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Europe in the Vicinity of Art: Thoughts
after Following the News
Mária Hlavajová
The idea of a European biennial of contemporary art began
with the (doubtless inevitable) question of what it actually
is – Europe, I mean. An obvious enough place to start. Nevertheless,
the answer is tenuous – no less so than this introduction
and the significance of these brief remarks. Even delving
over the last couple of weeks into a Slovak newspaper1 tirelessly
analysing the prospects of an applicant country on the very
doorstep of the European Union (a reading which prompted these
reflections), the picture I have of Europe has not become
the slightest bit clearer. I don't get any sense that the
European project has a clearly articulated concept. It lacks
a vision and it lacks a visionary. Only, it doesn't do to
come clean about it – because the ambition, so it seems, is
not to analyse or understand, but at all costs to belong.
The celebrations to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Schuman
Plan for the economic alliance between France and Germany,
which blueprinted a union of Europe's states, wearily acknowledged
– in the subtext of the magniloquent speeches – that the common
currency, the Euro, way before it had actually come into being
in any real sense, had taken a hefty battering from the economic
assertion of the union of American states. With similar symptoms
of mid-life crisis political Europe keeps pushing back the
date for its expansion. It feels that it needs the energy
of those for whom economic prosperity and political stability
have yet to be self-evident. But for the moment it is still
fearful, and so is on the defensive.
The assumption of new members is motivated by more than just
economics. The initial post-war collaboration of two countries
fifty years ago was intended, among other things, to make
future wars impossible. You would expect, then, that security
and political considerations would carry a lot of weight –
particularly at a time when the continent is more committed
to the momentum of integration than it was at the beginning
of the 1990s, when the preferred concept was that different
statuses of European citizen would co-exist.
The institutional background of the EuroAtlantic security
system (NATO) also lacks the inner dynamic it originally had.
With the integration of its Eastern neighbours, Germany has
lost its immediate incentive; and the reorganisation of the
Union's defence concept 'post Kosovo' will require both time
and a substantial rethink. And so it would seem that it is
only the newest members who are calling for expansion, albeit
with the sour wince of those whose own acceptance was hastened
by the pragmatic need to secure air-space en route to Belgrade.
The mental 're-territorialisation' of associations and bonds
within the continent is attended by anxiety and uncertainty
arising from the new, by doubts and by the politics of protecting
one's own – all in contrast with declarations of openness
and eagerness to link the two parts in a single Europe.
I also read that Austria is against the free movement of the
labour force, notably from countries aspiring to EU membership,
and particularly from Slovakia (where salaries are 11% of
the Austrian average); thus is articulated a counter-attack
whose aim is to cover up the paralysis engendered by its own
fraught internal political situation. I read, too, that Poland
has followed the example of France and Slovakia and has passed
an equally repressive law to safeguard the purity of its language.
More and more countries are imposing visa requirements on
Slovakia's citizens...
And we at home are trying. We are trying with all our might
– oscillating between the ultra-national and the pro-European.
At intervals, and with a rhythm easily picked out, we barricade
ourselves in from Europe and the next minute repair the damage
done, only for the electorate once again to cast its vote
in favour of political and economic isolation. In both of
these extremes, however, the 'West' is a zone of importance
in terms of which we articulate ourselves. One minute the
mantra is: 'If you want an invitation you've got to convince
the present members that you're one of them, that you acknowledge
the same values as they do'2 – though not quite knowing exactly
what those values are. The next minute, humiliated by the
status of second-class citizen imposed from outside, in a
torrent of nationalist bile we bellow to the world how we're
going to make it on our own. It's not the West who is colonising
us, we're colonising ourselves.3
The practice of art, spurred by the need to stay in sync with
the context, has naturally played a part in European realities.
It translates the problems that beset Europe into the language
of the everyday. And the tactics employed in building defence
mechanisms on the various levels of our immediate temporality
(geopolitical, institutional, individual, on the level of
disciplines, etc.) are a part of a direct reality which cannot
fail to be noticed. A state of extreme apprehension of the
unknown, an oscillation between diametrically different realities
(bundles of received values), or an inability to take (or
should I say the 'impossibility' of taking?) a stance on matters
of public concern (as happened to us all during the conflict
in the Balkans), and the whole thing concealed under a brilliantly
accomplished surface of insouciance.
It seems to me that the organisation of the logic of art at
the turn of the decade is undergoing similar processes. Projects
uncritically celebrating the interchangability of works from
whatever corner of the globalised world have run out of steam.
The excitement, too, has also evaporated on both 'sides' of
Europe – after the heuristic attempts of curators to show
something new (and yet the same) from Eastern Europe had for
the most part foundered on the reality of the one-off event,
but also on disillusionment in the wake of anticipation or
on consternation at the difficulty of the processes and practices
operating in a 'different' mode. In the 'new Europe'4 the
longing for integration into international art systems wilted
with the length of the waiting (with, naturally, a few active
exceptions), but also with a sobering-up from illusions. After
the brief experience of international collaboration it was
time for a questioning of the Western system, the art establishments
and the organisation of power. The idea of Europe without
political alternatives seems utopian which for the moment
is hard to credit – and if at all, then as a new totalitarian
ideology not dissimilar to that which the Eastern part of
the continent keeps trying to ditch.
In its nature, however, Manifesta 3 is not trying (only) to
show a collection of interesting individual positions. It
opts rather for a thematic survey of Europe in an attempt
to apprehend the mindset that leads to dubious events, war
not excluded. The sense of the project lies in its speaking
about art's participation in reality in its social and political
dimensions. However, the aim is not, despite its name, to
issue a manifesto on the state of things, but to make a discussion
of such things possible. Not to react ad hoc with vacuous
statements to the dramatic circumstances of the political
organisation of life in one's immediate vicinity, but, with
a continual opening of space for the exchange of ideas and
the comparing of experiences, for the grammar of the order
of things and for the analysis of trajectories of power, to
shape the reality of the everyday.
The cluster of art positions presented in this project, notwithstanding
the pressure of narrating the European present, does not borrow
elements of reality, nor does it record or commentate on reality.
On the contrary, it enters in all earnestness into the logic
of the social and the political, so that from within it becomes
a part of their organisation and operational system. The reality
of the quotidian, as it exists in all its connotations, without
modifications and camouflaging, becomes its valuable material.
The artists here presented break the mental topography of
Europe down into small snippets and by entering into the collective
space make it significant for an individualised awareness
on the part of each one of us of the contemporary reality.
In the uncertainty of a world suffering from 'borderline
syndrome' and with many asking 'where do you draw a line?',
only one answer of conceptual significance introduces into
the exhibition a feeling of security. Edward Krasiński knows
that the blue line is always at a height of 130 cm... Translated
from Slovak by Martin Ward
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