No.2,Ljubljana,December 2000

Ivanka Apostolova (Major of History of Art and Archeology at the University of Skopje)

MANI-transformational-emotional-instinctively-suicidal-FESTA capital

- An Impressionist Fine Arts Essay -
  

Now I'm thinking ... how to start this text ...

I have made my own choice and came to some conclusions regarding the artistic material presented at Manifesta 3.

I chose two installations which I consider to be excellent: Transformation Always Takes Time and Energy by Pravdoljub Ivanov with its manipulated translation: transformation is manipulation (like this text) or freedom of interpretation.

Transformation is a playful process of exaggerating the banal reality and everyday materialism in the name of a final creative result, such as a witty, or even more, a poetic composition. This optimistic installation, due to its spatial and temporal nature enters the sphere of scenography. This is the base of the witty ‘action’ that consists of the energy of the electric currency and the boiling of water: time as performance of water that vaporizes and the occasional human intervention of filling the pots with water and thus creating an inevitable happening. This is a Walt Disney-like, closely connected team organism; amusing because of the cord's linearity, the positive diversity of the household gadgets as the teapot and the cooking pots, with a small lid giving an accent to it all - so listen carefully to the boiling water! A Small Floor Theater.

The philosophy of the ready-made is practical: you observe; then you overcome and you completely turn around the meaning. The psychology of the ready- made throws a different light onto creativity: sometimes simplicity is clear as an open idea, while in other cases, believe it or not, the psycho-position of the ready-made becomes as complex as an emotional knot in Surrealism. I see an example of this in the work of Alexander Melkonyan – Armenian Emotional, Logical Victorious, Instinctively Suicidal Ancient-Armenian Urban Archetype in the Last Capital of Armenians. Fantastic fantasy! When one allows to be led by the child-like ‘strategy’, then one gets the feeling that maybe the last impulse of artistic creation will not be swallowed up by the reality of art’s insignificance. While reading the author's text (in the catalogue) I found it very pretentious – as if meant only to satisfy the concept and expectations of the curators. But I forgave him all that when I was confronted with the richness of allusions in his installation. The allusions and the provocation of the allusions became the aura of that piece of art. In this system, our soul ennobles through the various assumptions that appear in the center of the recipient's imagination. An imaginative interaction between the independence of this complexity and the viewers who are looking at and processing all these forms and details, so devotedly and emotionally concentrated and plasticized.

Now the question that occurs is, how to finish this text; so I've decided, to quickly go through the motto of M 3:

- (Do you suffer from a) Borderline Syndrome?

- Yes, from the whimsy of the subjectivity of the selection, and the problem of: to be or not to be selected.

- Where do YOU draw the line?

- In the center of the complex of illusion which has long ago turned into a synthetic raw reality.

- Energies of defense?

- Yes, in the psychopathology of ambitions!

Pravdoljub Ivanov: Transformation Tikes Time and Energy, 1998

 

 
 
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