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Yana Myaskovskaya, Daniel Hirsch & Erica Nunziante

Zuzana Štefková: Political? Socially Sensitive Issues in Central European Contemporary Art Practice

Zuzana Štefková is a curator at the Center of Contemporary Art at Prague and her concentration is in political art specifically in Czech Republic and Slovakia. Her presented works dealt with racism, sexism, corruption and social injustice in central Europe. She defined 'political art' in terms of post-social central Europe and it is an art that serves an ideological message. In central Europe political art has started as an honest way of portraying or reflecting what was going on rather than to have a political voice to it. She said that any art is 'political' since it's a production and evolutions depend on the heterogeneous social, economical and political powers. She also differentiated 'activist art' and 'political art' by saying that the motive of activists art is to motivate its audience from passively viewing or enjoying the art to active participatory audience. She presented several cases where political art was censored from the government one example being the work by Pode Bal Zimmer Frei 2002 where the officials censored the work because they were afraid that it would offend a certain group of ethnicity. She compared the two shows that she participated in curating in 2002 the and in 2006 and 2008 showing the differences and progression of political art throughout the years. In 2002, there was a strong idea in the society that art was helpless in that it could not influential the society and politics was more powerful over art. The show questioned the placement of the political art within the art world and the society. She also presented cases where the artists were arrested or went to court due to their performances or art pieces that the government felt threaten. However, even there are strong resistances to political art; there has been works that were accepted such as David Černý's work Pink Tank in 1991 where he painted the Soviet green tank into pink and later the veterans participated in the pointing and St. Wenceslas which is a statue of St. Wenceslas riding a dead horse upside down. She realized through his works that people don't get mad or critical as much if the work is poking fun at historical figures or issues whereas people are more sensitive to more recent political issues. She challenged and questioned the political art and artists in general if it was ever possible to be independent from the government or from funds that censor or have some control over what is shown in public. Looking through the political arts in central Europe, I was wondering where the boundaries were between vandalism/ breaking the law and art. Are artists responsible for their act of transgression or rebellious art? Where do ethics play in the process of making art?

artist talk : Tom Marioni's Beer Drinking Sonata

Founder of the Museum of Conceptual Art (MOCA), Tom Marioni is California based conceptual action artist and a curator who works in San Francisco. He was a curator of the Richmond Art Museum and during these years he used the name Allan Fish as an artist. He works with different mediums and performances to deliver his ideas to the audience.

In his talk he presented his past works were pioneer to the conceptual art world in the 1970's. The The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art in 1970 is one of the most famous works where he combined social situations to a conceptual art form. His obsession with beer not only ends in this performance piece but also in his video work From China to Czechoslovakia 1976 reflecting his idea that act of beer drinking is universal across the world.
It was aesthetically satisfying to see all the different brands of beer around the world and with the soundtrack of someone blowing into each beer bottle. During the early 1970's it was revolutionary that Tom Marioni introduced mundane activity of beer drinking into an art form.

In defining what conceptual art is he clearly explained in the clip of his interview that conceptual art is idea oriented situated art which is not defined by the medium like painting, sculpture or photography but free to work in any medium that works best to present the idea of the maker. He is also well-known for his 'action drawings' which performed in 1972, was recently performed again in 2007, but this time it was a collective work where other people participated to make a drawing. He discussed Tree, Drawing a Line as Far as I can Reach and Bird where for the former piece, he sat down in the gallery with a paper in front trying to draw a line as far as he can reach. For the later work "Bird" he hung a piece of paper on the ceiling and tried to draw a line by jumping across the room. Both drawings were very similar in that it was about the limitation of his body/ his arm, how far it can go, and his drawings was not a pictorial of the actual tree or a bird but a result of the imitation of its actions. He called the group of action drawings Creation of 7 days performance where he tried to make each drawing according to the things that were created in 7days, on the first day using LSD to see new light, like how God created light the first day and ended the work with beer drinking as a sign of resting. In discussing the differences between theatre and performance art he pointed out that in theatre it is the intension of the performer to entertain or to manipulate the audience through storytelling whereas in performance art the artists in not playing a role but manipulating the medium. He described conceptual art using an example of opera, how people might not understand a word of Italian but anyone can understand the essence through the mood or the atmosphere. Today, he is continuing in his works of conceptual art through different mediums such as print-making and installations.

artist talk : Andrea Bowers

She is a political activist artist who works with variety of mediums to present her research based art works that are about the power relations or struggles in the society. She started the talk with presenting 20miutes video of , a video that is a close-up of love letters written by a feminists Emma Goldman who was very influential in Andrea Bowers works. By showing her letters she not only wanted to show the character of the writer but the history of women's mark making. There was no doubt that Andrea Bowers was a strong feminist and was pushing her art work to the extremes. She presented another work where she made political posters out of wrapping paper (commonly used in women's crafts) and handed out to people. By looking at the photographs it seems more like a political rally than an art work. The writings on the posters made her work very literal and almost pop art due to the material and the colors that she was using when making choices in choosing types of posters. In using the wrapping papers she repeatedly said that she was not interested in making the low materials such as wrapping paper, quilts and elevating it into forms of high art. However, the way she presented the work did not reflect her intensions because she would often hang the work in a gallery space. It was ambiguous as to where her voice was because I was confused if she was trying to present her research of radical political or social groups or she was trying to speak for them and she was being part of their voice. One work that really stand out was where it was a memorial of an Iraqi Faiz Ali Salim who travelled with an American Marla Ruzicka who were both killed while researching civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq. She took news articles of their story and using graphite drew the articles and then only left the lines that mentioned the Iraqi Faiz Ali Salim by erasing anything that was not about him. This showed how the media was densely covering the life of a blond American girl Marla and how there was very little attribute given to the Iraqi man. This work was more appealing to me than other works of hers because the work was more indirect in what it was trying to say. The emptiness of the 20 framed graphite drawings drew me closer as a viewer to figure out what was there and what was not there. Where is the line between political art and art used to serve the political means of a group? (Posters that meat to hang in a gallery vs. on the streets for propaganda) Why does she choose to call herself an artist over a political activist?