What do we need art for?
Art creates discourse. This is what comes first into my mind. Art can be about so much and at the same time it can be about nothing. There is no specific definition, neither black nor white. There are so many models – I would say: Everything grey area. And exactly that grey area makes art as discipline so beautiful and interesting, because you can always call it something subjective, where you can see and turn everything as you want and all of those compositions make sense in a way.
In science every act is determined. After all, that’s its mission… To define processes and to prove them scientifically. Art works with another logic. Art reflects about society and about all the regulations and norms that form society. It acts more easily. It does not necessarily have to show proof to its statements and that creates antagonism… and antagonism creates discourse. And discourse, or the confrontation is the best way to get to a healthy democratic consensus, as Chantal Mouffe once said. We artists do twist our head (like dogs do sometimes when they don’t understand what’s going on) to see and reflect the world from another angle. Other disciplines are not that flexible, because of laws, regulations, standards, rules, orders, norms and so on.
About my experience/contribution within the frame of Historia-Hysteria project
I was invited to participate in an art residency-programme in Cluj – where I have to admit, that at first I did not really get what it was about. Then it became clear to me that it was about coming to Cluj for a two-week period and working on a chosen topic in the Transylvanian History Museum’s collection.
OK, I thought. It sounded interesting to me and I agreed. First I struggled with the given date, as I was supposed to be in the middle of production for two other exhibitions. But when I started to figure out my schedule, the Corona lockdown came in and I remained in limbo with everything… of course, like everybody else. My two other projects were postponed and the same happened with the residency in Cluj. After some time, the two initiators, Răzvan and Mihai came up with the idea to make the residency virtual… at home. That means the residents were asked to get in contact with professionals that are responsible for the collections in the museum.
To be honest – I’m the anti-communication-via-computer-person. I hate nothing more than sitting for hours in front of the computer writing emails. It takes me ages to answer emails. I’m terrible with that. But I said that I will give it a try, since it still sounded interesting to me. We were given about 10 topics to choose from and to get in contact with the responsible custodian dealing with the respective part of the collection while working out something artistically.
I chose the topic of the Roman borders in Romania, as the other two projects I talked about earlier are about borders as well. My plan was to make a connection between them. I’ve seen there was a whole documentation about the Danube as a border in Roman times. That was perfect, as I have one (or even two) works “on the shelf” that have a lot to do with the Danube as the border between Romania and Serbia.
The first one is an unfinished interview of a friend of mine, who managed to escape to Serbia in 1987 and the second one was about the nameless cemeteries on the Serbian shore of the Danube. The Romanians who tried to escape the communist regime are buried there and they were shot and killed by the communist Border Police. As they did not carry any identification with them (or had their papers taken away), the Yugoslavs on the other side took them out of the water and buried them in a separate area, next to their own cemeteries, but as unknown individuals.
My plan was to make a bicycle trip with a friend of mine, who is a professional cameraman. We were supposed to start by the end of July and cycle downstream, next to the Danube and collect video and photographic material from the borders, especially on the Serbian side up to Turnu Severin.
Documenting the external border of the EU is quite a delicate process, especially in Hungary. I had an attempt already in January this year: I went next to Szeged with the same friend by car and we wanted to take some video footage. We stirred up the whole Hungarian border police and Frontex nest in that area. We were treated like criminals and we had to delete almost all of our material and so I realized I needed another strategy. So, the plan was to go by bicycle to Hungary, Serbia and Romania, since by bike one attracts less attention than by automobile. But it happened as it had to happen: the borders connecting Hungary, Serbia and Romania were closed due to rising numbers of Corona cases by the end of July, right when we wanted to start. So we cancelled our trip along the Danube, because it would have been too complicated with tests and/or quarantine.
As a last attempt I tried to find out if any of the archaeologists of the museum was involved in an excavation on the Serbian side of the Danube at one of those nameless cemeteries. I was unsuccessful. It seems that there is no interest from the side of the Romanian officials (state) to find out more about the identity of the hundreds of Romanians, who were killed while trying to escape by swimming across the Danube to Yugoslavia in the communist times.
So, here I am. Half a year among Hysteria/Historia home-art-residency and other hysterical project plannings that are somewhere in the air. But what am I talking about? Almost everybody has the same problems now. Some handle them better, some worse. We have to learn to adapt to the restrictive situation with the virus, which – I guess – will follow us for quite a while. In the same time we have to learn to find the right channels to information about the situation and be very careful about the people who try to trivialize and those who try to benefit from stoking fear and spreading panic.
Where I am (situated) right now (it could be artistically, geographically or both)
Geographically: I’m in a very lucky situation to have an old farmhouse in Burgenland. This is an Austrian region next to the Hungarian border, around 100 km south of Vienna. I spent a lot of time here – especially since the whole situation with the Covid-19 pandemic started. I have my studio here and I am renovating the old house and spending time gardening a lot. This is the best I can do for my sanity. I am also renting a small apartment in Vienna, where I go from time to time for my social contacts.
And artistically: I explained a bit in the previous question, but I did not talk so much about my other projects. As I mentioned, they are about borders. Especially the US Mexico border. In 2019 I spent 6 months in Los Angeles, which was my base, going back and forth to the border area.
There is huge emphasis put on the US-Mexico border, especially since Donald Trump’s border policy was implemented. In the 80s, when the human and drug traffic into the US reached a peak, the government decided to build a physical wall between the two countries. It became one of the largest public work programs in the last decades and is still ongoing. The border crosses the American continent from east to west. It goes through rivers, deserts, cities and across mountains. There are many types of border-wall/fence (or even no wall), that were designed. F. ex. primary, secondary fences, vehicle barriers, pedestrian fence. The designs vary from one location to another.
