NOT FOR SALE: Art Communities of the 1990s as a Possibility (Alternative)
Compared to official cultural institutions and emerging fine art galleries, the activities of the autonomous art communities of the 1990s appear today as ephemeral and marginal efforts without great influence. With institutions such as the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art Network,1) which have attracted some attention in recent years, they shared some of the declared values, such as the need for greater openness, a critical attitude towards the contemporary art market, an interest in contemporary artistic practices, including electronic media, and harnessing the internet’s potential. These initiatives were sustained mostly by the artists themselves and, like the Soros centers, internationally oriented. One reason they have not received adequate attention from historians may be their often hybrid, multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary nature. Their activities usually transcended and interconnected narrowly defined artistic categories such as music, performance art and visual arts. They still await evaluation in the academic discourse of contemporary art theory and history.
One example is the programmes of the Hermit Foundation and the Centre for Metamedia Plasy, which in the 1990s provided ‘possibilities for interdisciplinary collaboration for artists, theorists and students’,2) mainly by organising symposia and festivals, through publishing and recordings. The digital archive compiled by Miloš Vojtěchovský in recent years is the first step towards placing them in a broader, political-geographic, or socio-political and cultural context.3) It outlines how and by whom the organisers around Hermit were inspired, what contacts and exchanges they established with similar centres and initiatives, not only in the West, but also in the closer Central European area. We can learn more about them today from the documentation and publications, mostly of which were produced by the protagonists and participants themselves.
Studio erté, active in the field of international art, performance and experimental poetry, has organised the Transart Communication festival in Nové Zámky since 1988. The studio’s activities were documented in book form in an anthology.4) Společnost pro nekonvenční hudbu [Society for Unconventional Music] (SNEH) was a loose group of artists,5)) which among other things organised the international festivals FIT – Festival intermediální tvorby [Festival of Intermedia Art] (1991, 1992) and Sound Off (1995–2003). The activities of SNEH and the affiliated Transmusic Comp. ensemble working from Bratislava are summarised in the anthology from 1996.6) The work of their founder Milan Adamčiak has been carefully mapped and documented in a four-volume publication by Michal Murin, a member of both groups, who has collaborated with Adamčiak since the late 1980s.7) Video recordings and incomplete documentation are available on the internet on the Media Research Foundation, which held major multidisciplinary and international symposia in Budapest, The Media Are With Us!: The Role of Television in the Romanian Revolution (1990) and MetaForum (1994–1996).8) The concept for a series of international events was conceived in Łódź as early as in 1981. Under the name Konstrukcja w procese (Construction in Process, 1981–2000), they presented the work of dozens of Polish and international artists working in multimedia, video, film, photography, object art and installation. Other editions were held in Munich, the Negev Desert in Israel, Melbourne and Bydgoszcz. Later, they became the subject of two retrospective exhibitions, including catalogues.9)
The social networks of these initiatives overlapped to some extent, even if the basis of their activities differed considerably. In the case of Plasy, these were mainly long-term residencies, festivals and symposia tied to the site of the Baroque Cistercian monastery in the west Bohemian countryside. The focus of Studio erté shifted from an interest in experimental poetry towards action art and performance, using the spaces and streets of the Slovak-Hungarian town of Nové Zámky. On the other hand, the Society for Unconventional Music organised concerts and performances in the Slovak capital, which mostly transcended the established forms of musical genres. The Media Research Foundation in Budapest was primarily devoted to artistic research into the social role of television and networked media through professional symposia and by co-running the Nettime network platform.10) In post-industrial Łódź, Construction in Process presented art ‘as a process, as the construction of forms and ideas that take place within social space.’
Although the aesthetic strategies presented at such events covered a very wide spectrum, their common denominator in this respect can be found in the specific concept of the connection between art and civic issues. To a certain extent, these and other initiatives followed the pre-revolutionary ‘anti-political’ tendencies, whose social strategy was ‘to democratise society rather than the state.’11) Thanks to the periodicity of events, adaptation to local circumstances and conditions, and the informal situation of contacts between artists and audience, they became an alternative to art intended primarily for entertainment and consumption, where issues of civil society were usually not very prominent or emphasised. At the same time, these art communities became an alternative to the notion of art and artistic creation as an expression of existential layers and a manifestation of individual freedom. In Central and Eastern Europe, this introspective concept is associated with the atmosphere and situation of unofficial and alternative art and society, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. The meaning and significance of artistic creation, traces of which can be found in the documentation of the environment of artistic community initiatives of the 1990s, was concerned not only with the strategy for long-term sustainability of one's own activities; it also thematised questions of aesthetic, moral and social values that in a way resonate in this region to this day.