,
Hazards extremes of heterodoxy,
Like him who finds joy at a table
Pondering the uncomfortable.
Ruling one's life by common sense
How can one fail to be intense?
But I must not accounted be
One of that mumming company ?
With him who hies him to appease
His giddy dames' frivolities
While they console him when he whinges
With gold-embroidered Celtic fringes ?
Or him who sober all the day
Mixes a naggin in his play ?
Or him whose conduct 'seems to own'
His preference for a man of 'tone' ?
Or him who plays the ragged patch
To millionaires in Hazelpatch
But weeping after holy fast
Confesses all his pagan past ?
Or him who will his hat unfix
Neither to malt nor crucifix
But show to all that poor-dressed be
His high Castilian courtesy ?
Or him who loves his Master dear ?
Or him who drinks his pint in fear ?
Or him who once when snug abed
Saw Jesus Christ without his head
And tried so hard to win for us
The long-lost works of Aeschylus.
But all these men of whom I speak
Make me the sewer of their clique.
That they may dream their dreamy dreams
I carry off their filthy streams
For I can do those things for them
Through which I lost my diadem,
Those things for which Grandmother Church
Left me severely in the lurch.
Thus I relieve their timid arses,
Perform my office of Katharsis.
My scarlet leaves them white as wool:
Through me they purge a bellyful.
To sister mummers one and all
I act as vicar-general
And for each maiden, shy and nervous,
I do a similar kind of service.
For I detect without surprise
That shadowy beauty in her eyes,
The 'dare not' of sweet maidenhood
That answers my corruptive 'would',
Whenever publicly we meet
She never seems to think of it;
At night when close in bed she lies
And feels my hand between her thighs
My little love in light attire
Knows the soft flame that is desire.
But Mammon places under ban
The uses of Leviathan
And that high spirit ever wars
On Mammon's countless servitors
Nor can they ever be exempt
>From his taxation of contempt.
So distantly I turn to view
The shamblings of that motley crew,
Those souls that hate the strength that mine has
Steeled in the school of old Aquinas.
Where they have crouched and crawled and prayed
I stand, the self-doomed, unafraid,
Unfellowed, friendless and alone,
Indifferent as the herring-bone,
Firm as the mountain-ridges where
I flash my antlers on the air.
Let them continue as is meet
To adequate the balance-sheet.
Though they may labour to the grave
My spirit shall they never have
Nor make my soul with theirs as one
Till the Mahamanvantara be done:
And though they spurn me from their door
My soul shall spurn them evermore.
---
James Joyce


No states ever nursed artists well,
but struggles are beautiful, dear,...

"na ulice, futuristi" &
"moje oci su tvoje"







zbt

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