Searching for visual significance in times of transition
As you’d might have noticed, recently I’ve changed the style of my blog. I started in 2005 to post works of art which somehow grabbed my attention. Mostly accompanied with a short text which I found on the internet. These texts were selected with the criteria that they should shortly explain a little more about these works and the practice of the artist to a broader audience.
Picture above: Sculpture in front of the bus station in Varna, Bulgaria.
After publishing for several years now it helped me to get a clear idea about what is going on in the contemporary art scene. More recently I realized that this form of writing is not convenient anymore, so I needed a change to keep it interesting. My ongoing research after the political role of visuals, with a special interest for the public sphere, made me decide to widen my view. So I form now on I will not limit myself by the art category only, but will focus on the visual and political meaning of a wide variety of situations and arrangements. This blog will be for now the place to share my observations and thoughts. If you have any tips about legal or non legal visual interventions please inform me. This summer my wife and I travelled to Varna in Bulgaria on the Back Sea coast. As a Dutch resident I am used to a stricktly controlled public domain and my aim was to focus on the Bulgarian situation. When searching for these spots in this post-communistic society, that is also described as a society in an era of wild capitalism, I realized how little I really knew and know about its communist past. I am wondering what exactly were the living standards and conditions. What I hear from stories is that it was highly controlled by the communistic party (dictatorship). The ideology was that everything was for everybody but this meant it was at the same time from no one at all. This gave rise to large scale corruption. I hear there were camps for dissidents and the parties ideology was the only true ‘religion’ which was allowed. I am wondering if this is part of your historical luggage, how would this past influence you in today’s society? A question which is keeping me busy. When I looked for old pictures of Varna I saw clean and broad streets that were well ordered and maintained. As for now they look often broken and damaged by the time. With some exceptions of course around big multinationals who recently invaded the fragile local economy. When you look at this, knowing that there is a non functioning government in this country and where there is a huge gap between the large majority of very poor people and the often corrupted rich, it doesn’t make you too optimistic. Keep this in your mind when you look at the photo's below, these circumstances makes it still hard for me to understand the core of what these images are telling me. The photo below shows a garden that was made by someone who claimed this public ground for private use and is willing to protect ‘his’ property.
If the public space is not equipped by governance people build their own benches for private use only...
Or this space where a certain group of people meets after work.
On one of our walks we came across this broad staircase leading to a pedestrian tunnel that is currently out of use. Trees are growing everywhere and a lot of garbage is collected here. What are the nowadays opportunities I wonder? It looked to me as a great spot for a public theatre, imagine how this area must have looked when it was newly made...
On one hand it looked as so much is possible to improve this environment, on the other hand a paralyzing heaviness is controlling the hot summer streets of Varna. As a place where transition is balancing and could go in all sorts of unexpected directions.
Within this ambiguous state of existence you can feel a need for visual direction and social planning. The question is only how and who to give direction towards this 'new identity' within this new political context, while carrying the weight of a loaded past; The highest pylons with flags in Europe were raised in the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Varna. In Bulgaria you can still find a lot of impressive monuments from the communistic era. These flags I am showing were placed right in front of The Park-Monument of the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship. Where a huge propagandistic sculpture was showing that this territory was part of the Soviet zone of influence, now two major flags were chosen to symbolize the new era. The flags are more than 294 sq.m (21.5 m. x 13 m.), ‘which is the size of the biggest flag in Europe situated in Madrid’ says an online article.
The flags and the monument are clearly visible on the left when you drive from Varna up north by the seaside. When we tried to enter the monument by foot from the sea garden we had to cross several busy motorways, as if we were not meant to be visiting this site. What I try to say is that the monument is part of Bulgaria’s history but it looks like searching for the right context in todays picture. On the internet I found a paper from a representative of the young generation Bulgarians who states that it is sad that these monuments aren’t used to attract tourists. The monuments are missing in the governments brochure for tourism. These sounds are all part of a general debate which ishould lead towards a new way of dealing with these sites.
There is not a lot I can find on the internet about this particular monument, but I read that for a work to be qualified as a Socialist Realist one it not only had to be figurative, also certain ideological qualities had to be present, most important was, to show in a clearly and understandable manner the future-in-the-present, to somehow embody progress towards the utopian state of Communism. I am wondering within this light how to look at these two large flags and how they relate to this future-in-the-present?
The park-monument of the Bulgarian-Soviet friendship was built by Architect: Kamen Goranov and Sculptors: Alyosha Kafedzhiyski, Evgeni Baramov on the Turna Tepe hill, this site the Russian forces had their base before the successful attack on Varna during the Russian –Turkish War of 1828–1829.
Picture above: Old photo of the monument I found on the internet.
Build in 1974 and constructed for 7 months with the help of 27000 ‘volunteers’, the monument is made of 10000 tons of concrete and 1000 tons of armature iron. More than 20 000 trees were planted in the area surrounding the monument. During the night, the 7th symphony of Shostakovich used to be played on the public announcement system in the park. The 48m wide monument was illuminated by 180 spotlights, so it was visible from the sea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._7_(Shostakovich) http://youtu.be/xuCUdGyUrr0 Soon after the political changes in the beginning of 1990 the monument and the adjacent bookstore, bomb shelter and tourist office were abandoned. Today the eternal flame has disappeared, just like the massive bronze letters from the inscription reading “Friendship for centuries throughout centuries”.
Picture above: Old photo of the eternal flame.
Here on the website of art historian and curator Reuben Fowkes you can read much more about Soviet War Memorials in Eastern Europe. http://www.translocal.org/reubenfowkesnet/papers/soviet%20war%20memorials.htm http://www.translocal.org/writings/sovietwarmemorials.html
At this very moment the place looks abandoned, people are using the stairs for their sport exercises. Some boys where spray painting their tag on the concrete when we were visiting the site. Later on I found information online that a few adventurers were reporting on their visits to the site. They described the existence of the atomic bomb shelter and a system of large tunnels which might even reach for kilometers towards the Sea Garden.
Link to a few of these blogs: http://www.thebohemianblog.com/2012/04/urban-exploration-soviet-propaganda.html http://io9.com/5899924/an-extremely-creepy-tour-of-an-abandoned-soviet-war-memorial http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/european-international-sites/83202-monument-bulgarian-soviet-friendship-varna-bulgaria-july-2013-a.html
When I go back to where I started my post, I am not aware enough of the situation during the communist rule in Bulgaria. But the walk towards this monument made a big impression on me. Living in times where image culture is continuously bombarding us with a large amount of images made me think that I had become numb for visuals. But here I am not sure anymore what to think. I am unable to disconnect the monument from its past and that makes it impossible to say that I like what I see and feel here. Even out of this context and abandoned as the site appears today, it still brings an overwhelming visual experience which I haven’t felt for any other visual art piece so far. And I am not only talking about the size, but the way the whole experience is embracing the viewer. When you Google on the biggest sculptures in the world you might find out that they are all made to impress and communicate ideology. In this light I wonder how we could perceive and contextualize the large scale inflatable’s of Paul McCarthy or sculptures by Jeff Koons?
My mind shifts between these communistic monuments and searches for a capitalistic variant of high-tech visual propaganda. Is it in the explanation of the word democracy or the visualizations around terrorism these days? Is it comparable with the fear that the gigantic Russian soldier sculptures bring to their audience, always depicted high above the serving citizens? Fear as a tool to control is as old as ages.
The Statue of Liberty in NY watches over seas and people to come to the land of the ‘free’ in the same way as The park-monument of the Bulgarian-Soviet friendship. The symbol of Western ideology might as well be dominated by the logo of Apple or Microsoft. Ask yourself, do we know who is behind the steering wheel of the visual representation of our times, towards a future in the present?
Text Edwin Stolk (originally published here)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty
