Guest Editors: Leigh French, Adam Jeanes and Simona Nastac
Production Team: Valentina Gottardi, Ann Harezlak and Lucy Parker

The 2007 Almanac of Political Art

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS + INVITATION TO PUBLIC EVENT

Deadline for contributions: 28 June 2007, 1700h
Discussion and production: 30 June 2007, 1100h –1600h,
Austrian Cultural Forum, 28 Rutland Gate, London SW7
Free and open to the public, refreshments will be served!

What makes art political today?

At a time of increasing awareness through symposiums, writings and critique of ‘political art’, it is time to reclaim and re-assess the terms, unravel where our politics lie and determine how politics are expressed through art and/or art achieves political aims. How do our understandings of political art differ and what are our shared concerns?

This is a chance to air our differences and document our ideals in the 2007 Almanac of Political Art!

The Alamanc will be edited and produced in one day marking two-years of REUNION meetings, exhibitions and events with artists from the UK and South East Europe. The Almanac aims to reunite the material, people and understandings of the terms and tactics of political art practice in Europe today.

An almanac (meaning ‘climate’ in Arabic) is usually published once a year and acts as a reference book of statistics, facts and recent events for that year. Almanacs sometimes include records of the rising and setting of the sun and moon, tide tables, planting charts, anecdotes, astronomical data and also predictions for the coming the year. The 2007 Almanac of Political Art follows this format, inviting people to contribute inspirations, quotes, hints, suggestions, references, drawings, photos, texts, weblinks, statistics and interesting facts relating to the question - what is it that makes art political? The editing and production of the Almanac in one day will mean the contents is filtered, discussed and analysed, leading to a series of predictions for political art in 2008.

Editor at large: Sophie Hope
Guest Editors: Simona Nastac and others TBC
Contributors so far include: allsopp&weir, Djordje Balmazovic, Nemanja Cvijanovic, Igor Grubic, Nada Prlja

Read on to find out how to contribute!

Distribution: Contact mail@reunionprojects.org.uk for copies of the Almanac. A small Postage and packaging fee might apply. The Almanac will also be available online later in the summer

During Nemanja's residency in London he showed some work in this exhibition at the ACF and took part in two discussions:

MONEY MATTERS: how is political art supported?
Presentations and discussion with Nemanja Cvijanovic, Nada Prlja and Sophie Hope.
Thursday 12 April, 1900h
Austrian Cultural Forum, London

CONTEXT MATTERS: Can political art travel and be understood?
public works Friday Session (on a Monday) with Nemanja Cvijanovic, Nada Prlja and Sophie Hope
Monday 23 April, 1900h
public works, Northgate House, 2-8 Scrutton Street, London EC2A 4RT
http://fridaysessionslondon.blogspot.com/

Notes from both these events and also the transcript from the interview with the Director of Austrian Cultural Forum, Johannes Wimmer about the Sweetest Dream, Nemanja's reworking of the EU flag, will be posted here soon.

From 11–14 April, the Austrian Cultural Forum in London will be temporarily transformed into a functioning estate agency, where Nada Prjla will take the role of an estate agent, offering for sale a selection of properties in the Balkans.

A year ago, a variety of problems became a part of everyday family life back in Macedonia - too many opinions, too many different needs. A sense of conflict and division even between the closest relatives became an increasingly common phenomenon, day by day… My mother, in an attempt to eradicate a series of repeated misunderstandings, come to the idea of selling our apartment - our home - as a possible solution to some of the issues that had invaded their lives. Since that day, a need to understand the relation between possession and a sense of belonging has haunted me.

There were many things that were ‘to blame for’ my mothers newly distorted vision about the notion of Home.
Firstly, I was angry of the effect of neo-capitalism, which was and still is ‘spreading as a virus’ in the geographical area of South Eastern Europe. Neo-Capitalism has made people aware of the market value of their possessions, followed by a sense of competitiveness in the economical domain.
Secondly, the notion of home/ motherhood has been vastly diminished, and the feeling of belonging, stability, and continuity has all been exchanged for a new type of stability – defined exclusively within a financial framework and the notion of financial stability.
Thirdly, and, for me, most painfully – the moment of replacement of the symbol (of home) in to a ‘straightforward thing’, a possession like any other that can be bought and exchanged like any other. The home as a marketable property is purely financial rather than having any emotional or symbolic value.
The need to incorporate Western standards has pictured the last decades in the level of the individual behaviour, city shape and society structure. The adaptation of the West was unfortunately taking only selected ‘values of Western society’ – for example - People have been waiting with the years for Mc Donald’s, Benetton and Mango to appear, in their full neon blast, where the real values of the West have been not acknowledged (as less neon representations), like knowledge and expression of personal freedom.
This adaptation has led blindly SEE people into plastic object consumers and kitsch fans.
Parallel to that the face of the cities has been developed by a storm of appropriation of public space by private interest, re-defining the distribution of the wealth and by acceptance of newly defined tastes.

The change within ex – socialistic countries was in many ways ‘fast-forwarded’
Is a possible motive for the ‘fast-forwarded’ change of the country’s policies perhaps a financial insecurity and the encouragement of a certain need for economical stability?

The ‘transfer of economical value’ is a clear illustration of a ‘fast-forwarded’ change within SEE society. Many moral/ethical questions could be stated in this discussion about which methodology of the policy makers is going to apply to this ‘accelerated’ process of modification of the whole society?

When the change is obligatory and imposed, my concern is not related to the reaction that could be provoked by the obligatory nature of this particular change. My concern is directed toward pointing out the reason why and how the obligatory change has been imposed in the first place.

Reunion is pleased to be hosting Nemanja's residency in London. Nemanja and I have been skyping about shared research interests and are looking forward to exploring more about the ways in which politically engaged practices are interpreted and supported (or misinterpreted and not supported).

The Sweetest Dream, 2005, flag

Nemanja describes the work:
'The european ‘second empire’ or ‘sub empire’ is united by dreams and symbols. Its boundaries are open to the circulation of goods but waterproof to the circulation of people. Near custom houses there are CPT (temporary permanence centres, along all the mediterranean coast: from Gorizia to Italian coast, to French coast, to Spanish coast. They look like concentration camps, from an age not so far, where people have no freedom, no justice and no culture). CTP are managed by a shameful society, that lives of wars, exploited countries’ misery (htey are its new ‘colonies’).
My point of view is from outside the EU, as Croatian citizen. EU approves without any problems the co-exhistence of ‘first and second degree (level/class)’ citizens within the community, and if we wanted to we could name even a group of ‘third’ degree invisible citizens.
I hope that everyone who sees The Sweetest Dream, when observing th EU flag next time, would reflect on what is become of this EU ‘anti-fascist’ dream of equality and economic sharing.'

Students of the London College of Communications made some of their own embroideries.

Lieve Carchon helped us to turn our collections of quotes into rhymes - thanks Lieve for your rhyming skills!

Thanks to Hanover in Hackney and SPACE for their support in organising the meetings between residents of Bayton and Adelaide Court and Skart.

I have got a confession to make. When I was younger I was madly and passionately in love with New Kids on the Block (NKOTB). I went to see them live three times, dragging my loyal, suffering, paying mother to different parts of the UK in order to do so.

Step by step ooh baby
Gonna get to you girl
Step by step ooh baby
Really want you in my world

Hey girl in your eyes
I see a picture of me all the time
And girl when you smile
You got to know that you drive me wild

(Step by Step, 1990)

Of course I believed these words whole-heartedly. Their tactic worked as millions of other young dungeree-wearing spotty girls thought the boys had invented these lyrics for them too. Did I have blind faith in this manufactured boy-band because I was really stupid or was there something else going on? It was not damaging for me to like this music. I was growing-up.

To what extent is the music we listen to harmless fun, propaganda or inciting violence? Pop impresario Maurice Starr cleverly tapped into the minds of pre-pubescent girls to make a lot of money by kindly giving the world NKOTB. You will be glad to hear I shunned NKOTB and went on to become a grumpy grunge teenager. KoRn are a more current version of what I had moved onto. Their songs also tap into an angst-ridden generation:

Day, is here fading
My time, has gone away
I flirt with suicide
Sometimes kill the pain

(Falling Away From Me, 1999)

Listening to music is a sole-searching exercise which most of us enjoy doing with a good sized dose of salt. We revel in the seriousness of this exercise and the utter absurdity of it. Bands such as Azra, Idoli and Disciplina Kicme that were part of the Yugoslav New Wave musical trend in the early 1980s embodied a self-awareness appreciated by many young people growing up in post-Tito Yugoslavia. The music provided an anti-establishment satire of Yugoslav socialism that was to some extent tolerated by the communist authorities.

While New Wave was enjoyed as an ‘avant-garde’, independent critique of society, the popular music of the early 1990s known as Turbo Folk became the official music of ‘paramilitary nationalism’. Still going strong, the music is now termed Pop Folk as its obsession with a glamorous lifestyle has replaced Turbo Folk’s overtly nationalistic messages. The music cleverly combines both exaggerated enthusiasm for rampant consumerism and latent nationalistic nostalgia. While the short-lived Yugoslav New Wave scene maintained a healthy suspicion of everyone and everything (communism and capitalism), Turbo Folk seems to devour it all.

What does it mean then for Nada Prlja to host a Turbo Folk competition as part of her exhibition, GLOBALWOOD? In drawing attention to the phenomenon and perhaps blind faith in turbo culture, this exercise attempts to draw attention to the absurd side of this music.

Whenever your night is long
Wine will make it shorter.

Start having a feast
Another day is on its way.

Oh brothers and sisters,
One day God will pay us back
For living this life as we do
As if it was a dream.

Jelena Karleusa, Pa Naravno, 2005

This competition offers us a chance to laugh at turbo-folk, enjoy it, hate it, but also understand that it is not the music but what it represents that makes this event so important. Turbo-folk is a contemporary symbol of a society in the throws of transition towards a self-absorbed, fake-tanned capitalist world. Despite its outwardly materialistic image, however, the use of eastern melodies is also seen as an anti-globalisation statement that has currency in the West. The schizophrenic musical result presents a coping strategy to enjoy this tension between the lure of both the local and global.

By putting on this event, Nada is asking both contestants (turbo-folk fans) and judges (artists and intellectuals) to face each other and confront the fact that they both take themselves perhaps a bit too seriously. One embraces the popular and ‘sexy’ image of turbo folk, the other dismisses it as superficial. I can imagine this scene, in which both performers and judges play their part is uncomfortable, but at the same time irresistible to watch. We, the audience are therefore implicated in the performance and have to recognise our own nervous, submissive state. We are sucked into the spectacle.

While there is an element of humour and irony in the competition, there is a more serious side. This action is not about persuading all people to dismiss turbo-folk. Instead, we are being asked to question our own beliefs and passions and recognise the twists and fates of our choices. There is a reason why turbo-folk taps into the life blood of a generation, culture or character. Revealing and dealing with those reasons is also a process of realizing the implications of our blind faith or alternatively complete dismissal of turbo-folk and all it represents.

How can the competition as an art event begin to ask these questions? Sometimes it takes a repetition or re-enactment to create a fraction of distance enabling us to question our actions and our listening tastes. At the time of my obsession with NKOTB I was unable to comprehend a future without them. An act such as the Turbo Folk / Pop Folk competition could be understood as an advert or celebration of Pop Folk. If it sets out to undermine the music, its fans would be reluctant to take part. They are unable to distance themselves from the music and so any manifestation of it is a welcome treat. What is the point then of such an exercise if only a few are in on the ‘joke’? Maybe it takes time for the critique to settle in.

I worked with Nada on her project, Advanced Science of Morphology which saw the blended flags of the countries of the former Yugoslavia flying in Marble Arch Park for two weeks in June 2006. We got permission from Westminster Council to remove the existing flags of the countries of the European Union and replace them with Nada’s new designs. There are many different readings of this action. By replacing the EU flags with those of countries on the margins of the EU (to date, of those countries of the former Yugoslavia only Slovenia is in the club), we are drawing attention to the power play across nations. We are giving some of the ‘Balkan’ nations a temporary, symbolic platform in a ‘centre of Europe’ – London. By doing this, we are also highlighting how problematic such a display of nationhood is. The fact that the flags do not represent the individual countries’ flags, but morph their emblems is a take on the fluidity and ambiguity between nations. To me, it questions the notion of nationhood in the first place. This is highly problematic as we are questioning and undermining an idea that many place utmost importance in to the extent that they will die or kill in order to maintain it.

While these are valid questions, what is the best way to ask them without the work itself becoming a nationalistic symbol? Journalists in Macedonia reacted to the installation in Marble Arch with nationalistic pride. One headline read:

'Our artist has pulled down the EU flags in the centre of London'

Is this a reflection of the media’s reluctancy to reflect critically on what it might mean for their flags to be morphed with symbols of neighbouring nations? Do you need to be at a distance (temporally and, or spatially) to ask these questions? While this may be the case, it could be argued that distance of time and place cancel out the potential for the action to have a knock on effect in the place it matters. But where does it matter? Advanced Science of Morphology asks questions of territorial claims and hierarchies across Europe. It is not just relevant in south east Europe but tells us something about Britain’s way of dealing with the wider context of European identities. The same Macedonian newspaper goes on to print:

'The EU fears Balkanization'

As a continuation of Advanced Science of Morphology, Nada’s new work, ‘Localn Globalism’, presents records painted with the colours and symbols of the flags of Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Sebia, and Turkey play music based on the words ‘localism’ and ‘globalism’. Songs from these countries feature the most on the turbo-folk TV channel, Balkania. The absence of Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro and Kosovo from this list reveals the power play between nationalities presented to us in everyday life. Manifestations of nationality are expected and normalised, whether that is through national symbols such as flags or in the lyrics of pop culture. Nada’s GLOBALWOOD presents the power of these symbols. It is the different interpretations of them that can reveal our fears, insecurities and dreams.

People who got involved included students from the London College of Communication; residents of Dayton Court and Adelaide Court (Hanover in Hackney) and other individual activists, artists and writers.

Here are some of the pieces. We used 3-D paint/pens to make them as it was a lot quicker than embroidery and has a similar effect! This reflects the speed at which people in London move - there's no time to fit in such a slow activity as embroidery!

A checked floor caught Igor's eye at Goldsmiths.

Igor saw some floor tiles in a reflection, that I now think he was intrigued by because they are a bit like the centre of the Croatian flag, but he called them cubes at the time, and I asked him if he was particularly interested in formal work.

I think that there was some confusion over the translation of the word formal, however, perhaps there was not. At the time I had been thinking of it in terms of the geometric designs and the possible analogous relation that would have to social concerns. Perhaps this was, in fact, understood. Igor later showed me work he called formal which was of him dressed in cartoon character furry suits, standing in prison corridors. Prisons that friends of his had been held in. They were formal in the sense that they were all had a single figure in a furry suit framed by prison walk-ways. But the figures did not all stand in the same way. He had not got his friends to dress in the suits he had done, because he felt it would be inappropriate. The suits were meant to be close to Disney characters- suggesting a possible analogy towards different modes of oppression-american capitalism as culpable as a serbian prison. I do not understand the Mickey Mouse Buddha but it is quite funny...

He gave a particularly interesting and informative talk on some of his past work at the Reunion pre-Christmas 'reunion'...

On 25 November, Sophie took part in a panel discussion in Athens about 'Borderlines' organised by the Forum European Cultural Exchanges and the Hellenic American Union. Other speakers included Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss & Katherine Carl, Heath Bunting and Angela Melitopoulos.

The expansion of the European Union in May 2003 to include 10 former socialist states caused wide spread media attention in the UK. News of the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in January 2007 has been met with the introduction of even more stringent immigration laws. Much of the press coverage in the UK over the widening of the European Union has been xenophobic, based on misunderstandings of other cultures and a fear of invasion of foreign workers. Headlines such as ‘Migrants ruining lives’ and ‘Migrants out of control’ continue to reflect these views, where as now, they are on the same page as travel tips to Dubrovnik and Ljubljana. Such double standards have been normalised and are reflected in Britain’s changing policies on immigration and human rights. The progression of Europe towards economic unification is resulting in incidents of rising nationalism.

The diverse ways in which artists are experiencing and interpreting the issues of a widening Europe was the subject of Trading Places, an exhibition curated by B+B (Sarah Carrington and Sophie Hope) in May 2003 in London (www.welcomebb.org.uk). The work in the exhibition and the integral programme of events presented different approaches artists based in Central and South Eastern Europe are taking towards issues of migration and border-crossing, from representing the experiences of migration as migrants themselves or collaborating with migrants to co-produce narratives, through to direct action by presenting alternatives to overcoming borders. The participants of Trading Places shared the need to raise the debate about migration and create a more complex picture that could challenge the dominant simplistic, imperial notion of nationalism. It became apparent, through working on Trading Places, that the concern that artists and curators have for reflecting and perhaps effecting change in the current social and political climate is inseparable from the power-plays inherent in the artist’s role as story-teller, educator, activator and agitator. The works and discussions in Trading Places raised the question: what is the relationship between the artist and her politics; how is a critique of that context and politics formed, performed, shared and made manifest?

Reunion is a framework through which to continue investigating this question. As a continuation of Trading Places, Reunion, led by Sophie Hope, is an action research, contemporary visual arts project that consists of meetings, experiments, residencies and exhibitions involving artists and curators based in the UK and South East Europe. The aim is to try out ideas and reflect on what it means to be political as a cultural producer in Europe today. The focus on this geographical area stems from a need to challenge perceptions of the ‘new’ Europe and its borders and to bring questions of unification, nationalism and identity to the fore. The Reunion projects have been a process of reviewing differences, commonalities and frictions across Europe.

Each research trip for the participants of Reunion - the meetings over coffee, train journeys and experiments in a strange land - are impossible attempts at trying to understand ones relation to a place. Who gets to report on these research trips? How is the communication across borders reciprocal and not just one way? Through Reunion, artists are moving from ‘east’ to ‘west’ and ‘west’ to ‘east’ to decide for themselves who and what gets interpreted, understood and reported.