BIOGRAPHY

Irina Grabovan (b. 1965) is a curator, founder and director of AoRTa Art Centre Chisinau, involved in communication and social change, investigating the emergence of new cultural forms, with special focus the on art of photography and video. She has published and edited numerous articles and book series on contemporary art and photography. Since 2005, she has been teaching “ The Theory and Practice of Photographic Image” , at the Fine Arts School of the State Pedagogical University, in Chisinau. Since 1983 she has been working as a freelance writer and editor in areas of culture, and contemporary art. 

PROJECTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Against pessimism. The value of art in the era of terror and apathy.
 
1. There is nothing more inspiring and more captivating than building theories of culture and art - this refreshing bath of descriptions of rational logics and irrational feelings. One can't help but soar into universal generalizations and skim the honey off the attractive distinctive traits. Alas, nowadays any concept is replaced by a new one faster than it manages to spread and attract objections.
 
In the 20th century Freud presumed that everything was sex, then semioticians discovered that everything was language, including sex, then later on postmodernists showed that everything was power, including sex and language. In its unrelenting drive for renewal, the 20th century rendered the achievements of classical painting anachronous: perspective, academic draughtsmanship, subject. Representation in art was replaced by a direct presentation of objects, facts, live human experience. The avant-garde, which was inspired by the idea of designing life instead of reflecting it, rose to an implacable battle against society only to merge with design in the '30s and find its echo in pop-art. The cultural-political situation of mid- 20th century encouraged the emergence and development of new concepts in contemporary art, while new materials and technologies begot new art strategies. The interest in abstract matters was replaced by a focused attention to acute social issues. Art went through stages of implacable struggle, captivating games, smart and sometimes cynical improvisations, pain, rationalism, irrationalism. The painting disappeared, then the author, followed by the viewer. Then all of a sudden everything started to change, somebody was emerging from the wings, waving his hand, somebody was falling off the stage, somebody remained on the stage for long periods of time, somebody was putting a bullet through his head, somebody was being jeered with impatience.
 
Yes, it is easy to describe things past, accomplished, when the finale is known; itis nice to stroll aboutthe museum and, with a slight bent, scrutinizing a signature through the lorgnette, to throw a fine observation to the charming companion. It is easy to look back: the hierarchies are there, the labels are on, everything is more or less in its place, circulating monotonously on the market or loitering in the store-room (hello dealers and art historians). The problems, which used to make one grind one's teeth and toss in search of a solution, have drowned in the flood of new ones.
 
And how difficult it is to understand what's happening in front of your eyes right now. Everything is misty, you have lost your way, you look around, you peer, rub your eyes, scratch your head-the landscape is illegible.
 
From afar, one hears Beckett: ‘ To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world and the shrink from desertion, art and craft, good housekeeping, living’ . (Samuel Beckett, Three Dialogues)
 
What? What are you saying?
 
2. In the New Times, and especially in the 20th century, the increasing wellbeing, the development of urban living conditions, the strengthening of bureaucratic power, the discoveries of science and ‘ delusions’ of art significantly changed the entire human experience, which previously used to be guarded by the power of tradition. By the end of the 20th century-early 21st century the changes accelerated: against a background of waning traditional ideologies (world religions, socialism, liberalism) the structure of distribution and power started to change. The previously impenetrable borders were unlocked, or, more exactly, these borders extended to the boundaries of the planet. The development of communications makes possible the integration of the most diverse and remote places of the world. The increasing migration of workers and the development of mass tourism herald the arrival of a new, nomad society. Global politics have marked a transition from the nation-state pyramids to the network relations of multitudes.
 
What is freedom after all? The boundaries of freedom seem to be expanding: one can freely choose one's place of work, outlook on the world, lifestyle, even sex. Although your average citizen will prefer a guaranteed sense of security to freedom. Terrorist attacks make it possible, by triggering a permanent sense of fear, to coerce society into agreeing to stronger individual controls. Today one can control every step a Westerner makes, the phone calls, bank transactions, SMSs and emails, shopping, contacts - technologies tend to turn practically every citizen into a participant in a total reality show. Even the experiences of modern man (even the pleasure of drawing a cigarette smoke) are controlled systemically.
 
Cultures subject themselves to discernment and mutation. Today the global-McDonaldized, TV-culinary-entertaining culture industry proffers a visual flow of stable intensity (please, stop muttering about the obvious shortage of images) and a media din (stop complaining, I beg you, of the shortage of languages). However, this culture massage, meant to sooth in this new era of three cultural whales (gloss, glamour, and hedonism) can hardly hide the logic of late capitalism which fails to solve - as Marx predicted - the contradiction between labor and capital, since the alienation of man from himself has been stretched to the limit. Today man clearly feels his loneliness, his forlornness - his abandonment in the void, which has unnoticeably surrounded him from all sides. He has been flooded by the void.
 
The deeply insightful philosopher Cioran who, similarly to Constantin Brâncusi, ‘ deserted’ from Romania to France, wrote about his homeland: ‘ I come from a nook of Europe where the outpour of emotions, lack of restraint, heart-to-heart discussions, the immediate, uncalled-for, familiar confession are common, where everybody knows everything about everybody else, where community life renders any confession public, where there is no such thing as a secret and loquacity borders on delirium’ . (Emil Cioran, Beckett )
 
Do you see the difference?
 
3. Is Great Art possible in this context of reality - devoid of meaning and total alienation? How does art's role change along with the spread of apathy, a crisis of trust in truth, the shrinking of human ambitions to primitive consumerism, which replaces activity and happiness? What can one oppose to the depreciation of values, the total skepticism that has set in after the postmodern criticism of grand narratives, when art and philosophy no longer seek the truth but try to identify the type of power that determines what we believe to be the truth? The gradual dissipation of common and immutable landmarks gives the impression of frightening freedom, wich only enhances the dumbness and paralysis, and impedes any attempt to acquire freedom from a sort of reflexive need to demonize the future, where art is given a place at the fringes of human attention and activity, in the leisure-entertainment, interior-decoration department. It seems that any attempt to oppose hopelessness turns into management classes and into a fight for the distribution of power over emptiness. Look at the art market, which winks at us so maliciously; it has managed to fill in the void with a heap of decorative-antique objects. Its optimism is justified: there is enough to fill in the void endlessly. This (along with mass conformism) can keep its vivacity up, sometimes even contributing to its prosperity, when the art market astutely lines up with the trends in ‘ purchasing power’ , in unison with capitalism which skillfully detects the subjects’ solvent needs.
 
What modern politician is able to share Napoleon's monumental pathos, when he spoke to his army in Egypt: ‘ Soldiers! Forty centuries look down at you from the summits of these pyramids!’ The struggle for survival, ‘ the conquest of space’ , competitiontoday they are all characterized by unheroic naturalism. Which artist can share the ambition of the Russian landscape painter Vasiliev, who used to dream of painting a landscape that would stop a man ready to commit a crime? Does art have the power (or at least the intention, the hope!) to transcend (if not today, then one day), if not by flying, at least by limbing (as L.S. Vygotsky used to say) the boundaries of the art market, its own boundaries? What can art propose to the exhausted and degenerating man?
 
Is there any answer to this?
 
4. Nietzsche described action as the choice between the dichotomy of ‘ active’ and ‘ reactive’ powers. In the former case the action is independent and not determined by any external cause, while in the latter the contrary is true - any action is a response to an external incentive. The response itself does not matter - be it an unconditional submission to the external force or an implacable opposition to it - as its essence is passive, since the vector of the action has been imposed from outside. Weber identified three general types, three ways of relating to the world, which determine humans' action vectors: Confucian-Taoist (adjusting to the world), Indo-Buddhist (fleeing the world), and Judeo-Christian (as a way to conquer the world).
 
When the crisis of values and systems, emphasizes all the existing contradictions, itthreatens the established borders, and hence it can become productive. However, when the crisis turns us, the subjects of the crisis, against ourselves, it stuns us and frustrates any attempt to action, and can thus become oppressive. ‘ Today, the instability and arbitrariness of the values and forms of social organization, which … the optimism of previous times considered guaranteed by some immanent historical need, are seen as clearly as ever. But it is the survival of this constitutive arbitrariness that paradoxically leads to a deeper understanding of freedom and human dignity, i.e. to the recognition of the fact that we are the sole creators of our world and thus have a radical and unavoidable responsibility towards it’ . (Ernesto Laclau, New reflection on the revolution of our time ). Action is a matter of choosing its vector. Zizek says thatin a true action the man does not only express/realize his inner essence, rather, he redefines himself, he redefines the very essence of his identity. The Construction of Identity requires a visibility of the identifying actions. This is why art still exists today.
 
Art is not defined by the consumption of all the materials, including the input called ‘ man’ (Heidegger's expression). Creation, similarly to knowledge, is not a reflection of reality. It is ‘ always an addition of the non-existing things to the world reality’ (N.Berdyaev. The Meaning of Creation ). There is no such thing as free territories. They have to be created and populated (just like Internet space). There are enough of them for everyone, as there is enough future for everyone. This is why art will exist tomorrow. This is the skill of making nets, which are then cast into chaos. (Saussure used to say that the world can’ t be described objectively; the world is a linguistic construct, defined by language. Language is the net cast over the chaos.) So big fish doesn't bite? The shadow of another thinker, Bertrand Russell, keeps smiling and whispers: ‘ Our confidence in language stems from the fact that language has the same structure as that of the physical world, and hence can express this structure. But if we take a world which is not physical, or which is outside of space-time, it will have a structure that we will never be able to express or know’ .
 
NEVER?!
 
What can the artist oppose to this hopelessness? One can't help but seek an answer. Only if Art becomes able to acknowledge its ontological instead of psychological nature, and aspire to a new being instead of new cultural values, might we see tomorrow arrive, which will be different from ‘ today’ . The history of art will then stop looking like entries in the log-book of an anchored patrol ship. The ship will then weigh anchor and sail away, into the open sea. It is there that new values, new worlds, and perhaps more inspiring prospects will open up.
 
(Must be continued)
 
Chisinau, 2006, translated from Russian by Iulian ROBU