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Lifting up old structures like space-shuttle-churches
by Felix Vogel

Choosing the concept of “Chaos: The age of confusion” for the 2nd 
Bucharest Biennale (BB2), the Hungarian curator and director of the 
Mucsarnoc – Kunsthalle Budapest took a decision, which is not only 
connected to our daily life in the age of globalization, but it also 
correlates to Bucharest and Romania on an urban and social-political 
level.

Already the – very small – list of participating artists, which are 
mostly young and not yet very popular, shows a difference to other 
biennials. No global player could be found in the biennial and against 
all trends of recent biennials (the last issues of Venice, Berlin, Lyon 
and Whitney) to backtrack into more private, easy-going, nice and 
escapist discourse Bucharest Biennale 2. is a social-political engaged 
and almost militant show.

Instead of putting out a conventional catalogue, BB2 published a hybrid 
between a documentation catalogue, a reader and a magazine (English, 
256 pages, ISSN 1841-7337, www.pavilionmagazine.org). In this great 
compendium, you will find texts by Zsolt Pétranyi, Marina Grzinic, 
Michel Tournier, Suzana Milevska, Douglas Kellner and many others 
concerning not only chaos. The reader – the 9th issue of PAVILION 
magazine – builds a bridge between the biennial’s artworks and 
art-theoretical, political, sociological and prose texts and it 
therefore continues the biennial in the medium of a reader, instead of 
only documenting the artworks.

Additionally, most of the artworks are videos and photography. 
Although, there are some other works – Dan Perjovschi’s huge wall 
drawing at the greenhouse of the Botanical Garden and his 
skateboard-plate-drawing in South Shop, Iona Nemes’ subtle installation 
“Monthly Evaluation Project” in the Faculty of Biology, Attila Stark’s 
graffiti project “The brown ship of two drunken cooks” around the city, 
which is documented with photos, and there is Sebastian Moldovan’s “end 
of Paris” sign in the Botanical Garden, but still this object is part 
of a video-performance – the show is dominated by video and 
photography. Actually, focusing on this mediums was not the worse idea, 
but the straight separation of video (in the Museum of Geology) and 
Photography (in the National Centre for Dance) prevents the dialog 
between the media and the artworks – there is a confrontation between 
the space and its surroundings (for example the stones and crystals in 
the Museum of Geology) but no dialog between the media. Although, such 
a dialog can be found in the Museum of Literature between Aya Tzukioka 
and Ilona Nemeth and it worked in a remarkable way.

Both artists presented a video-/photo-documentation of a performance. 
Tzukioka constructed for her work “Hide-And-Seek” (2001) different 
suits, which were mimicries of soft drink machines. The artists could 
hide in “dangerous” urban situations – in the subway, in front of 
tourist sights or just on the streets. The artwork questions not only – 
in a very funny and slapstick-like way – terms of personal security and 
paranoia but also the aesthetics of urban landscapes, influenced by the 
exaggerated presence of soft drink machines.

Looking at Tzukioka’s work as a hyperbolical and metaphorical 
documentation of the life of today’s people in the age of chaos and 
confusion, the work next to hers – Slovakian Iona Nemeth’s “Morning” 
(2004) could be seen as its less metaphorical and funny but more 
straight-to-the-point counterpart. In her video and photographs you 
observe a women eating breakfast, doing the kitchen, going shopping – 
just every day life scenes – guarded (or kidnapped?) by two 
black-dressed, masked, strong men. We do not know, why they are 
following her and she and the people around her look like, if they do 
not care, if they even do not realize the two hardly overlooked men. Is 
it necessary today to have personal guards or Tzukioka’s hiding suit in 
everyday situations?

Having five totally different main spaces – not one single to art 
related location – all around the city, the biennial intervenes in the 
chaotic structures of the city in a subtle way. Visitors were forced to 
confront the structures of the city. Although, all spaces were located 
in downtown of Bucharest, totally different places could be recognized. 
The seamless transit of old 19th century architecture to pretentious 
communist buildings seemed to be part of the topic chaos. Moreover, 
visitors had to question the condition of this markedly chaotic city 
not only in the context of art but also – looking at homeless orphans 
walking around shiny expensive cars – in terms of politics and 
Romania’s post-communist condition.

Admittedly, the intervention concept is not very new, but the way it 
works in Bucharest is different to other biennials. berlin biennale 
4th, for example, tried to intervene in Auguststraße, but in the end it 
looked just like a PR campaign of the curators, while in Bucharest the 
whole concept functions in a more militant and political involved wise, 
because every space and the way between the different locations showed 
a detailed picture of the diversity of the city’s structure, condition 
and people. Therefore, the way the biennial works reminds us of the 
last Istanbul Biennial in 2005.

Zsolt Pétranyi’s intervention concept seems to be continued in much of 
the artworks. If we look for example at Sebastian Moldovan’s “The 
Paris” (intervention in public space, performance, video, photography, 
2005/2006) we can see the artist strolling around the city in the 
manner of the situationist dérive, taking an end of Paris sign on his 
back to every places he goes. He places the sign on different locations 
all around Bucharest, places which were earlier called “Little Paris” 
and he asks therefore about the today’s condition of the city, if there 
is still – or again, looking at Romania’s move towards the EU – 
something like a “Paris” in Bucharest
Assuming, that Moldovan is discovering and questioning structures of 
the city his work has something in common with Rainer Ganahl’s 
“Bicycling Bucharest” (2006) performance/video. In his performance, 
Ganahl is bicycling against the traffic, without holding the steering 
wheel. The video shows the steering wheel, which can be seen – 
following Ganahl – as a cross hair. Due to this performance, which 
Ganahl did in cities all around the world like New York, Hong Kong or 
Damascus, the artist discovers the city in his full diversity, 
oscillating between sightseeing (The House Of The People) and busy, 
stressed and angry drivers and yelling policemen.

Another interesting intervention and one of the favorite artworks of 
the biennial could be found in Nemes’ installation “Monthly Evaluation 
Project” (2006) at the Faculty of Biology. Taking an old glass 
showcase, full of books, which were not touched since decades and 
wrapping the books in new and colorful bindings Nemes created an 
artwork, which confuses the visitor of the Faculty of Biology, because 
of its extraneous in the grey and less colorful surrounding. On every 
binding Nemes wrote some words about her mood of this certain day. The 
work established a very intimate and therefore almost voyeuristic 
relation between the visitor and the artist. Still, there is glass 
between the visitor and the – so to speak – artist’s life. You think 
you know everything, but you cannot (re)act and there is still a 
uncertainty that nothing on the book cover is true.

One out-sticking work could be found – and almost overlooked – in a 
small chamber in the basement of the Museum of Geology: Polish Janek 
Simon’s video “Departure” (2006, computer animation), which shows the 
city of Krakow, one of the most conservative and religious cities in 
Poland, and its churches. During the seven minutes of the video, all 
six churches are lifting up like space shuttles with an enormous sound 
intensity. The video questions the big influence of the Catholic 
Church, which dominates (or manipulates?) the political decision 
process still today, as well as the ridiculousness of only reducing 
Krakow to its tourist sights, namely its gothic churches.

It is not only Simon’s work, which shows the political engagement of 
BB2. The whole biennial tried to be involved in the social-political 
process of Bucharest and Romania. It could be claimed that BB2 tried to 
lift up old structures like the churches in Simon’s video.

__________________________________
Felix Vogel is theoretician and curator. Living and working in Germany.
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