RESIDENCY COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH RESIDENCY 2011
The research group takes as their point of departure two conflicting political categories: “class” and “nation.” These concepts, which have been employed to articulate two irreconcilable political doctrines (the Left and the Right) today seem to have regained critical importance in the post-socialist countries. Socialism and nationalism have again become co-opted within eastern European intellectual and artistic circles and used to express political discontent. While some artists have joined the class struggle on the Left, others seek ways to revive the national soul on the Right, and a third type try to combine them, mixing, like the medieval alchemists, fire with water (e.g. National-Bolshevism in Russia).
The research group has proposed to examine more closely both the “social turn” and the “national turn,” looking carefully at the gamut of radical left and right artistic strategies that have proliferated over the past decades. They are concerned above all with the geography of these turns. Upon a closer look, one may observe, for instance, that radical art inspired by left-wing politics is not distributed proportionally across the post-socialist map. One may also notice that many artist groups and individual artists who subscribe today to left-wing art, and who are most prominent on the international art scene, come from countries like Russia, a country with an enduring tradition of both socialist political thought and action. In smaller countries, on the other hand, especially in those that neighbor Russia on its western borders (the Baltic States, or Moldova) artists and curators seem more concerned with issues and problems traditionally charted on the right side of the political spectrum. In these countries artists seem more interested in issues of national identity or national culture. It is the group’s working hypothesis that artists in smaller countries, such as Estonia, Lithuania or Moldova, are more aware of their national identity due to their recently gained or re-gained independence. The collaboration will result in a concrete final product: a publication, an exhibition, a website.
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Rael Artel (b. 1980) is an independent curator based in the forests of Estonia. She graduated from the Institute of Art History at the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2003, and participated in the Curatorial Training Programme in De Appel, Amsterdam (2004–05). Since 2000, she has contributed to a number of magazines in Estonia and elsewhere, and curated shows in Estonia, as well as in Lisbon, New York, Amsterdam and Warsaw. In 2004–2008 she ran and moderated her experimental project space Rael Artel Gallery: Non-Profit Project Space. In 2007 she initiated Public Preparation, a platform for knowledge-production and network-based communication, which since the beginning of 2008 has focused on issues of nationalism and contemporary art in Europe in the format of international meetings. She is an artistic director of the festival of contemporary art ART IST KUKU NU UT in Tartu, Estonia.
Octavian Esanu (b. 1966) was the founding director of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art Chisinau, Moldova (currently KSA:K Chisinau). In this position he curated, published, and launched the earliest contemporary art events in his home country. He later became a participant in the Theory Department at the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht), where he researched and produced a large-scale exhibition and a two-volume publication; he has also collaborated with the Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst (Bremen) on an exhibition-concert and was an artist in residence at the Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart). In 2009 he defended his doctoral dissertation at Duke University (USA) where he researched and wrote on the impact of the socio-economic transition on the post-socialist contemporary art scene. He continues his academic research and writing, in the meantime becoming involved with a new art initiative in New York City and collaborating with art institutions in Europe and the USA.
Indre Klimaite (b. 1979) Lithuanian based in The Hague, Netherlands, graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania, 2001. In 2002 she moved to The Netherlands to study at the Type&Media master course at the Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague. She owns her graphic design studio ILEGAL since 2004. In 2006 she was invited to join the Amsterdam based public art initiative Cascoland. Cascoland works with areas in transformation, activating public spaces, mixing people, changing perceptions, and creating site-specific projects. These experiences inspired her to use visual solutions to work more socially and politically. Currently she is working on a self-initiated project about dying, neglected ‘Soviet’ canteens in Lithuania. Canteens are taken as a symbol of an old political system in a country of political transformation and the project analyzes how values, memory, habits, and traditions change when they clash with another dominating system.
