| Intalnire cu Istoria / Appointment with History | ||
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| Intalnire cu Istoria / Manifestul Comunismului, installation 2008, 5th Berlin Biennial, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin | ||
| Appointment with History (Treffen mit der Geschichte) consists in a research related to symbols. It could be defined as searching for a new symbol for old utopias. We use images that connect different ideologies and historic times and study the meaning of these within specific situations. The installation has besides a series of paintings and the audible Communist Manifesto through the speakers a live microphone allowing free speech from anyone who wish to say something to the public. |
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| Intalnire cu Istoria / Appointment with History, 2011, Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), Istanbul | ||
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| Syria / 2011 |
May 2011, Puerta del Sol, Madrid / 2011 | 28 March 2009, London / 2009 |
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| August 2008, Bagua Province, Peru / 2011 |
Bouganville, Coconut Revolution / 2011 | March 2011, From Tripoli to Lampedusa / 2011 |
| "In
their series of paintings Appointment with History/Intalnire cu Istoria, Vatamanu
and Tudor enact processes of collective and personal remembering. The catalyst
for the series was an anti-capitalist demonstration the artists witnessed in Basel,
with its insignia and banners familiar to them from their youth in socialist Romania.
The compact, small-format paintings are products of a painterly exploration undertaken
in quest of a new symbol of communist utopia, which includes its own failures
and scars. They are built up layer by layer in a process deliberately reminiscent
of the style, coloration, and paint application of nineteenth-century landscape
painting. The artist duo research their motifs of utopian ideologies and their
implications for social conditions in archives, schoolbooks, photographs, and
propaganda films, and come up with familiar images: people queuing outside a supermarket
under communism, crowds on Berlin's Alexanderplatz in 1989, or a scene from the
film Imposibila iubire (Impossible love, 1983), in which a worker contemplates
his vision of the world as it is constructed. The audio-installation Communist Manifesto/Manifestul comunismului comprises a lectern with live microphone, rows of chairs, and loudspeakers over which a reading of Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto (1848) is audible. Overlaying the images, the soundtrack calls on the viewer/listener to become conscious of ideological stratifications and to question the division of theory and practice." Silke Baumann |
Rosa
Luxemburg ... What does the entire history of socialism and of all modern revolutions show us? The first spark of class struggle in Europe, the revolt of the silk weavers in Lyon in 1831, ended with a heavy defeat; the Chartist movement in Britain ended in defeat; the uprising of the Parisian proletariat in the June days of 1848 ended with a crushing defeat; and the Paris commune ended with a terrible defeat. The whole road of socialism -- so far as revolutionary struggles are concerned -- is paved with nothing but thunderous defeats. Yet, at the same time, history marches inexorably, step by step, toward final victory! Where would we be today without those "defeats," from which we draw historical experience, understanding, power and idealism? Today, as we advance into the final battle of the proletarian class war, we stand on the foundation of those very defeats; and we can do without any of them, because each one contributes to our strength and understanding. ... "Order
prevails in Berlin!" You foolish lackeys! Your "order" is built
on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will "rise up again, clashing its weapons,"
and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: |
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| Written:
January 14, 1919 Source: Gessemelte Werke Publisher: Dietz Verlag First Published: Rote Fahne, 14 January 1919 Translated: Marcus Online Version: marxists.org 1999 Transcription: A. Lehrer/Brian Basgen |
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| Elections
Martor, Anthropology Review, nr 7, 2002, pp59 - 60 | |
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