NOTES FOR AN EASTWARD JOURNEY
BETWEEN HISTORY, MEMORY AND IDENTITY
Abstract from the essay in the catalogue
by Christine Frisinghelli / Francesca Lazzarini

This publication focuses on contemporary artistic positions in Central and Eastern Europe from the viewpoint of “memory, identity and history”. Today, in the latter half of 2009, the image of Eastern Europe and the way we see the countries, states and regions described by this geographical concept are especially influenced by our memories of the events of 1989: twenty years ago we watched – incredulous, awed, touched and deeply impressed – as the former Eastern bloc collapsed. This commemoration takes us back to the summer and autumn of that year, when first the “Iron Curtain” opened between Hungary and Austria and thousands of citizens of the German Democratic Republic headed for the West; when the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November; when, a bit later, the (Czech) sametová revoluce – Velvet Revolution – and (Slovak) nežná revolúcia – Gentle Revolution – went off peacefully in the CSSR; and when the final weeks of that year saw the dramatic events that would lead to the end of the dictatorial regime in Romania. The end of the “Cold War” also brought about the end of the face-off between two systems whose different ideological, economic and societal models had shaped the twentieth century. At that moment, and in the notion of a future of prosperity for everyone, the terms freedom and democracy seemed inseparably linked with the global successful model of the capitalist economic system. Yet in the face of political reality the hopes of a natural and inevitable democratic development in Europe soon proved to be an illusion. While the “Iron Curtain” between the two blocs had vanished, the borders in Europe have grown longer: the territorial configuration of Europe, codified by agreements made after the two world wars, was called into question, seizing the opportunity to implement concepts of national, linguistic and ethnic identities within changed borders. In some cases, a split into (new or old) national entities meant liberation from an imposed myth of belonging together (as Jirí Sevcík comments on the division between the Czech Republic and Slovakia), and this division was accomplished peacefully. At least since the beginning of the war between the former constituent republics of Yugoslavia we have become cruelly aware (once again) of how fragile the idea of a peaceful Europe – oft invoked since 1945 – turns out to be, and how profoundly the history of Europe is defined by war. We have also had to admit that socio-political consensus and political ability to act prove to be an extremely difficult undertaking on a democratic basis, particularly when economic pressure, wardriven flight, and global migration reveal xenophobia, nationalism and fundamentalism even in the economically successful and seemingly democratically stable countries of Western Europe, with the effect that populist right-wing parties are arguing their concepts with increasing success.

***
The twenty-nine artists present in the collection come from eighteen countries in different zones: Balkans and former Yugoslavia, Baltic republics and Central European nations, countries in the past inside, or outside, the Soviet Bloc, or even states like Turkey, which became part of NATO in 1952 and which – as a gateway between two continents – today searches for a new place in the process of redefining Europe. Heterogeneity distinguishes this group of artists. Even before 1989 it was impossible to outline the existence of a single Eastern European art: each country had its own artistic specificity dictated by the varying degrees of political and cultural dependence upon the Soviet Union, by the level of economic modernization, by its opening towards other Eastern and Western countries, by the degree of autonomy and freedom of expression allowed to artists within each country. After the demise of the Soviet Union, the heterogeneity of approaches multiplied due to its entry into the global market, and contact with the Western art system and dialogue – not always conciliatory – was gradually established. A few common traits can nonetheless be detected. The history of these peoples was in many cases marked by the conflict between totalitarian and opposing ideologies – fascism and communism, capitalism and socialism – and, successively, by national, ethnic and religious conflicts that made the theme of identity a crucial issue. If on the one hand this constitutes even today a traumatic issue to face, on the other hand it seems to have given artists the critical and cultural tools that are today particularly useful in interpreting the contemporary world. A further consequence of such historical courses is the realization and strengthening of the bond between personal experience and public, social and political life, a coincidence that often returns as the starting point in the work of many artists, at times like personal traumatic and painful baggage, while at other times as a stimulus to assume civil, political as well as artistic responsibility. […]

***
Photography (along with film and video as means of artistic expression) has undergone a visible enhancement over the past ten years. This was accompanied by a focusing of interest on socio-political issues, which, at the same time, led to a new positioning of documentary strategies. Within the same time frame, we also observed a shift in the boundaries of art reception (after the end of the Cold War) and an increase in the visibility of non-Western positions. These two phenomena converged above all where the experience of a globalized world – above all in terms of economic policy – gave cause to describe questions regarding origin and identity, social participation and economic survival with the means of technical image media, to entrench and convey them in the art discourse. In this context we can indeed refer to photography as a contemporary medium to which the art market has also reacted with increased interest. At the same time, however, we can establish that this newly gained status of photography in the art context also causes important positions of photographic practice to be masked out that (above all in Europe) were responsible for the emergence and continuity of a very differentiated culture of photography in the past decades. The analysis of the history of the medium and its inherent characteristics (e.g. seriality, indexicality, the archival, concrete reference to reality, and its technical existence as a multiple existent image) led to conceptual methodologies without, however, having to deny the image as the result of aesthetic decisions, without relinquishing the claim to contemporaneity in the analysis of social reality. However context-specifically or historically and geographically defined we perceive a work in relation to the general context of art, the fact is that we require an extremely precise and historically honed vocabulary in order to bring the work of a generation of photo artists back into the debate and to acknowledge their major contribution to the culture of photography. Seen as a whole, the works of these artists constitute a practice that appears to be heterogeneous, comprising conceptual strategies, series with narrative coherence, search for autobiographical traces. The formal, technical and material decisions that define the physical presence of these works as “images” are as numerous and diverse as the reservoir of memories, projections and utopias from which they draw their thematic urgency. They share an awareness of the problems, modesty and dependency on context intrinsic to the medium that they use: photography. But what they also share is the certainty with which they release their work (also by way of this book) into the space of the media in a process of exchange and communication.

HISTORY, MEMORY AND IDENTITY
Contemporary Photography
from Eastern Europe
from 13th December 2009 to 14th March 2010
EXTENDED THROUGH MARCH 21ST

PRESS PREVIEW
11th December at 11.00 a.m.

EXHIBITION OPENING
12th December at 5.30 p.m.

OPENING HOURS
Tuesday - Sunday 11 a.m.-7 p.m.
Closed on Monday

CATALOGUE
Skira, 248 pages, colour
Texts by Filippo Maggia, Christine Frisinghelli/Francesca Lazzarini

PLACE
Modena
Ex Ospedale Sant’Agostino
Largo Porta Sant'Agostino, 228
Info ++39 335 1621739

ADMISSION FREE

FURTHER INFORMATION
tel ++39 335-1621739
info@mostre.fondazione-crmo.it

PRODUZIONE
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena
Via Emilia Centro, 283
41100 Modena
Tel. +39 059 239888
Fax +39 059 238966
E-mail: info@mostre.fondazione-crmo.it

PRESS OFFICE
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena
Cecilia Lazzeretti, Claudia Fini
tel. +39 059 239888 fax +39 059 238966
e-mail ufficiostampa@fondazione-crmo.it