Erratum

Compensation Portrait: General Scheme of the New Objectivity
Original Author: Helio Oiticica, 1967
Notable Changes: Brazilian avant-garde changed to Czech contemporary art or post-communist condition.

Introduction

The Representing the Nation publication was prepared in relation to our participation in the International Triennial of Contemporary Art (ITCA) organized by Tomáš Vlček and Milan Knížák at the National Gallery (NG) in Prague in 2008. We were invited to create a new work.

We wanted to characterize the NG in Prague as an institution. In 2008 the NG was a member of the Association of Czech Galleries. We decided to visit all of its member institutions across the country during a six month period. This gave us an overview of topics, complications, facilities, and staff issues, including an understanding of the challenges the respective institutions face, in respect to the regional, economical, and historical collections of art for which they are responsible. How do they think about and reflect on their own practice? What kind of functions, positions, roles, or ambitions do they articulate?

Despite being dissatisfied with the research material, we made a decision to maintain the project’s original framework. We had anticipated more substantial visions or statements, so we applied an improvised strategy of so-called Compensation Portraits, inspired by a concept from the exhibition catalog First Papers of Surrealism held in New York in 1942. In this case, the surrealist painters were asked to bring photographs of people other than themselves to represent them in the publication. In this spirit, we selected theoretical texts on institutional critique from a range of international writers, translated these texts into Czech and presented them as texts from Czech institutions and their representatives.

The project as a whole was self-financed. The sponsors or partners whose logos are printed on page 59 at the end of the publication are all imaginary sponsors, themselves unaware of any seeming participation. Thus, the publication falsely takes on the form of a serious international cooperation between the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Practices (eipcp.net), the EU Education and Culture D6 Framework Program, the Association of Czech Galleries, the National Gallery Prague, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Prague, the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, and funded by the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank. This parody reflects the trend of corporate sponsorship supporting critical, progressive, intellectual, and autonomous initiatives within locations of their respective markets.

The Representing the Nation publication was immediately distributed to all of the represented institutions. The project was not appreciated by the organizers of the ITCA / NG, generally disappointed in not understanding the basic conceptual framework. They refused to cover production costs or to further communicate concerning the project. In addition, part of the publications went missing from the NG depository. Few institutions encouraged further dialogue, and there was limited interest by other representatives and researchers from various institutions in Prague.

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The Highland Gallery Nové Město na Moravě

Authority: The Czech Highlands Region
Director: PhDr. Josef Chalupa

History:
The Highland Gallery was founded in 1964 and built upon the rich art traditions of the Highlands in the birthplace of the sculptors Jan Štursa and Vincenc Makovský. During the years 1968-1972 the Highland Museum at Nové Město na Moravě and the Highland Gallery were merged. In 1972 the entire chateau was put at the disposal of the Gallery, which became once more an independent institution covering the whole region. Extensive reconstruction of the entire chateau, in line with Gallery requirements, began in 1986, with the completion in 1998.

Collection:
The core of the permanent exhibition is primarily the collection of sculpture with emphasis on classical trends in Czech 20th-century sculpture, Highland landscape painting and glass making. In 1998, to mark the anniversary of the founding of the Czechoslovak Republic, the Gallery opened an exhibition covering the period from 1918 until now. The bulk of the exhibition are largely bequests sculptures by 20th-century artists and a collection of 20th-century paintings. Practically unique is the collection of artefacts from the glass works at Škrdlovice and sets by artists working in glass.

Statement:

I will try to describe the typical state of Czech contemporary art as perceived from our institutional position. Its principal characteristics are: 1) general constructive will; 2) a move towards the object, as easel painting is negated and superceded; 3) the participation of the spectator (bodily, tactile, visual, semantic, etc.); 4) an engagement and a position on political, social and ethical problems; 5) a tendency towards collective propositions and consequently the abolition in the art of today, of “isms,” so characteristic of the last century; 6) a revival of, and a new formulations in, the concept of anti-art.

Therefore, as a typical state of current Czech art, it likewise distinguishes itself on the international plane from the two main currents of today; Post Conceptual Art and other quasi engaged art practices.
Current Czech art being a state, and not a dogmatic, aesthetic movement (as Cubism was, or instance, or any of the other “isms” constituted as a “unity of thought,” but unified nevertheless by a general verification of these multiple tendencies grouped into general tendencies). One may find, if one wishes, a simile in Dada, keeping in mind the distances and differences.

The problem of spectator participation is more complex, since this participation, which from the beginning was opposed to pure transcendental contemplation, manifests itself in many ways. There are, however, two well defined modes of participation: one is that which involves “manipulation” or “sensorial-corporal participation”; the other, that which involves a “semantic” participation. These two modes of participation seek, as it were, a fundamental, total, significant, nonfractioned participation, involving the two processes; that is, they are not reducible to the purely mechanical participation, but concentrate on new meanings, differing from pure transcendental contemplation. From the “playful” propositions to those of the “act,” from the “pure word” semantic propositions to those of the “word in the object,” in “narrative” works and works of political or social protest, what is being sought is an objective mode of participation. This would be the internal search, inside the object, desired by the proposition of active spectator participation in the process: the individual to whom the work is addressed is invited to complete the meaning proposed by it – it is thus an open work. It is useless to outline here a history of the phases and appearances of spectator participation, but it can be found in all the new manifestations of our avant-garde, from the individual work to the collective, e.g. “happenings”, “events” and “self organized “Temporary Autonomous Zones.” Experiences of both an individualized and a collective nature tend towards increasingly more open propositions in the sense of this participation, including those which tend to give the individual the opportunity to “create” his work. Likewise, the preoccupation with serial production of works, which would be the playful sense elevated to the highest degree is an important take-off point from this problem. There is currently in the Czech Republic the need to take positions in regard to political, social, and ethical problems, a need which increases daily and requires urgent formulation, since it is an crucial issue in the creative field: the so-called plastic arts, literature, new media, etc.

There are two ways to propose a collective art: the first would be to throw individual productions into contact with the public in the so called public spheres, naturally, productions created for this, not conventional productions adapted; the other is to propose creative activities to this public, in the actual creation of the work. In the Czech Republic, the tendency towards a collective art is what really concerns our new generation of artists.

In the Czech Republic, the roles take on the following pattern: how to explain and justify the appearance of a neo- avant-garde, not as a symptom of alienation, but as a decisive factor in its collective progress? How to situate the artists creativity there? The problem could be tackled by another question: who does the artist make the work for? It can be seen, thus, that this artist feels a greater need, not only simply to “create,” but to “communicate” something which for him is fundamental, but this communication would have to be large-scale, not for an elite reduced to “experts” but even “against” this elite, with the proposition of unfinished, “open” works. This is the fundamental key to a new concept of anti-art: not only to hammer away at the art of the past, or against the old concepts, as before, still an attitude based upon transcendentalism, but to create new experimental conditions where the artist takes on the role of “proposer,” or “entrepreneur,” or even “educator.” The old problem of “making a new art,” or of knocking down cultures, is no longer formulated in this way – the correct formulation would be to ask: what propositions, promotions and measures must one draw upon to create a wide-ranging condition of popular participation in these new open propositions, in the creative sphere to which these artists elected themselves. Upon this depends their very survival, and that of the people in this sense.

In conclusion, I want to evoke a sentence which, I believe, could very well represent the contemporary spirit, a fundamental sentence which, in a way, represents a synthesis of all these points and the current situation of the so-called Czech or Post Communist condition; it could serve as a motto, the rallying cry – here it is: OF ADVERSITY WE LIVE!