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Book
Mona Vătămanu and Florin Tudor
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ISBN: 9789460830037 Year: 2009 Publisher: Utrecht BAK, Basis voor Actuele Kunst

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Abstract

Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor have been working together since 2000. In a practice that spans a variety of media—from installation to painting to photography to film—their work is dedicated to an exploration of the formal manifestations of and shifts in ideologies (be they communist or capitalist). The artists engage with the politics of memory in their examination of the material and symbolic remains of ideologies. Their work does not shy away from addressing the inherent violence of historical transformations, to paraphrase Marx, neither the possibilities for individual political action under these conditions.

Vatamanu and Tudor belong to a specific generation in Romania: a generation born during the baby boom, which began in the late sixties (and was to a large degree influenced by the biopolitical measures of the Ceausescu regime), who came of age on the barricades of the Romanian Revolution in December 1989 and during the spring and summer protests of 1990. After the enthusiasm and solidarity forged during the Revolution, and the subsequent profound disillusionment caused by the violent repression of the 1990 protests by fellow citizens who were instrumentalized by the new regime, this generation played a key role in establishing the dominant ideological framework in Romania over the last twenty years. The resulting hegemonic culture is fundamentally rooted in anticommunism—a stance that has come to reject any strains of progressive thinking implying models of social solidarity or collective action, as well as any attempts to critically negotiate the memory of the communist past together with its preceding history and subsequent transition. In this parochial environment of constant historical self-victimization, Vatamanu and Tudor’s voices are exceptional, defined by their engagement in revisiting this history—its forms of representations and its narratives of memory—but also through their bold sense of universalism, seeing their position and responsibility in a public arena that goes beyond the confines of Romanian culture.

The exhibition Surplus Value at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst is the most comprehensive presentation of the artists’ work to date. But rather than as a premature retrospective, this exhibition—the result of a long-term dialogue between the artists and the institution—should be seen as an attempt at structurally analyzing Vatamanu and Tudor’s field of engagement and strategies. It is as well an unabated continuation of their observations of and actions toward the realities of today’s world.


Book
Art and culture in times of conflict : contemporary reflections
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ISBN: 9788867490455 8867490451 Year: 2014 Publisher: Place of publication unknown Mousse Publishing

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During the night of August 25, 1914, a library holding 230,000 volumes went up in flames. It was the centenary of this incident—the destruction by German troops of the university library in Leuven—that prompted the exhibition “Ravaged : Art and Culture in Times of Conflict”. The destruction of the centuries-old university in Leuven sent a shockwave around the world, heralding the new practice of deliberately destroying libraries and other cultural resources as a strategy of twentieth-century warfare. The exhibition “Ravaged: Art and Culture in Times of Conflict” at M–Museum Leuven (2014) moves from a cultural-historical perspective, focusing on five thematic clusters that recur throughout history in representations of crimes against culture : ravaged cities, ruins, targeted heritage, propaganda, and art theft. Parallel to a historical section, which covers the period up to the end of the First World War, ten contemporary artists (Adel Abdessemed, Lida Abdul, Sven Augustijnen, Fernando Bryce, Cai Guo-Qiang, Mona Hatoum, Emily Jacir, Lamia Joreige, Michael Rakowitz and Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor) have been invited to show work tying into the exhibition theme—including two new creations, especially commissioned for “Ravaged”. This publication sets out to explore their respective oeuvres, and to provide more information about past projects and new ones. Even today, works of art are not only deliberately destroyed, but plundered, stolen from museums or dug up illegally from archeological sites. By including these contemporary visions, it shows how local histories fit into a near-endless litany of devastation and plunder, and how the destruction of cultural heritage remains a widespread scourge.Designed by Sara De Bondt and published in collaboration with M–Museum Leuven.

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