Monday Night 09.20.04 — Presentation / Discussion with Kristina Leko & Vít Havránek
Comments Off on Monday Night 09.20.04 — Presentation / Discussion with Kristina Leko & Vít HavránekMonday Night 09.20.04 — Presentation / Discussion with Kristina Leko & Vít Havránek
Contents:
1. About this Monday
2. About Kristina Leko
3. About Vít Havránek
4. Short Article About Vit
5. Text by Vit
6. Related Text
http://www.16beavergroup.org
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1. About this Monday
What: Presentation / Talk at 16Beaver
When: Monday September 20, 2004 7pm
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
Who: Kristina Leko & Vít Havránek
For those of you who thought we would never end our Mass Moca series, you are in for a surprise. Although the series is not over, and neither are our discussions concerning the political in art (they seem to always find their way into our events), we wanted to begin the Fall with a clean slate. Having said that, this presentation/discussion links back to The Interventionists Series, our Curatorial Series, as well as our ongoing interest in cultural work being produced in post communist countries. Vit is a Prague based curator and writer, Kristina originates from Zagreb. The two will discuss some recent projects and following the presentations, we will open up time for a discussion about some of the issues they will be raising.
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2. About Kristina Leko
Kristina Leko, born 1966 in Zagreb, Croatia; visual and video artist, sometimes writer; concerened with a variety of issues ranging from political to intimate ones; actions in public space, as well as intimate biography-based works; strong documentary approach; communication and documentary projects in collaboration with different social groups; Sarajevo International, a video-communication project in collaboration with twelve Sarajevo immigrants, 2001; On Milk and People, an exhibition in collaboration with Croatian and Hungarian farmer families, 2002/03; Cheese and Cream, a serial of actions and artifacts dedicated to protection of the milkmaids of Zagreb, since 2002; “Mes objets trouves” – a collection of everyday objects with historical references, since 1992; Visualy Based Perception Training, a serial of public installations and workshops, 1994/97, Verfassungskorrekturbuerro – an action in progress correcting and improving the USA Constitution, 2004…
Kristina will be talking about her project on Zagreb milkmaids. It is an initiative to protect the milkmaids in Zagreb. There is The Declaration on Milkmaids, that one can read and sign on line…
www.sirivrhnje.org
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3. About Vít Havránek
Vít Havránek is a Prague based curator, writer, local leader of transit, initiative for contemporary art [CR, SK, A]. Since 1998 he has been working as a curator for the Municipal Gallery, Prague, CZ. In 2000 he founded the group PAS – Production of Activities of the Contemporary. He lectures in contemporary art at the Academy of Applied Arts, Prague. He has curated and organized numerous exhibitions, amongst which are: “Action, Word, Movement, Space” (Prague, 1999), “Glued Intimacy” (Prague 2000), Otto Piene “The Zero Experience” (Prague 2002), to mention but a few. He has had numerous publications on contemporary art in catalogues, has edited books (most notably “Action, Word, Movement, Space”, 1999) and has written for contemporary art magazines (Um_lec, Detail, Textes Sur L’art, Art Press), and for the daily press. He has also translated books including, Julius Koller U.F.O., Nicolas Bourriaud, Postproduction, Hakim Bey TAZ.
Some links:
www.display.cz
www.mip.at
Vit would talk about something like:
1. creating a discourse – our main goal in czech republic is to create a local discourse together with the artists – problem of a small scene situated in the global nets of history and knowledge, concretely thrue the intergenerational collaboration, defining paralel histories etc.
3. few examples of historical works [history of east conceptualism and action art]
2. different artists projects we have produced and organized
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4. Short Article About Vit
http://www.kontakt.erstebankgroup.net/magazines/issue1/stories/portrait_havranek/?language=en
Tilling with care A portrait of the curator Vít Havránek
http://www.kontakt.erstebankgroup.net/magazines/issue1/stories/portrait_havranek/?language=en
Antje Mayer The contemporary art platform tranzit has been dedicated to forging art and culture networks between East and West since 2002. But who are the persons at the bottom of tranzit? Here we present a portrait of the curator Vít Havránek.
The ”Velvet Revolution” in Eastern Europe in 1989 has been the most important event in Vít Havránek’s life (born in 1971). From this point onwards, everything changed. “The Czech art scene was completely isolated until the Iron Curtain fell. The artists had to produce their works of art underground, cut off from political and social life. I would go so far as to contend that our artists were in a state of constant psychological stress, a state of existential schizophrenia. Then the radical change occurred. All at once, you could move around and speak your mind freely. As a person who lived in both systems, up to age 18 in the old one and thereafter in the new one – this will always be a touching memory.”
Havránek has been head of tranzit.cz since 2002, a platform created by curators Mária Hlavajová and Kathrin Rhomberg in joint collaboration with Erste Bank’s Boris Marte in September of that very year. After studying art history at the Charles University in Prague, he had worked in the mid-1990s for the Soros Center for Contemporary Art, followed by a stint at the National Gallery. Finally, he ended up as curator at the renowned City Gallery of Prague’s painting department. Today Havránek stages a wide variety of exhibitions as a freelance curator – most recently a solo exhibition featuring Julius Koller together with Heike Ander at Kunstraum München, 2004.
Art is slowly shifting its ground
According to Havranek: “I consider myself part of the new generation of young art educators in the Czech Republic who approach contemporary art from a theoretical perspective and who are much more interdisciplinary orientated than their teachers. My foremost interest is in questions of aesthetics, conceptual art, and in a highly reflective approach to works of art. How is art received? How is the media environment incorporated into art, or what production processes accompany a work of art? These are just a few examples of the sorts of questions I am occupied with as a curator.”
For Vít Havránek’s professors at the Charles University, questions of methods, topical art theory, and contemporary art were not at issue. Instead, students received a good and solid education in art history, inspired and based upon the Viennese school of that very discipline about the 1900’s. Although, so Havránek, this approach to instruction has not changed all that much since 1989: “A lot of my teachers were not Communists and have therefore been teaching to this day.”
Many aspects of art production also change more slowly than a Westerner might expect: “As a legacy of Socialism, artists are still accustomed to producing works of art independently, totally separate from society, with a very personal focus. It is one of tranzit’s aims to carefully reintroduce contemporary art into a social context, to integrate it into society. But you have to step lightly. If you push the artists too far and just impose a topic, then they start to illustrate in a political manner, like in the good old days,” laughs Havránek. “These features are firmly rooted in the ground. We still have to do some more careful tilling.”
Incidentally, the curator also began digging up some of his own roots four years ago, when he founded the group PAS in joint cooperation with the artists Thomas Vanek and Ji_í Skála. “We view ourselves as a loosely organized production group – fun being a key factor. One of our works that has been widely appraised was “Display Cases”. It is based upon a certain type of display cases frequently employed under Socialism for purposes of political propaganda. We set them up in public spaces again, but asked artists to design them according to their predilections.”
Incidentally, switching back and forth between the roles of curator and artist or hovering somewhere in between, is something Vít Havránek has in common with Boris Ond_eicka, his partner from tranzit.sk in Slovakia, who is actively involved in the art scene as an artist, musician, and curator as well. “Boris and I communicate a lot. It made me realize the great differences between art productions in the Czech Republic and Slovakia at this point. It’s quite exciting!“ Havránek is pleased to add: “From what I’ve seen so far, Czech artists produce their work in a very conceptual, sophisticated manner – very much focusing on their own history. In Slovakia, in contrast, they are more straightforward in the way they go about things: much more radical, more direct, straight from the gut. This may have to do with the fact that agriculture has exerted a great influence on this country. I have to admit, as of late I have been quite flirtatious with the Slovak style of sensuality.“
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5. Text by Vit
Revolution in an Asynchronous Space
Vít Havránek, Jano Man_u_ka
name
Each work of art is a small revolution. Our names are Vit Havranek and Jan Mancuska. For some these names may sound exotic, even Slavic perhaps? The English versions of these names are Guy Little Raven and John of Man Chu.
A quote
Coming up with a quote that could appear at the beginning of this article proved problematic and we’d like to analyse the doubts that surrounded this. Art criticism has sufficient sources of recommended literature from which we could have drawn a quote. There is certainly nothing wrong with quoting less known people from the East such as _i_ek, Buchloh, Debord, Borges or any of the French post-structuralists or neo-colonialist critics. From the Czech lands, only Kundera, Havel, Kafka or perhaps something from the Good Soldier _vejk would be recognizable by non-Czechs. The referential frame of quotes predetermines the space and context, which we ourselves are situated in.
If we were to quote from Vítek Kremli_ka, Michael Hvoreck_, Egon Bondy, or even from Václav B_lohradsk_, a Czech sociology professor teaching in Turín, we would immediately (name, quote) set limitations upon the reader. Limitations due to our strangely sounding names and to the name of the quoted author that does not belong to any recommended literature. For us, this means that, without risking a misunderstanding, we cannot rely on our own context, since people have no awareness of the texts and contexts from our history (which are important for us). They do not belong to the recommended cannon and the model of a linear history. The same situation that applies for criticism also obviously applies for art – if we speak of certain artists, these artists are not part of the international cannon.
At present
It’s funny to see the interest in our region increase over the past half year. We’re happy to see it, but it’s surprising since the effort we put into our past activities is the same as today – only the effects are greater and so we feel as if we are the objects of a process coming from without. The funny thing about it is the overly apparent politico-economic motivation of this process related to the admission of new countries to the EU. What bewilders us is that this must be accompanied by non-interest in other (whether they be durable or fleeting) countries, regions, etc. Even though the whole system of Western culture has many layers, it can still come as a surprise how the power of a normal political-economic event permeates to the value judges of artistic quality, as well as to the specific decisions of individuals.
The objective of these paragraphs is to examine several terms whose construction we have endeavoured to define for a more universal grasp of our cultural matrix.
Ephemerality
Art is ephemeral. By that we think that art is pre-modern. With the passage of time, when the validity of the circumstances from which the work of art arose expires, there occurs a drop in the importance of the content components and an increase in the importance of the aesthetic component. That which was art becomes a historical problem and the visual signs and reconstruction of the period effect is a matter for specialists.
The notion that art is interpreted as an enduring phenomenon is the result of ideological manipulation. An emptied form of art is easier to manipulate. The emptied work becomes a vessel or space to which contemporary ideology inserts its linear and centralist constructions.
Ephemeral works have their duration in time and their entire existence balances on the edge of time. From a historical viewpoint, past ephemeral work – Fluxus, conceptual, process, action and others – had its meaning in a limited moment in time. The dateless components in them were in fact those emphasizing the ephemerality of art. Their legacy continues to inspire us in that. Those which we presently see in museums are material relicts which denied their own ephemeral essence.
If, therefore, contemporary art evokes ephermality, it espouses the tradition of a limited time existence of a work with an awareness of the limited duration of a work. The future of an ephemeral work is finite. The future is infinite. The ephemeral future is an open period in which an ephemeral work will no longer exist and the statutes of a work or art as well as the materialization of the process will have to be repeatedly refined. Continuous work is a basic principle in ephermality.
When a work dies away, the curators and artists begin to try to resuscitate it and its place is taken by its immediate context. Curators and the whole museum gallery system understand this problem – some more intuitively, others more articulately. That is why we are witnesses of necessary historical-social references within the framework of large (Documenta) and small exhibitions. The definition of cultural contexts comes from arbitrariness and subjectivity, though these are not values highly acknowledged by academic history. This is why we are witnessing the transferral of this role to the artist – lately they’ve often been called upon to fill the role of curators (society gives them the right to subjectivity. Artists operate with smaller prejudices than curators in reference systems (although there are, of course, exceptions) and are therefore invited to break down the linearly segregated model of academic history and critical art.
Artists, on the other hand, try to develop ways to expand their own possibilities in influencing art operation, through which they often feel manipulated and made marketable. One of these possibilities is to become curators themselves.
Here we feel that the discussion should be conducted more openly, for the people holding the power (actual and abstract) should be above all included in the discussion, and it should not occur that these people give up their own responsibilities in favour of artists who can more or less do curatorial work. This work, however, can always be doubted because they don’t belong to the “guild” and have the right subjectivity.
Immediate context
The immediate context puts the artist and artwork into a network of ideas, thoughts from which it rises, on which it reacts, which it negates and develops.
The immediate context is evolutive and fluid, and important components of it are its arbitrary history and construed history.
The immediate context is an environment in which the work of art was created and on the basis of which the art of work can naturally be understood. If the immediate context ceases to exist, the work of character of the work of art changes, and sometimes even ceases to exist as well.
Construed histories
All history is construed. The artistic system evolutively construes history. Numerous parties and interests have a say in its construction, which is a conflictive space of money and power. Academic history formulated by scholars, characterised by the monitoring of the priorities of the humanities and social-science trends – gender studies, neo-colonialism, sociological concepts, anthropology, etc. The art operation financed by various sources monitors the application of academic trends in communicating with the public, in which it applies as one of the leading principles the influence of politics, or the politics of the delegated structures financing the means of releasing art to the public. This system is connected in various degrees in various countries to art business, in which the primary role is played by the coefficients of the exchange of art for money.
The academic concept of history in the past is based on a linear understanding of history as formulated in the centres of power. This arose from the assumption that the event taking place in various locations and cultures could be assessed and classified on the basis of its own value system established in these centres – the event could even be chosen so that it would fit into the system. This concept of history has been subjected to criticism from numerous sides and is theoretically considered to be dead. Yet in the world of art operation it is still very much alive.
In this situation art from our space enters a global art system with its own construction, and demands its own place. It is naked and this gives it the possibility to see that what it cannot be depend on.
We are requesting the revision and re-definition of construed history as a whole. Both geographical and conceptual. We seek for our history a pluralistic asynchronous context, in which these two values will be the natural and generally applied norms.
Which history do we want to integrate to? To the linearly segregational and centralistic? No. That wouldn’t make sense. We want to integrate to a history standing on new structural bases – asynchronicity, parallelity, ephermality, immediate context, arbitrary history.
asynchronicity
Synchronicity consists of the scrutiny of two events at different places that took place at the same moment. If we speak of history, or even the present in at least two different places, we subliminally perceive them as synchronous. Synchronicity produced the metaphor of the historian/critique as a kind of physics scientist capable of repeating the same experiment in various places with the same result. Now history and the present must relinquish this formerly used model of a single unique time.
Synchronicity is a model assuming that time goes by at the same rate in all places. This assumption, of course, crumbled in the face of the laws of physics, which state that time is directly dependent on the speed at which the observer moves. The time dimension should be replaced by the term speed, which, as Virilio demonstrated, really structures our reality.
If we determine ourselves to be the initial experience of the immediate context, we must identify ourselves with the existential definition of time as well as variables dependent to the circumstances in which the individual, community, group or nation is found. Time passes differently for he who suffers than for he having a good time. This is where ontology makes its way to the foreground – the ontological positions which seems to us to be an incredibly present-day problem. This no longer concerns a traditional ontology, but a fluid ontology, a constant critique in relation to the world and changing with one’s own experience.
He who examines events in different places is more like a director than a physicist – a director who, with the help of specialists, synchronises the film’s video and sound track (post-synchron). The post-production model of the work of art (Nicolas Bourriaud) must refer to both history and criticism. A film whose video track appears to have been made together with the sound track is a construction. We are the directors of our experiences with time, which in different contexts runs at various speeds and we seek the way to create a new whole, which articulates this experience with asynchrons and post-synchrons individually.
There does not exist a single fixed model of history by which we could classify and evaluate things.
There exist many histories that exist side by side in various relations. They maintain asynchronous relations with one another (i.e. various stages of development have various time frames and various reasons and circumstances of events. If we intend to evaluate events in different cultures, we must always investigate with a different value system (i.e. employ continuous criticism). The task of artists is to present this value system, the task of the various institutions is to search for it.
A work of art without this understanding is incomprehensible in its entirety. At this point the question is posed: What remains of art when history cannot participate in it?
Therefore construed history should have as a base this asynchronous organization and constant criticism as a method of examination. The individual thus relates through an arbitrary history (established in a space of immediate context) to an asynchronous model of history.
arbitrary history
This is a freedom with which the artists can move through history and draw from codes, theories and historical aesthetics that are available. The freedom is limited by the accessibility of histories available and construed history serves as its main source. Artists and theoreticians can access history thanks mainly to construed history. At present we are witnesses to a new experience, in which artists firstly disrupt construed history and search for its subjective anchoring: from C. Boltanski to A. Sala to an anecdote by M. Gionni about three videos at the Manifesta, in which an interview is conducted with his own grandmother.
We must, however, take into account that disrupting construed history is a privilege of open democratic societies. Our recollections of the 1970s and 1980s of socialism is that these activities could not be undertaken (due to information barriers), since there were not accessible experiences and, above all, platforms on which these activities could be carried out. Many countries were much worse off, but nevertheless, or perhaps even because of this, art survives there. But even in other places where there is a tradition of disturbing construed history, this tradition is localised to the area of creative art, to a sphere of subjectivity without a congruous tie to academic history or art operation as a whole.
What remains of art when history cannot participate in it?
(continued)n
This text arose from discussions and e-mail correspondence by the following: Boris Ondrei_ka, David Kulhánek, Jesper Alvaer, Zbyn_k Baladrán.
Pictures
Julius Koller, Post-conceptual cultural situation, 1992, performance in the installation of J. Kosuth at Documenta 9 in Kassel
Ji_í Kovanda, I Stared at the Sun Until I Cried, 1977
Roman Ondák, Anti-Nomads,
Stano Filko, Textart,
Martin Polák, Luká_ Jasansk_, Czech Landscape, 2003
Tomá_ Van_k, Particip no. 28, 2002
Ji_í Skála, Schema, 2002
Avd_j Ter-Oganjan, Pub Modernism, 2004, first part of event
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6. Related Text
Artists don’t have control over art’s operation (exhibition spaces, museums, institutions, art market). We have arrived at the opinion that the artist should have the possibility to dictate his own view on the functioning of art’s operation. How should we proceed in this necessity?
We feel that an art work’s immediate context should be presented in order to understand it. How can this context be passed on? Is it more the artist’s task or the institution‘s?
We come from a Central European country with a communist past where unofficial art maintained an asynchronous position toward European and American history in how it was constructed in these regions during the second half of the 20th century. (A kind of asynchronicity is also known in the Western culture – e. g. the relation between European and American art after 1945, the reception of Marcel Duchamp’s work, etc.). How do we place this asynchronicity into a model of history?
Is it really necessary?
How in your view could a model of history conserving this asynchronicity be laid out?
From today’s view the art seems decentralized. However, in the second half of the 20th century individual local art scenes were not integrated in a network. There was no way to form immediate personal contact between artists from local scenes (e. g. of Eastern Europe). There was hardly any contact between the art of Western and Eastern block, Asia, Africa, South America. For the most part there was no chance to meet, exhibit together and take part in current events. But art itself wasn’t separated from the knowledge of history. This historical reality has worked as a determinant for contemporary art, since today’s artists are sharing the immediate context with the preceding generation.
To what extent is society aware of this?
How should these facts project themselves to the redefinition of art history and art’s operation (art history, exhibition and museum operation, the art market)?
What remains of art when history cannot participate in it?
At a time when our value system arises from the openness and instability, permanent critique is for us a method of how to perceive/explore the world. This means we can return to the same problem and see it differently at different moments.
Constructed history (an unstable system) and the immediate context (an unstable system) form the basis for permanent critique.
Nevertheless, the need arises to resolutely explain our attitudes? Do you feel this necessity as well?
What forms your own integrity?
Is it still possible to question ontology in today’s world?