Artistic Cartographies: An Investigation Into Personal Space
Student: Alexandra Nicolau
M. A. Artistic Research, University of Amsterdam
Supervisor: Dr. Jeroen Boomgaard
Second reader: Prof. Christa-‐Maria Lerm Hayes Word count: 15.700
Artistic Cartographies:
An Investigation Into Personal Space
Table of content:
Introduction
: p. 3-‐111.Chapter one: The City and its Networks
: p. 12-‐261.1 Discovering the City: p. 12-‐15
1.2 Public Space Projects: Pavel Braila and Lado Darakhvelidze: p. 15-‐20 1.3 Walking and Conceptual Networks: p. 21-‐24
2.Chapter two: The Sense of Place:
p. 25-‐342.1 Francis Alÿs and the Search of Self: p. 25-‐28
2.2 Walking as Practice: p. 29-‐30
2.3Psycho-‐geography and Drifting: p. 31-‐34
3. Chapter three: Assembling Meaning:
p. 35-‐473.1 Erik van Lieshout: Personal Space: p. 35-‐39 3.2 Individual Space and Public Place: p. 40-‐43 3.3 Mapping Movement: p. 44-‐47
4.
Mapping as a (Artistic) Research Strategy
: Conclusions p. 47-‐51
5. References and list of images: p. 52-‐ 54
“
To walk is to lack a place”
1
Walking through the streets is a way of interpreting the city. As an artist, I walk the line of my thoughts and visualise them. As an artistic researcher, on the other hand, I walk the line of my thoughts via words and writing. Art making played an essential role in my life since an early age, while the concept of artistic research is something recent. Research as a procedure has become complementary to my artistic practice and it has to be carried out according to a method in order to acquire new knowledge. The development of a research method requires practice and it is an evolutionary procedure. Within the lines of this text, I will attempt to fuse my artistic background with carefully noted observations and ideas. Walking through the city of St. Petersburg and following certain artistic projects left a deep impression on me and accordingly, this text is a reflection ‘after the fact’, based on travelling notations and observations, a specific research procedure. The research technique I will be employing will use the drawings and observation taken during the trip as a point of reference from which both a written thesis and a series of visual works will be developed. I will also use and add to the thesis literary and scholarly references that support or address the ideas of walking and re-‐mapping as a means to discover a place, a city, either as a visitor, a temporary inhabitant, or as a displaced immigrant looking to understand an adoptive city.
The visual project is entitled City Escape and it questions the meaning of drifting through unfamiliar urban surroundings as a method of artistic investigation. This project has developed from walking through the city of St. Petersburg and reflecting on several artistic projects, as part of the Manifesta
1 De Certeau, M. (2011). “Walking in the City”, The Practice of Everyday Life, University of
California Press, London, pp. 103
10. In a way, this journey of walking has a spectral aspect: I am present in my story, yet I shift continuously between ‘then’ and ‘now’, mapping and retracing my movements through the city (walking, geographical and mental map). As an artistic investigation it concerns absence, an operation of retracing footsteps that is itself visible, but becomes invisible once the trace left behind is replaced by artistic practice. In a way, stepping out of the movement is the only method of reflecting on the action. City Escape is a travelogue documenting the perspective of the passer-‐by. As a try-‐out and a transgression by means of reorganizing memory, it complements the potentiality of the event. The aim of this research is to challenge my presence as the passer-‐by: I appropriate iconic images of St. Petersburg (The Hermitage Museum, the Lada, the neighbourhood food markets). My research photographic material is digitally manipulated, and subsequently the imagines are projected and fixed on the screens for the printing procedure. Finally, the silkscreen image is printed on paper. It is a repetitive manual mechanism, frequently used for editions, yet the prints are not identical. By digitally manipulating them I render visible my absence. The project takes shape as a series of silkscreens and through a publication. By means of these artistic research methods, it analyses the figure of the passer-‐by in relation to presence and absence. Retracing his movements is a manner of managing the feeling of displacement and the emotional impact of the city. Travelling involves a certain degree of nomadism, understood as geographical mobility, wandering, drifting, and not following rules. The traveller collects and records, while moving he is absorbing the urban surroundings. He escapes one space and moves to the next in search of his place. While wandering from space to place, he becomes part of the city and its landscape. The traveller is a migrant in time.
The written part of this investigation tells the travel story of a city. The story traverses through everyday life, connects the journey with the reflections and organizes places. It is spatial story.2 A map is also a spatial
image, it connects space, wandering, walking and becoming and it creates the
2 De Certeau, M. (2011). “Spatial Stories”, The Practice of Everyday Life, University of
map of ‘intensity’3. The aim of this investigation is not to define the concept of
map, however it simply shows different perspectives of the process of mapping. The main character in this story is the foreigner who walks and dwells across the streets of St. Petersburg.
This text is an investigation inspired by the format of a travelogue and written from an artistic research point of view. What happens while walking through a city, following the routes of temporary artworks and projects? Is the process of following a map an act of translation? An unknown city unfolds by means of a personal journey. What happens with the geographical map, after translation, emotional impact, and interpretation? The starting point of this artistic research is interpretive and experimental. There are various interpretations and definitions of the concept of artistic research. In The Debate on Research in the Arts (2006), Henk Borgdorff states that artistic research is about “articulating knowledge and understandings as embodied in artworks and creative processes. It is about searching, exploring and mobilising-‐ sometimes drifting, sometimes driven-‐ in the artistic domain. It is about creating new imagines, narratives, sound worlds, experiences [….] it is about constituting and accessing uncharted territories.”4 According to Hito
Stereyl, artistic research is an “act of translation”5. Artistic research “takes
part in at least two languages and can in some cases create new ones. It speaks the language of quality as well as of quantity, the language of the singular as well as the language of the specific, use value as well as exchange value or spectacle value, discipline as well as conflict; and it translates between all of these. This does not mean that it translates correctly-‐ but it nevertheless translates.”6 Artistic research “recognises that art is based on
3 O’Sullivan, S. (2005): ‘Rhizomes, Machines, Multiplicities and Maps’, in S O’ Sullivan, Art
Encounters Deleuze and Guattari, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 32
4 Borgdorff, H. (2006): The Debate on Research in the Arts (Sensuous Knowledge 02),
Bergen: Bergen National Academy of the Arts, pp. 1-‐17, quoted in Gray Magazine number 3, pp. 16-‐17
5 Steyerl, H. “Aesthetics of Resistance? Artistic Research as Discipline and Conflict”,
maHKUzine, pp. 35
research, that art constitutes research.” 7 As a result, the following
investigation aims to provide new forms of research and develop directly from artistic practice. There are multiple ways of doing research, therefore a lot of methods. To name only a few: historical, theoretical, experimental (testing) or comparative. One could classify the previous methods as classical, while there are a few more directly related to artistic practise: descriptive, interpretative or practical and creative procedures. 8 The specific
research method used in this project is creative, based on practical and expressive procedures. In other words, this method is complementary to the artistic practice.
I propose a text that is based on personal travelling experience, as a travelogue, but that reflects ‘after the fact’ on the methods of translating site-‐ specific artistic projects. The format of the travelogue, being it a film, book, or artistic project offers some insights into the experiences of a traveller. During the trip I have taken notes, diary entrances, and photographs. After six months, I have returned to the collected research material: in parallel to unfolding my notes and my memories, I researched contemporary theories concerning public space, mapping and walking as artistic practice. The visual and the written parts of my thesis stem both from a travelogue of self-‐ exploration as well as a periplus meant to re-‐map a foreign city using temporary, artistic landmarks.
The first chapter deals with the notions of walking through the city and mapping the artistic events within the public space program of Manisfesta 10. How to contextualize the experiences of a foreign city? In order to proceed to discover the city I have taken some steps: I made a plan and mapped the areas of my interest; I walked from one point of interest to the next and recorded my observations. In this context, the city is my object and I proceed researching with the help of analytical tools. The action of walking gave me a better understanding and a distinct perspective of the city. Walking is thus a
7 Cherry, D. (2006): Introduction to Artistic Research, Gray Magazine number 3, pp. 11 8 Herman M., J.S. (2006): The Dérive. A method of Receiving, Grey Magazine, number 3, pp. 33
process of recording and collecting information. In the context of my travel to St. Petersburg, I explored the geography of the city by means of walking and I engaged emotionally with the surroundings.
The public space program for the Manisfesta 10 evolves around the idea of ethnical background and the role that it plays in artistic expression.9 The
functionality of this curatorial project is influenced by the political climate in Russia (reached a high conflictual level in august 2014) and moreover attempts to raise questions about how the urban environment keeps together multi-‐cultural groups. In this light, I will discus the projects of Pavel Braila (Railway Catering) and Lado Darakhvelidze (Transformers: the map of Saint Petersburg and an installation based on grassroots entrepreneurship, through the resourceful work of migrants). My aim is not to dig out political or social reasons for the everlasting conflicts in that area, I am looking at ways in which these artists and their work tackle the notion of art in public space. However political engaged public artworks might be, in this instance the focus will be on their connection to the urban environment. In order to connect artworks and the city structure I will use Bruno Latour’s theory on the notion of network 10. Latour uses this terminology in various contexts,
arguing mainly that the network is a tool to “describe something out there”11.
Consequently, this conceptual tool will support and contextualize the relation between the traveller and the city. While art in public space will play an important part in this first section, yet another aspect of the urban space is the idea of the global city, analysed frequently in Saskia Sassen’s theoretical works.12 Thus, from a theoretical perspective, walking and discovering a
foreign city by means of artistic projects result into a multiplicity of implications and connections. Walking makes it possible for the stranger in
9 The Guide Manifesta 10, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg,
Russia, 2014, pp.138-‐159
10 Latour, B. (2013): ‘Defining the Object of Inquiry’, in Latour B. An Inquiry into Modes of
Existence
11 Latour, B. (2005): Reassembling the Social. An introduction to Actor-‐Network-‐Theory
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 128-‐33, quoted by Larsen, L.B. (2014), ‘Connectivity Before and Beyond the Net’, in Larsen L. B. (ed.), Networks: Documents of Contemporary Art, Whitechapel Gallery, London, pp. 71
12 Sassen, S. (2012): “Public Interventions: The Shifting Meaning of the Urban Condition”, in
Seijdel J. and Melis L. (eds.) Open! Key texts 2004-‐2012: art and culture in the public domain,
the city to engage and understand its surroundings. By means of walking, one draws or maps the city, creating a conceptual network.
The second chapter addresses the matters of searching for one’s self, walking as art and the implications of drifting and psycho-‐geography. While the first chapter proposes the notion of mapping a city by means of walking, the second chapter analyses the geographical and emotional implications of a journey. On the theoretical level, the text will analyse the notion of walking and its artistic implications. From the interpretative perspective, the text will explore the depths of Francis Alÿs’s body of work. Within his work, he self-‐ consciously confirmed walking as the main strategy of intervening in the urban space, exploring social-‐cultural narratives and public institutions. The search of self is central. “In my city everything is temporary” Francis Alÿs has stated, meaning that his sculptural ideas are based on fleeting social and material occurrences. Rather than dwelling on social and mental structures, he was inclined to investigate the cracks in the urban narrative.13 The work
for Manifesta 10 entitled Lada Kopeika touches upon these aspects. The story of this project began thirty years before, when the artist and his brother dreamt of driving their Lada to the URSS border. Alÿs went to Germany from Mexico City where he lives and works, and took a car ride together with his brother till they have reached St. Petersburg. The filmed documentation of their trip is only a part of the artwork. In addition, their Lada car is also present together with drawings and sketches, presented as an installation. In one of his earlier projects The Loop (1997), Alÿs circumnavigated the globe in 29 days, physically crossing the USA border (by plane) to Mexico via Tijuana. The parallel between this work and Lada Kopeika (2014) is made in order to show that the notion of travelling functioned also as an escape from an apparently locked situation. As a ‘passer-‐by constantly trying to situate himself in a moving environment’, Alÿs had left Europe both physically and symbolically, in order to immerse himself in an unknown territory where he
was conspicuously acting under the confortable and sometimes convenient mask of the ‘foreigner’.14
The main arguments presented in this chapter are the theories of drifting (dérive) and Psycho-‐geography. First used by members of the Letterist International, Psycho-‐geography describes a “science of relations and ambiances” that they were developing in order to “give play in the society of others [le jeu de societe] its true meaning: a society founded upon play. Nothing is more serious. Amusement is the royal privilege that must be made available to everyone”. According to Guy-‐Ernest Debord: “because geography deals with the impact of natural forces (such as climate and soil composition) on the economic structures of a society, and thus on the corresponding conception that such society can have of the world, psycho-‐ geography should examine the specific effects of the geographical environment […] on the emotions and behaviour of individuals”.15 The
Situationists reflected on what was for them a practice, while artists like Alÿs moved from depicting places to pointing them out as means of transiting between private (personal) and public. Walking blurs the border between representing the world and designating oneself as a piece of it, it stands somewhere between live art and object-‐based art.
Chapter three relates to the notions of personal space, individual and public place. Following the ideas of Michel de Certeau, place is an assembly of elements coexisting in a certain order (assemblages), while space is an animation of those places by the motion of the body. He also advances the idea of the narrative that transforms places into spaces and spaces into places. In Non-‐Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity, Marc Augé writes about anthropological place, characterized by places of identity (birthplace), of relations and of history, while for Henri Lefebvre space is a continuous social dynamic, and place is a momentary destination16. These theories
14 Medina,C., Russell, F., Fisher, J. (2007): Francis Alys; Phaidon London,, pp. 64
15 O’Rourke, K. (2013): Walking and Mapping: artists as cartographers, MIT Cambridge, pp.
6-‐7
16 Lefebvre, H. (1985): “Urban Form”, Writings on Cities, Kofman E. and Lebas E. (eds.),
contribute to a wider understanding of our relation with the urban surroundings and the changes that occur within it. Place, individual or collective is the core notion and will also support the previous theories concerning walking and drifting. Geographical place will be presented as a participatory component of this research. In this chapter, the focus will be on the individual and the collective outcomes of his actions. Side by side with the individual aspect, the research is also focused on movement (walking, or from one landmark to the next, or the general movement of the city). Our carefully planned and designed cities are in a continuous movement. As inhabitants, we create relations, networks and trajectories. We create the city. In this light, one can consider the city as an assemblage. However, in this context I will limit the understanding of assemblage to the idea of elements shifting from different positions, leaving us with several choices of finding meaning. According to Marc Schuilenburg: “People select the option that they expect to benefit them the most. A characteristic feature of an assemblage, however, is that everything in principle, has the same potential for meaning. […]”.17 With or without this potency of meaning, the assemblage is also a
model of gathering information.
The work of Dutch artist Erik van Lieshout addresses the issue of personal space and its meaning. The Basement commissioned in 2014 by Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg challenges geo-‐political boundaries, offers a multitude of visual experiences and potential for meaning. Erik van Lieshout spent nine weeks in the Hermitage basement, together with the Hermitage cats, and he created for them the comfort of living conditions and launched an exhibition with their participation18. The Basement addresses multiple
layers of meaning, yet the main figure in this story is the passer-‐by, the foreigner discovering the city. This chapter proposes that the focus from the passer-‐by will interchange with the multitudes of meaning given by his experiences. The experience of St. Petersburg and the commissioned
17 Schuilenburg, M. (2012): “The Dislocating Perspective of Assemblages: Another Look at
the Issue of Security”, Open! Key texts 2004-‐2012: art and culture in the public domain, Seijdel J. and Melis L. (eds.), SKOR nai010 Publishers: Rotterdam, pp. 125
18 The Guide Manifesta 10, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg,
artworks encountered there, show only some aspects of the complexity of meaning in contemporary urban spaces. From walking routes, to geography and mental maps, public art projects influence our surroundings. Within the mix of conceptual tools and first hand experiences, this text intends to map artistic research methods, looks at the value of artistic methods, and the temporality of artworks within contemporary urban context.
“… To practise space is thus to repeat the joyful and silent experience of childhood; it is, in a place, to be other and to move toward the other. [….] This relationship of oneself to oneself governs the internal alterations of the place (the relations among its strata) or the pedestrian unfolding of the stories accumulated in a place (moving about the city and travelling). The childhood experience that determines spatial practices later develops its effects, proliferates, floods private and public spaces, undoes their readable surfaces, and creates within the planned city a ‘metaphorical’ or mobile city […]”19
19 De Certeau, quoted by Lefebvre, H. (1985): Writings on Cities, Kofman E. and Lebas E.
1.
1. Chapter one: The City and Its Networks
1.1 Discovering the City
How to contextualize the experiences of a foreign city with the means of public artworks? This chapter deals with the notions of walking through the city and mapping the artistic events within the public space program of Manisfesta 10. In St. Petersburg, before proceeding to discover the city I took some initial steps: I made a plan and mapped the areas of my interest; I walked from one point of interest to the next and recorded my observations. The action of walking gave me a better understanding and a distinct perspective (using architectural vocabulary, the word ‘perspective’ denotes a specific way of thinking or looking at an object). That is why it is essential to note that the experience accumulated and discussed originates from the perspective of a stranger in a foreign place.
Has walking the potential to explore and exploit the city, to observe its changes, drifts, shifts, breaks, lights, or infrastructure? According to Henri Lefebvre: “To think about the city is to hold and maintain its conflictual aspects: constrains and possibilities, peacefulness and violence, meetings and solitude, gatherings and separation, the trivial and the poetic, brutal
functionalism and surprizing improvisation.”20 The following analysis will
not strive at a complete understanding of these dualities instead it will focus more on the possibilities, the emotional and personal implications. The city of St. Petersburg has a majestic and overwhelming size and its allure isolates the traveller from human interactions. One of the most vivid memories is the strange, almost inhuman dimension of the sidewalks. As the traveller, I have experienced a process of transcending my corporeality, while the sizeable city giant was feasting on my human presence. From its artistic heritage to its family beaches alongside the river Neva and ostentatious weddings, St. Petersburg has a very fragmented presence: its geographical pattern is made of several islands that are connected by means of infrastructure and architecture. There are some aspects to discus when proposing the manner of travelling: the departure point, the reason of the travel or the places through which the traveller will pass. In this case, the essential is the movement from one place to another, not understood in its physical capacity (speed, vehicle or other obstacles) but as a continuous shift, a flow in space and time. Within this continuous shift, I will focus on walking. In the process of moving from one point of interest to the next, one discovers the city’s architecture, and in that sense one can encounter the shape of space. Nevertheless, walking involves movement through space and requires certain landmarks, and in the case of my travelling, the buildings facades played a major role.
The movement from one landmark to the next resulted in a certain pattern of walking. In some cases, the most desired result is to be able to reach the target of your walk as fast as possible. Speed and thus time are also involved in walking, yet I will focus more on the trace created by this movement. That is the reason why I argue that walking can be understood as means of mapping the space. The traces create the outline of the city and operate at a physical level (the act of moving your muscles while walking) and also at a mental level (when you retrace certain routes). Walking is thus a process of recording and collecting information, while the traces register
20 Lefebvre, H. (1985): “Introduction”, Writings on Cities, Kofman E. and Lebas E. (eds.),
spatial distribution. Maps are tools, just like databases, for organising, preserving and elaborating knowledge. In St. Petersburg, I have recorded the walking in writing and photographic materials. In a certain sense, I have built a documentation map without aiming for it. The immediate aim was to get to one point of interest to the next, to find a specific building or artistic project. After considering walking through St. Petersburg as means to map the city, another question comes to light: what have I discovered?
As, I was walking across a very rich and developed city, where life was active and efficient; the notion of ‘global city’ came to my mind. A dense definition of the global city (understood thus as the place where networks are fluid and operational efficient) is not entirely sufficient in this case. According to Saskia Sassen: “[…] the city becomes a strategic amalgamation of multiple global circuits that loop through it.”21If one reads the
development of the city in terms of global looping circuits, there is enough information to understand the multiple layers of the city of St. Petersburg are in a continuous shift and walking through it is just one manner of being part of the circuit. While walking, my traces formed maps, and the movement did not end where it had began. There are multiple aspects of the notion of global city, but the essential aspects that are guiding this research involve around the notion of fluidity. If one accepts walking as means of structuring time and space, an on-‐going, never-‐ending and looping process, the global characteristics of the city are indispensable (the multitude of circuits that are in continuous movement). In other words instead of using online or printed maps of the city, one might consider the notion of “speculative mapping”22,
understood as means of making sense of the surroundings using the charted personal traces. In order to respond to the experience of a foreign city, one requires a reconstruction: to perceive and experience, the beholder needs to create his own, ordering elements in the whole and making place for the extraction of significance. For Richard Long walking is “means to explore the
21 S. Sassen (2012): “Public Interventions: The Shifting Meaning of the Urban Condition”, in
Seijdel J. and Melis L. (eds.) Open! Key texts 2004-‐2012: art and culture in the public domain,
Open, pp. 69
22 O’Rourke, K. (2013): Walking and Mapping: artists as cartographers, MIT Cambridge, pp.
relationship between time, distance, geography and measurement.”23 In the
context of my travel to St. Petersburg, I have explored the geography of the city by means of walking and I have engaged emotionally with the surrounding. From a temporal perspective, I have moved from one destination to the next, and by doing so I have also managed to measure certain distances, by means of emotional ramification: while being part of the urban circuits, moving and consuming physical distances, all my senses were involved with the city.
2.
1.2 Public Space Projects: Pavel Braila and Lado Darakhvelidze
How to make sense of our surroundings? The immediate sense involved in the interaction with our surroundings is the sense of sight. Moving through St. Petersburg I have created a personal visual environment and my own referential cityscape. As discussed in the lines above, the action of walking allowed for an immensely rich experience. Visually, I had discovered the city but my quest was far from over because the aim was to encounter the artistic projects within the public space. From the central curatorial point, geographical and historical station Vitebsk was the central location for
several public art projects, and to name only two of them: Pavel Braila’s project Railway Catering (traditional Moldovan food delivered by the Friendship train to Saint Petersburg) and Lado Darakhvelidze’s Transformers (the map of St. Petersburg and an installation based on grassroots entrepreneurship, through the resourceful work of migrants).24 What are the
implications of public artworks within the present political climate? According to the Manifesta 10 curatorial statements: “a great number of public projects deal with the notion of public and private, pointing out socio-‐ political influences from the soviet and post-‐Soviet eras, and offer an alternative to conflicts and open protests.”25 In the following pages, my aim is
to investigate how the works of Pavel Braila and Lado Darakhvelidze have the potential to react to the public space in the current Russian political and social situation.
The official curatorial program states: “the public program will critically respond to the current socio-‐cultural circumstances, its conflicts and complexities, and the place of art within them. For Manifesta 10, a series of time-‐based projects will intervene in the city of St. Petersburg and its cultural, historical, and social complexity with context-‐responsive commissions and debates, events, pop-‐up shows, and discursive platforms, as an integral part of the exhibition. The program engaged with the urgency of unfolding geopolitical circumstances. The invited artists originated from cities of post-‐Soviet and post-‐communist Europe, including Vilnius, Tallinn, and Kiev. These cities are all accessible by train from St. Petersburg’s Vitebsk Station, which will be a key venue for the Public Program as the first train hub in Russia to connect East and West.”26 This statement seems, at first
glance, to support the fact art has the statute to be an alternative to political disputes. The Public Program also refers to the role of the private, the public, and their respective social and “political contexts during the Soviet era, as well as in the current post-‐Soviet condition and geopolitical situation. During
24 The Guide Manifesta 10, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg,
Russia, 2014, pp.138-‐139
25 The Guide Manifesta 10, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg,
Russia, 2014, Joana Warsza, head of the Public Program, pp. 138
the Soviet Period, ‘public’ (understood as critical exchange of free ideas) almost exclusively took place at home universities, secret political gatherings, and through inner emigration and apartment exhibitions where unofficial, nonconformist, engaged art was hosted as form of resistance”.27 In this light,
might one look at the artistic statute as being influenced by the relation between public and private?
3.
In the Railway Catering, Pavel Braila asked his family to prepare traditional food for an event and send it by train to the Vitebsk Station. The provisions had arrived by the daily train Prietenia (Friendship) from Chisinau via Ukraine. The performance took place in the station: food and wine were given to the passers-‐by. During the soviet time, fruits and vegetables were imported and transported via this train from Moldova to Russia. This performance/action and interaction has several meanings, due to the political context (the interdiction against import/export with the EU), the artistic climate in Russia, the status of the artist (internationally
27The Guide Manifesta 10, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg,
renowned), and the everlasting tension between East and West. The overall result of the artistic action was -‐ on one hand being outside the law and yet the authorities were officially invited – the manifestation of a predominant feeling of nostalgia transformed into a culinary feast. The artist’s intention was to criticize the political implications and disruption in the economy of his homeland, Moldova being a developing country that was dependent on exporting fruits and vegetables to the Russian Federation. Pavel Braila28 lives
and works in Berlin, has an acclaimed status and his works were part of several international artistic events, so one might ask how close is he to his homeland? In a series of interviews given to Russian reporters, in order to explain his action and artistic view, he stated that his intention was serious, he was not offering food and drinks just to make people enjoy themselves, but to emphasize the importance of trading with these goods. Video documentation of his family preparing the traditional culinary delights can be read as a proof of authenticity of his emotional involvement. On the other hand, a question that remains still open is what would have been the effect of this action, if the artist himself would have had prepared the food? By drawing this parallel with the family left behind in the homeland, while he is performing, presenting and acting on international stages, one might interpret this as a distance from his roots and a predominant feeling of longing. Geographically, Braila is not close to his country, yet emotionally and artistically he does not believe in distance, he is bringing Moldova to the Russian train station and shares it with the local passer-‐by.
28 The Guide Manifesta 10, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg,
4.
From the world of culinary feast in a train station, my next move within the city was the market place. Visiting a market in the city of St. Petersburg was a great experience: not only that the abundance of colors and smells took over my senses, but the continuous background of voices, languages and accents made it almost impossible to distinguish my own thoughts. Being born and raised in Romania, I had from an early age contact with fruit and vegetables markets, and not so much as an eventful experience, but as a practical manner of buying food. The difference with the Russian markets was perhaps given by the incredible vividness of the people selling and negotiating their goods, in strong contrast with the world I have encountered on the streets or in public spaces. People in the market had a certain allure and flow in their movements and facial mimics, an availability and interaction, with an almost performative character. Lado Darakhvelidze’s project at the Manifesta 10 evolves around the markets in St. Petersburg and their lively interactive world. According to the artist, his aim has to submerge the viewer in the everyday life of the city and its citizens. “The project Transformers St. Petersburg arose from the narratives of the resourceful labour force of legal and illegal migrants, who with limited resources and opportunities, are ‘making do’ in Russia today. The Transformers is an ode to the
creative and resilient attitude needed to survive in contemporary Russian society. This ‘transformer attitude’ stands in sharp contrast to the general perception of immigrants, and within Russians in particular.”29 He staged this
installation in the Vitebsk just like the previous performance by Pavel Braila. Lado Darakhvelidze’s practice focuses primarily on the phenomena of media information and its socio-‐political impacts. In his previous works, he reflected subtly and poetically on the transitions and relocations of national symbols in post-‐communist countries, expanding the political to encompass mythology, history, and storytelling. At a certain degree, The Transformers is a poetically
charged installation, complemented by the website (designed specially for this project), the collection of sketches, the location, and the artist’s statement. One might ask how the re-‐location of the market space within the train station, enhances the artistic message? What is the artist trying to tell us by this movement and how does this affect the inner mechanism of the market? Looking at the previous artwork, the political implication and context are made clear, whereas in the latter installation I miss precisely the feeling and the movement of the market. The artistic intention was to show how different cultures come together under the same economical umbrella (they are part of the market space because they are there to sell their products), yet their ethnical backgrounds do not suppress their interactions. There is a form of social exchange and along these lines one might consider the market as being a metaphor for the society. With or without the authenticity of the real market space, the relocation suggests also the social bound that overcomes politics and ethnicity. The artist believes that the collective energy generated by markets is comparable to that of public assemblies, where Armenians, Azeris, Ossetians,
Abkhazis and Central Asians work side-‐by-‐side. 30 The movement of buyers,
sellers and observers creates the excitement of social exchange. While Russian society shares scepticism about organized protest, its inclination toward self-‐
organization can be revolutionary.
29 http://www.ladodarakhvelidze.com/, artist’s webpage
5.
1.3 Walking and Conceptual Networks
This text proposes that walking has the potential to map and conceptualize the city. Through means of walking and recalling memory, the fragments of the journey are being brought to the reader and gain a context. There is the need to incorporate certain conceptual tools in order to understand this idea of contextualizing. Walking makes it possible for the stranger in the city to engage and understand its surroundings. By means of walking, one draws or maps the city, creating a conceptual network. According to the sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour the network: “is a concept, not a thing out there. It is a tool to help describe something, not what is being described. It has the same relationship with the topic at hand as a perspective grid to a traditional single point perspective painting: drawn
