{"id":400400,"date":"2005-01-23T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-01-23T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/?p=400400"},"modified":"2022-06-13T22:50:32","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T21:50:32","slug":"az-elokepek-a-mai-allapot-reszet-kepezik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/tema\/az-elokepek-a-mai-allapot-reszet-kepezik\/","title":{"rendered":"Precedents are Part of the Present"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Much-travelled Monument<\/a><\/div>\r\n\t\t
Little Warsaw: Instauratio<\/i><\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/td>\r\n\t<\/tr>\r\n\t<\/table>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n
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The feasibility of the exhibition strategies used in Little Warsaw\u2019s \u201cInstauratio\u201d raises some questions. How do you see it all in light of your earlier\r\ncollaborations with Little Warsaw?<\/i><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Just as the formation and interpretation of art is never complete, the same is true of the manner in which an artwork is displayed. Little Warsaw is different from\r\nso many of its contemporaries in that they insist on a say in possible strategies of presentation, indeed they consider the positions they take to be part of their works.\r\nIn every exhibition space (like the \u201cCrosstalk\u201d exhibition 1<\/b><\/sup><\/a>,\r\nthe events in Haj\u00f3s utca 2<\/b><\/sup><\/a>, at the Venice\r\nBiennial and every other show), the artists themselves determined how full the display space would be, and what texts would accompany the works, and the lighting,\r\nand all other details. Both expressed and unexpressed information have always played a major role in their projects. There was no documentation, photographic or\r\notherwise, to indicate the origin of the objects displayed either in \u201cCrosstalk\u201d (Marble Street) \r\n\r\n[I.]<\/b><\/a> \r\n[II.]<\/b><\/a> \r\n[III.]<\/b><\/a>, \r\n\r\nor Nefertiti\u2019s Body, or the Sz\u00e1nt\u00f3 Kov\u00e1cs statue in Amsterdam. This is an elitist strategy for displaying works, because it does not seek to explain, but rather to raise\r\nquestions by refusing to reveal the provenance of an exhibited work.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

There must be cases where this raises questions, but with works like this that carry complex sets of associations, this does not help to reveal that complexity.<\/i><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Every work is complex, but only part of this complexity comes from the history of art; another part comes from their social and historical context. Little Warsaw\r\ndraws on both of these, and since this is not aiming to be socio-art, it does not speak the language of public art. True, from this standpoint, a full clarification would\r\nrequire interpretation.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

What strategy emerges from the way Little Warsaw uses other works and monuments, in your view? There is a tradition of this from the work shown in the\r\nHague 3<\/b><\/sup><\/a> (Deserted Memorial \r\n[I.]<\/b><\/a>\r\n[II.]<\/b><\/a>) to \u201cInstauratio,\u201d also including Nefertiti\u2019s Body and Marble Street.<\/i><\/p>\r\n\r\n

The \u201cevocation\u201d of a work of art is not in itself an artistic strategy, only a technique. I see the strategy as being a mode of behavior that only rarely becomes\r\nvisible in the work of art itself, but primarily in the commentary that surrounds it. By \u201cevocation\u201d I do not mean quotation or reference, but rather a situation in which\r\nan already existing work evokes associations in a new context \u2013 in this case, through the style and thematics of a public statue, associations of an historical and\r\ncultural situation. What this work really shows, through its use of another\u2019s creation and the fact of its removal, is the artist\u2019s intellectual point of view. Little\r\nWarsaw\u2019s projects that use other works of art seem to present the notion that contemporary art is not a status quo but a process, one where precedents are a\r\ncomponent of the present situation \u2013 and so are usable and quotable.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

What do you see as the source of the tensions that have arisen at least since Little Warsaw\u2019s contributions in Venice, tensions that have created a fertile soil\r\nfor the present mis-explanations?<\/i><\/p>\r\n\r\n

This is because the members of Little Warsaw are working in a genre in which they are not educated. They have no degree in sculpture and attempt things that are\r\ndifficult even for trained professionals. So it is natural that they are sharply criticized by those who see them as skirting the serious professional tasks.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

At the same time, this means that they can approach sculpture in new ways. But I don\u2019t think all this has anything to do with their having or not having\r\nprofessional training in sculpture (though someone seeking norms can certainly use this to justify his argument). I was thinking, among other things, that a source of\r\nthis tension might be that they have taken the risk of working with original works.<\/i><\/p>\r\n\r\n

The idea of risk is a very important component of the creative process. This is obviously a given for the generations that have grown up on the avant-garde.\r\nWithout it, a work of art would be no more than an intellectual exercise, an outline of \u201cwhat would happen if?\u201d Little Warsaw wants to exempt itself from that situation\r\nby using preexisting original works.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Budapest, January 12, 2005
\r\nInterviewed by: Nikolett Er\u0151ss
\r\nTranslated by: Jim Tucker<\/p>\r\n\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

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 <\/p>\r\n\r\n

1<\/b><\/a> Crosstalk. Group exhibition, M\u0171csarnok \u2013 Kunsthalle, 1st<\/sup> June – Aug. 9th<\/sup>, 2000. Curated by Zsolt Petr\u00e1nyi. Little Warsaw participated in this show with their work entitled: Marble Street.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

2<\/b><\/a> The studio of Little Warsaw in Haj\u00f3s utca (Haj\u00f3s street), Budapest, where exhibitions and related talks were held regularly.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

3<\/b><\/a> See: http:\/\/www.denhaagsculptuur.nl\/en\/juryreport.htm<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much-travelled Monument Little Warsaw: Instauratio   The feasibility of the exhibition strategies used in Little Warsaw\u2019s \u201cInstauratio\u201d raises some questions. How do you see it all in light of your earlier collaborations with Little Warsaw? Just as the formation and interpretation of art is never complete, the same is true of the manner in which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":630394,"parent":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tema"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2023787,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400400\/revisions\/2023787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}