Close Up
How can an artist protest in today’s world? His place in the society, his sensitiveness and primarily visual means of communication all contribute to his readiness for reaction to and a critical review of political atmosphere and other problems related to culture and art in a specific situation. The exhibition „Close up“ in the etc. gallery offers several ways of expressing a protest in the context of contemporary art. What they all have in common is similar historical experience. In the 1990s, these regions went through a transformation following decades of a totalitarian regime. That period determined the way they formed the cultural and social conventions and the consequences can be seen on every level of the society, including contemporary art scene. The locally dependent topics of each of the contributions can be perceived in a broader sense so that they reflect universal approach of an artist towards politics, culture, cultural policy, society, history, the system and so on. We contacted curators from Romania (Florin Bobu & 1+1), Slovakia (Jana Kapelová), Hungary (Eszter Kozma and Márton Pascika) and Serbia (Milos Miletic, Mirjana Radovanovic) and Czech Republic (Vjera Borozan and Jirka Havlíček) who picked these particular projects. Every project employs different visual language: the exhibition includes newspaper as a classic medium, collages, a web page running on a tablet, photographic documentation of protest events, an interview recorded in the form of a printed leaflet, authentic artefact symbolizing a past protest event. The exhibition is based on a recently published collection of contributions Close-Up Post-Transition Writing and it is also a final output of the “Close-Up” project initiated by Artyčok TV. In the project’s realization participated the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Udružnje KURS, REMONT, Tranzit.ro, Lumen and ARTTODAY. Simultaneously we will launch a screening of critical videos created within the Close-Up project in the space of A4 in Bratislava.
- My name is Lubomír Ďurček00:03:53.654
- 00:03:53.654
- and I used to give this small card at the end of interviews00:03:57.531
- 00:03:57.531
- I gave between00:04:02.048
- 00:04:02.048
- 00:04:02.048
- I'd better read it.00:04:06.809
- 00:04:06.809
- Between 1989 and 1990 I took part in interviews with people00:04:08.291
- 00:04:08.291
- and all the interviews ended at a certain point.00:04:15.573
- 00:04:15.573
- White.00:04:20.041
- 00:04:20.041
- After that point I didn't continue in the interview00:04:22.632
- 00:04:22.632
- and I ended it by giving this small card called Identification00:04:25.677
- 00:04:25.677
- with my name and the year written at the back.00:04:32.545
- 00:04:32.545
- It was a situation in which I found myself every day.00:04:38.092
- 00:04:38.092
- The only way how to carry on the interview in a different way00:04:43.872
- 00:04:43.872
- was this paradoxical card which says00:04:51.478
- 00:04:51.478
- White although it is written in black.00:04:56.036
- 00:04:56.036
- My name is Blažej Baláž and the work presented here is00:05:06.264
- 00:05:06.264
- a segment of my long-time activist work after 1989.00:05:10.098
- 00:05:10.098
- It's a part of my letters I call Wart, originally called Artwart.00:05:19.708
- 00:05:19.708
- The letters are of different nature,00:05:27.753
- 00:05:27.753
- at the beginning of 1990 they were mainly ecological,00:05:29.723
- 00:05:29.723
- later they were political and the biggest part00:05:33.569
- 00:05:33.569
- concerns with an institutional criticism.00:05:38.630
- 00:05:38.630
- It deals with a delusive state and poor operation00:05:44.705
- 00:05:44.705
- of Slovak institutions which should engage00:05:50.722
- 00:05:50.722
- in surveying contemporary art.00:05:54.692
- 00:05:54.692
- It's an activity which various post-feminist00:05:58.275
- 00:05:58.275
- theories call the phenomenon of solicitude.00:06:05.474
- 00:06:05.474
- For example I also concern myself with the place where I live.00:06:12.292
- 00:06:12.292
- I cultivate it and invest my own money into a public space.00:06:16.854
- 00:06:16.854
- Differently from the society where the public resources are being stolen,00:06:23.628
- 00:06:23.628
- I invest my private resources into a public space.00:06:29.504
- 00:06:29.504
- Such inverse activity is just another reverse side00:06:33.823
- 00:06:33.823
- of my activity and as I found out at this exhibition00:06:39.968
- 00:06:39.968
- or at the preceding exhibition which was about compulsive writing,00:06:45.409
- 00:06:45.409
- that some Slovak artists call me pejoratively a writer.00:06:50.524
- 00:06:50.524
- So these are my conceptual letters.00:06:58.214