After the final fall of the "curtain", the grim landscape of these places
could finally be scanned: the earth, barren and heavily trodden, like in a
disused paddock, a most realistic counterpart of the disaster. The differences
can be spotted, but the similarities ar far more compelling - the same sadness
stemming from unaccomplished hopes, the reciprocal deliberate act of ignoring
the other, isolation from the media network in the western world. Thus,
suspended between the borders turned into absolute barriers, far beyond the
"integration" that politicians invoked, East Europe poignantly felt her
exclusion from Europe. Having to cope with economic dificulties, in which it
is becoming ever more engulfed, East Europe finds out that nobody really
cares anymore, there is no more time and the interest in its problem areas
declines.
The esthetician experiences with more and more subjective involvement,
the drama of this "Zone". He feels like
a kind of stigma, the dire poverty, the isolation of the people she is part
of. In the context of this desperate world, that is crying out its lack of
hope, the artist must find his own means to meke himself understood. Among
the art genres, the East European artist takes up the most direct -
performance art. In the former regime,
this had been their way of expressing their protest and it was generally
forbidden.
The choice of Timisoara as the venue of the Festival is obviously charged
with significance: the city became a symbol of the painful emancipation from
under communism. And if in general, all through Europe, the change occured
under peaceful circumstances, through "velvet" revolutions, in Romania
freedom could only be retrieved through bloodshed. On the other hand
Timisoara has always been one of the most reprezentative, interesting and
dynamic centres of the country, thanks to a fully-developed avantgarde
movement in the 60s and 70s (the Sygma Group),
with hepled to keep alive the taste for experiments and innovation.
This encounter of East European artists allows for a systematisation of
the problems. Incessantly antagonized from the outside, the artist lives on
the periphery of existence, subjecting her himself to masochistic physical
suffering (running needles through his arms, hammering his chest) and the
state of confused evasion induced by narcotics (Aby Space Group, Poland).
Another obsession of the East is the political context. After the
revolutionary 1989, simultaneously with the collapse of communism we witness
the upsurge of national talents repressed for more than 40 years of dictatorship.
This nationalistic movement engenders strong conflicts, some of them beyond
control (ex-Yugolslavia). An invitation sent out to an artist from Subotica,
received no reply. Against this background the installation of Ruxandra and
Ion Grigorescu sings praises to the Balkanic links through the
artist's own family tree. On the other hand, the two artists conducted an
opinion poll referring the audience to the imminence of a local war, a very
disquieting insight into people's states of mind.
Dan Perjovschi's "Antiperformance",
witch is stated to last "as long as the autor", entitled "Romania",
the word tattooed on the artist's shoulder before his audience, in an
"intimate, tedious and definitive show", as the artist thinks. He places the
value of this type of nationalistic discourse in a subcultural milieu, in
the underworld area.
Stimulated by the European atmosphere of Timisoara, by the superiority it
displays due to its multi-cultural configuration,
the Ütö Gustav and Konya Reka group
highlighted the coexistence of Hungarians and Romanians, in an artistic act
of dramatic interpretation.
The impossibility of communication between East and West, the crisis of
perception marking the latter, bringsabout an unsurmontable isolation in the
very century of communiccation and mass media. This is ironically and
abruptly hinted at in Teodor Graur's
performance entitled "Speaking to Europe from Europe".
It is a challenge to deep-rooted habits through the radical demolition of
taboos relating to sex and bread, that Janos Szirtes
and Lugossy László (Hungary) achieved with
compelling professionalism in their performance. Round the same area is
centred Imre Bukta's contribution, who
formulates ironies, with a type of humour bordering on the absurd, with
regard to the political and cultural context of the East European Zone.
The ecological approach of István Kovács
(Hungary) is tailored to the genre professed by the artist - body art.
Searching after a solution to the extreme states of mind, some artists
take refuge in their own personal mythologies. Amalia Perjovschi's
vindictivennes has a target her alter ego, a rag doll, releasing thus her
tensions in a purifying attempt, whilst Sorin Vreme
constructs an entire mechanism - intricate and absurd - and assumes the
mechanical, senseless gestures, stemming from a drab grey daily ritual.
The same theme is at the basis of the video "Automatic Cocktail",
done by Geta Brătescu and Alexandru Solomon,
demonstrating an elaborate techical treatment, with a view to emphasizing
the exasperating routine, automatism of some gestures.
The expressive means of the different participants are diverse. From the
most authentic existential expression of the Polish
"Aby Space" Group, the body performance
of István Kovács to the
deployment of theatrical means by the Slovak artist
(Juhász Jozsef and Zalaba Zsuzsa) or
the experimentalism form the musical performance of Alexandru Patatics,
the participants fully ilustrated the overriding directions of the genre.
But beyond any speculation whatsoever, they proved to be truthful, authentic
and deeply motivated in their artistic approaches. This type of
straightforwardnees is doubled by a specific spitituality.