An interview with Lia and Dan Perjovschi
Lia and Dan Perjovschi are two Romanian artists working within the contemporary art field. Although Westerners take for granted the linear progress of contemporary art, in Romania this history was lacking due to an extremely repressive and conservative political climate, which lasted until 1989.
Communism in Romania has had an immense effect in the way its society dealt with the outside world. Under the rule of Nicola Ceausescu, who came to power in 1965, along with his Securitate, an oppressive political police of the Communist regime, Romania was held in the grip of a political ideology that equaled a perpetual time warp. Anything considered anti-communist, or ideologically conflicting with Ceausescu’s communist mandate, was deemed illegal and subsequently investigated by the Securitate. As a result, the majority of the people working within the arts and the humanities were forced to study, practice, or research topics and ideas that were not contemporary, or that would otherwise critique the regime itself. Information from the outside was strictly regulated and usually banned.
After the collapse of the Communist regime in 1989 and the execution of its leader Ceausescu, Romania became a social democracy. After 24 years of an oppressive regime, the country had to make up for lost time. As a necessity, many Romanians began amassing historical, theoretical, and political ideas that were once banned. Professors and students are now beginning to study material that was once considered too ideologically subversive, which would have been any field relating to contemporary history or theory. As this process is happening, however, the old ways of thought still pervade the country. In 1997 a group of artists, among them Ioan Godeanu, were expelled from the Bucharest Art Academy for “serious deviations from the school’s discipline” for exhibiting contemporary ideas that were not tolerated by the academy’s standards. These “standards” are maintained by professors still enmeshed in the philosophies of the past. After being expelled, the students formed a coalition and named themselves “The Construction & Deconstruction Institute” (www.theinstitute.ro).
As artists, Lia and Dan are taking it upon themselves to disseminate practices and theories that have been unheard of in Romania. Starting in 1990 the couple began traveling and exhibiting their own work. Lia has shown at the Belgrade Museum of Contemporary Art, at the Kunsthalle Goppingen in Vienna, and was a Visiting Professor at Duke University in 1997. In 1995, Dan was part of the international exhibition “Beyond Belief” at Chicago’s MCA, at the Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1999, and as an artist-in-residence at the Franklin Furnace in New York. While on their travels, the couple has gathered books, catalogues, slides, and postcards in order to disseminate the history, theory, and practice of art. The materials gathered was formed into the Contemporary Art Archive, which is now called the Center for Art Analysis (CAA), in Bucharest to provide a framework for artists working in Romania.
The following is an interview conducted at LIPA gallery in Chicago where Lia and Dan are exhibiting alongside Romanian artists Matei Bejenaru, Ioan Godeanu, and Teodor Graur, in the show Palpable Disequilibrium: Contemporary Art in Romania curated by Olga Stefan. The exhibition is on view until December 7, 2003.
F News: What is the political situation in Romania like today, as opposed to fifteen years ago, and how has it changed?
Dan Perjovschi: It’s paradoxical because when you’re outside the country it’s like one million things happening there, and when you go back not so many things have changed. Now, it’s a dramatic change, I mean, if you compare it with fifteen years ago, just aesthetically, people are dressed colorful. At the end of the ‘80s, it was all gray, everything gray, gray, gray. At least now people are nervous and they’re speedy, and they have business to do. At that time, nobody had anything to do.
Lia Perjovschi: Yeah, in a way we have to recuperate everything from the 1950s. Because we’ve lost fifty years during the communist time. And then suddenly, we are in 2003 like everybody and all these changes which are global.
DP: Generally speaking, people expect from the new society, I mean capitalism, what they didn’t have during the communist time. But also a certain standard of life, goods, stuff like that, and it came like no one imagined. It’s a big frustration in a way. In fifteen years, the society split in two: the very rich and the very poor. For the first time it was visible and you could talk about it. During communism you couldn’t criticize a big shot or boss of the Communist Party who had a villa or cars. Now it’s on view.
F: Is this in the past five years? Or since 1989 after the Communist Revolution?
DP: Since ‘89. At the beginning, it was confusing. Because people were still afraid of the Communists, but also very afraid about capitalism. For years and years we were taught that this [capitalism] was our enemy. And then when democratic institutions began, like the Parliament, and with the separation of power in the states, these differences became very visible...
LP: And, because we want to enter Europe, we have to fix things at home...
F: So now it’s working as a “social democracy?”
DP: Yes, more or less.
F: But the government still has a strong hold?
DP: There’s no place for DJs there. So, this is just happening now in our context, it’s becoming a little glamorous. It’s so easy to do: you project images on the wall, put some music there, and it’s a show. It’s too easy...
F: It doesn’t create dialogue like you were saying. It feels like your going to a nightclub, instead of talking about what you’re trying to say.
DP: Yes, and its not to analyze, it’s just a presentation of something.
LP: In Romania nothing is clear. Not the official position, or the mainstream, or the underground; everything could be totally upside down there.
DP: It’s like a residual Communism. Now, you cannot make a genuine, normal, nice Romanian do volunteer work. Because he was obliged all his life to work for nothing during Communism...
F: State-sponsored activity in Romania is very high. Even in art schools you were saying that they play a big part in telling students what should be done and what shouldn’t be done. Can you talk about the school system, especially the art school system?
LP: So in Romania we were over-trained. We used to say we were over-trained because there was a long period of art education. In the art academy it used to be four years before ‘89, and then after the change it was six years, and then now its four years again. But the main structure is the same, so it’s very academic. You have a teacher for painting, for graphic design, etc. It depends what you choose for six years, which is totally catastrophic, because you begin copying the teacher.
F: The same
one for six years?
DP & LP: Yeah.
LP: And, uh, the students can change, but then, you know, you can have problems if you change.
DP: The option to switch from one teacher to another, now it’s allowed but it’s still difficult. The system changed a little bit, it relaxed a little bit; but not in the major way we expected. So it’s still kind of conservative.
F: In terms of the medium, like painting?
DP: The medium, the way of understanding the medium, talking about...
LP: The way they want to train somebody who studies art. For example, they train the hand more, not the brain...
DP: Craft it’s called...
LP: A lot of students when they finish the art academy they cannot find an issue...
DP: Subjects...
LP: Or subjects, or a way for themselves...
DP: In the main school, like in Bucharest, in the Academy of Art, there is one single course in contemporary art theory, one single class. One guy is doing this, and it’s not obligatory, it’s optional. So you have a bunch of young people who are not trained for the fields they’re supposed to be active in. Of course the situation has changed enormously, because they have grants, they travel, they can do a semester somewhere else.
LP: And now in each academy they have a photo/video department...
DP: Which is more progressive.
LP: So there are some changes. But, actually why do we have this situation? Because the same guys are teaching them... who were also teaching before ‘89 they are teaching now too. And actually it’s kind of a manipulation, they don’t want to lose their positions. If they let the students free, they wouldn’t mean so much to the society.
F: So politically it’s important...
LP: They have customers [collectors]; they have museums who like them....
DP: But this is the point. Maybe you can have in one city some kind of bad academy. But in the Western world you have this parallel education...
LP: Like galleries...
DP: Associations, museums, a whole system which is missing there, so you don’t have alternatives. You cannot do it...it’s very complicated to be self-taught, because you don’t have examples around you. You have it in the West, you travel, and you see things. But that’s the conflict, because they [Romanian art students] say “but we want to study that stuff!”
F: You started an archive [the Center for Art Analysis, CAA], can you talk a little about that?
LP: Yes, I have many reasons behind this archive. From 1990 we started to travel and we started to realize the difference between Romania, our art education, and the information in the West. And I started to collect: to buy books, slides, videotapes. In 1997 I started to organize them, because I thought it needed to have a structure of information. So I organized it in different directions, performance art, installation art, photo/video media art, institutions, and, of course, theories. In a way I tried to recuperate everything from the 1960s, like Modernism, the currents that changed something in the art world. This archive is a kind of museum of contemporary art. Because at home we don’t have a museum of contemporary art, and I said, at least let’s have images. Materials which are structured, but that helps us also imagine. Of course we can’t see a Matthew Barney installation anywhere in Romania, but at least we have good slides, or a videotape, or a catalogue, and people can imagine.
DP: The archive is not just to see Matthew Barney. But to make sense of how come this guy appeared, to see what he’s doing, it’s not like he came out of the blue. It was very interesting, because this kind of platform around us was missing, so we tried to do it small scale, in a way, with our own money. It was a decision. We don’t buy jeans, but we buy catalogues [laughs]...
LP: Yeah, in 1999 I applied for a grant and I had to remember how much we invested in this archive. And if you can imagine we invested $45,000 since 1999.
DP: So you decide to go see a show, but that means money. I mean, traveling and hotels, then you buy the catalogues. So you have to decide to spend money in order to get this information.
LP: And, because our studio is big we can invite people in, but not so many, because we have too many books. From time to time I was organizing exhibitions on different issues for one month in a public space like a gallery. To let people do research for themselves, to discover for themselves, but I also would guide tours. I have a collection of postcards from 1990, interesting postcards from the exhibitions...
DP: This is cool because you can compare the titles of shows from 1990 to today because they are changing, and the images on the cards are changing. So you can have a little art history in this material that nobody cares about.
LP: I’m kind of a detective in contemporary art. It’s like I’m recuperating and re-showing something from 1990 or 1994.
DP: But look, politically speaking being a woman, like Lia, and also an artist, nobody cares. So this was her way to have an institution. “You are an artist? Who cares about an artist!” If you’re an institution, um, it changes...
LP: Yeah, it was also a strategy for me. I don’t like to wait for somebody to change my life. I realized I had to do what I had to do. And, I didn’t want to wait for anybody. Because, in a way, its normal. If you have something in mind, and somebody else has his or her own agenda, sometimes you don’t need that. It was a strategy for me to be visible.
DP: Then there is this, you are doing contemporary art in Romania and nobody is understanding anything about what you’re doing. So in order to make them understand, for you to be identifiable, like somebody doing something interesting. You have to, in a way, educate the context around you. Or kind of prove that this is an important matter, so that was the strategy.
LP: Like in the architecture school or in medicine they tell you, “You are very important, take care, and you are somebody.” So, in time, I realized we are heavy workers in art. And it’s not fair at all. It seems to be a cliché everywhere that art is easy stuff...
DP: A luxury, who cares about it, it’s not the Super Bowl...
LP: Actually, people think you study art because you weren’t able to study something else...So, in a way, I discovered looking at this material that I need to change this mentality
DP: This is also important. If you look at art history there are some really interesting things done...
LP: But lost somehow, forgotten...
DP: In this very moment, there are very interesting things that are being done, it’s so spectacular and interesting. So this kind of fascination we have towards art we try to share.
F: So where do you show the archive in Romania?
LP: In galleries, in Bucharest I like galleries where young people go, like in a studio. Places without a program, without a snobby attitude, where you have to apply, blah, blah. Places where they have good shows, run by artists that belong to the art union. And in the country[side], we travel here and there, where we are invited by young artists, students, and teachers. So we show in museums and galleries...
DP: And sometimes in our own studio. But, we just talked today about it, and our institution its like culture jamming. It’s not an institution, we’re not paying taxes, it’s like a format. But, it’s not a fixed program.
LP: It’s organic.
F: Do you think art schools would take the archive in? Would you ever give it to a school?
DP: No...
LP: You know somebody asked me if I wanted to give this archive for free. No! We’ve invested a lot of money. We give the information for free. We have our own newspaper [CAA], and the all the time I make a short list of events, or interesting ideas, or theories. So I’m working a lot and I’m not getting paid. Dan is my sponsor, so I have an archive and Dan is my sponsor.
DP: But, we think about that. And the solution we came up with is this. We were born in a city in Transylvania and they have a wonderful museum there. This museum was state-owned, but it was private in the beginning. Now this museum is run by a Catholic church, and if they got it, it would become much more interesting. So we figured out if none of the schools were interested, the archive would go there.
LP: Anyway, we would leave this archive in good hands. It would also have to be an open place...it’s like a library, you can have them in a museum. But, in a way, I have a library built on information from a lot of museums while I was traveling from Europe and the United States.
DP: But what I want to say is that it [the archive] makes sense when there is somebody like Lia around to activate this kind of information.
F: Bringing it into context.
DP: Making a sentence out of the information.
LP: The first exhibitions were very didactic about decisions of performance, installation, photography, and different media; but then I started with the visual identity of institutions. What is behind the concept...And now I’m working on a kind of short history of art. Through some multiplies or copies or objects with labels. And from the objects you start to have a story.
F: Do you think people are starting to understand contemporary art by your archive? How is contemporary art looked at, like installations for example, in Romania?
LP: You know, people are very eager to find out what is new. So I have very normal people that are curious and they understood what I had there.
DP: Because you don’t force them to look at it as art only. They are not in a dangerous territory, where they don’t know anything about it so they reject it. So you put them in a territory they are familiar with. And they express.
LP: I had problems with specialists, like art critics or art historians, at home because they come in their minds with a lot of clichés. And they’re not open to realize that there can be a book, or books, in a gallery. It’s like an info room or like a lab in a gallery. Where everybody can come in and start doing research.
DP: About installation and how its seen in Romania. Like we said earlier, there is an emphasis on craft in the schools. So what you see working in spaces trying to come out of this kind of “craft,” more or less, it’s like “We’re coming out of the painting!” It’s been a problem for some years, this kind of medium was seen as too Western, not Romanian enough, stuff like that. But now it’s balanced.
LP: Now let’s come back to the West where we are. Like you said people maybe need these kind of events based on dialogue, and I totally agree with you. I checked this out in Europe. Actually I have a theory. In art a lot of mistakes were done. From the artists, the curators, and, in a way, they lost their public. Because of too many mistakes.
F: What do you mean by mistakes?
LP: Mistakes, like, sometimes maybe they didn’t believe really powerfully in what they were presenting in the exhibition. And then it’s hard to convince somebody else. When you don’t like something really badly, and I think we have to work with this involvement all the time, if you don’t like something, or you only like something half and half, you can not convince anybody to come, to talk, to see what’s there. Because you start to, you know, talk too much [Laughs...]
DP: No, but in a way maybe artistic research has become very sophisticated and that’s okay. But the link between this sophistication and the rest of the people is missing. Because probably the art system [before] was self-sufficient, there were enough artgoers, collectors, whatever, and who cares about the rest. And the rest, I’m sorry to say, they don’t care, so they don’t put in any effort. Even in the most known sport on the earth, you have to know the rules. You have to know why they kicked the ball. Why? You know? In some ways people are trained to understand culture, and visual culture, as not belonging to their life or something. It’s not necessary for their life, so they don’t know the rules. We’ve been always asking, why for contemporary art do you need so many words around the work? For a da Vinci or for a Raphael, there are a million books written about them. And if you think about the most common VCR you buy, everybody knows what this machine is. But you still get a book for how to use it, you know? When you speak to people like this in a simple way, maybe they relax and they try to understand, not 100 percent, but something.
LP: But I also meant a lot of curators, for instance, quite famous some of them, and they were impressed with themselves. In a way, they wanted to do a lot to be impressive. But they push to much on entertainment, like the public doesn’t know anything, its not educated, and they won’t understand; so the curators have do something colorful and fun, which is again a mistake. They have to do some research, and maybe they will find something.
DP: Now we live in a very complicated society, because there are a lot of people producing images, not only artists. There is a huge production of images, sometimes interesting. So how do you make a difference ...
F: Between art and non-art, or “what is art?”
DP: Or why this or that... So in a way the conservative feeling of Romanians, it’s like being safe. They can consider that painting like art, and if everybody is saying it’s good art, there’s no risk involved. That’s the problem. And with contemporary mediums, they were complicated to introduce, but now they’re becoming, we can say, they are being used in a conservative way. Of course, photography is the big fashion now, there is a lot of people doing photography. But, if you don’t do photography or video, you are not contemporary enough. Which is strange also.
LP: Or, of course, in Periferic [a biennial in Lasi curated by Matei Bejenaru] there are some confused things. For instance, the new media [in Romania] could be in the museum, but in the West it would be [considered] underground.
DP: If you have an official institution, and you’re doing an opening with DJs, more or less, it’s a paradox.
LP: It’s fashion.
DP: There’s no place for DJs there. So, this is just happening now in our context, it’s becoming a little glamorous. It’s so easy to do: you project images on the wall, put some music there, and it’s a show. It’s too easy...
F: It doesn’t create dialogue like you were saying. It feels like your going to a nightclub, instead of talking about what you’re trying to say.
DP: Yes, and its not to analyze, it’s just a presentation of something.
LP: In Romania nothing is clear. Not the official position, or the mainstream, or the underground; everything could be totally upside down there.